Most people we work with stop in just one session. You also lose that craving that the few that do manage to get through ‘cold turkey’ say remains – even sometimes many years after they have stopped. You will also not normally that have that irritability (or it will be much reduced) in the first few days or weeks even after stopping smoking. This is an approach that takes into account your whole life style and creates a treatment to stop smoking adapted specifically for you.
Client Fiona of Llandysul told Hazel she was sceptical when she came for her session. She’d been smoking for 19 years & had been trying to give up for the past year. She said: “I’m telling everyone it’s absolutely brilliant! You made it so easy – I had no cravings & no withdrawal symptoms at all.”
Fiona stopped smoking after one session with Hazel. Most clients only require 1 session whether with Peter or Hazel. Just occasionally clients might need 2 or more sessions. Sometimes emotional blocks from childhood may prevent progress and need to be dealt with before the person is able to stop smoking.
Why use Hypnotherapy to Stop Smoking?
The NHS continues to be recommend treatment with nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) using gum or patches by – it is hard to understand why. Various studies show success rates with NRT are lower than 10%. You can actually end up putting more poisonous nicotine in your body with these than smoking as well!
Hypnotherapy is the most effective method of stopping smoking, bar none. This is because more than anything else smoking is a very strong habit or group of habits – and habits are based in our long term memory – in the sub-conscious mind. Only through addressing the sub-conscious mind, that actually has our best interests at heart, can we easily address those habits. Contrary to what you probably believe, although nicotine is very fast to addict, it is a very weak addiction, only really on a par with caffeine addiction. An expensive American study has proved this.
The Journal of Applied Psychology published results of more than 600 studies, totalling nearly 72,000 people, to find the most effective method to stop smoking. The results clearly showed that hypnosis was many times more effective than NRT (See New Scientist vol 136 issue 1845 page 6) or any other treatment. The average results for hypnosis nationally are that 60% of smokers remain stopped after 1 year. Both ‘Which?’ magazine and a ‘New Scientist’ magazine studies came to the same conclusion.
We believe our our therapy is a lot more effective than that the national figures although these are the only figures we are allowed to quote.
Stopping smoking improves your health, self-esteem and confidence. Whithin 1 month of stopping your lungs natural cleaning ability will return. But you must remain completely stopped. Even one cigarette can burn off the tiny hair like structures called ‘cilia’ that do this cleaning of dirty mucus from the lungs. And nicotine, although only actually very weakly addictive is very fast to readdict.
There are increasing social pressures on you as a smoker.
Smoking is becoming an embarrassing habit that is not accepted. On 1 July 2007, the UK became totally smoke-free, and this has put even more pressure on smokers. You often miss out when you have to go out and huddle in smoking shelters – you are out in the cold – in reality if it is Winter, and symbolically too, as you miss out on the conversation back in the warm.
However, the main reason that will make you really want to stop is because smoking significantly damages your health and shortens your life. And it affects anyone else who breathes your smoke. It also damages unborn babies. Life Insurance companies are not silly – they charge smokers more for life assurance because they know that smoking shortens your life by an average 10 years (but this can be reversed by getting rid of the habit). Even so, many concerned smokers are unaware what the main health dangers are.
Emphysema is a terrible, normally irreversible lung disease where the air sacs in the lungs lose their elasticity. There is no known cure and the disease normally just gets worse. This can be very gradual if you stop – if you don’t it is much more rapid. You can end up unable to go anywhere without a portable oxygen supply. Nearly all emphysema is caused by smoking.
Smoking is a major cause of heart disease and strokes. This all quite apart from the cancer that everyone knows about. Even with cancer however, many do not know that it is not just lung cancer that is caused by smoking but throat, mouth and oesophageal cancers as well.
The financial cost of not stopping smoking.
You could be spending over £2250 in a year on smoking. Smoking in the UK costs the average smoker £2250 per year just for cigarettes and a typical brand of tobacco cigarettes is now £6.28 a pack. The price is rising regularly. Stopping smoking is like giving yourself a pay rise, or an extra foreign holiday you could not have had!
It is essential that you must be motivated to stop smoking before you come for therapy. You must really want this – typically clients have already had at least 1 attempt to stop themselves.