Can You Stop Smoking With Hypnosis?
It’s a widely held belief that smoking is one of the hardest habits to give up. There are a number of reasons why it is so hard to quit smoking, and they can range from personal to environmental factors. One of the worst aspects about quitting smoking is the fact that whenever a smoker who is attempting to quit fails, the people around them blame the recovering smoker for their failure, when in fact, as is true of any habit, most people find that smoking is just really not easy to quit, without effective help.
In fact, only about 3 – 5% of smokers manage to successfully quit smoking for more than 6 months using the cold turkey method. There are tools and resources available today that say they can help make your journey to recovery much smoother. However the results are disappointing.
In one year, studies showed 21% success rate for the nicotine patch, only 19% for the highly advertised non-nicotine prescription medicine developed specifically to help people quit smoking (brand name omitted). The quit rate for nicotine lozenges was found to be 15.1%, and nicotine gum 11.3%. And the nicotine gum has been shown to help people quit, but after only a few months a large percentage start smoking again.
One tool that you can look into is hypnosis. Yes, quitting smoking with hypnosis is perfectly valid and effective, when you work with a professional and understand your own responsibility in this particular process. To help you understand this better, here is what you need to know about using hypnosis to stop smoking.
Why is it so hard to quit smoking?
Before we get into how you can use hypnosis as a tool to stop smoking, you have to understand why it is so difficult to quit smoking in the first place.
Here are some of the reasons why it is so hard to quit smoking.
The main chemical found in cigarettes is nicotine, which all sources tell us, is highly addictive. The reason why nicotine is so easy to get attached to, is that it enters the brain in as little as 10 seconds when it is inhaled. This then triggers the neurohormone dopamine, which is also known as the “feel-good hormone”.
The release of the dopamine triggers a feeling of pleasure, which can become quite a habit, very quickly. And, the more you smoke, the more your body becomes accustomed to the feeling of nicotine, and the sense that the nicotine is bringing pleasure to you.
What we don’t realize is that the nicotine, instead of being relaxing, is a stimulant poison. It increases the heart rate, the breathing, the blood pressure, and it also increases alertness, which feels like a rush, feels good to the smoker. (But be aware that there ARE other ways to feel good instead, ways that are healthy for you!)
The vast majority of smokers started smoking because either their friends and family smoked, and they wanted to “fit in”, wanted that feeling of “belonging”, or because it seemed “cool” to them. Or both reasons combined.
After a short time, the cigarette became associated in their “internal habit systems” with those feelings of pleasure and of belonging and being cool. So, as time progressed, any time that person had any unpleasant feelings, such as insecurity, or anger, or any other negative emotion, they would suck on a cigarette to feel the good feelings they have now associated with smoking. The practitioners at Hypnosis Care understand this, as they are also former smokers.
All of these factors make it very difficult to quit smoking.
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