Why now is the time to stop smoking

You want to stop smoking... one day soon. Of course, you know it’s bad for you – it’s terrible for your health. You might even have noticed a persistent cough or difficulty getting your breath. And it’s so expensive, you’d love to use the money for something else. But you’re not sure that you're quite ready yet. You’re going through a stressful time, a demanding time, at work or in your personal relationships. You just feel that you need to be able to smoke right now, and as soon as this stressful time is over you can plan to stop.

The time is now. This is always a good time to stop smoking. If you try to find the best time – a stress-free time, the danger is you could keep putting it off, because that completely stress-free time doesn’t exist.

Smoking is a habit that comes to infiltrate every aspect of your experience – you’re feeling stressed – you smoke, you’re feeling good – you smoke, something bad happens – you reach for a cigarette, something good happens, ditto. Often you smoke because you’re bored or you just want to change your mood, you just need… something.

Do you think it’s going to be hard to stop? With hypnosis, it doesn’t need to be. It can be the easiest thing. You just need to make a decision. That this is it.

How does stopping smoking affect your mental health?

A study by Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences has shown that stopping smoking leads to improved mental health. Many people say they want to quit but they carry on because they believe smoking has certain mental health ‘benefits’ such as calming or relieving stress. However, as the Nuffield report states, these perceived ‘benefits’ are usually spurious, and the ‘stress’ temporarily relieved is generally a result of nicotine, and so is created by the smoking habit itself.

The study showed that people who had quit smoking showed improvements in their levels of both anxiety and depression. This was measured after nine weeks and after 26 weeks of quitting smoking. This is significant because, for people who feel anxious or depressed, there is often a belief that smoking is a form of ‘self-soothing’ that makes them feel better. This belief is sometimes even shared by mental health professionals, who might advise people against trying to quit smoking in case it makes their anxiety worse in the short term.

How does hypnosis help you to stop smoking?

Compared to quitting with willpower alone, or with other methods, hypnotherapy has some advantages.

• Hypnotherapy does not use any drugs or noxious substances like nicotine, so there are no side effects.
• The hypnotic state allows communication with your inner mind and enables it to take on board the suggestions relevant to you at a personal level.
• Hypnotherapy can increase your motivation to make a change for yourself. It can inspire you, not just to stop smoking, but to put your health first.
• It can increase your self-belief, so you feel confident you can stop successfully.
• The experience of stopping should be relatively easy compared to stopping with willpower alone. For example, withdrawal symptoms or cravings might be minimised or even unnoticeable.

So why would you want to postpone or avoid these benefits by saying you’re not ready to stop yet?

Well, it might be because you want to continue the dubious joys of being a smoker for a while longer. But perhaps it’s more likely to be because you doubt your ability to quit. You think of it as something difficult. It doesn’t need to be difficult, especially when assisted by hypnosis.

How my stop smoking sessions work

I generally treat smokers with a single session of 90 minutes to about two hours. I have successfully helped many people to stop, even long-term heavy smokers who have never quit before. Of course, there are no guarantees and everyone is unique and different. But you can increase your chances of success by choosing methods that have worked for other people.

I combine the hypnosis with suggestions for ways that you can help yourself, that will be immensely useful to you, not just when you are in the process of quitting, but longer term in your (much improved, longer and richer) life as a non-smoker. Whenever you are making a change to habits or addictions, it is beneficial to have a choice of activities or ‘healthy habits’ that you can draw on, to help to make the change. Some examples might be meditation or self-hypnosis, as well as relaxing physical pursuits like yoga, outdoor walking or gardening.

Stopping smoking is simply the single best thing that you can ever do for yourself, your health and your life. Once you’ve done it you will feel so proud of yourself, that it will become your greatest achievement, something to celebrate forever.

But first of all, you need to take the first step. Please have a look at my profile and get in touch to find out more.