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Smoking Cessation and Hypnotherapy
By Andrew M. Leon, BSN, MS, CH Certified Hypnotherapist
Three like individuals are offered an opportunity to smoke a cigarette for the first time in their lives. One will completely reject the offer. The other two will accept the offer. Only one will continue to develop a smoking habit. The other will determine that the experience is not essential to his/her life and never smoke again. Why is there such a discrepancy in these responses?
In my work with people who have been habituated or addicted to behaviors that are toxic to their health or mental health, one thing stands out. All of them seem to have some allegiance to a rule that causes them to need to manage an internal tension. It is as if there is a program in place that calls for short term relief of tension, even in the face of logic that tells the person that the proposed behavior will be toxic or harmful in the longer run. The other two people are able to process and weigh the information and choose, wisely, to move on.
When I began my practice of hypnotherapy, I began using the established scripts and techniques which usually involve direct suggestions to the subconscious not to smoke, reinforced by suggestions of negative consequences or personal affirmations. The commonality is that all these systems seem to deal with the present behavior as if it stands alone in the mind, an exclusion from all the other systems operating in the person’s life.
I was particularly impressed by a client who had exhibited deep trance and excellent motivation to stop smoking. She called the next day to say that she went home and threw away all her cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia. The following week, she came in and reported that in the interim, she was called to attend a funeral. After the burial, the friends and family gathered to eat and socialize. Many were smoking and she decided that she was doing very well and could smoke “just one cigarette” to be social. She immediately reverted to her previous chain smoking behavior and returned home to “dive into” a fifty gallon trash can and retrieve her smoking supplies.
Post-hypnotic suggestions will only work if the client has given a deep, internal consent. They will hold until the client seeks to defeat them by finding their way around them. They, in effect have fallen victim to their “inner attorney” whose job it is to find the exception/loophole to every rule. In the positive mode this leads to creativity and good ideas. In the negative mode, it is destructive. The behavior answers to the power of the original and unconscious pattern that drives victims to act against their own best interests. Another force, in the form of a rule, is in place deep in the subconscious memory. The person has not eliminated the older rule because it has not been recognized and resolved. In addition, the client may not have yet taken responsibility or ownership of the unwanted behavior because of an indoctrination that suggests that someone else can have power over the client’s issue and “make it go away”. That is the magical thinking that is encountered in our culture when we turn to repairmen, mechanics, physicians, nurses and others. The client abdicates his/her responsibility or contribution to the problem at hand and expects the solution to be created by the expert.
A pattern is like a program that is built into the psyche of the individual. It is an overriding belief and is not always in conscious awareness or accessible memory. Candidates for smoking cessation almost always speak of a desire for peer approval: “I wanted to be like my friend…my hero…etc.” The statement sounds simple enough until it is dissected and what emerges is an underlying sense of inadequacy felt by the candidate. Often it is not supported by the person’s overt behavior in his/her world. Education, social standing, wealth; even power are not strong enough influences to overcome that deep feeling of not being good enough. Many years ago, when I was beginning my psychiatric nursing career, I worked in a prestigious New York City based hospital where I was shocked to learn that my patient’s father believed he was a lazy person. He had achieved incredible wealth and commanded the respect of his profession, internationally. His books were translated and were part of the professional literature collections in almost every country in the world. None-the less, in his heart, he had an awesome sense of inadequacy and lack of belief that he deserved all that he had achieved. How did he learn to think this way about himself? I believe that it is this type of learning that contributes more to “glass ceilings” than any conspiracy to keep certain kinds of people from success. What drives people of reasonable intelligence to buy into such a mythology about themselves?
Human beings may carry several patterns at one time. Yet, there seems to be one Core Pattern that sets the basis for all others. If one is seeking to define one’s self at a certain time of life, they are open to learn. If, at that moment, information comes; in the way of direct rules; a reaction to an intense experience; a trauma or a comment from someone who holds a position of awe, respect or authority in the person’s mind set, then the person is liable to give credibility to the rule being set. The result is that their learning experience generates a rule that is embedded in the person’s concept of himself/herself and becomes the foundation for all future learning. If the purpose of the information in the pattern is to establish the rule of inadequacy or worthlessness, then no matter what height the person rises to in life, secretly they know they are never going to be the best… or even good enough. This is a form of negative post hypnotic suggestion. They will always feel that they have perpetrated fraud until the pattern is found and eliminated. Hypnotherapy can enhance the speed by which this can occur.
In hypnotherapy, the premise, that all information ever experienced by the client is stored in the subconscious, is the driving tenet. One does not have to be conscious or actively seeking information to place it in the subconscious memory bank. In hypnosis, the client gives permission to his/her conscious mind to relax and give right of way to the subconscious. Imagination, the dominant agent of the subconscious, is allowed to supersede the authority of Logic, the dominant force of the conscious mind. Imagination has no control boundaries like Logic does. The Hypnotherapist can ask the hypnotized client to return to the earliest moment in memory where he/she learned a particular rule or experienced the cause of embedding the rule and, in a split second, the client will be there. The scene of learning can be described in very minute detail by the client, if asked. The “teacher” of the rule will be the age and description they were at the time of the incident and the client can even describe costume and hairstyle in detail. In addition, clients can describe their age, costume and even emotional feelings as the scene unfolds. The advantage of using hypnosis is that the therapist can suggest ways for the client to get beyond the myopic experience and guide the client to see the greater scene, what Paul Harvey often called “the rest of the story.” It is in doing so that the client is able to see past the emotion of his/her situation and see the global perspective, using all the wisdom of their present self. The client can then see the connection between that early belief system and related vows or promises and the way that they have been affecting thinking until the present moment. Most often, these events happened and “contracts’ were made without the informed consent of the client. As an example, children and youth are prone to trust the authority of the elder or teacher or will agree to rules out of fear of consequences from authority. What constitutes authority depends to a large extent on the knowledge and maturity of the child in question.
Once the client agrees to be hypnotized for the purpose of stopping smoking a state of somnambulism is created in which the client bypasses the limits of consciousness and enters the domain of the subconscious mind. The advantage of doing so is that in the subconscious mind, Imagination rules and, as a result, there are very few real rules. There is no rule of time, space or gravity. So whatever can be conceived by the mind is experienced as if it were real… a kind of virtual theatre. Once in the relaxed atmosphere of the subconscious mind, the person can begin to receive therapeutic suggestions. He/she will learn that they have never “been a smoker”. That would constitute an identity like being male or female, something that is always true. Smoking is acquired and is really a learning experience. It can be stopped as soon as the client wishes it. Various techniques are available to the hypnotist to help the client. While the person is in trance, the mind is more open than ever to learn because it is relaxed. As a result, when the suggestions to avoid smoking are given, they are embedded in the memories of the subconscious mind and will activate anytime they are needed or until shut down by the client. Yes, the client can decide to cancel the post-hypnotic suggestions although that is self defeating.
The success of post hypnotic suggestion is in the strength of the partnership between the client and the hypnotist. Hypnosis merely facilitates an alteration of the clients’ state of awareness. In consciousness, we can vary our awareness by directly focusing on specific events. Contact may be fleeting. In hypnosis, awareness is focused on a single point for as long as the client is willing. The hypnotist merely helps the client to find the resources and strength that have been misplaced or unused. That is why people, who wish to end a habit, must be motivated by their own desire rather than trying to comply with the external influences of peers, groups or loved ones. Once the client gives consent to accept a post hypnotic suggestion, the old rule of negative choices is neutralized and replaced by the clients new and more positive belief. In making the choice to accept permission to make positive change, the client is able to liberate the emotional and psychic energy that was used to maintain the old rule which is ready to be discarded. That vital energy is then available to use however the client wishes and for any purpose deemed worthwhile. No one is born a smoker, or an overeater or an addict to toxic behaviors. Those are ‘acquired tastes’ which can come to be perceived as a natural force. That is the negative hypnosis that can be changed by the power of the subconscious mind and hypnosis.
February 2010
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