Psychologist & Hypnotherapist in Bromley

Smoking

Many smokers want to stop, but find it hard as years of conditioning has made it a deeply ingrained and unconscious habit. When a smoker lights up his first cigarette, usually between the ages of 11 and 14, they often feel dizzy and sick. However, they desperately want to be like the rest of their friends so they persevere and smoking in due course becomes an unconscious activity. Remember when you first learned to drive and needed to change gear, and it seemed impossible to coordinate your hands, feet and eyes? However, an experienced driver does not need to consciously think about changing gear, it is now an automatic unconscious action. In a similar manner, smokers at first smoke consciously and in time it becomes an unconscious automatic activity.

People are also driven towards events and activities that give them pleasure and away from those that cause pain, so if the unconscious mind perceives smoking as pleasurable it has no reason to want to give up. Hypnosis brings about change by reframing the client’s thoughts processes to associate pain with smoking.

It is important however to recognise that the client must want to stop smoking and the initial consultation is to assess the motivation of the client and study their individual patterns of smoking.

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