One of the ironies facing smokers looking to quit is they hate their habit. It’s true. Roughly 80 per cent, a decisive majority of smokers would cheerfully agree to never puff away on another cigarette ever again.
Seriously. And it’s understandable.
While there are many techniques available to help smokers give up their habit, it is proving tough in a nation of smokers. One of the most effective and popular techniques is quit smoking hypnotherapy a proven method especially when combined with a healthy diet and sensible exercise plan.
Indonesia Struggles With Its Quit Smoking Message
Yet, Indonesia famously remains a nation of smokers. More than two-thirds of Indonesian men fifteen years of age or older smoke. More alarming if you’re an Indonesian looking to quit is while the rest of the world is quitting, smoking rates are increasing in Indonesia.
That’s around 67 million people representing more than 225,700 deaths each year from smoking-related conditions.
Indonesia is also witnessing a dramatic spike in the number of teenagers taking up smoking. Roughly 9.1 per cent of teenagers between the ages of 10-18 smoke versus 7.2 per cent in 2013. And three out of four teenagers discovered cigarette smoking from online media, leading to a government ban on digital cigarette advertising.
Smoking In An Era of COVID-19
This has major implications in an era of COVID-19 Currently, the COVID-19 positive test results in Indonesia is hovering around 16.11% of the population. The WHO benchmark is 5%.
Smoking is a leading risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Reports from global studies indicate people with NCDs are more likely to suffer severe bouts of COVID-19 infections. Bottom line is smokers have a greater risk of experiencing a severe illness from COVID-19.
So, the COVID-19 pandemic has a clear and strong message for Indonesian smokers. That message is its time you quit smoking.
The Problem With Quitting
Okay, but if a majority of smokers want to quit, understand the reasons they should quit, and recognise how bad cigarettes are for their health, what’s stopping them from quitting?
Simple. Nicotine addiction is deeply entrenched in a smoker’s subconscious mind. Drinking alcohol, mealtimes, driving and stress subconsciously trigger thoughts that induce a craving for a cigarette.
Quit smoking hypnotherapy offers a way to “shut down” that voice inside your head? Or at least reframe those subconscious thoughts to view smoking negatively.
Why It’s Hard To Quit Smoking
Nicotine is a difficult habit to kick due to the combined physical and mental aspects of addiction. The physical aspects, the commonly experienced withdrawal symptoms are roadblocks to quitting.
Common physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal:
- Headaches
- Nausea
- Aches and pains
- Irritability
- Sluggishness
- Sore throat
Our mental addiction surfaces when our subconscious triggers that familiar urge for a cigarette. It’s your subconscious triggering pangs when you’re feeling stressed. Overcoming nicotine addiction, demands smokers tackle their mental barriers.
Blame Your Brain
All the sensory inputs we collect via sight, touch and smell receptors, are shuffled directly to our brain. This raw sensory data are combined to create a conscious impression. Our brain then shapes our feelings and emotions into a response.
It’s this input-output process that makes quitting smoking so challenging.
Subconscious thoughts strongly influence our responses. If you associate smoking with relieving stress, your natural response to a stressful situation might be to light up a cigarette.
The key to successfully quitting smoking is to eliminating your automatic responses to stimuli that are sustaining your nicotine addiction.
How Hypnosis Helps You Stop Smoking
Hypnosis assists you nurture a mindset in which you change these negative responses.
How? During hypnosis, your mind is more open to suggestions. It’s detached you’re your critical, conscious mind. The conscious mind is the part of your mind that’s continually searching for reasons to keep smoking.
Hence, a hypnotherapist can arm you with more positive subconscious suggestions that overwrite these conscious suggestions. Day-by-day you establish roadblocks for those automatic processes that keep your addiction firmly in place.
So, when you experience a smoking trigger, your mind doesn’t automatically react. Instead of reacting with the urge to light up, it slows down and “listens” to the new suggestions you’ve been provided with.
Reframing Those Subconscious Thoughts
Our subconscious thoughts are powerful once they are embedded. They continuously frame our responses to stimuli and thus our perceptions. Hypnosis piggybacks on this process. We equip our subconscious minds with powerful, fresh, and more accurate information to shape our response to smoking.
Hypnotic suggestions delivered while you are in a trance may focus on how our smoking habit is an automatic response to thoughts. Hypnosis looks to give you complete control over your thoughts.
Alternatively, you may be given suggestions that reframe how your subconscious interprets the smell of cigarette smoke to suggest your cigarette smoke smells unpleasantly like burning plastic. No one enjoys that smell!
Moreover, one of the most popular quit smoking hypnosis techniques to help patients stop smoking provides smokers with three primary suggestions. These core suggestions are repeated using a hypnosis script to suggest:
- Cigarette smoke is a deadly poison
- Your body needs to live
- Respect your body and protect it from self-harm.
In other words, this innovative technique doesn’t focus on thinking about quitting. Instead, it focuses on respecting the body and distracting your subconscious attention away from abstaining from smoking altogether.
Undoubtedly, hypnosis is a powerful, highly effective technique. Research indicates hypnotherapy requires on average six sessions to bring about long-lasting change. Plus, after six hypnosis sessions, 93 per cent of participants were able to quit smoking.
Indeed, hypnosis is twice as likely to help a smoker quit as going cold turkey or reading self-help books. Again, hypnosis was found to be twice as effective as nicotine replacement therapy.
Final Observation
The bottom line with quit smoking hypnotherapy is if you’re ready to quit, hypnosis can help. However, as with any anti-smoking strategy, you have to want the results. But in the age of COVID-19, there’s never been a better time to quit smoking.