Quitting smoking has become a necessity in our times, because smoking cigarettes has been banned from restaurants and other public places. And in fact, it’s the intelligent thing to do for more reasons than good health alone. This article explores the very best NLP techniques that can be used to make it as painless as possible to break the addiction to tobacco.
There are three separate factors to a cigarette smoking habit. Two of the components are mental/emotional, and one part is physical.
Part A: YOU SMOKE FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.
When you were a little baby and you got restless, your mother would put a nipple into your mouth to calm you down. You would get distracted, become mellow, and often fall asleep. That scenario was repeated dozens of times so that your unconscious mind was programmed: When something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it.
Now that you are mature, if you feel nervous or tense, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure – a cigarette!
Part B: SMOKING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After a few repetitions, he would just ring the bell, and the sound of the bell would trigger the dogs to salivate.
When you pair smoking with any other action, the other action will trigger cravings for a cigarette and a compulsion to smoke. This is called a conditioned response.
For example: If you light-up when you see a cup of coffee, you will automatically get an urge to light-up each time you have a cup of coffee.
Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your subconscious: If a person lights-up a cigarette and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the mind takes a picture of the cigarette in the hand, and links it to the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person sees a cup of coffee, her mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the cigarette, and the smoker gets a craving for one.
You may not be consciously aware of the mental picture of the cigarette, because it may only be at the subconscious level of mind. Just as you are not consciously aware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until something or someone draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for a cigarette.
Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .
I’ve worked face-to-face with several thousand people who smoke and I can guarantee you that the physical addiction to tobacco is the weakest part of the smoking addiction. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the addiction to cigarettes. The strongest parts of the smoking habit are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).
HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A SMOKER WHO WANTS TO QUIT.
As soon as you eliminate the tension that makes you smoke a cigarette to create relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and when you erase 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 stop smoking without needing willpower, and without having to suffer from withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.
Hypnosis can help motivate a smoker to quit. Self-hypnosis will make it easy to stop smoking because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:
Part A is where people light-up for relaxation and pleasure. It’s your thoughts which create feelings of tension. More to the point, people constantly create mental movies in their mind’s eye. If the movie is negative, it manufactures a feeling of anxiety.
We can use different NLP and Hypnosis methods to program the mind to easily take those anxiety creating mental pictures and movies, and quickly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This produces relaxation and pleasure, and eliminates the anxiety that creates the oral compulsions and urges for a cigarette.
Because of the elimination of anxiety, 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 possible.
Part B is where people light-up 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 you get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette causes an urge to smoke a cigarette?
There are quit smoking hypnosis, and quit smoking NLP techniques that can effectively erase those conditioned responses so that your subconscious will lose the cravings for cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject the cigarettes.
IN SUMMATION
To summarize, by utilizing certain NLP methods, it can be very easy to quit smoking without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these methods don’t even depend on post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on training the subconscious mind to use the same mental processes that it is using to create the addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate the mental addiction.
Hypnosis can help motivate a smoker to quit. Self-hypnosis will make it easy to stop smoking because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:
Part A is where people light-up for relaxation and pleasure. It’s your thoughts which create feelings of tension. More to the point, people constantly create mental movies in their mind’s eye. If the movie is negative, it manufactures a feeling of anxiety.
We can use different NLP and Hypnosis methods to program the mind to easily take those anxiety creating mental pictures and movies, and quickly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This produces relaxation and pleasure, and eliminates the anxiety that creates the oral compulsions and urges for a cigarette.
Because of the elimination of anxiety, 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 possible.
Part B is where people light-up 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 you get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of a cigarette, and the image of the cigarette causes an urge to smoke a cigarette?
There are quit smoking hypnosis, and quit smoking NLP techniques that can effectively erase those conditioned responses so that your subconscious will lose the cravings for cigarettes, and the compulsion to smoke. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject the cigarettes.
IN SUMMATION
To summarize, by utilizing certain NLP methods, it can be very easy to quit smoking without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these methods don’t even depend on post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on training the subconscious mind to use the same mental processes that it is using to create the addiction to cigarettes, to eliminate the mental addiction.
About the Author:
Alan B. Densky, CH opened his practice starting in 1978. He offers Neuro-VISION Video Quit Smoking Hypnosis Programs and Audio Stop Smoking Self Hypnosis CDs. Visit his repository of original hypnosis & NLP articles or download FREE self hypnosis and NLP MP3′s and newsletters.
