The Power Of Hypnosis To Break The Smoking Habit
As a stop smoking hypnotist seeing clients in Miami Beach and remotely, I understand just how gripping the habit of smoking can be on my clients. I also understand as a stop smoking hypnotist just how effecting hypnosis can be to break free of this terrible mental and physical addiction.
As someone who has used hypnosis to quit smoking himself, giving that freedom to others is not only one of the tenants of my profession, but my passion.
According to Tobacco Free Florida, there are more than 16 million Americans living with a disease caused by smoking:
In today’s day and age, it is common knowledge as to how disastrous the effects of smoking can be on the smoker, and their loved ones.
As a stop smoking hypnotist, each and every client I see if fully aware of the damage and harm they have caused themselves from this horrific affliction.
Then why is it so difficult for smokers to leave the habit behind?
In the following text I’m going to explain how the smoking habit begins, why it can be so difficult to break (on your own), and why hypnosis can easily allow for this destructive mode of being to be extinguished for good.
A Common Beginning
As a stop smoking hypnotist, time and again I hear the same story from each client. Maybe the details vary slightly, but the plot is often the same.
Typically clients pick up smoking in their early teens. At this point in ones adolescence, the child is attempting to seek out connection and validation from their peers for the very first time. For the first time in their lives, they are leaving the “bubble” the parents provide which offers esteem, validation, and connection, and branch out into the world to obtain such emotional benefits and requirements from others.
This can be quite the daunting task for a couple reasons:
First, since this is the first attempt at such a task, it can be choppy and difficult to say the least. The first time we try anything its difficult and mistakes are made. Second, since everybody they are trying to connect with is also doing this for the first time, that can make for a rough and bumpy ride.
This is why teens engage in teasing, backstabbing, bullying, and induce dramatic situations frequently.
While children at this age are insecure and attempting to fit in while looking “cool”, smoking solves both those dilemmas. Teens get to feel older and strong, while obtaining the bonding rewards smoking provides at the same time.
As a stop smoking hypnotist, I realize that this is a very pivotal moment in the smokers journey, as the cigarettes are now associated with fulfilling emotional needs. This can create a disastrous cycle for the smoker causing a lifetime of addiction.
Not Nicotine
As a stop smoking hypnotist, I fully understand that smoking for most is a strategy used to satisfy emotional requirements and needs. As we have just learned, that cycle and pattern is formed in adolescence that can be carried on well into adult hood.
There is a shared illusion by society that smoking addiction is the result of nicotine dependency. While nicotine is an addictive substance, its grip on clients are not as fierce as most assume.
For the typical smoker, 99% of cigarettes smoked are consumed without any urges for nicotine. It is very rare that a smoker will reach for a cigarette because the physical body is withdrawing from nicotine. Most would require about 24 hours of abstaining before the body will crave nicotine. A typical smoker inhales almost a pack daily, meaning each and every cigarette smoked was consumed in the absence of any physical nicotine cravings.
Furthermore, as a stop smoking hypnotist I understand that once the smoker/client ceases to smoke, the urge for nicotine is completely removed from the body within 48-72 hours.
Nicotine is not the reason people are addicted to cigarettes.
As we have learned, most smoke because they have created a strategy for dealing with life. This strategy becomes locked into the subconscious “knowing”, which then creates a lifetime habit.
The Mind - 4 Parts
In order to understand how smoking can become such a gripping habit for the smoker, its important to become aware of how the mind operates and enables the smoking process.
To begin, there are three parts to the mind:
The unconscious mind
The Subconscious Mind
The Critical Factor
The Conscious Mind
The Unconscious Mind
The unconscious mind is that part of the mind that controls the bodies automatic functioning, such as hunger, or the beating of your heart. The unconscious mind does not play a role in the smoking habit, however I thought it beneficial to mention briefly.
The Conscious Mind
The conscious mind can be referred to as our point of focus mind, or are “thinking” mind. The conscious mind is our present awareness, and only makes up 5% of our minds activities.
The conscious mind is responsible for 3 activities, which are analytical thinking (such as problem solving), short term memory, and will power.
When most attempt to quit smoking, they do so by using their conscious mind. More specifically, they are tapping into the will power portion of their conscious mind. The problem with will power, is it eventually runs out. This is why smokers can go hours or maybe even days and months without a cigarette, but eventually the habit returns. This is because that habit is stored and engrained deep within the workings of the subconscious mind.
The Subconscious Mind
As a stop smoking hypnotist, my work with smoking clients and all others is done by communicating and essentially treating the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is who and what we are. Within the subconscious mind stores our habits, beliefs, personalities, and identities.
The subconscious mind is essentially who and what we are.
When we first start out, our subconscious mind is essentially a blank slate. As we progress through life, the subconscious mind becomes filled with beliefs and habits based on our experiences. If those experiences are positive and nurturing for our younger self, beliefs that enhance our human experience can be stored allowing us to grow into happier and healthier individuals.
Transversely, if we are met with traumatic moments that cause personal distress negative beliefs and habits can be formed about ourself, and our world. Imagine a child who is teased in school or ridiculed at home forming the belief “I am unlovable”. Now imagine a teenager who uses cigarettes to cope with uncomfortable stressors believing “smoking allows me to make it through”.
When these negative beliefs about ourselves and the disastrous habits and emotional responses associated with them are created and stored deep within the subconscious mind, changing habits and behaviors can be a daunting task.
This is why most smokers know consciously “I want to quit smoking” but are unable to. The subconscious wiring and programming is simply to powerful and will ultimately win.
Hypnosis & The Critical Factor
Hypnosis is simply defined by the U.S. Government as “the removal of the critical factor”.
The critical factor is located between the conscious analytical mind, and the subconscious mind. As a stop smoking hypnotist who works daily with those attempting to shift and change behaviors, I understand that the critical factor works for us as well as against us.
If a client believes they are valuable and worthy deep within the subconscious, they are likely to make choices that benefit and improve their life, such as choosing healthy relationships and taking proper care of themselves. Transversely, if a client believes “Life is too difficult, smoking provides relief”, then that belief will be reinforced through the destructive habit. As you can see, the critical factor is both beneficial and harmful.
The critical factor is simply a comparing mechanism that essentially guards the subconscious mind, pushing out new information and rejecting everything that doesn’t match what is located within the subconscious.
If the smoker consciously thinks to himself “I hate these cigarettes and I don’t need them” the critical factor is likely to reject that information due to the hard wired programming “cigarettes help me manage my life” that is stored within the subconscious.
As a stop smoking hypnotist, it is my job to remove the critical factors presence which can then allow for the subconscious mind to be worked on and reprogrammed within minutes.
I do this by performing what are known as inductions, which are simply a series of simple instructions the client can easily follow which guides them into the hypnotic state.
Once in the hypnotic state, with the comparing mechanism of the critical factor removed, clients are easily able to accept and receive suggestions for change allowing them to form new understandings and the healthier habits associated with them.
For more information regarding the workings of the mind, please watch this brief video here.
Smoking - The Distractor Model
As a stop smoking hypnotist, I treat many clients that are looking to remove behaviors in their life that are punitive for success. These behaviors and habits are known as distractors.
Distractors are the result of emotions that arise from an unsatisfied need.
For example, if a client feels lonely this may cause them to over-eat at night. If a client feels anxious, this may cause them to drink alcohol excessively.
These distracting behaviors are the result of unmet needs. In our example(s), there is an unmet need for safety and connection.
As a stop smoking hypnotist, I understand that there is no distracting behavior that can satisfy an unmet need.
Ponder the question:
“How many cookies do I have to eat before I meet the love of my life?”
As you can see, there is no answer because the question doesn’t make sense.
Distracting behaviors such as smoking, doing drugs, or overeating only serve to perform one function, to distract. While they do provide relief temporarily from painful feelings, they can never satisfy the unmet need causing the negative emotions.
More times than not, smoking is used as a distracting behavior providing relief momentarily from negative feelings. Feelings such as stress, anxiety, or even insecurity can be temporarily avoided by reaching for that cigarette.
However I will pose the question, how many cigarettes do I have to smoke before my problems go away?
Two Types Of Smokers - Habitual & Emotional
As a stop smoking hypnotist, when clients come to see me they get put into one of two categories; they are either a habitual smoker or an emotional smoker.
Habitual smokers are those that feel otherwise healthy and are highly functioning but simply smoke merely because they always have. They are not driven to smoke because of emotional distress, but by the simple fact that this behavior has been repeated so often the subconscious mind knows no other way.
An emotional smoker is someone who regularly uses smoking to cope with life’s problems and stressors. As we have discussed, these people are using smoking to merely distract time and again, allowing them to avoid the all to real painful feelings that may be surfacing.
Feel bad, distract, feel bad, distract.
Regression - Habitual Smokers
The quitting process for habitual smokers is much more simplified than those of their emotional counterparts. As a stop smoking hypnotist, using inductions and other methods for inducing hypnosis, clients are able to easily be “regressed” to moments in their life that are significant that have lead to smoking.
For habitual smokers, that moment is the first time they ever smoked a cigarette. Once the client is regressed to this pivotal moment, the “grown up” version is then able to speak to them directly, providing them with the knowledge and guidance needed to experience that initial event that caused them to smoke, without smoking.
Such information the client provides their younger “smoking” self may be:
“You don’t need anything to fit in”
“You are good enough just as you are”
“This choice you are about to make will cause years of stress and suffering”
ETC.
Once the younger version of themselves is able to easily accept the knowledge, guidance, and wisdom from “grown up”, they are then able to experience that new event free of the erroneous beliefs of the child or younger self.
Smoking habit removed.
Regression - Emotional Smokers
As a stop smoking hypnotist, 80% (or so) of my clients fall into the emotional smoking subcategory. These are the clients that experience many emotional hardships on a daily basis, that are the result of a lifetime of trauma and drama.
More times than not, there is a specific feeling that the client experiences that leads them to smoke. Wether it be stress, fear, or anxiety, clients reach for the cigarette at the first signal of these emotional occurrences.
Treating clients who are emotional smokers follows a similar path as their habitual counterparts, but with a few different detours.
Instead of inducing hypnosis and regressing emotional clients to the first time they had a cigarette, they are regressed to the first time they ever experienced those negative feelings. For example, if a client smokes primarily out of fear, they are taken back through their life to earlier times where they experienced fear.
100% of the time clients report feeling fear (or other negative emotions) prior to the age of 4.
“Grown up” now feels fear regularly as a result of first learning that fear response many years ago and experiencing it on a regular basis due to the beliefs that were formed at such a young age.
For example, if a client experiences fear because they were left alone in their crib and mom wasn’t around, at this early age they may have learned “I am unsafe and unloveable.”
The fear response and the beliefs associated with them are taken through life causing negative behaviors and outcomes, smoking being one of them.
During age regression, the client is led to “inform” the little one that even though mom wasn’t around in this moment, he/she is lovable and safe.
Once the client is able to re-experience that event free from the fear, he is then taken through their life to any events the subconscious finds significant. That process of teaching the younger one everything they need to know in order to experience those events free of fear is then repeated as many times as necessary until the emotion attached to all those moments is then removed.
Emotion removed, smoking habit removed.
Direct Suggestion
Wether the client is an emotional smoker or purely habitual, they are both provided with additional sessions implementing the hypnotic technique of Direct Suggestion.
Direct suggestion is when the hypnotist provides the client with the words and beliefs that the client came in to obtain. Simple examples include:
“Because your younger self has learned and obtained this newfound knowledge you will easily and effortlessly seek out healthy alternatives that improve your life”.
“You are a non-smoker and will remain so for the rest of your life”.
“With each minute that passes free of cigarettes your confidence in your ability to solve problems grows”.
ETC.
Forgiveness - The Removal Of Anger
As a stop smoking hypnotist, I understand that direct suggestion combined with Age Regression techniques are often more than enough to cease the disgusting habit of smoking for good.
However, as a stop smoking hypnotist I also understand that there may be one more piece of the puzzle that needs to be put into place; forgiveness.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool for creating real and deep levels of forgiveness allowing for the removal of anger which may be causing clients to cling to their habit of smoking.
Clients are encouraged to forgive two people; the person that hurt them the most (often times a parent), and themselves.
Through this deep transformational work of understanding and acceptance, clients can finally be free of the binds from the past, allowing them to create a healthier and exciting NEW.
Expectations
Hypnosis is the leading method to rid those afflicted with this destructive habits. As a stop smoking hypnotist, I see success rates in the 90% range. This is a fantastic number compared to the more traditional strategies, such as willpower, medication, talk therapy, support groups, or patches.
Clients seeking a stop smoking hypnotist should be fully informed of one distinction, there is a difference between stopping and quitting. Often, after the first session a client is able to stop smoking, but as a stop smoking hypnotist I know the work is not complete. Age regression, forgiveness, and other techniques are then implemented to ensure that the client fully QUITS.
Conclusion
The grip of smoking is a result of the past, erroneous beliefs brought on by traumatic moments experienced by the child, and the result of habits stored deep within the subconscious. Hypnosis is truly the only effective method for addressing all of these contributing factors, which is why clients seeking a stop smoking hypnotist are able to see such beneficial and dramatic results.
If you are looking to leave this destructive habit behind, simply click the link below to schedule a time to speak with me directly so we can get started on the healthier you today.
Thank you for reading, hope to hear from you soon - Brad.
305.778.9236
