Accidental Hypnosis for Smoking - on Myself
Hypnosis can be a very powerful tool to help quit smoking, even when you don’t intend for it to be. Here is a funny and yet not so funny story about the power of hypnosis versus the power of a strong nicotine addiction.
I was a heavy smoker of cigarettes for many years. I finally quit about 18 years ago after several hundred failed attempts to quit smoking over about eight years. Recalling some of my experiences today makes me laugh in amazement at my own struggle.
I’m a clinical psychologist and prior to successfully quitting smoking I helped start a pain control and biofeedback clinic based in a medical school. One of the factors that correlates with difficulty in achieving pain relief is the use of tobacco, and nicotine addiction is one of the hardest addictions to overcome. For the clinic, I developed some procedures for helping the patients to quit smoking.
Since I was trained in hypnosis for smoking cessation, one of the main techniques I used was my own form of hypnosis with small groups of patients. I did this for the patients even though I was still a heavy smoker myself and was not ready to quit at that time. Smoking was not yet the socially unacceptable behavior it is today and at that time even some TV personalities still smoked openly while on the air.
When I use hypnosis in small groups I concentrate my attention on the reactions of each individual in the group and tailor my suggestions to address what I see happening at the moment with each individual. This takes a lot of energy on my part and intense focus on each group member and leaves virtually no time for me to monitor what is happening to me.
Some of my hypnotic suggestions to stop smoking encourage the individual to recall the very first time they tried to smoke and the sensations they experienced. I remind the group of the choking, the dizziness, the tingling, the nausea, the headache and so forth that happens with all of us the first time we deeply inhale cigarette smoke. The fact is these same unpleasant sensations happen to us each and every time we have a cigarette no matter how many years we smoke or how much we may enjoy smoking.
We learn to block out unconsciously all this unpleasantness in order to continue our habit, both the physical addiction and the psychological dependence. It can be helpful to stop smoking if we undo the blocking of these unpleasant sensations and again become aware of them. This is part of what my hypnotic suggestions are designed to achieve. As I said, hypnosis can be a powerful tool for achieving this and I was quite successful with the many patient groups I conducted at the medical school.
The personal problem for me occurred when I got in my car to drive back over to my private practice office after a group hypnosis session in the clinic.
I was still not ready to quit smoking myself, and I wanted a cigarette and I readily gave in to my urge. What is funny to me now is that when I lit up that first cigarette after a hypnosis session I again experienced the choking and coughing, the tingling and headache and so forth that I had just suggested that the group members allow themselves to re-experience as if they were inhaling their first cigarette.
The hypnosis had unintentionally, accidentally worked on me … once again. I inhaled, smoke filled my lungs and the nicotine rushed through my system, and I had to fight through all the unpleasantness to keep smoking, just like I did with my very first cigarette to become one-of-the-guys as a teenager. The unpleasantness typically did not go away until the second or third cigarette.
The not so happy part of this story is that repeatedly after each group hypnosis session I consciously persevered through all of this unpleasantness so that I could reinstate my unconscious blocking of the unpleasant sensations and resume feeding my overpowering addiction at that time. As I said, nicotine addiction is one of the most difficult addictions to overcome.
I eventually did succeed and consider stopping smoking as one of my major achievements in life. I do not have urges to smoke. I am fortunate in that it also does not bother me to be around people who still smoke. I have never been critical of those who continue to smoke, although they do get my unspoken, understanding sympathy at the power of the addiction.
If you want to quit smoking, keep finding different ways to try to quit until you find what works for you. There is no one solution that will work for everyone. And, help can come from the most unexpected sources. The newer medications that are available today combined with behavioral therapy appear to be the most successful treatments.
What eventually worked for me was the combination of hypnosis, nicotine chewing gum and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. And, the last straw, so to speak, that finally pulled it all together for me and enabled me to quit was the addition of a simple little question that I imagined asking myself in the future each time I had an urge to smoke when I was trying to quit. And the question I asked myself was: “What did you do when the urge came up to smoke?” Now, there are many things that you can learn to do to allow the urge to subside, which it always does, rather than smoke a cigarette.
Please give a gift to your family and friends and share what you have learned with them about nicotine addiction.
If you find this information useful, you can find additional information on my website www.drpaulmalone.com.
Thank you for reading this article. I wish you good luck with your Overcoming Addictions…a better way.
