Stop Smoking: I love helping people kick the habit

I love helping people stop smoking. Some hypnotists consider the work boring, repetitive, below their capabilities. But I consider the work to be of the highest order. What could be more challenging than helping someone bring an end to a stubborn, expensive, life-threatening addiction?

Think about it. Cigarette companies spend billions trying to find new, subtle, subconscious ways to keep you hooked. They put special blends of chemicals in their products, chemicals designed to keep your cravings alive no matter how hard you try to quit. They spend billions on marketing, showing their customers to be healthy, vigorous, supremely confident individuals living their lives to the fullest—when in fact their products have the opposite effect on people’s health and their customers can’t go a day without being dependent on finding a cigarette.

And Hollywood—oh my the complicitous guilt of the movie industry over the last century! “Casa Blanca” is one of my favorite films, but my goodness how those people smoke! The so-called “stars” look so cool, so elegant, so self-assured doing it. What man hasn’t wanted to look as confident as Humphrey Bogart, matching wits against the Nazis or wooing Ingrid Bergman all the while casually lighting one up? What woman wouldn’t mind if a smartly dressed Bogart approached her in a smoky casino and expertly torched her cig as an entrée to a conversation?

So you see? Smokers have a lot going against them. On top of that, there’s an infinity of other reasons people get hooked: following a parent’s example, peer pressure during their teenage years, something to do with their hands, taking a break at work, picking up a spouse’s habit, enjoying a night on the town with friends, keeping off weight, relaxing after work or a meal. The list is endless.

So it’s a big challenge to stop smoking. And it’s a big challenge to help clients kick the habit. Some hypnotists do the same program over and over, not taking into account an individual’s history or needs. They just do the same thing, over and over, reading from the same textbook script until the client runs out of money or patience. What? That’s not therapy. That’s taking people’s money and providing little in return. And if by chance it does work, it works only for a little while. Then the subconscious programming wears off and smokers are right back where they started…

To prevent this from happening, my stop smoking programs are tailored specifically to an individual’s needs: their history with tobacco, the triggers that keep them hooked, the goals they want to pursue as a non-smoker. As with all my clients, I recommend a minimum of three two-hour sessions. The first session is straight “programming”—empowering you to resist the temptation to smoke and delivering suggestions to your subconscious to replace your old habits with newer, healthier ones. In the second and third sessions, we go deeper, using classic therapeutic techniques such as Parts Therapy or Regression to uncover the hidden motivations behind your old tobacco habits. It’s here that the true, long-lasting effects of hypnotherapy are found. It’s here that even longtime smokers discover a new perspective on life, a new way of motivating themselves to stay away from tobacco forever.

Sometimes smokers come to me and say, “I don’t know if hypnosis is right for me. I’ve tried everything—gum, patches, cold turkey, even other hypnotists. Nothing works.”

They’re skeptical, discouraged, beaten down by their long twilight struggle against tobacco. It’s a story as old as humanity—the beleaguered individual against the omnipotent machine, David verses Goliath, the underdog against big money corporations. But there’s always hope. There’s always a better way to do things.

That’s where I come in. I enjoy the work. I’ve got a talent for helping people stop smoking. In a relatively short amount of time, I can help you end a decades-old addiction and find a new direction in life.

So you see, helping someone end their smoking addiction is, truly, a calling of the highest order.

Thomas C. Williams

Clinical Hypnotherapist

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas C. Williams