Breaking the smoking addiction is a necessity in our times, because smoking cigarettes has been banned from eateries and other public places. In fact, it's the intelligent thing to do for more reasons than good health alone. This editorial explores the very best hypnosis and NLP techniques that can be used to make it as painless as possible to break the addiction to cigarettes and tobacco.
There are 3 distinct factors to the addiction to cigarettes. Two of the components are mental, and one part is physical.
Part A: YOU SMOKE FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.
When you were a tot and you got upset, your mother would put a pacifier into your mouth to pacify you. You would get distracted, become peaceful, and often go to sleep. That scenario was repeated hundreds of times so that your unconscious mind was programmed: When something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it.
Now that you are a grownup, if you feel tense or nervous, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure - a cigarette!
Part B: SMOKING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After a few repetitions, he would just ring the bell, and that would make the dogs salivate.
When you associate smoking with any other activity, the other activity will trigger cravings for a cigarette and an urge that makes you want to smoke. This is called a conditioned response.
For example: If you light-up when you see a cup of coffee, you will automatically get an urge to light-up each time you have a cup of coffee.
Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your unconscious: If a person smokes and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the mind takes a picture of the cigarette in the hand, and ties it to the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person has a cup of coffee, the unconscious mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the cigarette, and the smoker gets a craving for one.
You may be unaware of the mental image of the cigarette, because it may only be at the unconscious level of mind. Just as you are not consciously aware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until something draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for a cigarette.
Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .
I've worked with several thousand smokers and I give you my guarantee that the physical addiction is the weakest part of the smoking addiction. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the habit. The strongest parts of the addiction are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).
HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A SMOKER WHO WANTS TO QUIT.
When you eliminate the tension that pushes you to light-up a cigarette for relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and if you can extinguish the conditioned response of feeling compulsions for cigarettes when having a cup of coffee, driving, or finishing a meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can give up cigarettes without needing willpower, and without having to experience withdrawal symptoms or gaining weight.
Hypnotism can help encourage a smoker to stop. Self-hypnosis will make it easy to give up cigarettes because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:
Part A is where people light-up a cigarette for relaxation and pleasure. It's a person's thoughts which create feelings of tension. More exactly, people invariably create mental movies in their mind's eye. If the movie is negative, it brings on a feeling of tension.
We can use different hypnotic methods to re-program the mind to instantly and automatically take those anxiety creating mental movies, and instantly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This produces relaxation and pleasure, and eliminates the anxiety that causes the oral compulsions and cravings for cigarettes.
Because of the elimination of feelings of tension, the smoker who is quitting does not experience the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the cigarettes. So quitting without weight gain is possible.
Part B is where people get cravings for cigarettes because smoking becomes a conditioned response to many different activities and locations. Remember in the earlier example how smoking became unconsciously associated with other activities and environments so that each time smokers get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette creates an urge to light-up a cigarette?
There are quit smoking hypnosis, and quit smoking NLP techniques that can effortlessly erase those conditioned responses so that a smoker's subconscious will lose the cravings for cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject the cigarettes.
IN SUMMARY
In summation, by utilizing certain hypnotic techniques, it can be very easy to quit smoking without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these hypnotic methods don't even depend on post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on programming the mind to use the same mental processes that the unconscious is using to create the addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate the mental addiction.
About the Author:Alan B. Densky, CH in practice since, offers Neuro-VISION Video Quit Smoking Hypnosis Programs and Audio Stop Smoking Hypnosis CD's. Visit his free library of original hypnosis & NLP articles.
Quitting smoking is, according to many, as difficult as quitting more serious illegal drugs. The nicotine is in the blood. Withdrawal can bring on the shakes, headaches, nervousness, and insomnia. Cravings are strong and come long after the initial quitting period. To have the strength to resist these feelings is the difficult part.
Smoking cessation is a billion dollar industry. The products to choose from are vast. Nicotine gum, hypnotherapy tapes, stop smoking groups, and an assortment of books at any bookstore provide many ways to reduce the cravings and ease the withdrawal. Most of these products cost money and it can be hard to make your way through the jungle of stop smoking products.
In 1992 the most comprehensive study of smokers trying to quit was carried out at the University of Iowa. Two researchers compounded the information from many different studies using the data collected from over 72,000 smokers. These smokers lived throughout North America, Scandinavia and Europe. The results were published in New Scientist magazine.
On average, the different quit smoking methods had an average of a 25% success rate. Joint techniques, combining exercise and breathing techniques, acupuncture, and stop smoking groups where participants smoke stale cigarettes in confined spaces did not rise above 30% success rate.
The research project examined the data from forty-eight different hypnosis based studies on quitting smoking. Over six thousand smokers participated in these studies. Hypnosis, compared to the other quit smoking techniques, was off the charts. An average of 80% success rate was seen in the different studies. In contrast nicotine gum provided a 10% success rate. The self-help books achieved 9% change.
Hypnosis is clearly the strongest method for quitting smoking successfully. As smoking cessation can be an expensive endeavour, early investment in a hypnosis programme can be money saving. Research shows that often many sessions are not necessary. The average smoker needs between one to four sessions. A trained and licensed professional is also a key to success.
About the Author:Terry Doherty works all over the UK working extensively with individual and business clients helping clients to stop smoking, manage weight - stress, become more confident and helping change many other behavioural issues Terry uses the latest techniques of hypnosis go to http://www.mind-works.co.uk
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