How Hypnotherapy Helps You Quit Smoking For Good

Hypnotherapy can help you quit smoking

Smoking is a habit and since all our habits are regulated by the unconscious mind, you simply allow yourself to relax and let your mind do the work to eliminate the habit for you. Though Hypnotherapy, we can communicate directly with your unconscious mind to remove the habit of smoking cigarettes. It will feel easy and natural to think of yourself as a health conscious person who no longer uses cigarettes. You will simply no longer choose to smoke.

What has kept you smoking in the past is your own brain chemistry and psychological habit.

The Science of Smoking

There is a science to the process of smoking cigarettes that you may not be aware of. A cigarette is simply a delivery system of crude chemicals and poisons into your body. When you smoke a cigarette, the poisons inhaled signal your brain to release endorphins, the body’s natural opiates or ‘happy chemicals’. You may think it’s the cigarette that makes you feel good, but it is really your body’s own response to the cigarette.

Most smokers report they only enjoy the first few cigarettes of the day. After that, they feel they are just slaves to the habit. The reason for this is that your body will shut down its natural cycle of endorphin release, saving them up instead to combat the next assault of poisonous chemicals via that cigarette.

When the anticipated endorphin release doesn’t come, the smoker experiences stress and craves the endorphin release they now associate with smoking another cigarette.

Some smokers find it difficult to believe, but much of the stress relieved by a cigarette was actually caused by smoking the one before. Bit by bit, smoking shuts down your body’s natural system for dealing with the real stresses of life, replacing it with an artificial and ultimately deadly & expensive substitute.

The good news is that if you learned how to smoke, you can unlearn it. You weren’t born with a cigarette in your mouth – you had to train and condition yourself to smoke. If you learned it, you can unlearn it.

Change your Habits, Change Your Life

Imagine waking up tomorrow morning to find you don’t have any urges or cravings for a cigarette? What if you went through each day feeling great without any desire for a cigarette at all?

Hypnosis Can Help

Hypnosis may be defined as a state of deep relaxation within your body and a state of increased and heightened awareness within your mind. The most frequently asked question about Hypnotherapy is: ‘Will I act like a chicken?’

Most of us have seen stage hypnosis, or perhaps know of someone who took part or witnessed a stage show. These experiences are far removed from clinical hypnosis which is a well recognised therapy that can help resolve many difficulties, issues and addictions.

Clinical hypnosis is a gentle experience. Your body becomes very relaxed, yet your mind remains very focused. The process of Clinical Hypnotherapy allows you to bypass thoughts and impulses that no longer serve you and replace them with new and healthy patterns of behaviour. It’s a bit like deleting old files in a computer and replacing them with new ones. The process is safe and you are always in control.

Clients who attend for hypnotherapy spend most of their session sitting or reclining comfortably, experiencing deep relaxation. The most frequent reaction is relief at just how simple and effective the process actually is. This is especially the case where a client has tried to change long standing patterns of unwanted behaviour where will power alone just hasn’t been enough.

Hypnotherapy has a long and effective history of bringing positive and beneficial change to people’s lives. We take this practice a step further by applying a holistic approach with nutritional education. We assist you to develop habits that support your body and your mind to restore balance and obtain optimal health results.

How Does it Work?

Hypnosis will assist you experience a state of mind known as ‘Alpha.’ When in Alpha, you are up to 200 times more open to suggestion and more able to receive messages that influence positive change. Your mind can focus on the things you wish to change and on the best ways to do so, free from critical or anxious thoughts.

In this state, your conscious mind has a rest from everyday cares and concerns and allows the unconscious part of your mind to take care of things for you – like giving up cigarettes.

Normal awakening consciousness is called Beta. In Beta, you are paying attention to and processing everything that is happening around you. In Alpha, you allow yourself to slow down and narrow your focus on the changes you wish to bring about in your life.

Deleting Habits you Don’t Want Anymore

Because hypnosis is a state of focused attention and heightened awareness, it allows you to bypass all of those unhelpful thoughts and impulses stored in your unconscious. You replace them with new and healthy patterns of behaviour. It’s a bit like deleting old files from a computer.

You are not asleep nor are you unconscious. You simply allow your unconscious mind to accept suggestions for positive change rather than trying to make them happen with your conscious mind.

Hypnosis allows you to access your creative potential. Unwanted long held thoughts, beliefs and patterns of behaviour can be deleted and rewritten. It is simply the power of your own mind.

But Am I Still in Control?

A common misconception about Hypnotherapy is that clients under hypnosis cannot react, and therefore the Hypnotherapist has ultimate control over the patient. This is not the case. In Alpha, you are always in control and are fully capable of reacting and making decisions. At any time you can move about or get up and you are always fully aware of your surroundings.

Hypnosis resembles the state you are in as you enter sleep: you are not fully asleep but you are not fully awake either, just very deeply relaxed. Your mind will only accept the suggestions from the Hypnotherapist you wish to accept. If you wish to give up cigarettes, your unconscious mind will happily accept any suggestions to do so.

Because you are relaxed or otherwise occupied mentally, the suggestions given to you by the Hypnotherapist will be acted upon more easily by the unconscious.

Post hypnotic suggestions are those that will be carried out by you when you come out of the hypnotic state. The best example of this is having no desire for cigarettes at all.

The Unconscious Mind

Most people are unaware they use a form of hypnosis in everyday life called ‘self-suggestion’. Thoughts such as ‘I cannot stop smoking, no matter how hard I try’, or ‘I’ll never be able to do this’ or ‘I’ll only start up smoking again’, are powerful negative self suggestions and are a form of self hypnosis. In a Hypnotherapy session, these unhelpful thoughts can be deleted and rewritten with new and healthy thoughts that support you.

The unconscious mind takes care of approximately 95% of mind function. It is the most powerful computer ever devised and is capable of running multiple tasks simultaneously. It does not judge, criticise, analyse or reject. It acts quickly but in many cases, not appropriately. It is emotional and unaware. It does not understand nor have a sense of humor and takes everything literally.

Our unconscious mind also seems to be innocent and naïve, possessing the intelligence level equivalent to a four year old child. It wants to help us as much as possible and tries to help in the best way it knows how.

Many times however, it does not help us in the most appropriate way and needs to be given direction.

How the Mind Works: Think of a Bodyguard

Picture a doorway beside you and allow yourself to imagine that this doorway is the entry to your unconscious mind. Now imagine that there is a big burly Bodyguard in front of the doorway guarding it. Nothing will get in without that bodyguard’s permission.

This ‘bodyguard’ represents your conscious mind and it will stop and examine anything that is said to the unconscious mind before it enters. One of the main problems with the conscious bodyguard mind is that it is geared very critically and negatively and does not like change.

The conscious mind is a creature of habit. It tends to keep the status quo rather than make any drastic changes. It would rather keep things the way they are. And so even if something may be bad for it, the conscious mind tends to keep things the same way because it is comfortable or familiar with the way it is.

When it comes to smoking, you can tell your conscious mind to stop smoking over and over again but the conscious guard will put up its defenses to any suggestions to quit smoking. It will rationalise saying ‘but it relaxes me’ or ‘it helps with stress’ or whatever your guard tells you to keep smoking those cigarettes. Have you ever heard a smoker tell you how a cigarette relaxes them, whilst on the other hand admitting how much they hate the habit?

It seems like no matter how many good reasons you have for change; the guard will continue to fight them off. This is why it is so hard to make a positive change such as smoking cessation or weight loss or other behavioural changes with most non hypnotic programs.

Reprogramming the Unconscious Mind

Going past the conscious guard into the room, you will find the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the most perfect computer ever made. Every sight, sound, smell, taste you have experienced since you were born is logged in perfect clarity in your unconscious mind.

Now here‘s the problem. Your unconscious mind is being operated by that four year old child. The child is innocent and naïve. They want to help you but they just don’t know the best way to do it. They therefore try to help you the best way they know how.

A good example would be someone who has experienced a very bad car accident. Wishing to protect that person, the unconscious mind may think the best thing to do is to cause them to have a panic attack so they will never leave the house again to get in a car. To a child this may seem like the best solution.

Another example would be someone who has a serious problem with gambling. A four year old child may think it best that they lose their job so there is no money to spend.

You can see where the unconscious mind really wants to help but may be completely missing the boat. For example, many cigarette smokers report they originally took up the habit to ‘Look Cool’. Of course the naïve four year old wants to be accepted and has kept them in the habit. When Hypnosis is applied, the four year old begins to realise it is better to ‘Look Cool’ in other, healthier ways and become a non smoker.

Hypnosis and Quitting the Cigarettes

The unconscious mind wants to help you to solve your problems and to be a functional member of society. It wants to experience success as a habit. The unconscious mind is the most brilliant goal tracking mechanism ever built.

In Hypnosis, the unconscious mind is given detailed instructions on how to solve the problem of smoking cigarettes. Once the unconscious mind has the proper solution and realises the error of its ways, it quickly changes course and uses the proper solutions. The four year old child wants to help you as much as it can.

Once suggestions for non smoking have been given and accepted by your unconscious mind, you have another 95% of your mind working for you in comparison to the mere 5% of the conscious mind you had on side with you before.

Having 100% of your mind working for you means you really can quit the habit and quit the cigarettes for good.

Hypnotherapy Can Help

The Australian Hypnotherapists’ Association (AHA) has received approval for listing on the Quitline database to assist people through the use of Hypnosis to help stop their addiction to smoking.

 

For any enquires, contact: Mind over Matter Hypnotherapy:

0414 649 088.

 

Jeanette Buzolic

BA Psychology. GDIR. Dip Clinical Hypnosis

Member Australian Hypnotherapists’ Association

 

 

 

CM 0310389