How Hypnosis Works to Help People Quit Smoking (Part One)

Hypnosis offers means of communicating with the functions of mind that are below conscious awareness. Anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking cigarettes already knows that the urge to smoke comes from something gravitationally more powerful and monolithically more immune to persuasion than the conscious mind. These deep functions of mind are called the Unconscious, not because they don’t know what the conscious mind is thinking, but because the conscious mind is unconscious of what these deep functions are doing. A fleetingly remembered dream or a embarrassingly timed Freudian slip may give us glimpses into what’s really going on, but on the cruise ships of our lives, most of the action is not happening in the well-appointed first class dining room of consciousness, but in the unseen engine room whose vague pulse is the sound that consciousness has learned to ignore. Alarmingly to those whose identities are well-seated in their intellects, the powerful engines of these deep functions of mind can change and even cause our perceptions, feelings and thoughts.

For example, notice how the perception of smoking a cigarette is edited by the deep mind. Picture our fictional fellow John leaning against the back wall of his junior high sports field. A bigger, older guy with muscle definition offers him a cigarette. John can either be a wimp and turn it down, or he can jump at the opportunity to join the successfully hormonal and put the cigarette in his mouth.

John thinks it won’t be too bad, because he has already smoked pot a few times. However, his first cigarette is a fiery-hot, sharp-fumed, foreign invasion of the throat and lungs. The nicotine burns. Additives such as ammonia, acetone, napthalene (mothballs), methanol (rocket fuel), formaldehyde, phenol (disinfectant), hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, cadmium and nickel, polonium 210, potassium-40 (radioactive compounds), acetic acid (vinegar), and various pesticides not found in John’s cousin’s homegrown pot slam through John’s alveoli and soak straight into his bloodstream.

The violence of the chemical impact brings him sputtering into the Zen reality of the present moment. Psychologically, that is a relief. This is because he is constantly worried about what is going to happen next at home, next at school, and even in transit. But now, he’s forgotten everything but the desire to breathe plain air. His throat, bronchial tubes and lungs try to expel the smoke. In fact, the whole physical organism seeks to reject it.

However, in the interest of social acceptance, this rejection response is suppressed. Over time, as John continues to accept offered cigarettes, the effects of nicotine come to the forefront of perception, and the reality of pulling hot, poisonous smoke into soft lung tissues becomes an internal background noise, like the external hum of powerlines overhead. In fact, the smoke even feels good. This is a perceptual rearrangement of reality. What was once, that first time on the playing field, a big problem breathing with some minor positive social and psychological side effects, is now an experience that coherently spells relief.

If social anxiety caused the initial smoke, and that first cigarette did seem to create social acceptance, and there is also a lift from the nicotine, and, most importantly, the smoking experience is always the same, then, as far as the deep mind is concerned, the problem of social anxiety has been solved, permanently and conveniently. And since the deep mind lives only in the present moment, there is no future of lung and/or heart disease to worry about. Relief is the end of the story. No wonder the habit is so hard to break.

The next blog will give details on various ways that hypnotherapy can help people to quit smoking.