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Dr. John J. Murphy Psychologist and Hypnotherapist | Beverly Hills, CA |
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We discussed in the last section how hypnosis works by suggesting and describing certain body sensations and ways of thinking that can be adopted by the sub-conscious mind. So now that we know a little more about hypnosis and hypnosis programs, what programs do we use for smoking cessation? The three main programs we use are: Breathing Replacement, Social Pressure, and Detachment. Let’s go over them, in order.
As we’ve seen from chapter 2, breathing is a major component of relaxation. What becomes psychologically addictive about smoking is very much the deep breathing that becomes attached to the act of smoking. So our first step is to break apart the association between breathing and smoking. How do we do this? First, suggestions are given that deep breathing will occur throughout the day just like with non-smokers. Then, the suggestion is given that whenever there’s a thought of smoking, or you see a cigarette or smell one, you naturally breathe deeply. That way, deep breathing is no longer tied to smoking, and you’re no longer dependant upon smoking for the ensuing relaxation.
So far so good, right? But that just leaves us at a wash. After all, you’ve gotten your deep breathing by smoking for so long, why break the status quo? Your sub-conscious—all of your little employees—really hate change. Why change what works? We have to give them a reason. Fortunately, we can give them a very good reason. In fact, it’s the most powerful reason that could be made to the subconscious: social pressure.
To understand why we’re all essentially slaves to social pressure, we need to look at evolutionary psychology, a study of how the forces of evolution shape our thoughts, behaviors, actions etc. Anthropologists have discovered that for most of our history as human beings, we’ve lived in little tribes of no more than 20 people. There was no such thing as a Los Angeles or New York City. In fact, through most of our history, there were less than 10 million people in the entire world. So if you lived a few thousand years ago, you probably lived in a small tribe and the closest tribe was probably 20 miles away.
In this environment social rejection wouldn’t just be humiliating, it would be deadly. If it’s your job to fish for your tribe and you become weak and unproductive, you could be ostracized. A small tribe has limited resources. They simply can’t take care of the weak. You’d be cast out. And the nearest tribe is 20 miles away. If you didn’t die of exposure in your journey to a new tribe, that new tribe might not take kindly to strangers, and you’d be killed on the spot.
This helps explain why it’s so important that we feel that we’re either fulfilling a role or at least be a part of something. Everyone wants to be seen as apt and good at what they do, regardless of whatever it is they do.
What’s even greater than the desire to fit in is the desire to be seen as attractive. After all, if you don’t care about being attractive, you wouldn’t find a partner and no partner means no kids. No kids equals no contribution to the gene pool. We’re all children of a long line of people who cared enough about their attractiveness or social status to find a mate and rear young. This explains why it’s so important for both men and women to be seen as attractive. To be seen as fulfilling their respective gender roles.
Consider the fears that nearly everyone has: the fear of being rejected. The fear of being alone. Consider how important it is for every age group from pre-teens to the elderly to at first fit in and, later, to be seen as useful and contributing. These feelings are even more powerful than the fear of dying. How this is so is beyond the scope of this writing (which is already much longer than I originally intended). Suffice it to say we have young men and women joining the military, the police force, and fighting fires, all risking life and limb to be a part of something.
How does this all relate to smoking? Well, in this day-and-age, no one ever starts smoking because of an information campaign. You don’t have health education teachers extolling the virtues of smoking in middle school. Kids start smoking because of social pressure. It looks cool. It makes you look older. It makes you a rebel (i.e. you fit in with the cool kids). When a child (or really, anyone) sees an activity that could potentially give them a higher social status, a chance to fit in, or make them appear more attractive, their subconscious starts to scream we need to be doing that!!!
So how can we use this to bring about an end to smoking? Well, once you leave the teenage years, smoking is no longer ‘cool,’ at least in California. Smoking now has the opposite effect: it makes you appear older, smell funny, and keeps you from exercising, which keeps you out-of-shape.
Now, unfortunately, your sub-conscious doesn’t know this. It still believes smoking makes you fit in and appear attractive. Once we make the opposite case, it provides more than enough motivation to abstain from smoking.
That’s why, when I make the customized smoking cessation script, I focus on smoking as leading towards social rejection. Forget cancer: what’s really scary to the sub-conscious is being seen as weak and unproductive. Instead of talking about how smoking makes you look older and smell bad, how does looking older and smelling bad lead to social rejection? How does smoking make you less of a man/woman? Once I have that information from you, I can feed it back to your sub-conscious and really make the case that smoking isn’t in your best interest.
Compared to social dynamics and social pressure, the idea of detachment is relatively simple. Even though smoking is mostly a psychological issue, there are some physical and physiological effects of smoking. One of the weird applications of hypnosis is to create a sense of anesthesia, which can actually be used in surgery or for drug-free childbirth. We’ll create that sense of anesthesia towards those physical cravings and establish a sense of mental detachment to those cravings. This is generally tied to the breathing program.
Now that we’ve seen what I’m going to do, let’s focus on what you’ll need to do when you become a non-smoker in order to remain a non-smoker.