Well, thanks again to tt for pointing me in the right direction on this topic!
It's good news: I am accepting, claiming, owning my unconscious self and all those feelings (formerly known as "Twiggy") as ME. It's a strange feeling and process. It's ongoing... and may be for quite some time.
I got so used to talking about Twiggy as if she were another person - with her own thoughts, memories & feelings - but the inescapable fact is that she is me and I her. Yeah, I even blamed her for starting to smoke and thought that the problem of quitting belonged to her, too. I was WRONG. (see the Obsession vs Self-Acceptance thread).
It's me - the conscious Amber - who is physically addicted; who is using smoking to deny, ignore, not deal with the last bit of emotional processing that is necessary for Twiggy & Amber to finally be just one identity - mentally, emotionally, and psychically - in the same old baggy skin. Smoking was the only way I learned to be comfortable with all emotions - and I mean all of them!
I was taught that my emotions weren't important; that they were dangerous even. I had no reason to believe that they wouldn't just completely overwhelm me and make me as mentally ill as my mother; and I feared this and had no one to tell me otherwise. As intense as my emotions are - I was NEVER in a position where I couldn't function or not be able to think rationally. (Dissociation is another story; but those two experiences got smooshed together; confused for me.)
I have more emotional work to do in this phase.
The unconscious me, is way smarter and more powerful than "me". That's been proven over & over through countless bits of self-sabotage - those emotions; that self that I split off in the trauma-era simply wouldn't be denied or just "go away". When I let my unconscious self make the decision to quit smoking, the relationship between conscious-unconscious (Amber & Twiggy) subtly changed. All of a sudden, I began forgetting cigarettes. I forget to carry my pack - where I left them - even forget to buy them or bring them in the house.
I am aware that withdrawal is going to bring up the usual emotions. I was a bit worried about anger being predominant - but I don't think it will be what I have to finish dealing with. I think it will be grief; powerful, intense, grief... for all the losses that figure into my "story"; for the loss of my coping mechanism (smoking); for all the people that I have to "let go" in this last dash for freedom and self-integration and survival.
I'm working with the BecomeanEx support group. I loved their commercials - of relearning how to do everything without cigarettes; they're hilarious! I really connected those images with my idea of "practicing"... which is close enough to their "separating". One of the steps in all these CBT techniques is clearly defining WHY you want to quit.
Conscious me wants to quit for health reasons; but you know what? For someone who's spent most of her life locked in self-imposed abusive cycles - that's simply not important enough a reason. After all, I'm conditioned to believe that what I want isn't important; I'm used to my need not getting met. It hasn't been enough so far.
So I asked Twiggy why she wants to quit. She wants to be like BEFORE the trauma; before the splitting. Reintegration, in other words. A worthy, powerful want... and what's the only thing standing in the way of reintegration? My conditioned, addicted, non-accepting, coping mechanism for not feeling ALL my emotions, clear & pure, without any kind of "filter": smoking.
That sorta explains my obsession, too, doesn't it? HOPEFULLY, this is the end of the conversation about smoking. I'm hoping to use this thread to talk about the experience of reintegrating, primarily. My Quit Date is Friday - was last Friday, but I had to reschedule a server upgrade last week. And I know I need to not be trying to quit while upgrading a server! I can't predict my mental/emotional state... at least, in the past, this was true.
I get the sneaking suspicion that this time, the quit is going to be completely different than I imagine it from this side of it.
Since I'm going FOCUS on reintegration - not "quitting". Well DUH, right?
