The benefits of stopping smoking start straight away and last for a long time as long as you don’t start again. But many people struggle to find the determination, motivation or self control to stop. In this week’s blog we ask Clinical Hypnotherapist and Cognitive Behaviour Therapist Andrea Smith for her advice on how you can get motivated to stop.

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

How do you permanently stop smoking even if tried everything? When you stop smoking cigarettes or other nicotine substances, you can feel irritable, uncomfortable and may feel a desperate urge to spark up a cigarette. This is because it is habitual: you are used to having a cigarette after a meal, with a coffee or a glass of wine.

Most smokers use the term ‘addicted to nicotine’ but they misuse the term addiction. People who are truly addicted to a substance will need to have that substance to stop going into withdrawal. There is a huge difference between other addictions and people who are trying to stop smoking. Stopping smoking won’t cause huge withdrawals but rather a niggling annoyance that can be very irritable. People easily fall back into smoking because they lack the motivation to do so and think that a cigarette will ease the stress. If you don’t have cigarettes to calm yourself down, how will you cope with the stress or anxiety life brings?

Hypnotherapy can help your motivation. CBT and Clinical hypnotherapy techniques are much more likely to help you quit smoking rather than by using willpower alone. It also provides an opportunity for you to create the idea of seeing yourself as a confident non-smoker.

By helping you let go of limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns, you can regain self-control over your habits, altering behaviours and release deep-seated emotional issues in the process.

Change will start the minute you decide you would like to improve, resolve your issues and take positive action. I help people get the results they want, improve self-confidence, regain self -control over unwanted habits and behaviours, feel happier and healthier – an improved version of you.

To see Andrea Smith’s stop smoking videos and more – CLICK HERE