Why can’t I quit smoking even when I want to?
If you’re asking yourself this question, you have probably tried to quit using all of the smoking alternatives, and probably more than once with little success. And the little success you did find, you relapsed back into the habit as though you had never stopped.
So why do we continue to smoke even though we want to quit so bad? After all you’re so disgusted with the habit and you know deep down that you can do better. You are better. Yet, smoking is the one area of your life that makes you feel weak.
The inability to quit smoking comes down to two things and both are resolvable:
The beliefs you hold around smoking: If you really believe you are addicted to nicotine or have no willpower, you’re brain says “at your command”. Here’s the thing, neither of those beliefs are true, which I will discuss in another post.
How you associate to smoking: If when you imagine yourself smoking and you imagine just an average day of you smoking, then there is no urgency to your mind to quit. Smoking doesn’t seem that bad. To your brain, it’s just another Tuesday.
But if every time your brain imagined putting a cigarette up to your mouth and all it can imagine is the taste is your babies worst blow out (you know the kind), your mind is going to be more incentivized to quit.
How do I shift my beliefs and associate myself to smoking in a new way?
Truthfully it depends on how much work you want to do. The subconscious is not mysterious, but it can seem mysterious if you aren’t directly working with it on a regular basis. There are two ways to go about this experience:
Understand how your smoking experience is held together and dismantle the habit yourself. If the habit was formed in young adolescent. Understand why that part of you started smoking and give them a new alternative to meet that need by feeling it. Understand the beliefs you have around smoking find ways to dismantle those beliefs. Understand the images your mind creates and create new images that make you want to put down the smoke.
OR you could do it the easy way and see a hypnotist. Sure it can be pricey depending on who you go to. But the only thing you need for hypnosis to work is the willingness to use your imagination and a good reason you want to quit. With hypnosis, you don’t have to try to figure out who to do it yourself. You can know that if you have the willingness to use your imagination and a good reason you want to quit, you have a very statistical chance of quitting permanently without cravings and withdraw.
Now I know that I am hypnotist selling you a solution. so if you’re skeptical let me ask you this? How many people do you know have quit smoking just because they wanted to? Everyone knows at least one person. Some of these people had been smoking for decades.
My mother was one of those people. She started smoking when she was 13, quit on and off, and when my youngest sister was born in 2006, she decided at the age of 32 that was a good enough time to quit and has been done ever since. If she was really addicted to the nicotine she never would have quit. Living to see her youngest daughter grow up was a good enough reason for her and has continued to be enough.
My reason for telling you this story is because people quit on their own all the time regardless of where they come from and how long they have been smoking.
But Jarisa, the cravings and withdrawl?!!
What if I told you that research suggests that the way you think about addiction and cravings — including your mindset, attention, and cognitive framing — can significantly influence craving intensity and smoking behavior, and can support long-term abstinence? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6532787/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619004/
Now I know you’re probably having flashbacks of those really intense cravings, which is WHY you should hire a hypnotist. Those flashbacks can mislead you into believing that quitting feels impossible. A hypnotist on the other hand, understands how to navigate you out of this terrain and into your natural ability to change habits with ease simply because it wants to.
Okay, I’ll entertain the idea of hypnotist, what can I expect from my hypnosis session?
First, expect that you will not feel the same about smoking at all when you’re done with your session. Every client I have can’t wait to leave their vape or pack of cigarettes on my desk on their way out. My most recent client said “I can’t believe how vivid hypnosis was, I don’t ever want to look at those again”. Rightfully so because hypnosis has a way of having you truely experience your why for quitting smoking in an unforgettable way.
Which leads us into that you can expect to willfully use your imagination. Imagination is not about your ability to visualize. It is about your ability to know what I am talking about when I offer a suggestion. For example, If I say the boy is eating an apple. In your mind right now, you know what a boy eating an apple looks like. Everyone’s interpretation of what the boy or apple looks like will depend on their own experience.
In the same way if I were to ask you about a smell that you find horrifically disgusting, your mind can think of something. You may not visually see it, but you know. And if you focus on it long enough, you may find yourself sick to your stomach. The smell is not really there, but your body is reacting as it if were.
So during hypnosis, you will utilize your brain’s natural ability to create experience, except you’re doing it with purpose. In this case, to quit your smoking habit for good. The best part of this experience? You will feel in control of the experience. So much so at the end of your session, you can’t help but feeling lighter knowing that you truely don’t want the thought of a smoke, much less put one up to your mouth.
If you’re ready to finally kick this habit to the curb for good. Book your hypnosis session today.
