Hypnotherapy can be a powerful help in battling addiction. Everyone has heard of someone who used Hypnosis to quit smoking and it is very effective. But, how does it work?
Hypnosis can be used to beat any addiction that is not going to pose a physical risk when you are withdrawing. I have used it successfully with clients who wanted to stop overeating, smoking, vaping, drinking (not alcohol dependency), using Ketamine or cannabis. I explain it like this.
When you learn to drive, it is quite difficult. You have to concentrate hard and can’t really think about anything else, but pretty soon after passing your test, you just get in the car and drive. You don’t think about it. You just do it. So it becomes automatic behaviour - something you do without even thinking about it, something subconscious.
This is because as soon as our minds can consign something to automatic or subconscious behaviour, they do. This is to free up the processing part of our minds for processing things. We can only think about so many things at the same time. We can only concentrate on so many things at the same time. Because of this we learn quickly to do as much automatically or subconsciously as we can. Still with me? OK.
So we start to live a life that involves overeating, smoking, drinking or taking drugs automatically. It just becomes part of how we live, who we are, what we do. We don’t think about it, we just do it. Of course, just like driving, once you’ve learnt to do it, it can be hard to unlearn, and our lives are lived on auto-pilot for a lot of the time. We have a cuppa - we have a smoke. We feel upset - we eat some chocolate. We see Dave in the pub (no offence to any Daves out there) - we get drunk. We get in from work - we do Ket, etc. These become automatic, subconscious patterns of behaviour, rituals, routines - habits. It’s just the way we live and the way we respond to certain triggers automatically.
So, cut to the chase, Lucy, how does Hypnotherapy help?
Hypnosis gives us access to the subconscious mind, the part that controls all these automatic behaviours and responses. It enables us to plant suggestions regarding different patterns of behaviour, it challenges the established routines and builds walls around automatic responses and triggers. It helps you to envisage how good it feels to live without that behaviour.
The Hypnotherapist will establish which buttons need pressing - for example if the smell embarrasses you, we work with that, if the money is an issue, we work with that, if fear surrounding your health is a biggy for you, we work with that.
After the session, you are likely to hear a different voice (probably mine!) when you face a trigger. You can use that new moment between the trigger situation and the automatic behaviour to consider a new choice, a better choice, the choice to NOT do it. If you make that choice, and keep making it, it will quickly become automatic, your new behaviour will become subconscious and that old addict will become someone else, someone who looked a bit like you, but wasn’t you, not you anymore.
Find out more - drink & drugs.
Find out more - smoking & vaping.
