How hypnosis can help you butt out

Accessing your subconscious can help you quit smoking

14/07/2005 by Canadian Living (canadianliving.com)

Hypnosis is a successful tool in smoking cessation because it helps access the subconscious mind to break a behavioural pattern, says Georgina Cannon, director of the Ontario Hypnosis Centre in Toronto.

BREAKING HABITS: All our habits are formed in the subconscious mind, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "patterning." "Eighty per cent of what you do today, you did yesterday; that's patterning," explains Cannon. Lighting up a cigarette with your morning coffee, or whenever you feel stress, is a pattern you repeat without thinking about it.

HOW IT WORKS: To break the pattern, you need to access the subconscious mind, says Cannon. And hypnosis can help. In the case of smoking, the subconscious pattern that leads a person to light up when someone else does can disappear immediately after the start of hypnosis treatment.

HOW MANY SESSIONS: The number of hypnotherapy sessions necessary to kick the nicotine habit 'varies from person to person. For some people it's only one session, while others might need two to four. "Some people need to do it more gradually," says Cannon.

SUCCESS RATE: Almost everyone can kick the habit. Cannon cites a 95 per cent success rate at her centre, although that may be because she has a strict policy of who she takes in. She says she asks potential clients how badly they want to quit on a scale of one to 10, and if the answer is less than eight she won't take them. "All of the success of hypnosis is up to the individual," she says.

TAPES CAN HELP: Tapes or CDs help the process of changing the script in your brain that tells you to reach for a cigarette and are often used in conjunction with weekly sessions. You can buy tapes and CDs at most hypnosis clinics.

COST: The cost of hypnotherapy varies from clinic to clinic but usually costs about $80 to $100 per session.

Why is it so darn hard to quit smoking?

It's hard to quit smoking because tobacco companies spend so much time and energy making sure it would be. It's good old American business practices hard at work.

Quitting smoking is fairly easy. As Mark Twain said, "I've done it hundreds of times." Quitting is hard but compared to staying stopped, it's easy. Not starting again is the real issue in most cases. Quitting smoking is the same as quitting any habit disorder. There are a number of elements to deal with and issues to address.

Stopping:  every day is easier than the day before.

(Again, this is the easy part.) First, understand that stopping will mean establishing in your mind a resolve not to smoke any more and an understanding that there will be hard, hard work after that staying stopped. It will include a resolve to stay away from the people and places that you associate with smoking and from any other people that might be smoking and places where you will see or smell smoking and smokers.

Also you need to accept the rule: Stopping means stopping. I have little faith in claims about fake cigarettes and cutting back gradually. Stopping when your last pack is gone is just stopping later. The best stopping is when you have cigarettes left. You don't give them away to another smoker to contribute to his or her cancer, respiratory disease and ill health. You destroy them. You destroy them and you swear to God and whatever else you swear to that you will destroy all other cigarettes you find yourself buying, borrowing or finding. If you start stopping by excusing further smoking with the silly argument that you don't want to waste them, you will never stop. If you destroy them and hate the waste that your getting them forces you into, you will be less likely to fall for such nonsense later. Saying you're going to cut down gradually is saying you are not going to stop but you are going to pretend to start stopping some day.

Five basic issues:
       1) physical dependency,
       2) psychological dependency,
       3) busy hands,
       4) busy mouth and
       5) psychological triggers

Physical dependency - nicotine patches and gum.
Physical dependency is basically an issue of being "hooked" on nicotine. You can deal with this by just letting your body deal with the loss -- usually called "going cold turkey" -- or you can get yourself a nicotine patch or nicotine gum.

Psychological dependency - SSRI's and good old will power and resolve. The hardest part of any habit disorder is the psychological dependency. This results in a state of minor panic about losing your loved smoke and a lot of nagging reminders and arguments inside your head. It has been found that sometimes this problem can be lessened by visiting your medical doctor and asking for some chemical assistance. There are many fairly new drugs now that can help people rid themselves of nagging thoughts. The most common I have heard of is Welbutrin. This is a medicine in the Prozac family of Serum Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors -- used for reducing obsessive-compulsive thoughts. (This family of drugs is also used in cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression -- all of which have a nagging thoughts component.)

With or without medicine, you will still need to steel yourself against the intense pressures that you will find yourself putting yourself through. If you aren't very busy with other things you will find yourself angry, frustrated and constantly tempted to say to heck with quitting. It can help to think of the rich tobacco company executives delight in your addiction. It can help to think of how stupid it is that you want to burn leaves and paper and suck in the fumes. It can help to think of how often everyone has told you you smell awful and you couldn't even smell that you did. It can help to think of how blackened your lungs probably are from sucking smoke for so long.

Busy hands, busy fingers.
Stopping will be easiest if you have ways to replace the fingers-occupying aspects of smoking with something else to do with your hands. This might mean getting a little squeeze ball like they have stressed executives and hand rehabilitators using. Or worry beads. Or a coin or stone you can hold and move around in your hands.

Busy mouth.
Stopping will be easiest if you have ways to replace the mouth-busying aspects of smoking with something else to do with your mouth. This could be chewing gum, sucking candies, toothpicks or -- my personal favorite -- certain types of pens that are marginally chewable. (Pens can substitute for something very close to cigarettes. You can play with them with your hands, place them in your mouth and give a good chew and then play with them some more with your hands. You need to stay away from pens with metal clips or ends as you will need your teeth later. You usually need to get used to finding yourself covered with ink if you chew too many hours on the same pen.)

Psychological triggers.
Psychological triggers are elements in the environment that remind you of smoking. Like Pavlov's dogs, our brains get used to the connections between things. (Pavlov realized that his dogs started salivating in anticipation of being fed when he opened the laboratory door in the morning -- and he was pretty sure they weren't thinking of eating either him or the door.) If you smoked in the kitchen in the morning, the kitchen in the morning will trigger memories of smoking and make you want to smoke more. If you smoked with coffee as a rule, your hunger to smoke -- whatever level it is at -- will increase every time you have a cup of coffee. If you always smoked with your best friend, his or her presence -- even if not smoking -- will increase your drive to start smoking again. And, of course the most obvious, if you see someone smoking or smell smoking, your urge to smoke will increase. change it all, all at once
The best way to maximize the likelihood of success when working to quit a bad habit is to change as many things in your life as possible -- at least for awhile.   This is because of the way everything that you did when smoking will trigger you wanting to smoke.   The more you change, the less triggers you will need to deal with.   This means that if you have multiple bad habits, working on them all at once can maximize your likelihood of success with each. 
 

Given the realities of the above paragraph, it will obviously make quitting easier if you stay away from any activity or place or person that usually involved smoking. If you can't stay away, you'll do best if you keep yourself very busy with something else. If you can't do either, it will help if you just realize that your urge is going to increase when you do whatever it is you can't avoid that will trigger your thoughts of smoking.

The easiest way to change habits is to change as many as possible at the same time. Thus, one doesn't trigger the other's relapse. If you can go on a cruise, if you have to be in the hospital for an extended stay, if you visit someone else (not a smoker), it will be easier to quit.

Staying stopped: every day you are likely to relapse

Resolve: If you relapse, you're going to stop again right away!
Quitting is the easy part but it is very hard. Remember that. Every day you go, it gets easier. Every day you stay quit, it will cost you more grief if you relapse because you have to start back from the beginning. Every day you stay smoking after you relapse, quitting will be tougher.

Resolve: If you relapse, you're going to figure out how!
If you do relapse -- and you might -- you have to figure out how and make sure you burn that information into your brain. If you were telling yourself you could smoke just one, if you thought it would be okay to hang out with a smoker friend, if you thought going bowling (where the place is full of smokers) was going to be okay -- you have better information and you need to quit again.

Resolve: If you buy more smokes, you will destroy them!

Also: REWARD YOURSELF FOR YOUR FIRST WEEK's SUCCESS and the second and the third.

Also: REWARD YOURSELF FOR EACH MONTH's SUCCESS.

Also: NEVER LET YOURSELF LIE TO YOURSELF THAT YOU CAN HAVE JUST ONE.

from:  [www.head-cleaners.com]

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