Central Hypnotherapy

I got an email on July 16th which began with these words:

“It’s my anniversary this week Chris, 6 years since I gave up smoking thanks to a single session with you!”

The rest of the message was about another issue which the sender now wants to deal with in the same way.  One session, one non-smoker - that what I aim for and expect.  So I asked the person concerned if I could put that line up on the website if I left out the name and the other details, and this was the response:

“Yep not problem about quoting me, if it helps others then its worth it.”

It DOES help others.  Sometimes clients ask me about success rates, and if I know of people stopping permanently with hypnotherapy. Of course, I’ve been doing this for ten years! Many of my former smoking clients come back later to solve other problems too, and so I hear of their long term success all the time.  Most of my new clients are direct referrals from previous ones, so that is where I usually get confirmation of the on-going success not just with smoking, but with all the other things we do as well.  And I get messages like this all the time - often by phone, so those are not recorded and I wouldn’t dream of putting testimonials up on the website from memory. In fact, I never thought of putting testimonials on the website at all, until the last few years - when this website was built actually. There were none on the old website.  I’ve got a big collection of Thank You cards, postcards and written letters as well as hundreds of emails which I was going to put together in a file but I never got around to it.  Now I feel it is a bit late to go back and ask permission to reproduce all that or show it to people, so that’s all sitting in a filing cabinet but who cares? New messages are coming in all the time!

Nowadays when I get a phone call I often hear them say: “I’ve been reading through some of the testimonials on your website…” and it is obvious this has inspired them to go ahead and grab some of that success for themselves.  And I have the comfortable feeling of knowing that it is all genuine, and that with every single one of the messages on this site I have the full permission of the client to reproduce it here.

Quit smoking in one easy session: no weight gain, no bad moods, no willpower required!   Call me (Chris) on 07748 838 644.  One call.  One Session. One Non-Smoker!

You know what really surprises people about hypnotherapy?  That you feel perfectly normal throughout the session!  Most new clients are expecting to be asleep, or at least to “feel hypnotised”, even if they’re not sure what that would be like.  What they do not expect is to feel absolutely normal and well aware of everything I am saying.

The second surprise is the results.  Think about it: we spend about an hour chatting about the issue, then you spend the rest of the session listening to me explaining things, whilst wondering why you feel perfectly normal.  It seems like nothing is happening at all.  You heard what I was saying and it was all stuff you knew already on a conscious level.  So it is not surprising that your conscious mind is not expecting anything to have changed.

Then you find that all desire to smoke has ceased.  Or the impulse to buy chocolate, gamble, get plastered or buy clothes you don’t need.  Or the phobia has gone, the anxiety, the emotional pain…

Where did all these feelings or impulses come from in the first place?  All generated by your Subconscious mind… which DID NOT know all those details until I explained them during the second part of the session, even though your conscious mind did!  By the way, human beings have no effective way of telling their own Subconscious minds anything in detail - that’s why an experienced hypnotherapist is a handy person to know.  But don’t expect hypnotherapy to be some strange experience you’ve never had before, because it’s really rather ordinary.  It’s the results that are exciting, not the experience itself!

If you just want to be rid of the habit, all you have to do is call me (or text) to book a session, and then turn up on the day.  You may have mixed feelings about quitting - or about hypnotherapy, if you’re new to it - but the good news is that I take care of all of that during the session.  That’s why it takes two hours.

But you can leave all that to me!  You spend the entire session relaxing in a comfy chair.

During the hypnotherapy session both the habit and the craving signals are shut down, which just returns you to normal.  No battle to fight, no willpower needed, no weight gain and no irritability.  Go for it!

07748 838 644.  Ring (or text) any time, you can always leave a message if no-one is free to take the call and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I’m usually in session during the day so if you want to ask me about anything then ring after 6.30 pm. and I should be free to chat.  Ask for Chris.

Some smokers already ‘know’ this, because they have heard it said somewhere before.  Even so they may find themselves reaching for a cigarette when stress levels go up, and might be puzzled as to why that is when they already know consciously that tobacco isn’t relaxing.  I can explain exactly why this is: the Subconscious DOESN’T know… until the hypnotherapist explains it during the therapy session.  In fact, the Subconscious has been led to believe the exact opposite over many years of tobacco advertising.

The alarming reality is that nicotine actually causes heart-rate to increase and blood pressure to rise.  You might not notice that at the time though, especially if you are already distracted by some annoying stress factor, such as your husband for example.  Thanks to him, your heart rate and blood pressure are already rising!  The last thing you need is something which will actually drive them higher, but that is exactly what nicotine will do, which is why smoking triggers heart attacks and strokes that would never otherwise happen.

So why the impulse to reach for tobacco?  Let me explain what is actually happening.  Although a craving feels very much like a need or a desire, it is in fact only an irritating impulse prompting you to reach for a cigarette and light it.  If you do not respond you will get another impulse, and they can be pretty annoying so you usually respond quite quickly.  The moment you do that, the irritating prompting signal goes away.  Notice how you do not have to actually smoke the cigarette and get all the nicotine out of it for that to happen?  The signal disappears the moment you light up, which is a relief because it’s an irritating signal.   The immediate disappearance of that impulse is also the reason heavy smokers sometimes light up, put the cigarette down in the ashtray and forget all about it, because the impulse is only motivation to light it.  Smoking the rest of the cigarette has nothing to do with the craving signal.  It is simple habitual repetition and expectation, with no great motivation driving it.  The irresistible urge to light up (craving) has already gone by then!As every smoker who has ever tried to stop smoking with willpower alone will tell you, the impulse to reach for tobacco does not come from the conscious mind.  The decision to quit was a conscious decision, and willpower is a conscious effort to enforce that decision by bravely resisting the urge to smoke.  That urge comes from the Subconscious mind, which has no idea you made a conscious decision to quit.   All it knows is that you are apparently not responding to the first prompting impulse, so it sends another, stronger one.  And it will keep doing that until you DO respond!

Why is the Subconscious doing that?

I’m glad you asked me that.  Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is: tobacco advertising.  Yes, I know - it has been banned. So it has gone.  Or has it?  “Happiness is a cigar called…”  “Relax, with a fuller flavour!”  Sound familiar?  That’s because they didn’t spend millions of pounds every year drilling that into everybody’s Subconscious minds for nothing.   So yes, your conscious mind may have been told already that tobacco isn’t really relaxing at all, but if no-one has told your Subconscious mind, it has exactly the opposite idea.   Therefore when you become agitated, the Subconscious decides: “We need one of those things that’s going to calm us down!” and sends the signal go and get a cigarette, go and get a cigarette!  In fact it isn’t really stress that makes you feel like doing that, it is your Subconscious reaction to stress.  And once I explain to your Subconscious mind that actually the tobacco companies were lying to us all along: at stressful moments nicotine is even more likely to cause a heart attack than it normally is, so can we please have those annoying craving signals switched off?  …your Subconscious mind will be quite happy to shut them down.

Of course, there are a number of other things I have to explain to the Subconscious as well, but you don’t have to do anything.  You spend the whole time lazing about in a comfy chair.  You’re not asleep - in fact you feel quite normal really, a bit like when you wake up in the morning but you don’t have to get up.  After the session the cravings are gone.  No bad moods, no weight gain, no overeating.

If you like the sound of that, read on.  Or just call me on 07748 838 644.  You can ring the office on 0161-474-8120 between 9am and 6.30pm too.  If I’m already in session the lovely reception folk will jot down your details so I can call you back, usually at the end of the day.  If that doesn’t suit for any reason, call me any evening on the mobile - I take calls any evening or weekend day up to about 10pm, so do feel free to call. You’ll be glad you did.

Only this morning I had a call from a guy who said: “Hi Chris, I don’t know if you remember me but I first came to see you about ten years ago to stop smoking.  Then a couple of years later I came to cut back on my drinking… all very successful, and I really owe you a debt of gratitude for all the help you’ve given me.  Now I want you to help me with something else… ”

First of all, in my practice I meet about seven hundred new people every year, on average.  This means that since his first session, I will have worked with well over six thousand other people, so the chances of me remembering him at the telephone stage are probably nil.  Yet it really is amazing, once the person is sitting in my office again, how much I will remember about the earlier conversations we had once we start chatting again.

Life Stories

It isn’t names I remember, usually.  It isn’t faces either, in fact I am terrible at remembering or recognising either of those.  It is cases - or to put it another way, that person’s story.  Ever since I was little, I’ve always been intrigued by other people’s personal journeys, and what happens to them.  I know that telling you this next bit might make me sound a bit weird but as a child I was often drawn to churchyards and cemeteries, where I would read the inscriptions on headstones and memorials, fascinated by who these people were and trying to imagine them from what little was written about them. I wasn’t being morbid, I was genuinely interested.  Those little investigations weren’t about death at all, they were about people’s lives, and events that had gone before.

Your Own Story

If you think of your life for a moment as a story, I think it goes without saying that you would prefer it to be, overall, a success story by the time it is concluded.  Whatever has happened previously, all the days of the future will be more enjoyable and fulfilling if we bring more success into the picture, and change the things that you would regard as areas for improvement.  If you have tried to change such things before but not yet had long-term success with that, you would have that in common with nearly all my clients, whatever they have come to see me about.

My Favourite Clients

The chap who rang me this morning is a classic example of my favourite kind of client.  They use what works, and they use it again when there is something else they want to change but apparently couldn’t change just through their own efforts. Many people, you see, come here to fix a particular problem and although they are successful with that, somehow it never occurs to them that I might be able to help them with all sorts of other things as well.  They quite happily refer people to me for the thing they came to see me about, yet continue to struggle with all their other issues as unsuccessfully as they were struggling with them before!

Sometimes I wonder if those clients have reached the limits of their imagination with regard to hypnotherapy.  They are so astonished that it worked in the first place - let’s face it, most people don’t really expect that to be the case when they first try hypnotherapy - so surprised that it stopped them smoking (for example) that they cannot even entertain the notion that it would help them lose weight as well, or help them to easily reduce their alcohol intake.

Really Successful People

Anyone can be successful, and anyone can learn to be much more successful than they have ever been before.  But so many folk are forever looking back, not forward.  Really successful people do not do that: they are interested in what happens next, not what happened before.  And I have noticed that people who are particularly good at creating success and overcoming problems will return to hypnotherapy again and again, because they don’t expect to achieve all the things they want to achieve without any help.

These people want to be happier and more fulfilled, and they want it now!  They don’t want to do it the hard way, all by themselves, struggling with things they are not particularly good at.  They typically bring in experts: they use the talents of other people to save them time and effort, and therefore easily bring success forward.

My favourite clients do not come here every week for years on end - they don’t need to!  They don’t spend large sums of money on hypnotherapy.  Not necessary.  Over the years they will return occasionally to fix something else, because to really successful people - or people who want to become more successful than they have ever been before - hypnotherapy is a tool… probably one of many tools they will gather as they go through life… and they’ll use it whenever they need it.

Wow, it worked!  Now what else can we fix?

Listen to Holly, who first came to see me at the end of October:

“Hi Chris,

Just to let you know how it is going. It is still early days but I know I am officially a Non-Smoker! Went out on the Saturday night and actually went outside with my drink and chatted away to my smoker friends and didn’t get the slightest craving whatsoever!!! It’s so strange!!! I have no intention of ever going near those horrid fags again!! I feel free again..and now my breaks are used to make a brew rather than standing outside in the freezing cold smoking myself to an early grave!! So as you can see I’m ecstatic with the results.

However, there are a few more issues that I want to see if I can tackle using hypnotherapy as I believe it definitely works for me…”

As with so many other messages like this, the over-use of exclamation marks indicates just how astonished people are at their own success.  But the difference between the average client and the people who are particularly successful in life is that most clients forget all about it after a while, and for them it was simply a “Stop Smoking Experience”.  They might also have self-esteem issues or a fear of driving on motorways, but although the smoking thing went well they never call me again.

Of course, the vast majority of smokers in this part of the world never called me in the first place - which is the only reason they are still poisoning themselves and paying far too much tax.

People like Holly and the chap who rang me this morning did not just settle for a singular success.  They never forget the impression hypnotherapy made, and so it goes into their toolbox.  It is the easiest way to change anything because you spend the entire time lazing about in a comfy chair.  Partly because of this, Holly was astonished by the results - that reaction is almost universal - but look how quickly she turned that into: “Right!  What else can we fix?”

As for the other chap who will be returning on Friday for his third session in ten years - does any of this sound expensive?  If he was smoking the average 20-a-day, his original session will have saved him around £15,000 by this time, if not more.  The one to cut back on drinking will have saved him large sums on top of that, which means that therapy clearly isn’t costing him anything, it is making him far more wealthy and successful.  These are certainly lasting successes, because I know for sure that if he had needed another session on any of that stuff, he would have been back. That’s the other characteristic of the typically successful person: if the problem returns, they go straight back to the thing that fixed it before - hypnotherapy.

Logical, intelligent, pro-active, enterprising, go-getting.  I think anyone can become like this, and hypnotherapy is the fastest and easiest way to make it happen.  If you would like to quit smoking and/or enjoy being more like that in the future, call me.  Ring 07748 838 644 and ask for Chris.  Evenings are probably the best time to ring because I’m usually in session all day.  Call on any day Monday to Sunday, and make it happen.  You’ll be glad you did - look what a difference it made to Holly!

I was doing a session today with Amy - who I first saw on 5th October to eliminate her smoking habit.  She hasn’t smoked a cigarette since, and you can tell from this excerpt from the email she sent me on the following day that her conscious mind was a bit perplexed by the fact that our session seemed to have worked fine:

Morning Chris

 I thought I might give you some early feedback on our session yesterday!

Having gotten through the first proper test this morning - that cigarette in the car on the way to work - I have to agree that the conscious mind is still quite shocked by what is going on!!

 The second test: my work colleague Tom who offers to roll me a cigarette every morning.  He was informed of my new non smoking self, and had an air of “I’ll believe it when I see it” look on his face.

 The next test will be Friday, when on finishing work I will relax with a glass of wine at home, so of course I will be in touch, but I’m not really in any doubt that the “case” you submitted to my subconscious yesterday is working its magic…

 Regards,

 Amy

First of all, it’s not magic! Amy’s Subconcious simply shut down the smoking habit, including the cravings, because the case I presented during the session was a good one. Notice how her conscious expectations - and those of her colleague Tom - were skeptical, confident that it wouldn’t work!  It is normal for the conscious mind to be perplexed by the sudden disappearance of the habit… partly because it didn’t do anything at all during the session.  The adjustment was entirely taken care of by the Subconscious.

Hesitation in the Face of Success

Today - nearly a month later - Amy was saying that she can’t quite understand why a friend of hers - who is also a smoker, and can plainly see that Amy isn’t smoking any more - is still hesitating, saying: “Oh I don’t know - £120 is a lot of money!”

Actually, there are people charging up to £350 for a stop smoking session, so my charges are certainly not at the top end.  Don’t pay that, by the way, it’s a rip off.  If you live in the U.K. never pay more that £150 for a single session of hypnotherapy for any issue, unless your therapist is in Harley Street.  (Not that those therapists are any better, but there has to be somewhere for the spoiled rich/famous people to go.  I certainly don’t want them to come here.)

Relative Costs

The average smoker has to shell out about £1,800 every year on tobacco.  So already, Amy’s friend has probably wasted £150 during October to ’save’ herself £120!  And if she keeps hesitating for another eleven months that will increase by a further £1,650.

Amy is still quite young, so assuming she doesn’t start smoking again she will probably save around £90,000 (at today’s tobacco prices) over the next fifty years of her life… and also be fitter, stronger, safer and more confident than she would be if she had decided against going for hypnotherapy that day and held onto the original £120.  Which she would have spent on fags by now anyway, so of course she would have saved nothing at all, quite the opposite.

What if she DOES start smoking again?

No problem, because I can fix that.  If that happens, there is always a cause.  I will find it, and I will sort it out - Amy wouldn’t have to do anything.  Except come back.

Now, if that relapse were to happen within the first year, it would only cost her £40 to fix it.  If it were longer than twelve months - well, that first £120 session would have saved her about £1,800 by then so I reckon it is fair enough to charge the default standard session-rate of £70.

So to save yourself from becoming ill through smoking - to save your life, maybe - and to definitely save yourself £1,800 every year of your life from that day on, what are we looking at? Two to four hours of therapy, costing only £120 or £160… unless of course it has already saved you at least £1,800 in which case it costs £190 all told.   Even if you ended up having THREE sessions over the course of a year or two - which most people do not need by the way, because the majority are all done and dusted in one session - it would still cost less than £300 if you come to Central Hypnotherapy.

So why did Amy have another session today?

To fix a different problem.  Which she can easily afford, because she isn’t wasting all that cash on tobacco any more.  Now we are on to weight loss, and as soon as I get feedback from today’s session, I’ll post it here.

I’m confident.  Amy’s getting more confident with every week that goes by.  Would you like to be more confident and save yourself a fortune?  Call me (Chris) any time on 07748 838 644.   The best time to catch me is after 7pm, as I’m usually in session during the day.

As far as the brain is concerned, smoking as a behaviour, an activity, is exactly the same no matter what substance is being smoked.  Likewise, the compulsive urge to repeat the behaviour - the craving signal, or impulse - is also exactly the same system in operation.  And although it certainly feels like a need or a desire, this impulse is actually just a prompt from the Subconscious mind reminding you to do what you would usually do at that moment, or a moment like that.

If you go ahead and do that, the prompting signal will go away until the next ’smoking situation’ pops up.  But if you don’t, you will get another impulse, and another, and another… each time your conscious efforts to resist the impulse are reduced, and it will nag away at you until you finally respond.  All that is happening here is the brain is sending you a reminder, but you’re not responding, so it sends another automatically, just like the reminders British Gas will keep sending you until you finally respond.

So during the course of a hypnotherapy session to quit smoking I explain to the client’s Subconscious mind that this signal is no longer required because the whole smoking habit is now under review, and then I explain why.

Tobacco, Cannabis, Banana Skins…

Does it matter what the client is smoking, when it comes to eliminating the habit with hypnotherapy?  Actually no, except for the fact that their beliefs about what they are doing and why they are doing it will vary a bit. (N.B. I am excluding heroin from this, habitual heroin use is different. I will expand on that point soon in the Cannabis and Other Drugs section of this site.)  We deal with the individual smoker’s underlying beliefs during the course of the session so that by the end of it, the feeling is one of liberation.  The client is not left feeling bereft, like they’ve given something up, but free and independent, like they have got rid of a burden that was sapping their strength and self-confidence.

I received this message by email on 29th August 2009:

Dear Chris,
Just wanted to let you know how successful my hypnotherapy session last Monday was - you not only helped me to give up smoking cannabis but also with a few other issues I had with regard to my outlook generally.
I am recommending you to friends of mine who will surely be contacting you when they are ready. I would say to anyone who is sceptical about hypnotherapy to give it a try; it empowers you much more than N.R.T. etc. etc.
Thanks again for helping me to achieve my aim. I’m looking forward to a happier healthier future!
Joanne.

So of course I checked with Joanne that it was okay to add her comments to the smoking sections of the website, as I always do before using testimonials.  She replied on the 3rd of September, ten days after the original session:

Absolutely Chris - I actually wrote it thinking it may be useful to you and prospective clients in this way anyway so no problem!
Thanks again, I’m really enjoying my freedom from the weed!
Jo.

So, obviously not struggling at all there.  I would like to stress that this is the usual response.  The client is usually quite surprised by that kind of success, but I am not, it is exactly what I expect straight away in the majority of cases.

If you would like to quit smoking any kind of weed, give me (Chris) a call any time on 07748 838 644.  Evenings are the best time to call as I am usually in session all day, but you can still leave a message any day, any time.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I am able to do so.

My usual advice to clients who are coming along to ditch their smoking habit is that they don’t need to prepare in any way, smoke as usual in the days before the session and earlier on that day.  I explain that most smokers will have a cigarette before they come in, and I believe that is the best way to approach it, they can leave the rest to me.

Occasionally though someone will do things a bit differently out of choice, and a recent example was a chap who decided - having read quite a lot of this website - to demonstrate to himself that he could adjust a particular part of his smoking routine without any difficulty well before the smoking session. So he invented the Non-Smoking Smoke Break.

Now, I’m not suggesting that if you try this yourself you will surely find it as easy as he did.  In fact, if you attempt to impose this restriction on yourself using willpower (a conscious effort to just ignore cravings) I would expect you to find that pretty damn difficult.  But that is not what my client did.

Doing Subconscious Deals with Yourself

What he did was not actually unique, because smokers commonly do a little deal with themselves over when and where smoking is okay, and sometimes they change it.  Like the smoker who buys a new car, and decides they’re not going to turn this baby into a mobile ashtray!  So they don’t - and that’s the end of them smoking in cars.  Or the smoking parent with a new baby who decides that no-one is allowed to smoke in the house any more, except in the kitchen.  Some will extend that to standing at the back door.

In truth, these are normal smoking self-restrictions, and as long as it was your idea and you would genuinely prefer it that way, it is remarkably easy to do.  The Subconscious picks up on the new routine within a week, and all impulses to reach for tobacco will quickly disappear in the self-restricted areas.  From that point onwards the smoker will feel very much inclined to head for the back door whenever some other trigger trips the smoking signal.

Smokers Don’t Like Being Told What to Do!

Naturally, smokers’ responses to new restrictions are a bit different when the restriction was someone else’s idea!  Many smokers originally started smoking partly because they were told not to.  In fact anyone who first tried a cigarette before they were sixteen (eighteen now! Who’s daft idea was that?) knew that they were breaking the law, the school rules perhaps, and going against the wishes of parents and authority figures.  Of course - that was largely the appeal of it!  So by extending the period of those restrictions by another two years the government have also extended that rebellious Subconscious motivation to get involved in the whole smoking pantomime by another 24 months.  Stupid.

So all my client really did, in the run up to his smoking cessation session, was re-invent his smoke break at work so that it no longer included a cigarette.  Instead he had decided to have a cup of tea, and because he had decided to be entirely successful with this right away - thus proving to himself that he didn’t really ‘need’ that cigarette - and because it was entirely his own idea, and didn’t involve anyone else at all… he was immediately successful with it.

Of course we need a break.  We look forward to it and enjoy it, and because no-one can smoke when they’re working nowadays, the only time a smoker can fit in any smoking during work hours is to slot that in at breaks and at dinnertime.  We enjoy those free moments, so it is very easy for the smoker to believe that they are looking forward to, and enjoying those cigarettes.  My client decided to prove to himself that he could alter that by choice, and found that it was actually the break he was enjoying, the Subconscious quickly recognised the change and ceased to send the impulse to smoke at those times.  No real need or ‘addiction’ involved.

Actually, even when the changes are imposed by other people, most smokers will adjust quickly enough just for their own convenience.  Only the smokers that truly resent it will find that difficult, because - whether they realise this consciously or not - they chose to find it difficult!  Their reasons are understandable, but most smokers can’t be bothered to object for long.

Why does hypnosis make such an amazing difference?

New clients will sometimes begin their smoking session by telling me that they have “tried everything”, but have never yet managed to stop smoking permanently.  They may also add that hypnotherapy is a sort of last resort, and that I now represent their “last chance” to quit.

So - no pressure then!

Bring it on

I like challenges.  I don’t mind being regarded by the client as their ‘last hope’, because I understand exactly how they came to feel that way - and I can fix it.

Conscious Expectations of Failure

Are you a smoker? Let’s be honest, then - your conscious mind probably doesn’t expect hypnotherapy to work for you.  Not everyone is thinking like that, but many clients are, and there are two reasons for it:

1) Hypnotherapy sounds too easy on the face of it.  All the other quitting methods are mainly down to conscious effort (willpower) - which is hard work, stressful, and usually doesn’t bring permanent success.  In contrast, once a client has arrived at my office and settled themselves into the comfy blue chair, the session doesn’t involve any effort from them at all, so of course they are very surprised - on a conscious level - when the habit disappears.  It’s a nice surprise though, as you can see from the emails reproduced below.

2) Your conscious expectations are actually based on past experience.   As your previous attempts to quit with willpower, gum, patches etc. did not result in permanent success, then of course the conscious mind is expecting difficulty, relapse or failure.  Understandable - but illogical, because if you think about it, that assumption would rule out all eventual success, wouldn’t it?

The Reality

Fortunately your Subconscious mind is not affected by negative conscious expectations in any way.  The outcome of your hypnotherapy session will be a direct result of your Subconscious mind’s response to the case I put forward about smoking, not conscious concerns about your previous attempts to stop smoking - which the Subconscious knew nothing about anyway.  The Subconscious mind has no idea what the conscious mind thinks or expects - that is a different mental department.

The Usual Response

What follows are two typical messages of thanks and surprise of the sort I regularly receive from clients.  These messages are genuine, and reproduced with full permission. Notice how amazed these people are at their own success, and that this proves that they really didn’t expect to be that successful, although of course they were certainly hoping for it.

I have also reproduced my own replies, with my request for permission to use these messages for the purpose of inspiring and encouraging others to choose hypnotherapy, and the replies granting that permission.

November 26, 2008

Dear Chris,

Am emailing to let you know that after one session with you on June 9th, I stopped smoking with no ill-effects or craving or weight-gain, and I think it’s a miracle.  By the way that was after over 40 years of smoking.  Thank you so much.

Barbara******

Barbara, I’m delighted, well done!  You may well feel it’s like a miracle, but in truth that’s just what happens when you finally find the right method and the right kind of assistance! It was a pleasure to help.

By the way, would it be okay to include your comment to promote hypnotherapy as a successful method?  Personal details deleted, of course.  It gives people more confidence in the process, you see, and can even help them to respond better too.  Best regards, Chris

Chris,

I would be very happy for you to use my comment.

Barbara

————————-

29th April 2009:

Hi

 My name is Sarah ******* and I visited your clinic on 15^th April (2 weeks ago) and I thought I would give you an update.  I came to be “cured” from smoking, and since that date and the time I spent with you – I have not had a cigarette and continue to feel like I don’t need one.  I personally feel like I have overcome something that has been weighing me down for over 15 years – so thank you.

My main driver to do this was my daughter, who is 6 years old.  I wanted to make a clear impression on her, and one that ensures she knows that smoking is not acceptable.  By giving up for even only 2 weeks, I feel I am showing her the right way to behave, and not, for example, pushing her to the back of my attention when I need to “get my fix” – now I can devote my time to her, and mean it.

Also, I feel like I spend my time as I feel I need to, not always planning my time around my cig breaks at work, or which places I can eat and drink in that allow smokers to go outside and smoke!  I feel like every time I see a smoker I feel another pang of success and also a pang of sympathy for them…I wish I would have done it years ago!

I have also referred 2 other people onto you from my company in Stockport, one for weight loss for her upcoming wedding and she also feels this has helped her immensely. Thank you once again,

 Sarah

Hi Sarah, and well done, I’m very proud of you!

Thank you also for referring others, and please pass on my best wishes to them too.

I’ve recently started using update messages like yours on my website and in promotional literature that I send out to doctors surgeries, dentists etc.  Would it be okay by you if I used your email for these purposes too?  All contact (email) details would be removed of course, and I only use first names in any copies made.  Messages like this encourage others enormously, but I never use them without obtaining permission first.

 Best regards, Chris 

Hi Chris,

That’s absolutely fine - feel free to use any information you may need.

Sarah

If you too would like to find yourself both free and happy to be, with no cravings and no weight-gain, call or text Chris any time on 07748 838 644, or send an email to: enquiries@centralhypnotherapy.co.uk

No-one likes to think that they are just smoking out of habit, but that is the reality. All habitual behaviour is just automatic repetition of the usual routine, or the usual response. This behaviour will have been under your conscious control to begin with - when you could easily take it or leave it - but was quickly taken over by the Subconscious mind and turned into automatic repetition (habit) once the pattern became predictable.  After that, the conscious mind may well be aware that it is happening, but no conscious thinking is required to repeat that sort of routine behaviour.

Conscious decisions that the Subconscious knows nothing about

So when a smoker makes a new conscious decision to cut down, or to quit, the Subconscious doesn’t know - that’s a different mental department. So it carries on trying to direct the usual habitual behaviour, whilst the conscious mind tries to resist it: conflict!

Which isn’t any fun. Also, smokers may believe that there is more to this than habit - that there are other reasons why they smoke, or believe they cannot stop.

The Addiction Myth

Smokers have been repeatedly told that they smoke because they are physically addicted to nicotine. I can prove that this is not true, and I explain it to every smoker who comes to Central Hypnotherapy to kick the habit. It is true that habitual smokers experience strong compulsive urges to light up at certain times, and it is also true that those urges become more insistent if you do not respond, but none of this has anything to do with nicotine.

My clients are astonished when those urges have disappeared after the session, because in all honesty they were not expecting that. Since they had always regarded those feelings as a ‘need’ or ‘desire’ to smoke, they thought they were stuck with them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Craving Signals

The urge to pick up tobacco is not really a need or a desire, it just feels like that! It is an impulse sent by the brain, but routed through the body, so you feel it as a physical ‘pang’ - very much like a hunger pang, also produced by the same system. Like with hunger, if you respond to it then the signal will vanish, but if you do not, you will likely get another, more insistent signal. These pangs will continue, and typically continue to become more insistent until you do respond.

Shutting the Cravings Down Forever

In hypnotherapy, the therapist explains to the Subconscious mind that the smoking behaviour is under review - and the reasons - and then asks for the signals to be shut down, along with the whole habitual smoking routine. It is very easy indeed for the Subconscious mind to do that, because what we are really asking it to do from that point onwards is nothing, instead of directing the daily repetition of a smoking habit.

A Return to Normal

So the impulse to buy, smoke or accept tobacco that is offered (or cannabis, this will work for any smoking habit) disappears, and the client is returned to normal. It does not matter how much smoking was going on previously, or for how long. The only thing that matters is how the client feels about being rid of the problem.

Mixed Feelings?

It is quite normal for clients to have mixed feelings about stopping smoking. It is part of my job to help them make sense of all that, and get rid of any conflicts there might be about quitting. Then there are the ideas and beliefs that support the habit:

Stress

Lots of smokers assume that smoking helps them deal with stress. In reality it causes tiredness and hypertension (high blood pressure). Stress also causes high blood pressure, so the combination triggers heart attacks and strokes that wouldn’t otherwise happen.

A Simple Misunderstanding

So why does the Subconscious mind respond to stress by sending an impulse to light up? Simply because it does not know that nicotine causes blood pressure to rise - in fact it was given the opposite impression! Almost every advert for tobacco you ever saw or heard tried to make out that smoking was either calming or relaxing.

Tobacco advertising has been made illegal in the U.K. now, but we all grew up surrounded by messages like this: “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet”, or “Relax, with a fuller flavour…” none of which means anything rationally, but it sure suggests pleasure and relaxation. That advertising was not aimed at your conscious mind, you see. It was intended to make a lasting impact on your Subconscious mind.

Lasting, indeed!

These suggestions - that tobacco is calming or pleasurable - were so effectively planted in everyone’s mind that they are still in common circulation - in real conversations, and therefore also in drama too. So although tobacco advertising was officially banned from TV screens in the U.K. over a decade ago, the repetition of the original suggestions from the tobacco companies can still be heard over the airwaves today!

Coronation Street Sponsors Tobacco as a Stress Reliever!

Not deliberately, of course. But twice in the last year I have heard the notion that smoking relieves stress repeated in conversations on that show - which is not true, but it is a common enough misunderstanding because we were all bombarded with that brainwashing. The tobacco industry did not spend millions of pounds every year doing that for nothing - they hypnotised millions of people into believing that tobacco is useful or pleasant in some way. So what I do is really de-hypnosis, which returns you to normal. We were all born non-smokers, after all.

The Pleasure Issue

Not all smokers are of the opinion that tobacco smoking is a pleasure, but some are.  Long before any of us smoked, we were all bombarded with millions of suggestions that smoking is a pleasure, yet most smokers remember that their first encounters with tobacco were nauseating.  So whatever it was that made us pick up the second cigarette, it certainly wasn’t because we enjoyed the first one.  It was the same thing that made us pick up the first one - the influence of others, a spirit of rebellion, curiosity, trying to be more grown up - that sort of thing!  Notice how that had nothing at all to do with nicotine?  What’s more, you knew that then.  And if there is a pleasure in smoking, how come we didn’t notice it straight away, eh?

Tobacco smoking is just inhaling the fumes from burning dead leaves, and it is not addiction it is just a compulsive habit. The average habit costs about £1800 a year - most of it tax - and if someone asked you to describe the pleasure of smoking, could you find anything to say?

If you would like to be free from the habit without struggle, without weight-gain - call or text Chris on 07748 838 644.