More Thoughts on Triggers

d2e8b8 3579

Quit Date: Oct 17, 2016

Posted December 15 

I recall a post explaining triggers which I'll try to paraphrase in case it helps someone as much as it helped me.

There are 3 kinds of triggers - 

- Daily triggers.  These happen daily e.g. coffee, lunch, in the car driving to work, returning from work, etc.  When we quit smoking, these are the triggers that we tackle first and overcome within the first few days.  Having overcome these, we start to feel confident ...not realizing there are other triggers waiting to trip us.

- Occasional triggers.  As the name suggests, they happen occasionally e.g. vacation - drive, flight, visiting family or friends, social activities like bar, dance etc.  Generally, these are events that happen a few times a year but not daily.  These are dangerous because they surprise us just as we're feeling confident. If we're not prepared, we can lose the quit to these occasional triggers even after staying quit 3,4 or 6 months.

- Life event triggers.  These only happen a few times in our lives e.g. losing a job or a loved one or a break up.  Again, smoking doesn't help with anything but the trigger catches us at a moment when we are vulnerable and may not be acting rationally and can result in losing a quit.

For me, it helped to understand the concept ahead of time - that after overcoming the initial daily triggers, there will come other triggers and they will tend to catch you by surprise and unprepared.  A bit of thinking and preparing ahead of time helped so that when the time came, it was possible to fight and kill the trigger.  

It's all in the head after all and I had my own game that I played in the head to kill triggers.  I visualized hitting the trigger with a hammer and shouting "Die trigger die".  A couple of times I may have shouted aloud getting a few strange stares ... but it worked ... and that's all that matters.

Link to original post: https://www.quittrain.com/blogs/entry/1105-thoughts-on-triggers/