Give Up Smoking With Hypnotherapy – A Case Study

I used to smoke 40 cigarettes a day and then I stopped.  The most surprising thing about how I stopped was how easy I found it.  When I say easy I don’t mean that I just gave up smoking one day and then never thought about cigarettes ever again – far from it.  In fact, I thought about them all the time but all of a sudden, when I thought about my craving for a smoke, and believe me the craving was still there, for some reason I didn’t want to light up.  So I craved nicotine, but in all honesty didn’t want to smoke anymore.  The mind is a funny old thing, and the working of our brains is far from hard-wired, or so it seems.

Giving Up & Start A Whole New Life

A friend of mine who also lives in Nottingham, an ex-smoker himself, first suggested hypnotherapy as a means of giving up.  He knew I had wanted to for years and I had tried (and failed) many times before.  The thought of giving up had become miserable, in spite of my desperation to quit the smoking habit.  Spending every waking moment craving something that you were denying yourself.  I now had nothing to loose, and obviously, a lot to gain, so I had obviously reached the frame of mind where I was willing to try anything.  I didn’t care what the cure was, I wanted it.

After looking through all the hypnotherapists in Nottingham for what I thought would be my best bet, I eventually settled on the local clinic just down the road from me in Southwell.  In less than a month, I was living a happily smoke-free life.  How did hypnotherapy help me to quit smoking?  To be perfectly honest I’m not entirely sure when you consider the fact that at no point did I ever feel like I was “hypnotized”.  During the sessions, all I felt was very relaxed.

As far as I can tell hypnosis appeared to be an attempt to re-wire the mind.  To throw out accepted ways of thinking, and start again with a different mindset.  Fundamental notions about myself and my relationship with smoking, even how I thought about the concept of giving up smoking, were somehow changed in just a few short hypnosis sessions.  It was not long before I was looking at my cigarette packet with a genuine disgust.  There were the nicotine pangs, but in a strange way, they were enjoyable.

Everyone seemed a pleasure in a strange way.  When you think about it, it was actually a daily (often hourly) reminder that I had finally set myself free from the smoking habit.  No more smoky clothes and breath, no coughing every morning, the feel of fresh, clean air passing into my lungs.  Each nicotine withdrawal pang became a happy occasion – proof that I was finally free.

Conclusion

The mind is a mystery to me, but I am very glad that it is not entirely a mystery to others.  I will be always grateful to the hypnotherapy clinic which reprogrammed my mind to rid me of my smoking habit.  I finally discovered that giving up smoking doesn’t have to be hell.