Electronic cigarette use or other NRT along with hypnotherapy

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Permalink Reply by tc_Burt on October 22, 2011 at 5:48am

I'm all for working within a client's belief system, if they believe adjunctive assistance will help them, then why fight it, work with it to reinforce their ability to effect change.

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Gionti on October 22, 2011 at 4:10pm

My motivation for explaining to clients that they will not need anything additional is for the simple fact that James mentioned. The person who walks into my office for a hypnosis session to quit smoking with a patch on his or her arm is already thinking that hypnosis is not going to do the job alone. And even if it does, they are going to most likely end up believing that the patch is the reason why they quit smoking and not hypnosis. Again, I don’t go out of my way to discourage it but as a professional hypnotherapist, if I am not setting the proper expectation that this WILL work for them and they will not need anything additional, then I am simply taking their money knowing that they don’t fully believe that my services work in the first place. Heck, if a client leaves my office and feels better slapping a patch on their forehead afterwards then all the power to them. I just feel that if I am charging money for my service I have an ethical responsibility to explain and make sure that they understand that they are paying me for my services so that they do not have to resort to doing that.

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Permalink Reply by Leaha Lara on October 23, 2011 at 9:30pm

I couldn't have said it better Joseph :-)

Joseph Gionti said:

My motivation for explaining to clients that they will not need anything additional is for the simple fact that James mentioned. The person who walks into my office for a hypnosis session to quit smoking with a patch on his or her arm is already thinking that hypnosis is not going to do the job alone. And even if it does, they are going to most likely end up believing that the patch is the reason why they quit smoking and not hypnosis. Again, I don’t go out of my way to discourage it but as a professional hypnotherapist, if I am not setting the proper expectation that this WILL work for them and they will not need anything additional, then I am simply taking their money knowing that they don’t fully believe that my services work in the first place. Heck, if a client leaves my office and feels better slapping a patch on their forehead afterwards then all the power to them. I just feel that if I am charging money for my service I have an ethical responsibility to explain and make sure that they understand that they are paying me for my services so that they do not have to resort to doing that.

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Permalink Reply by Brunhilde (Bruni) Brewin on October 25, 2011 at 3:32pm

Have a look at this link here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728144349.htm where you can read about a research they did on electronic cigarettes. 

 

stopping cigarettes is about having NO craving and NO withdrawal symptoms.  Why would you continue to put the chemicals of cigarettes into your body if you want to stop?  If we allow the client to understand that nicotine leaves the body in about 4 days and the other chemicals (Nearly 500 of them) take another 4 or so days.  So the client is literally chemical free in 7-10 days.  The rest is the psychological reasons that make it difficult for him/her to give up.

 

Whilst most of us would have started off because it was the cool grown up thing to do and the repetition of doing that turns it into a habit, for some it turns into a coping mechanism due to the happenings in their life.  If you take in a slow deep breath as though you were sucking on a cigarette and blew it out in the same way, that is the only relaxation that smoking a cigarette gives a person.  The other part of smoking is by replacing the nicotine (craving) the body instantly feels it has met its needs, but research tells us that within 3 seconds of replacing it, nicotine becomes a stressor.

 

If you use ideo questioning and have ascertained that all parts of the subconscious want to give up smoking, then you can ask it to release the craving and withdrawal under awareness from the conscious body.  You can remove the links to the habit of smoking, i.e. lighting up when you get in the car whatever and do a time progression as a non-smoking... happy, healthy, in control.

 

If you explain all this to the client, he can see that there is no purpose in having to have a crutch while he/she stops smoking using hypnotherapy.  You could give him/her the expectancy that they won't feel like smoking when they leave your office - and you could give him/her the crutch by saying that for some people it might take one or two sessions more, and if you are one of those people, if the craving comes, do something else and let it go away - but if it comes back over and over, cut a cigarette in half and smoke that, pick up the phone and make an appointment.

 

I actually never do that because I prepare them with the expectancy that they will give up in my 1.1/2 hour session, and they usually do.  If they have background problems, such as sexual or physical abuse etc. I deal with that first as the psyche will be using smoking to help them cope with inner stress.  I phone my clients up to check that they did stop, and that they have no craving or withdrawal.  If they did and all is well, I ask them to refer someone else to me.  If they have stopped and are using willpower, I book them in for another session.

 

I hope this is helpful.

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