I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes. I have no idea how many people I've seen to help stop smoking with Hypnotherapy over the years, but it was only yesterday afternoon that a client showed me a benefit of stopping that I hadn't even considered before.
Yes of course it's great to do something for your health - actually, there's probably nothing better you can do. And saving thousands and thousands of dollars each year is great, too.
Here, have some free time
But how about this? My client told me in her second session, having stopped completely after her first, that she now was more present in whatever she was engaged in, because she wasn't thinking of that cigarette she was going to have as soon as she finished what she was doing. Now considering that she has young children whom she obviously loves to bits, she's now getting more time with her kids, and being more in the moment when she does. Bonus!
(By the way. If you have young kids and you think they don't know you're smoking, you're kidding yourself. They do, and they often worry about it.)
And actually, when you think about it, what she was anxious for and what she was craving was the thing that was going to settle her anxiety and craving, which was being driven by the need for the thing that was going to settle her anxiety and craving... Sounds crazy put that way, doesn't it?
How does it work, though?
Most of us have heard of using Hypnosis to stop smoking, but do you know how it actually works? What does Hypnosis do that, say, just taking a nicotine replacement product such as mouth spray, gum, lozenges, inhalers and patches doesn't?
Well, for one thing, just taking nicotine to help get rid of your dependence on nicotine doesn't sound like the best way to get rid of the craving for nicotine to me. And yet Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NCT) can work for some people. How? Well, a large part of smoking is the physical elements of the habit - the packaging, the cigarette itself, the ritual... (Smokers at this point are beginning to feel the need for a fag.) With NCT you don't get that.
What you also don't get, though, is any way of dealing with what the cigarette is solving for you. If you smoke to get a break from work or the kids, NCT does nothing to give you an alternative solution. If you smoke to hang out with your mates, NCT doesn't help you do that. If you smoke because you're bored and have nothing else going on in your life, NCT doesn't address that, either.
I hope I'm giving you a few clues here. My approach is to understand what problem cigarettes are currently solving for you - and then help you come up with an alternative solution. For example, if you're smoking when you take a break at work, you rapidly come to associate the cigarette with the the break and the break with the relaxation. So the question becomes, what can you do to replace the cigarette while still taking the break? For one thing, you can't go to the same place as you've been going to, because that's where your smoking buddies hang out, and I'm not sure too many people have the willpower to withstand the offer of a cigarette just when and where you're used to having one. So instead, you need to go somewhere else - the other exit, round the block, to the tearoom, to the kitchen... anywhere but the usual place.
If you're one of those people who gets up, makes a cup of coffee and heads outside for a ciggy, I've good news for you. You don't have to not have that first cigarette: you just have to not go outside. Yes, I do realise it's not that easy. (If it was that easy, you would have stopped already and you wouldn't be reading this.) But it's part of it. If you don't go outside, you won't find yourself in the same place you've always been when you have your first cigarette.
We also need to work on your negative and positive motivations. Your negative motivations are what you're seeking to avoid - bad health outcomes, continued loss of money, bad social status (movie stars smoking in the 1950s looked cool and sexy: you don't), not getting your legs amputated because they've already done the artery operation and that's their only option... whatever you're disgusted and frustrated by. And your positive motivations are what you want to get - the ability to breathe without hocking up your guts, more time with your grandkids.
And we also need to work on your beliefs and values, too. Example belief: 'What do doctors know anyway? My uncle Jack smoked two packs a day till he was 97.' Example value: 'Smoking is adult. I smoke, so I'm a grownup.' And that's where the Hypnosis comes in, because those beliefs and values are very resistant to logic (evidently), and it's only when we let our 'reality filter' down - such as when we're dreaming, or when we're in trance - that we can eliminate them, and instead install more positive ones (and which they are depends upon you: I'll find out from you before we do it).
If you're still reading, you're obviously thinking pretty hard about this. Good. And you're sceptical, right? Good! Sign of intelligence, scepticism. I was, too, when I first started exploring Hypnosis as a client. Now it's time to find out if your scepticism is well-founded. Book in for a free call - or let's just get straight to the chase, and book in for your first session.