Smoking cessation treatment with hypnotherapy can involve a number of strategies:
- Aversion therapy (associating smoking with something disgusting)
- Cost-benefit analysis (comparing monthly smoking expenses to the cost of hypnotherapy or of something you want to buy)
- Health assessment (risks of continuing, benefits of quitting)
- Support networking (having friends or family to contact during stress or boredom and who won't smoke around you)
- Oral fixation substitution (replacing cigarettes with something healthier like water or carrot sticks)
- Regression therapy (reminding your subconcious how difficult it was when you first tried to learn to smoke)
Addiction to smoking, as with other addictions, is a special case with hypnosis. Almost half of my clients used to stop coming for sessions before the number of sessions they agreed to attend. (Perhaps it is the fault of our immediate gratification expectations.) Almost all of those who completed sessions became nonsmokers -- usually for life unless a stressful event comes up in the first two years, and then refreshers may be required again. A certain percentage of those who attend only one or two of the sessions quit smoking within the following 2-9 months, claiming the hypnosis was not a factor, despite 3 or 4 previous unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking.
So now, if you come to me for smoking cessation, I require a one-session deposit that may be applied only to the last session we agree to. The session schedule is usually:
- First session on the day you want to quit (some request a session one week before this)
- Second session approximately three days later (seems a critical time for most)
- Third session one week later
Occasionally one or two more sessions may be required, but three is sufficient for most, so your total cost is likely to be $300-400.
Some common myths about quitting smoking:
- "I am going to gain weight." -- Oral fixation is a strong factor in most people's addiction to smoking, and some people fulfill that need with unhealthy foods. With hypnotherapy we find other healthier ways for you to deal with your boredom or stress.
- "I'm not ready to quit, so it won't work." -- This is true in a way, but not in the way you might think. You don't have to be ready to quit in order for hypnosis to be effective in helping you stop smoking. But our minds are as easily programmed by our negative expectations as anything else, and the belief that hypnosis won't work (for whatever reason) will keep it from working. Your resistance to suggestion will be too high.
- "I can wait until I'm older." -- Some people rationalize that heart disease and emphysema only happen to older people. The tar build up in the lungs, the damage of nicotine, and the carcinogens in cigarettes have a cumulative effect. Your risk of life-threatening illness goes up every week you smoke. Two days after you quit smoking, you will cut your likelihood of heart disease and lung cancer by 50 percent. And if you wait until after age 35 to quit, your lungs may never fully recover.
Nicotine gums and patches should be discontinued during hypnotherapy for smoking cessation, if you're using them. And temptation is the quickest route to relapse, so make sure your friends and family, especially those you live with, know you're quitting and don't offer or leave out cigarettes for you.