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Stop Smoking Hypnosis How Does It
Work?
There are three separate parts to smoking addiction. Two of the parts are
mental/emotional, and one part is physical.
Part A: YOU SMOKE FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.
When you were a little baby and you became upset, your mother would put a
pacifier into your mouth to distract you. You would get distracted, become more
peaceful, and often fall asleep.
That scenario was repeated thousands of times so that your subconscious mind was
programmed, when something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure
from it.
Now that you are an adult, if you feel anxious or tense, the old pattern kicks
in, and you crave something to put into your mouth... A cigarette!
Part B: SMOKING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Remember Pavlov and his dog?
He rang a bell every time he fed his dog. After a few repetitions, he could just
ring the bell, and the dog would salivate.
When you associate smoking a cigarette with any other activity, the other
activity will trigger cravings for a cigarette and a feeling of urgency to light
up a cigarette. This is called a Pavlovian conditioned response.
For example, if you light up a cigarette when you watch a movie, you will
automatically get an urge to smoke a cigarette each time you go to the movies.
If you light up when you drive your car, you will automatically get an urge to
light up a cigarette each time you drive your car.
If you smoke a cigarette when you see someone else smoking, you will
automatically get an urge to smoke a cigarette each time you see someone else
smoking.
All these things which set off your cravings are called triggers. An essential
part of quitting smoking is understanding your triggers and knowing how to
tackle the cravings when participating in these activities.
Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your
unconscious.
If a person smokes a cigarette and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the
mind takes a snapshot of the cigarette in the hand, and links it to the cup of
coffee. Thereafter, every time the person sees a cup of coffee, the unconscious
fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of a cigarette,
and the smoker gets a craving for a cigarette.
You may be unaware of the mental movie of the cigarette, because it may only be
at the subconscious level. Just as you are not consciously aware of what you are
seeing through your peripheral vision until someone or something draws your
attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for a cigarette,
building a trigger.
Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .
The physical addiction is the weakest part of the habit. In fact, I believe that
it is only ten percent of the addiction to cigarettes. I believe that 90% of the
habit is the mental and emotional component! (Parts A and B).
HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A SMOKER WHO WANTS TO QUIT.
What this means is that as soon as you eliminate the feeling of tension that
compels you to put cigarettes into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure (Part
A) . . . and {if you can extinguish the conditioned response of feeling a
craving for cigarettes when having a cup of coffee, driving, or finishing a
meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can break the addiction to cigarettes without
having to suffer from withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.
Self-hypnosis will make it easy to break the addiction to cigarettes because it
takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how.
Part A is where smokers light-up a cigarette for relaxation and pleasure. It’s
your thoughts that create feelings of stress. More specifically, people
persistently run mental movies in their minds. If the movie is negative, it
brings about a feeling of anxiety. But if it's positive, it makes warm happy
associations, often accompanied by thoughts of smoking a cigarette.
We can use various hypnosis techniques to reprogram the subconscious mind to
instantly and automatically take those anxiety producing mental movies, and
automatically exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies.
This instills relaxation and pleasure, and obliterates the tension that triggers
the oral cravings and compulsions for cigarettes.
Because of the elimination of feelings of tension the smoker who is quitting
doesn’t experience the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the
cigarettes. So quitting without weight gain is actually quite easy.
Part B is where people smoke a cigarette because smoking becomes a conditioned
response to many different activities and locations. Remember in the earlier
example how smoking became unconsciously associated with other activities and
environments so that each time a smoker gets into that activity or environment,
the mind to flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette
triggers an urge to smoke?
There are quit smoking hypnosis techniques that can effectively extinguish those
conditioned responses so that a smoker’s mind will lose the cravings for
cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you will even get
a compulsion to reject the cigarettes towards the end of your quitting period.
Article Source:
http://www.hypnosislab.com |
