This is a question that clients hear multiple times when they come to smoking cessation therapy. Their answer is usually a firm yes, accompanied by a suspicious look that says – why do you think I came here in the first place? However, it often results that this “yes” comes from a series of completely legitimate reasons – family, health and all other smoking inconveniences – for which the client, on a subconscious level, doesn’t really care much.
Often, smoking is not just an innocent habit that pulled us in when we were younger and became a highly addictive fixation over the years. It represents those precious five minutes we manage to take for “ourselves” in a busy schedule. Or an anaesthetic for all the stress we experience in our hectic daily lives. Sometimes, smoking is the last piece of freedom we have left since entering the world of parenthood. Other times, smoking is a patch on the wound left by our partner’s betrayal. Why would we give that up?
When we really want to stop smoking – when we are truly determined and highly motivated – hypnosis helps us to consolidate this decision on a subconscious level. In that case, listening to negative suggestions of black and dried lungs will take any desire for a cigarette away in a session or two. However, when smoking represents some emotional compensation, the therapy focuses on discovering and resolving the cause that lies in our subconscious.
Hypnotherapy leads us to life with less compensation. It helps us to establish the internal conditions to put ourselves first again. To climb down off a racing horse that drives us towards possible burnout. To discover the magic of life again, lost somewhere while growing up. To face feelings of rejection and heal the pain of betrayal.
In any case, change happens when we are ready for it, when we really want it. And when we truly decide on it, when this is our own and sincere desire, entering the non-smoking world is relatively easy.
So, it is important to ask yourself – why do I smoke?
