I wanted to share an amazing experience I’ve had with the things I’ve learned from Precision Hypnosis and Uncommon Knowledge. Four weeks ago, I began discussing smoking with a friend – we both smoked and neither of us was planning on quitting just yet. Without consciously thinking about what I was doing, I found myself using so many of the tips and techniques I’ve found here – referring to smoking as “it” throughout, we likened it to abusive relationships from our pasts and how its “voice” demands that we stop whatever we’re doing and tend to its “needs,” making numerous connections to its dishonesty, pretending to be comforting us, its selfishness and how it only demands our attention when it needs something from us – after about an hour, the following conversation ensued:
Friend: But isn’t it strange how acceptable it is? At work, I’ll say, “I’m just going outside for a cigarette” and everyone just says “OK.”
Me: Think how much like a mental illness smoking actually is – that “voice” in your head telling you what you have to do, right now, to placate it. Can you imagine being at work and saying, “Oh, wait, the voice in my head is talking to me again – I’m just going to pop outside for five minutes and harm myself.” Your workmates would freak.
Friend: I just realised something else- we were talking about it being like (ex) taking everything from me and giving nothing in return, even to the point of stealing from me – it isn’t just stealing from me … it’s stealing from the children I haven’t even had yet.
Me: It’s like when (ex) moved in – he never paid rent or any bills, he made such a mess and never cleaned up … it started off seeming like a friend and moved into the spare room (in our head)- it was only supposed to be temporary, but it’s been squatting there ever since, and we’re paying for it, constantly cleaning up after it, while it sits there and demands our time and money, and convinces us we can’t live without it.
Friend: It’s moving out right now. I’m taking my spare room back.
Me: me too.
Neither of us has had a cigarette since. When we call each other, we refer to ourselves as being “squatter free.”
I had no intention of practicing hypnosis that day (although we were discussing the course as part of the smoking discussion) and I can assure you neither of us believed ourselves to be anywhere near “ready” to quit. But the incredible thing is, none of the triggers and circumstances that would normally have accompanied the quitting process (we’ve both stopped before) have occurred – there’s no sense of something missing after a meal, or when having a glass of wine. The entire “thinking like a smoker” process was gone by the end of the conversation. Neither of us has felt any need to “fill the space” with eating (or anything else) because the only “space” is the spare room in our minds, which each of us decided to use for something else at the point we moved the squatter out. More than anything, we both know, deep down, that this is permanent.
Just wanted you to know how successful my accidental therapy session was for both of us.
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About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.
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