They are still smoking!!!!!

Life as a successful hypnotist is somewhat of an usual one.  One day you are walking into a pub to the throngs of, ‘Don’t look into her eyes, ha ha!’ or, 'You can't stop me smoking' (to which, after ten years of similar comments, I inwardly question why would I want to and where's my two hundred pounds) and the next you are being worshiped as a semi deity because you have lowered someone’s blood pressure, sent their life-threatening condition into remission, or just freed them of their addiction to chocolate biscuits or enabled them to get on that aeroplane for the holiday of a lifetime they thought they would never have (not all on the same day you understand, though maybe that is possible!).

 The one thing folks associate professional hypnotherapy with the most, in my experience, is stopping smoking.  The results of your first stop smoking therapy session can make or break a career in hypnotherapy, no matter how talented a therapist you are.   Let’s say you are a newly qualified hypnotherapist.  You put your heart and soul into over two hours of the best therapy you could muster and have gone for two whole days with your fingers crossed hoping that it has worked and then... and then..... a friend of a friend thought they overheard someone saying that who they think may have been your client might actually be smoking again and you are crushed, resolving never to ever try to help someone stop smoking again!  If this sounds familiar, or promotes a lurking fear of dread to the surface, then read on.

One Hit Wonder?

Many schools and advanced master classes teach the two session smoking cessation method.   It is valuable to have some kind of follow up, maybe either telephone the client, get them to text you, or even come back at the same time next week, though do get some kind of response rather than blind hope to build your business on.   These people will be going out into the community either singing your praises or not.   So even if you do just the one session, follow up to know how effective you have been.

They are still smoking!

Actually, what has happened is they have started smoking again.    There will have been some time after the session in which they were a non smoker.   It may have been hours, days and sometimes years.    I had a client return after two years of not smoking to say the session had not worked as someone offered him a cigarette at a New Year’s Eve party and he was drunk and did not know what he was doing, so had one and became a smoker again.  The mastermind phrase, 'I have started and so I will finish' has a lot to answer for!  Just because a cigarette has been offered, or lit, or bought, does not mean that the whole thing has to be smoked, and certainly does not mean that twenty more have to follow that day to finish one's past daily smoking behaviour. 

What do you do?

One cannot help but be changed by such deep inner work as occurs in hypnotherapy when the hypnotic state has been achieved during the session and the unconscious mind of the client has agreed to stop smoking.   So reconnect them with the experience of being a non smoker, recognising that the body was recovering and purifying itself.   The sense of smell and taste will have had time to recover and the unconscious will remember this and want an improved circumstance  to continue.  However brief or long a time it was that they experienced being free of tobacco,  let them elaborate on any negative aspects to truly process them out and to get rid of them, though remembering to return them to the positive effects of your therapy.   They will probably realise that they have been sleeping a lot better, their senses have been more engaged and they have been generally a lot happier, in addition to remembering they did actually stop smoking for a time.  This will get you into a more positive state too.

Information Time

You can suggest to them that they know far more about their smoking behaviour than ever before (and you will know more too) and ask them about it in detail.   Don’t accept the lazy phrase, ‘it just happened’, the conscious mind will try to trip you up and remember you could trance them if necessary;  just get the information as to why it was useful.    Acknowledge that indeed smoking that cigarette or cigar was useful because the unconscious never does anything for no good reason.  Reiterate the physical effects of smoking, depending on what they say, for example if they did it to relax and you have explained that it speeds up heart activity you could say something like ‘I wonder why your unconscious would continue to believe something that is not true?’  This will instigate the separation that you need for part therapy.   It is not their fault that the unconscious has returned to the old habit, though it is their conscious choice to allow it to take place.   Perhaps ask, are you fed up enough now?

Choice

For your information, not the client’s, to help you understand how important this stage is, I will explain choice here.  It might sound simple to just choose, though I think choice is more complex than is appreciated.  Choice is one of the most powerful things a human being can do.

Making Choice Conscious

You can either regress to when they began smoking again, or project into the future to a time when they know they will smoke and get them to accept that they made a choice.   For whatever reason, they made a choice.   For example, consider the following statements.

This is a choice.

This is my choice.

I am choosing to, etc.

My reason for this choice is, etc.

This is what I am feeling and this is how I am going to respond.

This is the action I am going to take.

The result of my action was, etc.

That was my choice too.

 You cannot go beyond something that you don’t do.  So all experience is useful.    I have found some clients go back to the behaviour seemingly to kind of test out whether life is in fact better with cigarettes or without them and then when they give up smoking ‘again’ it is with much more satisfaction, glee and determination that this truly is their choice!  I have also experienced family members, when I was newly qualified myself, tell me that the session had not worked, only to witness them giving up all by themselves a couple of weeks later, strange that, is it not? 

Some facts about choice

Choice offers freedom.  

Choice can override genetic-hormonal codes.

Choice is focussed intent.

Choice is critical to changing action and image and essential to change itself.

It is the active agent (like yeast in bread) of your power, strength and talent.  It is the active agent of taking back your power with responsibility.

 The unconscious mind cannot choose

Choice selects the neural pathways of brain activity. When choice is accepted as a conscious act, the electromagnetic and electrochemical energies and forces of the brain are shifted and changed.  Neural pathways are changed by choice.   

Think about some good choices of the past, feel the sense of aliveness, gratitude to your old self and love for that past self having made the choice.   Feel self value.  Feel patience and feel power.   When you connect the client with this real past experience their unconscious will be having a template to use with this particular behaviour.   You can change your beliefs and your attitudes, though reality does not change until you make new choices  based upon your new beliefs or attitudes.

Choice triggers the action and implementation of belief, attitude, thought, feeling and decision making.

Just Pretend

What do we term it when we can’t do something but keep going until we can?   Practise.   How do children practise to become well rounded adults?  (A little too rounded and we are perhaps on to the next topic of hypnotic gastric bands!)   Seriously, they do so, as we all did, by Pre Tending.   Pre tend literally means before holding.    So you can even get the client to pretend they are a non smoker.  What would be different?    Maybe talk about the four levels of learning.  Where are they on the scale, is it maybe, conscious incompetence?   Great, because that is one step up from unconscious incompetence.   As we aim for conscious competence we need choice.    Unconscious competence surely follows this, as the client can easily demonstrate with other activities from the past.  

 If we pretend often enough, we get there.  

 State Dependent Behaviour

Choice is entwined with state dependent behaviour.   Will we just be sad until we stop being sad?   Or shall we choose to cheer ourselves up?   Does life just happen to us and affects us or do we happen to it?   Use this wonderful idea of truly being responsible, or to be literal, ‘response able’.   If client says ‘it just happened’ that the cigarette was in their hand then replay in detail, trance if necessary, how ‘it’ happened.   Return to choice.   What has to be happening around them for the behaviour to be triggered?

What about if they use the blanket global causal reasoning of stress?   How does the client know when they are stressed?  Does smoking really take away stress or just temporarily stops one thinking about the stressor?

 A ware ness, to be aware, is the first step to conscious choice.

There are many suggestions you can make, such as the following.  Do you want this body to be something you can control?    This is called freedom.   Be so curious that you do not judge them, or yourself.   They are coming to you for help, so they trust that you will be helping them.  

Create better feelings for your client, ‘let’s just feel better for no reason!’.

Use NLP, swap tenses to encourage a link to past successes, for example, saying, ‘That is something you knew how to do, isn’t it?’ 

Create a caring for the physical self, and an acceptance of how things were, moving ahead with new choices.   Utilise the numb hand technique, or glove anaesthesia, suggesting that now that same powerful part of your mind that’s creating that numbness is now creating numbness for any remaining feelings of withdrawal whatsoever, whether they be psychological, physiological or mental, so that not only can you stop smoking, you do so comfortably, easily and naturally.

Reality is a monitor, a feedback device, let it feedback data to help you.  Tell them to expect positive results.  Tell yourself to expect positive results too.  The positive aspect of someone coming back to you saying your therapy didn’t work is that they are giving you an opportunity to put it right for them, rather than just talking about you unfavourably to other potential clients!

Work with the reality of what is happening to you to revaluate what you are doing.   Don’t make the client returning to the smoking behaviour a judge of your prowess; instead let it feedback data to help you.

You could ask ‘why wouldn’t you want it to work?’   You need honesty from the client here.   There are payoffs and functional purposes all over the place with smoking;  find them.   They may worry about not having a break at work, or the wife or husband would be left out because the sharing and togetherness couples have is key to the success in many cases. 

Create a touch program (NLP) for them to activate at key times.  

Decide that you and the client are willing to review the process and continue learning.   Thank goodness people smoke, you may say, because the rewards of this second session will be utilised by the inner mind in all other areas of their life to enhance it.    The past is over, now is a new time! 

Summary

Be client focussed, be client led.   The above are just some ideas to get your creativity flowing.  You may use all of them, or something completely different.    Your client still wants your help or would not be putting themselves to the trouble of coming back to see you.    Use the returning smoker to make yourself the best therapist you possibly can be.   Each one is different, though the step by step guidelines below will help in all cases: 

1. follow up
2. use the data to enhance your technique
3. connect with positive effects of original therapy
4. identify and explore deeply that moment of choice to smoke
5. revisit new behaviour generator, perhaps in new guise (eg Gestalt)
6. establish congruency, are all of the parts in agreement with these new behaviours? 
7. address functional purpose
8. work with future self and care of physicality
9. use past choice successes to overlay on therapy
10. be positive!

To be successful, be interested in your returning smoker and let your creativity flow.   Be interested in your own development and recognise that we are always learning and enjoy the process of becoming the best in the business!