Phone 07734 113 830 or email dawn@thinkitchangeit.com

There's a part of me that wants to give up but then there's the other part of me that really enjoys smoking

Where do you think these two parts are? One is the conscious and one is the subconscious. 

It's tough being a smoker these days. Like being overweight, it is regarded as socially unacceptable and people who smoke are constantly judged and harangued. 

To smoke these days you have to spend a fortune and spend a lot of time freezing to death on your own outside. 

Don't you think, under these circumstances, if it was that easy to give up then people would just do it?

There are many different ways to approach giving up smoking. Most of them address the symptoms of smoking i.e. the behaviour and habit of smoking. Here are some of the ways you might choose to try and give up. 

  1. You might choose to address the behaviour. To substitute the need to smoke or to be doing something with your hands with gum, sweets or the plastic nicotine filled cigarettes.

  2. You might try to address the cravings using a patch 

  3. You might go cold turkey and sweat it out using willpower alone

  4. You might find your own approach using exercise or even food to substitute for the hole left by the cigarettes

  5. You might try hypnotherapy tapes or a visit to a hypnotherapist and tell your subconscious that you no longer want to smoke.

  6. You might try aversion therapy which makes you sick to think of a cigarette

There are many things you might do.

But in any of them, do you see anything that addresses why you smoke? After all, there are many different reasons why people start and continue to smoke. If you constantly address the behaviours, the symptoms of anything, then there is a higher chance of failure and the process is often harder. Because at the end of the day, it is likely that you are fighting against yourself and I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty stubborn.

So in Cognitive Hypnotherapy, the first step is to address the “why” using the same trance state that I have discussed in other parts of this site. We can remove the trigger so the symptoms never need addressing.

Sometimes we might find that it's purely behavioural – all the cool kids smoked so you did too. In this case, there is less likely to be a lingering emotional attachment and we can focus on changing that behaviour through something like aversion where the thought of smoking makes you feel sick. You aren’t fighting against yourself because the reason you started smoking is no longer relevant to you.

But it might also be emotional for example; your dad smoked and all your fond memories of him include him having a cigarette in his mouth. In this instance we can take you back to the earliest and most significant memory using hypnotherapy, and you can look in on it and realise where your association with smoking came from, and you can let that association go.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy does not use a “one size fits all” approach for any problem a client has and that includes smoking. I first ask “What’s that about?” and then use that to help my clients get to where they want to be. 

Let me give you two things to try.

  1. Our brains work on patterns. Smoking is a pattern because it's a habit. Try changing the hand you smoke with. Try changing your brand. You might find that immediately cuts down how many you smoke. You may even find that's enough to stop altogether!
  2. Now go and fetch my FREE relaxation download from this page if you believe that you smoke to help with stress. It's less than 10 minutes long, costs nothing and has no known side effects (other than helping you feel more relaxed!)

If you think I might be able to help you either check out my Sessions page for my rates or just drop me an email to Dawn@thinkitchangeit.com. Please note I can help with quitting smoking online through my Online Therapy model too.