Smoking Cessation
Hypnotherapy Sessions
I offer a
2 hour stop smoking hypnotherapy session. This is
designed to allow you to walk into my office a smoker
and to walk out a non smoker armed with the
comittment and the tools to keep you a non smoker for
good. There is a lot of work that we do in this
session and I have had enough testemonials to know
that it works very well.
Whilst this approach works for the vast majority of
smokers I don't think that this is the best way for
everyone to stop smoking.
Over the years I have found that the people who
respond exceptionally well to this approach are the
people who tell me that they have managed to give up
for a day or more within the last few years or, if
not, that they feel that they would be able to not
smoke for a number of hours on a long haul flight.
If you are someone who would not be able to take a
plane for a few hours without smoking then I would
want to have a consultation with you and work out a
plan that is most likely to have you succeed - this
may mean that we take a more gentle approach to help
you stop smoking.
Stopping smoking with hypnosis.
Hypnosis has a good reputation for helping people to
quit smoking and deservedly so. However, no matter
how good the therapist, you will only be successful
if you really want to quit and you're prepared for
the rest of the battle.
Thats why I believe that preparation is so important,
it is as important as the hypnotherapy itself. If a
client stops smoking for 6 months and then starts
again, I consider the therapy to have been a failure.
The key to this work is understanding that the
smoking habit gets into our very psyche. We must be
aware that once we quit it will try to make us start
smoking again at any opportunity. It will be there
hanging around for a long time. I always tell my
clients that they should be aware that they need to
remain vigilant for at least a year after they’ve
stopped smoking. In fact the only way that you’ll
know that you’ve truly cracked the habit is when you
can really see that cigarettes only take from you,
they don’t give you anything, and when you really
realise this on an emotional level then you will
truly have no desire to smoke again.
When you have this nasty habit inside your psyche it
can be really difficult to believe that you won’t
actually be losing anything by stopping. You feel
that life could never be quite as good in one way or
another... THATS THE ADDICTION TALKING - ITS RUBBISH.
Life in fact becomes so much better in so many ways,
but you’ll just have to take my word for it! (for
now...)
The only way to stop smoking forever and to get rid
of the nasty lurker in your psyche is to say “never
again”, not one puff of another cigarette ever again.
If you would like to be able to say that, but don’t
think you have the strength, thats fine, thats why
you’re here looking for some help.
People generally start smoking again for two
reasons..
1. The habit creeps back at the moment you thought
you had it beaten. That quick drag of someone else's
cigarette means that you're a smoker again… that’s
all it takes.
2. Something happens in your life that leaves you
feeling you have nowhere to turn, so you go back to
your old friend … the cigarette.
Hypnosis can help you to change the way you look at
cigarettes and smoking and it can help you make a
committed and permanent decision to stop. Once the
decision has been made and the cut is clean it can
further help by eliminating the desire to smoke. It
can also help us find alternative patterns of thought
(often deep in the subconscious) that can be called
on to replace the need for smoking as an emotional
crutch.
For suitable clients I can offer a single, stop
smoking session tailored to you during which we cover
all the above and more. You will leave my office as a
non-smoker with a cd to reinforce the session.
You will often see hypnotherapists saying 8 out of 10
smokers quit straight away. Ever wondered about the 2
in 10 why didn’t they quit? Well, some people realise
that they never really wanted to quit in the first
place, maybe they were being pressured by someone
close to them. The rest I would suggest are more
compulsive in their smoking, they have emotional
needs that are met by the smoking or maybe being kept
at bay by the habit. These people can still give up,
but the work needs to be a little more careful, often
we will need to see what it is that they haven’t
faced in their life, that the smoking is helping them
not to have to face.
This sort of work leaves us with the choice of either
dealing with the emotional issues which can take a
series of sessions to clear up and then focussing on
the habit, or reducing the smoking gradually and
using ego strengthening in place of the cigarettes
while they are being reduced and finally stopped
altogether.