This is a guest post from Barrie. Before you start diving into the article, please keep in mind that Allen Carr the well-known author of a quit smoking Book admitted that hypnotism helped him greatly when he was quitting.
How many smokers do you know who don’t want to quit smoking? I’d wager it’s not many. We all know it’s unhealthy. We know it makes our breath and hair and clothes smell like a stale ashtray… not exactly the most seductive scent known to man. We even know that it worries our children, parents or spouses that we’re continuing to do something that is basically killing us, so why don’t smokers just quit? What makes it so tough to give up those little white cancer-sticks? And how might hypnosis help to overcome those barriers to becoming smoke-free?
The stock answer is that a smoker is so addicted (on nicotine) that it takes a massive amount of will power to quit smoking. We know that there’s an element of physical addiction. Nicotine is viewed as the guilty party as it’s the key part of a cigarette that causes a physical addiction. Nicotine causes receptors to grow in our brains, and if those receptors don’t receive nicotine, they create intense cravings leading to the need for another cigarette. But smoking is also a hugely psychological addiction.
The body is free of nicotine within a couple of days of right after quitting smoking, and the physical withdrawal symptoms are usually gone within a couple of weeks. But the psychological habits we’ve formed are far more difficult to break. The connection we’ve made between sitting down with a cup of coffee and having a cigarette in the other hand, or that after dinner smoke, or the fact that we need a cigarette to really concentrate, all of these situations can continue to make us experience deeply felt cravings, even when the physical addiction has long gone. And that’s where hypnosis can help.
The psychological smoking “habits” we develop are controlled, like all automatic functions, by the unconscious mind. As a result, will power alone (which is very conscious) is not enough to break those habits. We need to use the conscious mind to make a definite decision that we want to quit smoking. It’s the conscious mind that understands the benefits of quitting smoking and all the arguments about health, well being and the concerns of loved ones. But if the unconscious mind isn’t on board as well, then we still find that we automatically light up that cigarette often without thinking at all. If you’ve ever found yourself half way through a cigarette before you suddenly realize that you’ve lit up, then you’ll know what we’re talking about here.
Hypnosis Will Help You Quit Smoking
There are a variety of ways of engaging the unconscious mind, and one of the most effective and time-efficient is hypnosis. Hypnotherapy relaxes the conscious mind and opens up the unconscious, making it easier to accept and act on positive suggestions. A trained hypnotherapist knows the kind of language that the unconscious mind finds easy to take on board. If you can get the unconscious mind on board with your desire to quit smoking, it becomes so much easier to stick with your plan.
A good hypnotherapist will also help you analyze your smoking patterns, to work out which cigarettes over the course of the day will be the most difficult ones to cut out, and the best ways of tackling those. Different approaches work better with different people. For some people, setting a date and just stopping will be the best way to quit smoking. For others, setting a date and gradually cutting down as they approach that date will work best, so they completely stop by the agreed date. Some smokers find that tackling their habitual cigarettes one at a time is what they need to do, starting with the easiest ones to do without. And yet others will find that lighting up, taking a puff or two and stubbing the cigarette out will be their most effective way of cutting down and eventually cutting out altogether.
Your hypnotherapist should be able to help you decide which approaches will work best for you (a combination is often the most effective), and can then design your hypnosis session specifically to suit you. Some therapists will record the session for you to take with you, enabling you to regularly “top-up” and reinforce the progress you’re making. For many people, so long as they genuinely want to quit smoking, just one session can be all they need, so it’s pretty cost-effective too.
But you don’t have to visit a therapist in order to get the benefits of a stop smoking hypnotherapy session. Purchasing a hypnosis product from an online store is one way of getting treatment instantly and is very cost effective. There are also many good self-hypnosis recordings in CD format available to buy; either online or in specialty shops. All these recordings utilize relaxation techniques and will then use many different forms of positive suggestion to help you move towards becoming a non-smoker. One great product we recommend is called Stop Smoking Hypnosis Download session.
Whichever kind of hypnosis you choose, you’ll almost certainly discover the many fringe benefits it offers – feeling calm, relaxed and in control; feeling more positive about the future; feeling better able to handle whatever life decides to throw at you. And that is absolutely worth trying!
By Barrie St John
Barrie St John is a professional hypnotherapist and has helped thousands of people quit smoking and resolve many other issues via his successful series of hypnosis downloads and by working with clients on a one-to-one basis.
