Stop Smoking For Good
Elements of the Envision Hypnotherapy Stop Smoking (and vaping) program
I have used my own experience as an ex-smoker as well as my hypnotherapy skills and experience of working with smokers to develop a highly successful 3-session approach to quitting. While there is no absolute guarantee of success, 9 out of 10 of the smokers I see become an ex-smoker and stay that way.
At the initial free telephone/online consultation, I test to make sure the person is at the ‘threshold’ point necessary for change to occur i.e. they want to stop, have the necessary commitment to stop and want to stop now. If we decide to proceed to treatment, my approach involves 3 steps…
- Session One – Getting ready to quit smoking.
The first session is all about helping the person to get ready to quit in body, mind and spirit. Part of this process involves exposing key truths and lies about smoking as well as better understanding that smoking habit and the beliefs that they have attached to smoking. - Session Two – Stop smoking
The second session comes a week after the first and is the main stop smoking session. - Session Three – Staying Stopped
The third session is optional – it is there should someone need it and is available for up to 12 months after seesion two (the main stop smoking session).
I also provide useful information (see links at the bottom of this page), self-assessment exercises and self-hypnosis recordings to support the process of becoming and remaining a confirmed non smoker.
I find that, like most people, smokers really don’t like to be told what to do. What this means is they need to stop because they want to, that it is their own choice and one taken freely. I also find that most smokers know that it is highly damaging to their health although may not be fully aware of the extent of the risks and the damage smoking causes to their bodies, skin and appearance, to say nothing of the damage to their pocket.
If you want to remind yourself of some facts about smoking please click here – these facts are drawn from the Britsh Lung Foundation and NHS UK
Knowing what you know now as a smoker – would you ever have started?
The problem is that most smokers live in hope that that none of the chronic health problems caused by smoking will ever
happen to them, that somehow they ‘need’ to smoke and besides, when they reach the point when they really, really want to stop, they somehow just do it by magic! However, if you are that smoker who has been struggling to stop, and perhaps have already tried and failed several times to do so, you will know that it is not quite so easy and that willpower is hard to sustain in order to stay stopped!
In my experience, most smokers wish that they had never started smoking in the first place. Just ask yourself, if you could go back in time, would you start smoking, knowing what you know now and feeling as you do now?
Smokers don’t choose to smoke any more than alcoholics choose to become alcoholics: they just become lured into a trap. Breaking out of that trap first involves opening the mind so I typically ask people to first think about their smoking and ask themselves questions such as:
- How do I think smoking helps me? What do I believe I get by smoking that I cannot get by other means?
- Do I actually enjoy smoking?
- How difficult is it to maintain my smoking habit (as opposed to how hard it is to change)?
- Do I really want to go through life paying through the nose just to stick things in my mouth to poison and suffocate myself?
Blocks to overcome
The main block to stopping is FEAR – of misery, of being stressed, of loss of enjoyment, of loss of concentration and self confidence, of sacrifice, of anxiety, of being “once a smoker, always a smoker”, of not being strong enough to defeat it, fear of boredom and so on. Smokers typically fail to realise that FEAR is really just False Evidence Appearing Real!
The truth is that it’s fairly easy to stop smoking if you change the way that you think about it deep down and overcome your fears about stopping. You just need to be convinced of this and provided that you want to quit, then hypnosis enables you to do this exceptionally well.
It is estimated that 3 out of every 4 smokers want to quit but the question is, just how strong is that want? So, as I mentioned above, one of the first things I do when someone calls me for help is to make sure that they truly want to stop. There is a big difference between knowing you should stop and wanting to stop. Even though someone may think it will be hard for them to stop, as long as they truly want to stop, then I can help.
And while the desire to stop has to come from within to succeed, hypnosis can help with that too. As mentioned above, the first session is all about boosting that desire to stop and helping the mind and body to get ready to quit for good.
Other methods and hypnotherapy’s success rate
There are of course methods other than hypnotherapy that people can use to quit such as ‘cold turkey’, nicotine patches and acupuncture. People can also consult their GP to see if there is medication that can help. The NHS UK Stop Smoking service is a useful source of advice and options to consider. However, most of the people I help to quit smoking have already tried and failed with at least one and often several different methods before considering hypnotherapy.
And if you have already tried stopping, found it hard and started smoking again, sometimes after months without a cigarette, then your experience is not unusual. Your experience of trying and failing to stop may even lead you to believe that you are forever destined to be a smoker and can’t do it …..or maybe you concluded that the time was wrong and you need to pick a better time next time…… but somehow that next time is a long time coming around. Hopefully, that time has come for you now.
It is always worth remembering just how many people have given up smoking. In 1972 just under half of adults in the UK were smokers. By 1990 this had fallen to just under a third. At present, less than a sixth of UK adults are smokers and the numbers are dropping all the time. Yet all the millions of people around the world who stop smoking every year are not in anyway special or more able than you. You are just as capable as they are of stopping. Hypnotherapy with me just gives you the opportunity to discover this for yourself and to enjoy life more being a non-smoker.
For more information please see the following resources:
- How life improves when you stop smoking
- Smoking – truths, myths and lies
- 10 Ways to Help Yourself Stop Smoking
- What’s in tobacco?
- Some facts about smoking
