The Smoking Trance

If you have read any of my information on this website about the nature of the hypnotic state that we also refer to as trance, you will know that its characteristics include the narrowing down of attention and absorption. It’s the kind of state of awareness we tend to be in when we are watching a good film or TV programme, for example.

If you are a smoker, then you will be familiar with this state when you want a cigarette. The desire to have the cigarette can override everything else and you might be willing to put yourself in a state of discomfort to attend to it - witness the small groups of people you might see outside a work place smoking in inclement conditions or the desire to go out late at night to buy cigarettes when you have run out. In that moment, all you want is the cigarette. Once you have smoked the cigarette, the trance dissipates and you return to other activity.

It is at this point that someone who wishes they didn’t smoke will tend to berate themselves. The state of absorption created around smoking the cigarette with all the attendant feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction, is no longer there because the cigarette has been smoked. “Why did I do that?” “I didn’t need that cigarette.” “I let myself down“, and so on. When someone enters the smoking trance, all resolutions, all knowledge about the dangers of smoking, all self-loathing about it, go out of the window. The smoking of the cigarette must be attended to.

Smokers have all kinds of these trances around smoking that become activated in particular situations or at certain times of the day, as a matter of course. One of the focuses of hypnotherapy treatment for stopping smoking is to help the client eradicate these trance states so that the compulsion to smoke in those situations is no longer activated.

We use a range of approaches aimed at breaking through these trances so that the compulsion to smoke is no longer there. These might include reframing the smoking in particular situations, getting the client to rehearse being in situations and not smoking, which they might not have thought possible before, tapping into the person’s resources of success, determination and other useful aptitudes they have demonstrated in other situations and linking them where needed and amplifying in a compelling way the client’s reasons for not wanting to smoke.

There are a whole range of techniques a hypnotherapist can use to help the client break out of the smoking trance and that is why hypnotherapy is still considered one of the best methods for smoking cessation.