Understanding Your Smoking Behaviors
Smoking Behaviors
For most people, the reasons why they smoke and continue to smoke are complex. Nearly everyone knows that smoking is bad for them, and can in fact be fatal, but millions of people smoke anyway - including some who wish to stop. Smoking can be a complicated habit in addition to the addictive potential of nicotine. Obviously smoking cigarettes includes the manipulation of the cigarette in your hand; the component of putting a cigarette in your mouth; the manipulation of the lighter - all of these physical things become habitual and ingrained.
For the majority of smokers, the reasons why they smoke go far beyond “I enjoy smoking,” and if a smoker wants to stop, it can be very helpful to do some deep examination of their “smoking behaviors.” This is why some addiction experts suggest that a person who wishes to stop smoking should keep a journal of when and why they smoke. Clinical hypnotherapists and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) practitioners know that getting at the deeper, usually subconscious reasons why people use tobacco (in addition to their physical addiction) can be part of the powerful tools that can help them to stop smoking.
In order to be fully successful with stopping smoking, some of the questions that you may need to ask yourself, either on your own or with your therapist, include:
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What pleasures am I fulfilling with smoking? (Your answers may include things similar to: “It gives me something to do with my hands when I am nervous,” “It gives me something to put in my mouth which won’t make me gain weight,” “It helps me to fit in because I have an instant bond with other smokers,” or even “It helps me to feel closer to my mother or father because they are/were smoker(s).”)
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What are the cues that trigger me to smoke most strongly? (Is it the smell of smoke? The sight of cigarettes or an ashtray? Feeling angry? Stress in general? Seeing other people smoke? A need to “relax”?) Figuring out what the cues are is the first step to changing your reaction when the cues happen.
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What prevents me from letting go of smoking? (Is it that you associate smoking with pleasant parts of you past? Is it that you feel in control when you smoke? Are you smoking because someone doesn’t want you to smoke?) Looking at this question as well is important to give yourself the ammunition to stop smoking.
Looking deeply into the reasons behind what you do and why you do it, and then working with your subconscious mind to reframe or change those reasons and the things that trigger the unwanted smoking behavior - either through hypnosis or NLP, is the fastest, most effective, and most permanent way of stopping smoking that exists. (Barber J. University of Washington School of Medicine,
Depts. of Anesthesiology and Rehabilitation Medicine, Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2001 Jul;49(3):257-66, Klager, R.MMW Fortschr Med. 2004 May 13;146(20):16. [Article in German]PMID: 15344725 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Although NLP and hypnosis practitioners do not “make” you do anything, they can help to seed your subconscious mind with new attachments and frames that will make doing something else instead of smoking easier for you. They can also help you build a new and complete picture in your conscious and subconscious mind of yourself as a non-smoker, who is not addicted to anything and who is fully in control of his/her life. NLP and hypnosis practitioners also help you to look at the consequences of your behaviors, e.g. what happens if you continue to smoke? What happens when you stop? How will you deal with these consequences? What do you value about being a non-smoker? All of these questions and more can be addressed in the short-term therapeutic practice of hypnosis and NLP. And for stopping smoking, a combination of NLP and hypnosis has been shown to be most effective in some studies. However, either treatment will also work on its own, if you truly wish to be a non-smoker.
