How Hypnosis Can Help You Quit: An Overview
One theory of why hypnosis works for nicotine addiction: It provides us the ability to reframe our top-down thoughts.
When you experience stimuli that may cause a craving, the mind already has associations in place that influence the response. You feel stress. The stress triggers thoughts of smoking as a stress reliever. And you react.
But hypnosis helps you get to a frame of mind in which you alter these negative thought processes.
How? Well, during hypnosis, you following relaxation and breathing techniques to reach a trance-like state. This frame of mind is similar to daydreaming; you’re aware, but at the same time, the mind is disconnected.
While in the trance-state, your mind is much more open to suggestions. It’s detached from the critical, conscious mind – the part of the mind that’s constantly looking for reasons to stay a smoker.
Therefore, a hypnotherapist can provide you with more positive suggestions that “stick.” In other words, you’re setting up roadblocks for the automatic, top-down processes that are keeping the addiction in place. So when you experience a smoking trigger, the mind doesn’t automatically react – it slows down and “listens” to this new information you’ve provided.
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