So today's D-day - maybe Q day is the better choice of alphabetical symbol - since this is my deadline to complete work on self-sabotage: smoking being the sabotage in question. Been working through the very, very last of this sabotage topic for myself and have FINALLY gotten "outside" of it... the perspective is much different from here!
I am finally able to be conscious of, clear in myself, that the ONLY reason I'm still smoking today... is that the addiction wants me to smoke... it wants fed. It threatens with pompous, overly self-important horrible things that will happen to me, if I choose to stop feeding it. It pretends to be an awful monster. All just hot air... the only weapon it's got is the fraudulent FEAR of these not-enforceable threats. Twit. I'm going to put it out of it's misery.
Y'all know how fascinated I am with the brain, neuroscience, and it's impact on our emotional/psychological lives. Maybe I'll start doing more research in this area, soon. I did want to share something I've found that's been helping me. You might laugh, but that's OK. It's a totally serious thing for me - and the benefits are becoming real. One of the CBT tips to get through a nicotine crave that I found, was to play a calming, relaxing computer game. Bejeweled was recommended.
Now, I've been anti-computer games ever since pong... and it wasn't until hubby bought a wii, and I started hitting home runs in baseball, that this unfounded prejudice was shattered. Well, another game - Excite Truck - where you race & jump & crash trucks gave me an idea: I realized that I was training myself to perform certain tasks... and to know exactly when the timing was right to get the most possible points for various tricks. And I noticed that if I "thought" - used my normal cognitive processes - to try to determine this timing - I sucked. Big time.
So I started trying to observe what was going on. Tai Chi & push hands has helped me "notice" things with some other part of my brain than the "thinking" part. Then, I wondered if I could actually improve my timing in tai chi....... by practicing on the computer game. It worked. Maybe it's just simply instinct, reflexes, some lizard-brain skill... but what was interesting was that it was trainable. So, knowing I used to like puzzle games as a kid, I downloaded Bejeweled. Been working with it since my last quit attempt - 3 days!! - a couple months ago.
If you don't know the game: you're presented with a grid of jewels; 6 different colors & shapes. The "play" is to match 3, 4 or 5 (I still haven't gotten 6). You're only allowed to move one square at a time. A match disappears from the board, and the jewels drop down into a new arrangement. There are two versions: a short, timed version that is scored and an "endless" version, in which points are tracked and the board is cleared - but only after a much longer timeframe. It just keeps going up a level and recording the score. Endlessly. I downloaded the game for my computer; but it's also available for the playstation2. Bought that one, too. It's cheap.
This game has other kinds of effects & benefits than the other games. Almost immediately, I noticed that little, tiny, disconnected snippets of memory - sometimes visual, sometimes emotional, sometimes events or places... would float up into my brain, while playing. The time-frame of the Twiggy years. Sort of like, what happened to me during meditation. So I just let them float on by... except I think they're actually filling in tiny gaps in that period of lost memory. By themselves, they're completely meaningless. But I sense that it's important to let them come up; fit in where ever; and not worry about them.
Then I started to see what the game was requiring of me... psychologically. And what it was training me to do. I've kept notes, since these were things I hoped to "work on" in myself... and here I was "training" my brain with this silly game! For instance:
>Accept the reality of what's in front of me - no wishful thinking - and take an immediate action
>Respond quickly - make a decision - w/o worrying about the "right" choice
>Allow tradeoffs - the consequences of those decisions to happen - and just adapt: sometimes the game will remove potential matches that I'd postponed making, in favor of the one that removed all those gems - but later, the opportunity returns AGAIN... for those points
>Even small, repetitive movements will eventually "shake up" the whole board and I'll have more matches to make than I can possibly make, all at once - racking up an immense number of points
Well, all this has had the effect of helping me feel more confident in myself... my judgement... in me, really. And it IS wonderfully relaxing, no matter what the problem - nic crave... garden-variety anxiety or nervousness... and I can use this as a "reward"... too.
It's been an interesting tool... and even though it might not be useful for someone else, there are other things that might work the same way, too. With my MIL, recovering from a stroke - it was crochet with large yarn/needles that helped her get enough skill back with her right hand (and the neural connections) to be able to write legibly again. We gave her lots of things she had been familiar with - boxed puzzles were another big help - our companionship, encouragement, and time... and now she's a whiz at puzzles & crochet - and making even more improvements.
Well - I've blathered on & on here. (I do that when I'm excited about something.) My point is that the brain is "fixable", "trainable". And that maybe there exists some thing like this, for everyone. Something that helps retrain the brain... break old emotional loops... and change self-sabotage habits. These are just the ones that work for me...
