I'm A Smoker

It always makes me giggle when I hear people describe themselves as a smoker. One of the fundamental of flaws in human psychology is that people who have a problem that they would like to change, have a feeling of being 'stuck'. This is shown by the way they convert an action into a thing. So for example the statement,

" I started smoking, (action) when I was twelve and I have been smoker, (thing) ever since."

So what does this mean?

Well in therapy talk one of the ways to change smokers is to make them aware of this conversion in some way. One to one counselling, NLP, groups, cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnosis, and any other form of help can do it with varying results. But the thing to understand is that you cannot 'be' a behaviour. Smoking is a behaviour, therefore you can only be a human being that smokes because really, there is no such thing as a smoker...

What Am I trying to tell you?

The great thing is of course when this process is understood then the event is turned back into an ongoing process. This means that it is not fixed and can be changed, therefore smoking can be stopped. This all sounds too simple but people who smoke can by default be people who are non smokers..

The great thing about this!

A lot of people who smoke really do think that they could never become non smokers for fear of the consequences. This is a shame as everyone was born a non smoker and for the vast majority spent at least ten years as happy healthy non smokers.....

What about the Nicotine addiction?

Well in my opinion there is no such thing! This I believe is a myth proliferated by the tobacco companies, drug companies and Governments. Believing that one is addicted to something becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Smoking is just a habit. The Brain just becomes accustomed to tobacco as it does any other habit. I like my long grass Analogy:

If you walk through a field of long grass and turn around you'll see where you have been as the grass will be flat, come back four days later and you will not be able to see, as the grass will have straightened. However if you keep on walking down the same route everyday eventually there will be a bare track. The brain is a bit like this, if you think of the neural pathways in the brain as the long grass, keep on doing the same thing everyday and you get a 'bare path' in the brain so to speak, or in other words a habit. But just like any bare path, stop going down that route and the grass will eventually cover it up again, with no harm to the ground!

Change the way you think and you really can stop smoking.... harmlessly.

Warm regards

Nigel