Hello Frances:

 

You are making a very false assumption when you say "you know" a cigarette will make you feel better. Cigarettes had the ability to make you feel better when you were an active user, not by doing anything to relieve the stress, but rather by replacing the nicotine that the stress caused you to lose thus pulling you out of withdrawal. Now, when you are encountering stress you are feeling the stress and working with the false premise that a cigarette will make it somehow better now. The following posts explains why this logic is flawed. Hope they help.

 

Joel