(Not just a smoker who is courageously resisting cigarettes)
Everyone knows someone who has quit smoking but still says they’d like one with a drink, or after a meal.
And what a terrible place that is to be.
Having to deny yourself something you want all the time.
That’s why I use an approach that helps you become a true non-smoker, not just someone who is resisting smoking.
The ‘stopped smoker’ courageously resists having a cigarette, while the non-smoker couldn’t think of anything worse than smoking.
That’s if they give it a thought at all.
My approach to smoking cessation hypnotherapy changes the unconscious mind of a smoker to an effortless non-smoker.The techniques I use address every single psychological trick that smoking addiction plays on you and frees you from its grip.Smoking cessation hypnosis with me will gently move your mind from its current addicted state to complete freedom from cigarettes.
No longer will you be controlled by the need to smoke: No more planning your day so you can smoke, no more running outside at work or at parties, no more worrying whether you have enough cigarettes left. No more stressing about what smoking is doing to your health.
Why You Really Should Love Smoking!
So you are getting ready to quit smoking, and the first thing I tell you is that you really should love smoking.
Now you're thinking, "What do you mean?!"
All I ask is that you bear with me and enter into this experience wholeheartedly and with an open mind. Quitting smoking the traditional way is not easy. I want to explain how it can be much, much easier.
All I ask is that you devote a few minutes to reading this blog. The idea of becoming a non-smoker after many years of smoking can feel pretty daunting. You want to quit, but at the same time, you don’t want to. There’s a significant difference between wanting to quit and feeling like you “should” stop smoking. I want to find out whether you are truly ready to free yourself from smoking.
But if you are interested in learning whether you can move to a place where stopping smoking feels easy, even uplifting, then read on...
A smoker has a relationship with their smoking. Smoking is often used as a rebellious “screw you world” gesture after a bad day. It gives real perceived benefits, and it's silly to pretend it doesn’t. (Even today, many hypnotherapists are taught to tell their clients that “it’s easy to stop as you’re not really getting anything from it.”)
I love helping smokers and have found that I can often ease them away from smoking with no or few withdrawal effects by helping them see smoking in a totally different way, rather than just giving them a few hypnotic experiences. I don’t just mean they thought about it differently, but also felt differently about it before they stopped. That was the key to helping people escape nicotine comfortably.
What really makes a difference is stopping smoking properly.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of finding someone charming and attractive, then discovering something unsavory about them? You just can’t see them in the same way ever again. This can happen with cigarettes.
The government tries to achieve this with its warnings and images, but that approach often backfires.
When cigarettes no longer have the same pull for you, you don’t have to resist them anymore. I call this the “What did I ever see in you?” effect. When this truly happens, it’s quite amazing.
To take the pressure off my clients, I help them feel differently about smoking and find healthy, non-toxic ways to meet the needs cigarettes once met. The vital change in my understanding is that when you stop smoking, you are not just stopping a behavior; you are ending a relationship. This makes all the difference.
There is always a part of you that wants to quit—your lungs, your skin, even your ovaries or prostate.
These are the silent victims, the parts that need representation.
Helping people naturally come to the point where quitting feels inevitable is about restoring justice in the province of the human body.
I’m indifferent but not anti-smoking. I'm not going to be one of those judgmental, boring, self-righteous anti-smokers. You know the kind of person who thinks they are superior because they don’t smoke. There is nothing worse. And when you quit, I don’t want you to become a brow-beating anti-smoker either. Why? Because hate is too close to love. When you hate smoking, you’re still too emotionally connected to it. This isn’t about the ‘evils of smoking’; it’s about ascertaining whether you are ready to leave behind something that no longer fits with who you are.
So let’s talk about love and smoking.
You must love smoking, don’t you?
Or maybe you once did and now you’re not so sure. Maybe you love it too much to free yourself from it. People love, or think they love, all kinds of people, substances, or ideas that undermine them. Or maybe you hate smoking now but feel caught in the ‘honey trap’ of addiction.
Think about the habit of smoking not as a habit but as a “deal.” So what is this deal?
Our deal with smoking. For the pleasure of smoking, you get…well, the pleasure. But maybe you don’t feel much pleasure and instead get other perceived benefits. Perhaps smoking helped you form a certain identity—it made you feel cooler, fit in, or whatever. It’s unlikely this still feels like a benefit, but its effects can still be there at an unconscious level.
Or maybe you feel, like millions of others, that smoking helps you relax or socialize because you can connect with other smokers, or because smoking gives you something to do with your hands. Maybe smoking feels comfortably familiar, like a friend who is always there for you in the good times and bad.
Maybe you now smoke just to feel “normal.”
Perhaps you simply like smoking, enjoy the taste, and the quiet moments those cigarette breaks give you. These smoking benefits are by no means unimportant and do feel like benefits. These are some of the things you might get from the ‘deal’ with these strange creatures known as cigarettes.
So what do cigarettes get in return? For giving you pleasure, a sense of identity, something to lean on when times are tough, and the feeling of being able to relax or concentrate, cigarettes get your money and time, some if not all of your fertility, the brightness of your eyes, the youthfulness of your skin, your sexual and general fitness, and for one out of every two frequent long-term smokers, your life.
Remember, I’m not here to scare you—you know all this stuff already.
I’m just asking you to assess the deal you’ve struck. Does that sound like an equal and fair deal to you? Liking smoking is not enough. If you continue to smoke, you shouldn’t just “quite enjoy” smoking; you should love it like nothing else in life. Then we start to square up the deal.
Seriously, if you really love smoking to the extent that it feels like the most meaningful thing in your life, then maybe the ‘deal’ is worth it. If that is the way it is, I for one will not try to talk you out of it. Maybe it is worth it. But when I say “love,” I really mean it.
Considering what cigarettes take from you, you need to take such a level of ecstatic joy from every smoke that it actually feels worth the sacrifice. It’s a tragedy when people say they just “enjoy” smoking because, as I’m sure you can see now, that’s really not enough. To justify handing over all that to cigarettes (or let’s be clear here—the tobacco companies), you should love smoking more than anything.
And maybe some things are worth dying for.
If nothing else compares to smoking for you, and you really feel it’s worth paying for the pleasure, then perhaps you should continue.
So how did cigarettes trap you?
Are you too physically addicted to cigarettes to free yourself from them?
You start smoking, maybe when young, and it’s just something you do. You “own” it at first. It, the smoking, doesn’t "own" you. And, of course, you feel if you so choose you can quit at any time. But what happens? Bit by bit it gets under your skin. There is a point when you feel a choice has become an addiction and that’s what we are looking at now. It’s not just stopping smoking that’s important but how you stop.
The truth about physical addiction.
Some people will readily jump on the idea of physical addiction as justification for them continuing smoking. I’m sure you’ve heard it… “But I have an addictive personality!”
How much is pure physical addiction and how much is psychological expectation?
Your body hates nicotine!! The truth is nicotine is gone from the body pretty fast - it really doesn’t stick around for long.Within 72 hours your blood oxygen levels return to normal, toxic carbon monoxide levels will have fallen within the normal range, nerve endings are starting to repair itself and the sense of smell and taste begin to return.
Any physically-based craving will have peaked after this time also. Despite the abuse your body suffers from smoking, your body fights back and recovers many of its losses pretty quickly - as long as it’s given a chance to do this before cell damage becomes too chaotic and uncontrolled.
I found that when the smoker started framing the time after they quit as healing rather than withdrawal they had much fewer so called withdrawal symptoms. Expectation produce powerful physical responses.
But what is highly important in maintaining a smoking habit and also in the experience you have after quitting is your psychological expectation.
So if we can remove a large amount of expectation that nicotine withdrawal is going to be terrible then all a person has to deal with is the physical element of letting their body heal. This is why we use hypnosis - because it is much better at helping you change your expectations than will power is.
If someone is led to believe that withdrawal from smoking has to be awful then that belief and expectation may produce a large part of what they experience.
Are you too physically dependent to even think about freeing yourself from smoking?
Or have there ever been times like long haul flights, visits to non-smoking friends or to the movies where you hadn’t really thought about smoking? Do you ever sleep for more than two hours without your body waking you up demanding to be fed cigarettes? Did you ever forget about smoking for longer than normal because you had become so engrossed in some emergency or other diversion? If the answer is yes to any of the above then you certainly are not too physically addicted to think about quitting for good sheer force of will can and does work for some people, but it’s exhausting and often doesn’t last.
Trying not to smoke has you still focussing on…the smoking.
What if smoking felt stranger to you than purple pants on backwards Have you ever noticed that the tasks you get done most efficiently are those which feel right to do? Not the tasks you know you should do that never seem to get done.
Because when cigarettes feel so alien to you, so irrelevant then you don’t need to exercise any will power at all. Or put another way: Think of all the stuff you don’t have to force yourself not to do: I’m guessing here but I doubt you have to force yourself not to walk down the street dressed as Tinkerbell the fairy … or run naked through the shopping mall... … or steal cars for a living. You don’t even think about that stuff because it’s just not who you are.
You don’t have to spend even an ounce of willpower stopping yourself doing these things. Smoking can feel that way to you too.
Is it really the right time for you to quit?
Most people don’t lead perfect lives all the time.
We all have stresses day to day. We all get frustrated, bored (which is another kind of stress) or other people can irritate us. The art of living well isn’t about eradicating all stresses from life (I wish) but in coming to the point where you deal with life’s stresses in ways which are healthy and don’t create further stresses. It’s also vital to know what you genuinely need, so that smoking doesn’t hitchhike a lift pretending to be a viable way of combating say loneliness or soothing frazzled nerves.
Once you know when you are truly done with the misguided and outdated stronghold smoking has on you and feel this is the right time to let go, get in touch now for our 4-session program.
The 4-session program is a program where the client can have up to four 1 hour sessions to quit smoking forever. To discover that they are truly ready, 4 hypnosis sessions, tips and tricks and a Quit Smoking Forever" recording.
Priced at $500 upfront or $145 for individual sessions. June 2024 only.