The benefits of smoking!

Ok, so you might quite rightly wonder why a hypnotherapist that offers to help you stop smoking forever, within 2 hours would write about the benefits of smoking but... having spoken to a number of clients that came to me as they wanted to stop smoking and by delving into my own reasons for being a smoker for 17 years, I realised that people seem to think there are benefits of smoking.

I worked with a gentleman, who after doing some soul searching, realised that he had struggled to give up cigarettes for so long because he was using them as a crutch to get through social situations. I could empathise with that one completely, I would use going for a “fag” as a reason to escape from social situations where I did not feel confident or out of my depth – the smoking ban was great for me as it meant I could actually completely leave a situation in which I was struggling and go outside. That first pull on the cigarette used to calm me down. Can you relate to that feeling? What I didn’t realise was that it was the practise of breathing deep with each pull of the cigarette that was relaxing my body, not the harmful chemicals that I was pumping into it at that point!

I spent time with a lady who was using cigarettes as a way to control her eating and again, that resonated with me. Having struggled with my weight for a large number of years and having no confidence in my body at that time, meant that I would starve hunger cravings with another cigarette – another benefit to smoking, no?

As you can expect, I never actually got any thinner as I had not understood that my weight gain was due to emotional issues that I had not dealt with, but why would I have thought of that? I had managed to get myself into a horrible cycle of feast and famine and we all know that doesn’t work, so what did I do to console myself? I reached for another smoke, not realising that the heightened levels of chemicals within my body was raising my blood pressure and reducing my oxygen. I tried to convince myself that this feeling of smoking another cigarette was making me feel good, but I knew that it wasn’t really. I was beating myself up for giving into them, again! I wonder if you can recognise that feeling of constantly battling with the “smokes”? 

Hypnotherapy is a great way of exploring emotions and memories tied up around food and they may not be in the obvious ways that you would expect. Clients that have issues connected to weight and food, can manage to uncover memories or triggers that have been laid down and then compounded this problem over and over again, to clear the emotional baggage tied in with emotional eating or weight gain. Funnily enough, once that weight is lifted (excuse the pun!) smoking will not seem to have any benefit any more and the client will be free from the habit.

People, generally, are fully aware of the health benefits to quitting smoking and of the dangers of smoking and they try various methods but find that they cannot beat the habit. Why is this?

If they truly want to give up then what is stopping them, or you? Maybe, there are underlying benefits to smoking that haven’t been acknowledged and discussed. It is not just about the habit, habits are easy to break, but it needs you to look at the emotional attachment to smoking and the unconscious benefits from smoking that you think you are getting.