Hypnotherapy To Quit Smoking: Parts Therapy
Why It’s Hard To Quit Smoking
When we smoke for a long time it becomes our identity. We feel it’s just who we are. But you weren’t born a smoker. Smoking is as much who you are as drinking a cup of tea. It’s just something you do - a habitual behaviour.
You want to be a non-smoker.
You want to live without the need to smoke.
You want to breathe easily and freely, but it's as if there's a part of you that says "why not? Everyone else is. I need it to function."
The Part Of You That Smokes
This part of you was the part that learnt to smoke and now runs that behaviour autonomously, just like there's a part of you that knows how to drive and can do it automatically. There's a part of you that learnt how to tie your shoelaces and now does so effortlessly, without thinking which hand goes over the other. It's the same with smoking. You're going about your day and something inside you says it's time to smoke, and before you know it you've finished a cigarette. The trigger could be friends, coffee, alcohol, the time of day, turning up to work, finishing work, a stressful event, a moment to relax, really anything we associate with 'the time to smoke'.
Like A Loyal Employee
This part of you that reminds you to smoke is like a loyal employee - reminding you to smoke at certain intervals through the day, and it does so reliably every day for years and years. However, it's not doing the job it was hired for in the first place. The first time you ever smoked was probably to fit in with a group of cool kids at school (that's how I had my first) or to rebel against your parents and generally look cool. However, now you're older, that's not why you continue to smoke, at least not consciously. There are much better, healthier, more grown up ways to fit in with a group, or look attractive, than smoking. It is a very childish thing to do, but now we've learnt to do it, it takes some care to unlearn it. It’s as if that loyal employee was given the job to mop the floor on the 1st floor, and has been doing so for 20 years. He just needs to be given the instruction to do something else - clean the windows, go up to the other floors!
How Hypnotherapy Helps To Quit Smoking
When we do hypnosis to quit smoking, we can communicate with the part of you that runs the smoking habit and ask it to fulfil it's purpose in another way. If it's trying to get you to fit in, maybe you can begin paying more attention to the people around you and improve your social skills. If it's trying to calm you down in a stressful moment, maybe you can be reminded to take a couple long, deep breaths and think about solving the problem. There are lots of ways to do any one job, many of them yet to be explored. Hypnosis to quit smoking is like a wardrobe of new choices, trying out new behaviours to see which fits best.
Are You Ready To Quit Smoking?
If you’re reading this, that’s enough of a sign that you can see a better alternative, one that is more suited to your future self. Quitting smoking doesn’t need to be hard and painful. If you want to quit smoking, it can be easy, enjoyable, fulfilling and enormously rewarding.
Make a start today - book a hypnosis session with me!
David Stewart
Evergreen Hypnotherapy
Help you change your habits - one part at a time.
