Hypnosis, or trance, is the name used to describe a deep state of internal focus that one achieves when one's mind is drawn to a single idea. While under hypnosis, the part of your mind that controls habitual behavior, known as the subconscious, is unrestrained and left open to suggestion. For this reason, hypnosis is often employed as a means of replacing unwanted behaviors with those that better serve the individual. By tapping into the deepest levels of thought, hypnotherapy helps those who seek it to unlock psychological barriers to achievement and improve the quality of life.
Connecting to the Subconscious
The subconscious mind is where habits are stored. Once a task is repeated enough times, it becomes instinctive and moves to the background of active choice. It is then merely a sequence of actions recorded in the subconscious that will automatically replay under certain conditions, like the tape in a cassette recorder. By creating a direct pathway into this part of the mind, a hypnotherapist can modify behavior at its source, rewriting the program and producing what is often instant change for the individual.
Reroute Habituated Behavior
The human mind learns quickly to identify and follow a sequence of events. It is designed in this way to ease our travels through life. Over time, the habit of smoking also fits its way in to one or several processes that a person initiates throughout the day. Many people smoke at precisely a certain amount of time after waking up, eating, taking a break or doing any other everyday activity. The initial behavior acts as a trigger for the second, and so on. Using hypnosis, a person can, mentally, run the first step of a sequence then wire in a new, more useful, course of conduct behind it. Once repeated several times, the new sequence will seem natural and the person will automatically follow it to completion.
Meet Needs In a Different Way
A person may begin smoking in order to feel calm, think clearly, or achieve some other useful state of mind. When he or she then attempts to quit, an emotional emptiness seems to loom over certain parts of his or her life. The mind will then attempt to fill it with what is most familiar--smoking. This is why a person who tries to quit without finding a new way to fill his or her needs, feels tremendous urges to smoke again. In hypnosis, a therapist can move the experience of smoking into the background of the client's mind and bring forward resources that satisfy the client's emotional drives more effectively.
Relaxation
Many people smoke when nervous and find that a cigarette will trigger calm feelings at times of concern. The hypnotic state is typically coupled with a profound sense of relaxation. This feeling can, in fact, be anchored to a word, thought, sound, or gesture by the hypnotist, while the client is still in trance. When the client thereafter feels the need to relax by smoking, he or she can fire-off the relaxation trigger and experience the same relief. As the client becomes aware of his or her own ability to create positive emotions at will, the draw to smoke loses its power.
Switching Associations
To smokers, a cigarette may have become associated to feeling "cool" or part of the crowd. This interpretation may have been ingrained in youth, when the person began learning the habit as a way to "fit in" with others. A hypnotherapist can actually reconnect smoking to other associations, more realistic to the current moment, such as bad health, loss of money, and alienating others. The hypnotherapist can also connect the idea of living a smoke-free existence to feelings of increased energy, good health, attractiveness, and so on. Doing this makes the change seem natural.
Imagination Over Will
The conscious mind attempts to use its tool of logical thought against smoking, saying things like "If I don't quit, my health will deteriorate" or "I am going to quit smoking today, because I doesn't serve me anymore." The subconscious mind, however, has a huge storehouse of feelings, images, and associations, all more powerful than words. Hypnosis works with the imaginative part of the mind, the subconscious. While in trance, you can rehearse experiencing the joys of living a smoke-free life in real time and feel as if it is actually happening. A hypnotherapist can actually run you through the scenario several times in a very short amount of time, giving you an instant history of life without smoking. This is a more potent way to create change, as deeper learning is discovered from experience as opposed to words.
Uncover Deep-Seated Problems
Habits are often mere reflections of a deeper issue, perhaps the need for control or stability in one's life. A hypnotherapist can ask the subconscious, directly, about the real issues at play and work on the root cause. Once this is done, not only smoking, but other ways of acting that were manifestations of the deeper problem, will simply fall away. By improving behavior at the source, hypnotherapy can create deep and lasting change.
Rapid, Measurable Results
Results give you the enthusiasm to move forward. Seeing a hypnotherapist, most often, produces some sort of immediate, observable change in one's experience. The hypnotherapist can start by installing a simple suggestion that is easy to follow. Suggestions, once acted upon, gain momentum. Each one becomes easier to follow than the last. Achieving even a small success will set up expectancy, in the client's subconscious, for future results to follow.
Reframing Beliefs
Many smokers develop a belief, over time, that quitting would be a very difficult process or else one that they lack the capacity to complete. Hypnotherapy allows you to go inside the subconscious and to expand your belief system to include a reality where living smoke-free is possible.
Self-Empowering
Hypnosis allows people to realize that they can control their own perceptions and emotions. This knowledge automatically removes the power that any habit can posses over their lives.
