What Role Does Sensitivity To Anxiety Play In Tobacco Use?

We’ve all said or heard that “I’m nervous, I need a cigarette. ” Thus, the belief that tobacco has enormous anxiolytic power is so widespread that it has become part of the collective unconscious. Many people believe that tobacco has a relaxing effect, similar to that of a valerian infusion. In this way, many people continue to smoke for the sole purpose of keeping anxiety at bay .

But the reality is that no. Tobacco is an excitatory substance. By smoking, we become more activated. We also get more nervous. The “tranquility” that we feel at first when puffing on the cigarette has to do with reducing the need to consume the addictive substance, not because it really has a relaxing effect. In fact, our sensitivity to anxiety has a significant influence on tobacco use.

Anxiety and the first puffs

For starters, what is anxiety sensitivity? Sensitivity to anxiety is that fear that some people have of anxiety itself and its symptoms. These people think that stress has very harmful consequences for them. Thus, when they detect indicators that they are experiencing this emotion, an amplification of it occurs.

The danger of having a high sensitivity to anxiety when starting to smoke is that these people can see as very beneficial that first reduction in anxiety that is achieved immediately after the puff. The fact that they find tobacco use an effective way to regulate anxiety is going to make them start smoking regularly. Also, it will be a reason not to quit.

In other words, these people harbor the belief that smoking is an acceptable and “cost-effective” way to reduce anxiety. In other words, they are going to make tobacco use their strategy to regulate anxiety. For this reason, it is important to learn and implement other types of coping strategies for stress, so that we are able to manage it without carrying out behaviors that are harmful to our health, such as smoking.

What role does sensitivity to anxiety play in our continuing to smoke?

Just like starting to smoke, sensitivity to anxiety also plays a role in our continuing to do so. In addition, not only because these people have a greater sensitivity to the anxiolytic effect of tobacco from the first puff. Other factors also play a role.

Specifically, people with high sensitivity to anxiety have a greater positive affect after smoking. Likewise, they also report greater satisfaction. Also, the psychological reward for them increases. In this way, not only does anxiety decrease, but positive emotions appear that will influence them to continue smoking.

This will make people with high sensitivity to anxiety smoke more inflexibly in stressful situations and generate negative emotions. That is, again, they use the behavior of smoking to regulate stress, rather than cope with it in a more adaptive way.

When it comes to quitting smoking, how does sensitivity to anxiety work?

Sensitivity to anxiety is especially important in quitting smoking. It directly interferes with attempts to quit, since these people indicate more intense withdrawal symptoms in the first week. Therefore, they are less likely to quit using tobacco and are at higher risk of relapse.

They also report more unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking.  The consequence is that they feel less capable of achieving it. In addition, they believe that in the end the only thing they will achieve is to increase their feeling of discomfort. As we have already mentioned, these people fear feeling more anxious, so these expectations will be an added handicap to the already difficult process of quitting tobacco.

For all these reasons, it is interesting to  work specifically on sensitivity to anxiety with people who want to quit smoking. To do this, you need to gradually expose yourself to anxiety. That is, you have to feel it. In this way, they will be able to see that they are capable of handling it and they will not fear it so much, which will reduce the negative effects of this sensitivity in quitting tobacco use.

Images courtesy of Stas Svechnikov, Lucas Filipe, and Dmitry Ermakov.