Quitting, on the Homefront

My recent post was on partners quitting together. What happens if you are the only one that is ready to quit or if you are the only one that smokes in your household, what then? You still need the support of your family, and everyone living with you. This can be tricky because often between family and loved ones ISSUES about smoking have occurred, or times when your smoking has been a cause of conflict. It is easy to feel judged by others who don't smoke or smoke themselves but think because you have young children or are pregnant that you should quit. So the question becomes how to get past all of these barriers and begin the efforts of quitting despite the negative opinions of others.

This will take effort, and I will begin by suggesting that you start with laying it out on the table. Tell them of your feelings. This works by using those "I feel" words. It doesn't help if they get on the defensive, you want their support, not their anger, so own your feelings by letting them know how you feel and what you want to accomplish. An example would be, "I feel scared to try to quit because I don't want to disappoint myself or others if I can't quit but I have set a quit date and would like your support. I feel that if I tell you what things will help me and what things don't help, things will go easier for me. I know this won't be easy for either of us but it is important and I need your support and feel I know what things you can do which will really help me during this difficult time." In this example you lay out your feelings and desires, you are up front about the specific things that will help support your efforts and you acknowledge how hard it will be for both of you.

To help them know how to support you, you need to be specific on what support works and what they could do that would feel judgmental from them. This is tricky because to enlist their help you have to make sure they don't feel blamed or defensive. Again try to stick with the "I feel" words, they will cut out some of the negative feelings they might feel about this issue too. I would suggest that you don't get into the things that have happened in the past by just saying I have given this a lot of thought and think that _______ will work best. This is a new day and everyone involved needs to feel this is a fresh start and shouldn't be weighed down by the past.

It is important to relay how important it is that everyone around you should not smoke around you. Ask if they would change their routine so that they smoke away from the home or at least away from you. It is especially important that they don't smoke in the car that you will travel in. This is often a place people associate smoking with and it will trigger a stronger craving if someone has recently smoked there. I would encourage you to figure out times and ways to spend together that don't involve smoking. You both will need to change routines so that you still spend time enjoying each others company, and handling family business without doing it where you used to smoke together. Your special loved one can help by changing a smoking routine to going out on walks with you, or helping you through a craving with a change of activity or an I love you.

I know that you need the support from loved ones especially during the early days of quitting where you are likely to be cranky, difficult and when you might not feel very well. Tell them you expect the early days to be hard and that you hope they can be patient when you are hard to live with. Ask them to give you some slack when you are angry or emotional, that you especially need their love then. Let them know what some of the hard parts of quitting might feel like to you so they can better understand what you are up against.

I hope that you can have these honest conversations with your partner and loved ones and that they will take them in the spirit they are offered. These times require patience and love shown by everyone and support can be shown if they keep what will work best for you at the forefront.

Smoking Together? Is it time to Quit Together

I've observed that when we live with someone, we share moments throughout the day, we share parts of our social routines; and sometimes these moments are more important to our lives than we recognize. Smoking is one of these routines that can be an integral part of our relationship, part of our interactions that can bring us together or sometimes cause great stress to a relationship. Perhaps this shared time might be over coffee and a cigarette in the morning, or getting away from children for a quick smoke, out on the porch. Sometimes couples don't really talk about their cigarettes and whether they want to quit, or not, except in generalities. When a pregnancy happens with all of the expectations and sometimes ambivalence of a baby coming the generalities of whether a person has thoughts of quitting tobacco and the shared time of smoking can bring up strong feelings and frustrations. Sometimes it brings out shared "you should's", expectations of what their partner should do from both sides of the partnership. Have you experienced any of this?

Sometimes the shared experience of smoking, a time which brought you together before the pregnancy, is something that has never been discussed but now becomes important in new ways and a discussion becomes important. Now smoking, because of the importance of quitting for the baby, is an important decision for both parents. How this discussion and the decisions made by both mom and dad occur has a huge impact on the relationship and on how stressful the pregnancy is on the relationship, and on mom.

Whether this discussion and decision becomes something shared by the partnership is vitally important to the relationship and to the baby. Openly talking with each other about conflicting feelings of quitting and empathy for each other are vital to this important discussion. Recognition about the difficulty of quitting and why it is important for everyone that both the man and the woman quit, needs to be communicated and resolved. This discussion might best be handled with a counselor. The quit line has tobacco treatment specialist that are trained in helping pregnant couples quit. A First Breath booklet titled, What you Can Do to Help Your Loved One Quit Smoking" might be a helpful resource. It would be available through your county Health Department in Wisconsin. I would also like to invite anyone who would like to work through these feelings and issues together to contact me. Whatever the time, place or format I would encourage this to be something you as a couple tackle together. I know, that this can be the time which brings you together as a couple, making decisions that will benefit your baby's beginnings and health and your own future and health. Blessings for you both in this effort.