My mood weblog

Situations where I am angry are the hardest for me. In the past things went pretty much how you described: A–I am really angry and I need to calm down. If I don’t I wlll say things I will be sorry for later. B— A smoke will calm me down and give me time to think this through. C—I want to smoke. Now A of course is the same. B–is not usually a thought to smoke anymore although that will happen occasionally. I usually try deep breaths or removing myself from the situation for a few minutes so my C is usually getting away for a few minutes. The problem is that my B’s don’t seem to be very effective because I usually end up opening my mouth and saying what I know will haunt me later. I don’t know if I am not giving myself enough time to calm down or if I need to do something else instead. It almost feels like I am on the same timetable as I was when I was smoking—I would decide to go smoke.
The nicotine would enter my system quickly, take the edge off the emotion and then I was able to approach the situation and either resolve it or it didn’t bother me as much. Not sure which really happened most frequently. Of course, as I read this, I am thinking that maybe the "think this through" part of my old B isn’t currently happening. Just calming down and not thinking about why I am so angry etc. probably isn’t very effective! I would appreciate any additional thoughts from anyone who has a handle on this one.