My last stop smoking with hypnosis session today, was with a widower whose grief resulted in him increasing his smoking from a few a day to 25 or 30. He’d not been a particularly heavy smoker but since the loss of his wife in an attempt to fill the aching emptiness that losing her had left him with, he almost immediately substituted his sense of loss for the cigarettes.
If you are reading this blog about the use of hypnosis to effectively stop smoking then there’s a strong chance that you’re smoking yourself and have some understanding about the tendency a smoker has to attribute qualities that you would associate with a good friendship: someone who makes you feel good, someone you can depend on, someone who doesn’t judge you however disappointing you’ve been, someone who will be there to celebrate your achievements without a hint of jealousy. Whatever you personally attribute to friendship or companionship…it’s different for all of us.
As I write this, the idea that a cigarette fulfils any of these functions seems as absurd as I imagine the ideas appear to you as you read them…in fact this understanding of the absurdity of a smoker’s logic is probably partly what motivated you to begin researching ‘hypnotherapy stop smoking’ sessions. I’m guessing you’ve been smoking long enough to understand your habit and the biggest part of you know that none of it makes sense.
And yet…knowing this absurdity, along with all the other absurdities doesn’t stop a smoker smoking. Chances are you’ve tried to give up a number of times already:
Possibly you went cold turkey; maybe a natural break in your smoking made you think you’d just carry on not smoking, which you did until something made you want one again and before you knew it you’re back to twenty a day, maybe you’ve tried patches and gum, maybe you switched to vaping, thinking that would be better but are now vaping and smoking. It’s not funny and yet I find myself laughing, not at you, please understand; I’m laughing at myself really, as this was me for 40 years.
It was only your desperation to finally stop smoking once and for all that made you reach out and type the words into your nearest device:
“Stop Smoking Hypnotherapy near me.”
And this popped up, this blog about smoking being like a toxic relationship that we think we need but we don’t and how actually you can easily and effectively be rid of this relationship by using hypnotherapy to stop smoking or if you’re reading this from the US you might prefer the term quit smoking with hypnosis.
Anyway, the point is…it’s very common for a smoker to believe that they are getting something akin to a friendship from a cigarette, which is why a lot of the clients I see tell me that they started smoking again when their relationship ended. I spent at least twenty years trying to stop and if there was one thing certain to make me drive to the shops and buy a pack of twenty, it would be an argument with my husband. Perhaps that’s why we spent the first few years of our relationship arguing so much. That tumultuous clash and my conviction that we were breaking up would whip me up into a frenzy of self-destructive need and throw me into the arms of another alright not another…a something..
A something…that’s been with me all my life. “cigarettes.”
Bloody cigarettes, they are not your friends. They are killing you and you know it and not only are they killing you but they’re making you pay for the service. They’re killing you, charging you for it and also robbing you of your health and vitality in the meantime. There is not a single thing that cigarettes benefit you with apart from the ‘illusion’ that you enjoy them – and I get that and that’s powerful. But as we can all agree that this is an illusion, why not try hypnosis.
And if that leads you to ask the question: “does hypnotherapy work to stop smoking?” then the answer is yes.
Hypnosis works by inducing an REM state similar to sleep and distracting your conscious mind enough to allow communication between the hypnotist and your unconscious mind, the part of your mind that runs that smoking habit.
And if it’s an illusion you’re after we can work on creating the illusion that you are ecstatic about being a non-smoker, so ecstatic that every thought or desire to inhale another toxic cigarette disappears from your mind forever and every time you think about your freedom, you experience a rush of pleasure and pride.
Now that’s a kind of illusion worth so how about ending your toxic relationship once and for all and enjoy a peaceful relationship with
one hypnotherapy stop smoking session.