Smoking Cessation: Getting the Ego States to Work Together

• Published in: Australian journal of clinical hypnotherapy and hypnosis Vol. 27; no. 2; p. 23
• Main Author: Emmerson, Gordon J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brisbane Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists 01.10.2006
• ISSN: 0810-0713

Helping a client to stop smoking is one of the most difficult challenges for a hypnotherapist. This paper offers an ego state therapeutic structured method to assist in smoking cessation. Every time a client comes to a hypnotherapist to stop smoking there is at least one ego state wanting to quit, and one ego state wanting to smoke, otherwise the client would be happy either smoking or not smoking. An internal dissent exists among the states. The goal of the hypnotherapist is to empower the states that can assist the client in not smoking, while at the same time give new roles and meaning to the states that had previously smoked. In this manner the client can achieve an internal peace in relation to being a non-smoker.There are many obvious reasons why clients choose to stop smoking. Smoking shortens life, creates chronic and severe health problems, is generally socially unacceptable, is expensive, threatens the health of others, creates bad odours and bad breath, and can injure the self-esteem of the client by creating a feeling of loss of control. Smoking is expensive to individuals with lost work, bad health and medical costs, and smoking is expensive to the general economy with lost spending power created from the expense of cigarettes, medical treatment and from the loss of work time and shortened lives.