Focusing on personal values for smoking cessation

Values management is a very important element in psychotherapy applied to smoking cessation.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of disease and preventable death.. In Spain alone there are already 58,000 tobacco-related deaths per year.

Smoking kills half of its users prematurely, causes multiple health problems for those exposed to it, and leads to more frequent admission to intensive care for those infected with COVID-19.

It is possible to quit tobacco from value management.

Prolonged use of nicotine leads to addiction, and therefore the abrupt cessation of consumption triggers an abstinence syndrome. which is characterized by the following symptoms: irritability, frustration, anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, increased appetite, restlessness, depressed mood and insomnia.

That is to say, initially, when one tries to remove tobacco from one's daily life, one feels a strong protest from the body, which was accustomed to this substance. This is one of the reasons why quitting tobacco is difficult, but with the right accompaniment, quitting tobacco is possible.

Giving up an addiction involves going through a series of phases

The psychological approach to smoking initially consists of assessing how the habit has developedThis includes knowing what factors are maintaining tobacco consumption.

By knowing the reasons why the person continues to smoke, we can influence these triggers, which are often automated.

The person suffering from an addiction (whether to tobacco or some other substance) moves through a series of phases: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation for change, action, maintenance and, when this occurs, relapse..

The initial evaluation of the case will allow us to know in which phase of this process the person is, and this is fundamental, because depending on this the therapy will be oriented in one way or another, the objective being to accompany the patient through the successive phases until he or she manages to completely give up tobacco and become an ex-smoker.

Quitting smoking involves dealing with ambivalence.

The smoker is torn between cravings for smoking (craving) and reasons to quit.. In this struggle it is useful to remember that motivation is a state, not a stable aspect; this means that motivation fluctuates depending on what the person feels, thinks and does.

There are internal triggers (getting rid of anxiety) and external triggers (being exposed to situations associated with smoking). Internalizing the reasons why a person decides to quit smoking is fundamental because values are more stable than motivation and can serve as something solid and stable to hold on to.

It is as if we were on a boat in the middle of a storm; the tossing and tossing waves, strong winds and instability would represent the unpleasant sensations associated with withdrawal, but if we have a good anchor, no matter how strong the swell, the boat will not sink.

This anchor represents our values: to take better care of our children, to enjoy better health, to increase our life expectancy to see our grandchildren grow up, to prove to ourselves that we can achieve difficult things, to improve our performance in sports, to have an odor-free home where our friends and family can feel comfortable, to have more money for the really important things, or whatever our reasons are for kicking the tobacco habit.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a useful approach to quit smoking.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a therapeutic approach that maintains that a large number of psychological problems, very different from each other, share a common characteristic, and that is that the person suffers from a series of discomforts (anxiety, sadness, hallucinations, Pain or desire to consume) and tries, in multiple ways, to reduce these unpleasant experiences. In the short term, attempts to control the discomfort may be useful, but in the long term they lead to exacerbating in the long term they lead to exacerbation of the symptoms and, more importantly, to neglect those things that are important and valuable to them.

In the present case, many smokers smoke to avoid unpleasant situations such as anxiety, nervousness, insecurity in social situations, or boredom.

This type of psychotherapeutic approach aims to help the patient to examine the usefulness of his attempts to control his discomfort. and to show that, in the long term, these strategies are ineffective. The goal, therefore, is not so much that the patient does not have a bad time, but that he learns to tolerate the discomfort so that attempts at control do not lead him away from the things that really matter to him.

Clarifying these really important things is crucial; this way the values of the person who intends to quit smoking become the new compass, the commitment to quit being the new compass.The commitment to quit smoking is a deliberate decision, made out of freedom, not out of other less consistent factors such as fear of the consequences of smoking or the desire to please someone else.