Jan
4
Posted in
This page pulls together my most useful posts and other information and links about smoking and how to stop smoking. As a hypnotherapist and health coach, I see a lot of people who want to quit smoking cigarettes, and I’ve studied the topic and become a bit of a stop smoking expert.
I have a series of videos in which I interview a client whom I helped to quit smoking (How to Get Unstuck), and she makes a great point: Stopping smoking is not just the best change you can make for your health. It’s a personal development issue. Quitting smoking is about taking back control of your life. It’s not just a medical issue, it’s an emotional issue too, as my article Smoking and anger management explores.
Not only anger, but also anxiety and depression are linked to smoking. In fact, one study found that people who smoke tend to have reduced quality of life. But smoking is widely used for stress management, creating a vicious cycle. (Smokers also sleep less soundly and become increasingly socially isolated, both of which are harmful to general and mental health). Even secondhand smoke can be linked to depression.
What’s more, every year, hundreds of thousands of people fail to stop smoking in my small country alone – millions worldwide. Help to quit smoking is badly needed.
So I’ve now released a free stop smoking ebook which is also part of an affordable online course for people who want help to stop smoking. The course is called Smokefree Life, and you can get it through that link, for about the cost of a couple of packs of cigarettes.
As well as material drawn from the posts and links I’ve set out below, it includes other useful quit-smoking methods, tools, tips and techniques, 5 relaxing hypnotherapy audio tracks and some of my best advice on stress management and motivation.
How nicotine works
When you smoke a cigarette, nicotine is absorbed through your lungs into your bloodstream and reaches your brain. (Most of the poisons in cigarettes are there to help it get to your brain more quickly.) In the brain, it stimulates receptors which directly affect the dopamine system, which is your motivation and reward system. This is one reason it’s so hard for many people to stop smoking cigarettes, because they fool your brain into wanting them (even if you don’t like them). How Stuff Works has an excellent summary of the whole process.
Ways to quit smoking
Smoking is a complex behaviour, and there is not just one method to stop smoking. Controversy rages, of course, over the best stop-smoking method: is it drugs, behavioural counselling, hypnosis? Despite the extreme positions you’ll find on all of those ways to stop smoking, there is evidence for all of them, and none of them is a magic bullet. Quit Smoking Methods sets out to list them all (with user contributions, some of them bizarre). Here are the ones I know most about.
Nicotine Replacement Therapy
I used to be opposed to NRT, but I’ve now changed my mind on nicotine replacement therapy. Like every other treatment, it doesn’t work for everyone quitting smoking, and it needs to be provided by someone who knows what they’re doing, and used correctly, if it’s going to be effective. But, with those disclaimers, I don’t believe it’s harmful and I do believe it’s helpful. I give it to my clients if it’s appropriate for their situation, based on a standard test that’s also in my ebook How to Stop Smoking (I’m authorised to give out NRT subsidy cards).
(For an alternative view claiming that NRT is harmful, see Ginzel et al from the Journal of Health Psychology, 2007.)
Stop-Smoking Drugs
Other drugs, such as varenicline (Chantix or Champix), are sometimes prescribed by doctors to help in stopping smoking. Among my most popular blog posts are two questioning the effectiveness and safety of varenicline: Just say no to stop-smoking drugs and more bad publicity for Chantix/Champix. The advice I hear is that (like anything else) it doesn’t work for everyone, but the people it does work for it works for really quickly. But it can have bad side effects, like any drug that messes about with your brain chemistry. Sounds like a last-resort option to me.
Hypnosis to Quit Smoking
As a Registered Hypnotherapist I’m obviously interested in helping people quit smoking with hypnosis. But does it work? (People ask me that all the time.) I go into the evidence in several articles here:
- News flash: Hypnosis isn’t magic (but it can help you stop smoking) reviews a 1992 study which surveyed a number of scientific studies and concluded that hypnosis was one of the more effective methods available. That study has been put under question for the methodology of some of the trials, though.
- Further study on hypnotherapy for smoking looks at a more recent study, in 2007, which supported quit-smoking hypnosis. Again, though, the study was flawed.
- In Why it’s hard to find good studies on hypnotherapy for smoking, I talk about how methods which are suitable for testing drugs are not as suitable for testing a non-drug method.
- This leads in turn to organisations such as Action on Smoking and Health raising questions about hypnotherapy, as I discuss in ASH “concerns” about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation.
- But in Why I still use hypnosis for smoking cessation, I go in depth through a study claimed by the New Zealand Ministry of Health to provide “evidence that hypnosis does not improve long-term abstinence rates over any intervention providing the same amount of time and attention to the participant”, and show why that negative claim is incorrect.
- Finally, I look at a study called Hypnosis for smoking cessation: A randomized trial, which describes an excellent intervention that is very similar to what I do, and in a well-constructed experiment produced good support for the idea that you can stop smoking with hypnosis.
Support from others
Support from other people is very important if you want to stop smoking cigarettes. Some people are even using social media to help them quit smoking.
How to quit smoking
So, you might be asking, can you help me quit smoking? I’m glad you asked.
Start out with 10 tips to stop smoking and Dealing with recovery effects from smoking. (“Recovery effects” are also known as withdrawal symptoms.) They’re just two of my free online resources to stop smoking.
If you find you need more help, though, take a look at my free stop-smoking ebook, How to Stop Smoking, and my stop smoking online course, Smokefree Life. I’ve deliberately kept the course very affordable so that as many people as possible can get stop-smoking help (if I made it free, though, you wouldn’t have as much motivation to complete it, so I do charge something). A quit-smoking ebook, a simple, research-based method to quit smoking, a self-check, a quit plan template, and 5 hypnotherapy audio recordings in MP3 format are all included, and it covers questions that a lot of people have such as how to quit smoking without gaining weight, quit smoking withdrawal symptoms and the benefits of giving up smoking. Click here to find out more.
Technorati Tags: stop smoking, quit smoking, how to stop smoking, smoking cessation
Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.
Oct
19
The day after someone joins my email list, they get an email from me asking, “What one thing would help you most?”
I read answers to that email very carefully, because it tells me what people are looking for. My assumption is that if one person cares enough about something to send me an email about it, there are probably numerous other people who want the same thing but aren’t saying anything. I’m committed (within broad limits) to giving people what they ask for, and at the moment I’m putting the best answers up for a monthly vote to my list and using the results to decide what free resource to offer during that month.
Recently Mary gave me this reply:
I would love some help with self sabotage.
My biggest frustration is with myself. I make the right choices for a week or two, then I do something that wipes out all of the progress I’ve made.
If I could find a way to stay on course with my medication, exercise and healthy eating, I would feel able to tackle the other stressor in my life.
Procrastination is my main theme at the moment, leading up to a new course: Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding. (That link is to a page where you can get on a special pre-release list, which will get you a discount and an early opportunity to buy the course when it comes out.)
But isn’t procrastination one form of self-sabotage?
Who Is Doing This Self-Sabotage Anyway?
Let’s think about that “self-sabotage” idea. We say, “I sabotaged myself.” It almost sounds like there are two people in that sentence – with two different agendas.
And in a way, that’s true. I’ve written before (in How to Form an Alliance With Yourself) about the idea that we sometimes have different “parts” with different agendas. The trick is to bring these parts together so that they can work in alliance rather than at cross-purposes. And the key is to find out what they want.
What We Really Want
Negotiation is the art of finding a situation that all parties involved would prefer to the present one, and can agree on. And before that can occur, some work needs to be done to bring to the surface what is driving their actions, what their values and goals are. The results are often surprising.
In the case of parts of ourselves, we have a useful piece of knowledge going in. We know that one of the goals that all of the parts have – that they, in fact, share in common – is to help and do good for the whole person.
Now, that may seem contrary to the evidence. After all – to use Mary as an example – she would clearly benefit from keeping up her medication, exercise and healthy eating, yet some part of herself is preventing her from doing so. But the thing about these parts is that they don’t always see the big picture. The less self-aware parts, in particular (usually the ones that are left over from our childhood) will often pursue a short-term, impulsive desire to feel good now instead of the actions which will help you feel good over the long term.
What You Can Do Right Now
Here are seven steps to start yourself on the path to integrating those sabotaging parts, so that they start to help instead of hindering. A small disclaimer: If you’ve ever been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, it’s probably not a good idea to do this kind of exercise by yourself without a “spotter”. Otherwise, you should be fine.
- Get into a reflective state where you’re in touch with what’s going on inside you more than what’s going on around you. Just go somewhere you won’t be disturbed, sit in a comfortable position, and let your mind access a daydreaming kind of state – but with a purpose in mind.
(If you want fuller instructions, and a free recording, try the Blue Sky Hypnotic Induction.)
- Ask the part that is doing something to hinder your self-growth or self-care what its agenda is, and then answer yourself as that part.
- Thank it for trying so hard to help. Then gently point out how it’s very important to you that you fulfill your self-care plans.
- Ask the part if it is willing to find another way to achieve that agenda that doesn’t involve going against your plans for self-care. Negotiate with it – remembering to remain gentle, patient and appreciative.
- Invite your creative and problem-solving parts to be involved in helping the other part to come up with a strategy that works better for you in the whole of your life.
- Allow the parts to have a little “conference”. You may or may not be consciously aware of what they come up with.
- In your own time, return to your usual alert awareness and connection to your surroundings. The parts can continue their work outside your awareness if they need to, while you go about your daily life.
Now look for a shift in your experience!
(If you would like me to facilitate the process for you, I’m very happy to do so. Contact me to set up a session. At the moment I’m looking for a few people to do single, discounted sessions on procrastination and self-sabotage, as preparation for writing my new Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding course, so please get in touch if you’d like to be one of them.)
Next week: Part 2, how to make hard things easier.
Technorati Tags: procrastination, stop procrastinating, success, taking action, self-sabotage
Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.
Aug
31
I’m a comics fan.
Not comix (which are quite a different thing, much more intellectual and anarchic). Comics. Superhero comics. (Various webcomics, too, but I’ll talk about those another time.)
This surprises even people who know me well. For one thing, I’m more or less a feminist (if a man can be a feminist, and I know this is fiercely debated), pretty nearly a pacifist, and have a master’s degree in English, whereas superhero comics are full of women in skintight costumes whose breasts are bigger than their heads, contain pretty much wall-to-wall fighting, and are generally considered not too intellectually demanding. (That last point has a lot to do with why I like them, actually.)
As Walt Whitman said, though, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Somewhere deep down inside me there’s some kind of consistency. (I can only assume.)
Anyway, here are three life lessons I’ve learned from superhero comics.
1. With great power comes great responsibility
 photo credit: Eneas
Spider-Man has been through a lot of changes and reinventions since his creation in the 1960s, but at the core he’s always a decent, human guy who is continually crapped upon by life from a great height, but (with a few exceptions, which only serve to humanise him further) does the right thing anyway.
His Uncle Ben’s wisdom – that with great power comes great responsibility – is familiar enough to seem trite. But when you really think about it, especially in the context of Spidey’s life, it’s all about living up to your potential and using what you have in the service of others.
Great power inherently carries the risk of exploiting others. When you’re really powerful, you can do what you like because very few people will try to stop you. Glance at the celebrity news from time to time (then look away quickly) to see how well that generally works out for people.
I’m white, male, middle-aged, middle-class and heterosexual. To have any more hegemony I’d have to be dead. I’m also a hypnotherapist, which is kind of a low-level superpower – not over other people so much (that only works inside the comic books), but over my own body and mind. It’s up to me how I use all that. Great responsibility.
What great power do you have that you can use for others’ benefit?
2. You can’t beat a good team-up
photo credit: Willrad
One of the most popular formats for comics is the “team-up”, where two or more superheroes join together to face a threat that they can’t defeat individually. There are also some great team comics – the Justice League, the Avengers, the Teen Titans, the Fantastic Four.
Team-ups work much better for heroes than they do for villains, and there’s a simple reason. Villains are always out for what they can get, while heroes have a higher purpose, a dedication to the welfare of others.
I can’t always triumph over my challenges alone, either. Sometimes I need to team up. That’s one reason I’ve been doing a lot of guest-posting lately. I also get coaching from several other people, because there are things they see (and know) that I don’t.
Who could you team up with?
Everyone has a weakness
photo credit: Randy Son Of Robert
I thought a lot about this last one. Should I use “No truly important character ever dies permanently?” “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry?” “You’re a person if you act like a person, regardless of your appearance?” All good lessons. But I went for “Everyone has a weakness” because it’s so fundamental to comics that it’s just silently assumed.
No matter whether the character is an Olympian god, the Last Son of Krypton or an immortal being who eats planets, there’s always some way to defeat them. There’s always a balance, always a solution, always a way to carry the day. (And it’s not just because someone who just automatically won all the time would be unbelievably boring. Life’s really like that.)
And the inevitable consequence is this: Great power or not, there’s some way in which you’re vulnerable, and only by connecting up with your team are you going to be able to overcome that and then find the inevitable weakness of your opponent. (You see what I did there?)
One of my weaknesses is that I enjoy thinking about things more than doing them.
What vulnerability do you have?
If you’d like to team up with me for any purpose, including to work on your weakness or develop your great power and its responsible use, contact me and let me know. I’d love to partner with you.
Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.
|
