Every morning I post the current Threat Level. When I arrive at work, I assess the situation and post the days level prominently on my office door. This threat level has nothing to do with terrorists.
It’s all about me.
I have really good mornings most of the time. Today was not one of them. I normally use the real color-coded threat level sign. But that seemed too ordinary to express the condition I had elevated to in the 3 hours between getting out of bed and starting to work. Every joint in my body hurt, my fasting blood glucose was 314, meaning two injections instead of one. I felt feverish, sweaty and grumpy. My skin itched and crawled.
I did not want to go to work. I wanted to scream, throw a tantrum, and go back to bed. But being the dedicated employee that I am, I sucked it up and went to the office. Where I found more crap to irritate me, just reading my email.
<—Today’s Threat Level
Someone said “A picture is worth 1,000 words”. I have no clue who this little girl is, but she looks how I felt today. And still feel tonight, so I am sending my grumpy ass to bed now.
My daily post will be late today because I’m involved in a writing exercise..
BEFORE:
I have been called worse.
My posts are returned from the grammar checker full of green underlined phrases . There are red underlines popping up too, but those are expected, because I can’t spell while I write. My muse can’t be bothered with semantics. It must be allowed to flow unencumbered by such mundane things like grammar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AFTER:
I’ve been called worse.
My posts return from the grammar checker full of green underlined phrases . Red underlines also pop up, but I expect those, because I can’t spell while I write. My muse isn’t bothered with semantics. It wants to flow, unencumbered by such mundane things like grammar.
Dear Diary,
I know I said goodbye at the end of June. I also said I wanted to move on to other topics because I was bored, blah, blah, blah.
The Bitch
The truth is I needed to stop blogging about quitting because I was thinking about smoking all the time. I needed to break away before I drove myself crazy or to the liquor store for a pack of cigarettes.
I recently figured out that the hardest part of the journey has begun, and it would be down right selfish of me to not mention this last phase that is the most important one of all – Phase III: Maintenance.
In other words, staying quit. Watching out for my addiction (a.k.a. “The Bitch”) because she lurks and patiently waits to catch you in a weak moment. You know it’s her when a craving smacks you right between the eyes, and you weren’t even thinking about smoking. The sudden interruption of your thoughts is jarring, and upsetting because it’s been x many months now, damn it! Withdrawal is over! You want to throw a tantrum like a little girl.
Take immediate action. STOP THINKING! NOW!. Before you start to rationalize. Before you justify (to yourself), why it’s OK to have a cigarette. You deserve one. Or two… The longer your mind travels this destructive train of thought, the more logical your thinking seems to you. But it’s not your thinking anyway, it’s your addiction‘s thinking.
A psychologist, I know personally, taught me a technique called “Stop Thought”. It sounded too silly to really work, but in the spirit of cooperation, and the fact I knew no other techniques, I gave it a try. (I used to try reason. But that Bitch is SO unreasonable.)
“STOP!!” is the simplest and fastest one. I visualized the word STOP in bold, bright red and font-size 14K, as I screamed (very loudly inside my head) “STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!” . Very cathartic .And it works. Your brain switches over to defensive mode and your only focus now is slamming the door in the Bitches face.
Other Stop Thoughts that help me are: “GO AWAY“, “UP YOUR NOSE WITH A RUBBER HOSE“, “CA-CA“, “KNOCK IT OFF“, and “NOT TODAY“
And don’t be shy – throw that tantrum like a little girl if you want, by stomping (as loud as you can) in circles, flailing your arms about, with your fists tightly balled up. Then you add in shrill whining and hiccuppy* sobbing. If you are the adventurous type, try the rolling around on the floor version. I’m too old to do that anymore, but I think the vertical tantrum is more fun anyway.
OK. You slammed the door against your Bitch. So what now?
You can do whatever. Continue on with your day like nothing happened. Good News: Cravings only last one or two minutes and you handled those minutes beautifully. There will be other minutes down the road. Some worse than others, but do not be afraid of them. You don’t have to listen to the Bitch’s lies anymore.
<—Today’s Threat Level 
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