Venting

I think most everyone who is out has been where you've been. As we process the loss of our perception as straight, we go through stages: denial-anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance. They aren't necessarily sequential, and can take minutes or months (or longer). But that's a pretty similar process for most.

It sounds like you're handling it quite well, and doing exactly what you're doing ("it's OK") is an ideal way to begin to change the messages coming up around the feelings that are emerging. It's a well established way of learning to accept parts of ourselves that are out of sorts with who we've held ourselves to be.

One suggestion I'd make: Try to find something other than smoking to calm yourself. For one, it's only a very short-term calming strategy. That's quickly replaced by a dependence that creates anxiety. The nature of the way nicotine works within the body is that it is deadly toxic, and the body's way of handling the toxins is to create receptors to bind with nicotine. So every cigarette you smoke creates new receptors. Once created, they never go away. Thus, when you quit, the receptors create the anxiety and desire to use that one feels. Over time, the receptors calm down, but they never go away, so if you give up cigarettes for 10 years and take one cigarette... all of the receptors light up again and the cycle restarts. The tobacco companies have literally spent billions of dollars engineering cigarettes to be the most addictive substances known to man. They are more addictive than heroin and more difficult to quit. The sooner you quit, the easier it will be and the more likely it can be permanent.

As far as your anxiety, there are better choices than cigarettes. Here's what goes on: Your heart races, and you have other feelings of anxiety, because neurotransmitters are released with anxiety. It's a feedback loop that starts with the thoughts, which release the neurotransmitters, which influences the heart, which influences breathing, which causes more of the anxiety-driving neurotransmitters to be released.

So what can you do? One very simple thing is deep breathing. As simple as ten breaths, taking about 5 seconds each for inhale and exhale, will reverse-engineer the anxiety you are experiencing. It provides extra oxygen, which feeds back to the heart to slow its rate down. This reverses the feedback loop and tells the brain "Things are calm, no need for these anxiety neurotransmitters." Breathing is *extremely* effective -- more so than cigarettes -- if you can remember to do it.

Self-massage is another. It sounds silly, but simply rubbing your arms, shoulders, neck, head, upper body sends the message that things are calm and safe and reduces release of anxiety-related neurotransmitters.

There are some excellent herbal supplements that have been clinically shown to help with anxiety. Ashwagandha is one, valerian root is another.

You'll get through this. I just encourage you to not fix one problem by starting up with another one.