According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 68% of smokers want to quit. In addition, 55% have made at least one attempt to stop smoking over the past year.
Despite its dangers, smoking can be an incredibly difficult habit to break. It affects users in both a physical and psychological sense, and those behaviours become intrinsic over time.
While there are many products designed to facilitate this process, there’s one that holds exciting promise: self-hypnosis. Today, we’re taking a look at this practice works and its use in smoking cessation.
What Is Self-Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is the process of becoming highly focused and absorbed in a thought-based experience.
While there are treatment centres and therapists who can perform hypnotherapy on others, individuals can put themselves into this state on their own. It simply requires eliminating distractions and allowing the mind to focus on the subject at hand.
Compared to meditation, self-hypnosis is more intentional. While meditation encourages participants to be open to anywhere their thoughts want to travel, self-hypnosis directs the path a little more. Participants are encouraged to focus on a specific goal that they want to achieve, and then gently think of ways to get there.
Using Self-Hypnosis to Stop Smoking
Individuals can practice self-hypnosis to meet a range of objectives.
When they practice stop smoking self hypnosis, they’re focused on breaking the chain of addiction within their psyche. While products such as patches, gums, and inhalers can help them manage physical withdrawal symptoms, they stop short of facilitating this mental change.
During a self-hypnosis session, people will dive deep into the psychological component of their habit. They’ll contemplate the negative behaviours and thought patterns that lead them to smoke, and they’ll also uncover unconscious motivators they may not have realized before.
For instance, they may discover that they’re more likely to smoke during times of stress. Or, they reach for a cigarette when they’re bored, lonely, or anxious for acceptance. As their mind travels, they might also realize that they associate smoking with other behaviours, such as drinking or driving.
Gently, they can shift their thoughts to the negative associations connected to smoking. They may remind themselves that cigarettes contain poison, or that the odour is off-putting. Then, they can create short, memorable phrases to remind them of these outcomes, and repeat them softly.
In addition to its mental health benefits, self-hypnosis also has a physically calming effect. This can help combat some of the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.
From Theory to Application: The Power of Mindset Change
In time, self-hypnosis can help smokers understand their behaviours more closely. It will also catalyze a shift in their mindset, where they see the habit not as something to be enjoyed, but as something that could harm them and take them further from their goals.
Also Read: How to Stay Healthy During Your Career
While physical cessation aids are designed to reduce the number of addictive chemicals in their systems, this practice works by repositioning the habit from within. It empowers smokers to take charge of their thought patterns and actions, and take the first step toward long-term healing.