Here’s the standard line from the standard hypnotist “I can’t make you stop smoking, you need to want to stop”.
Let’s examine that now.
We as hypnotists work with the subconscious of our clients. Thats how we can get all the splendid hypnotic effects such as amnesia, hallucination, and ideomotor movement. We simply have the subconscious accept our suggestion for name amnesia, and presto like magic, they can’t remember their name no matter how hard they try and no matter how hard they want to.
Can someones SC work against their wishes? Of course it can! Look at any phobic, they didn’t ever want to become a phobic, they got hypnotized into it without their consent and without their willingness, and there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do to stop it.
We find that phenomena of people being unable to consciously fight the SC on many levels. We find it with emotion, thoughts, habits, and beliefs.
So if we as hypnotists work with out clients SC minds, so long as they follow our instructions during the session, why oh why would they have to consciously want to quit?
So here’s the thing. As good as we are as hypnotists, we aren’t perfect. So while we might change beliefs, habits, patterns, and emotions, for all we know there might be some pieces of the puzzle that we haven’t gotten to. Those remaining associations and learning can reinstall the old smoking issue.
Along with that, even if we did zap the smoking issue completely and remove all traces from the SC, the conscious mind of a person is their own hypnotist! Not always is it the most effective hypnotist (as we see in the case of a phobia), but it’s a hypnotist nonetheless. And so it’s possible that even after we have changed the SC so the problem is no longer there, they might rehypnotize themselves right back into the habit.
Recognizing that, we enlist the aid of their SC so that they don’t fight us and rehypnotize themselves, and so if we missed something, they will hypnotize themselves and finish the work.
And so to summarize, I think that we most certainly do not need the person to want to quit. So long as they come to us and follow instructions during the session, we can change the SC to the point that they can’t smoke no matter how much they want to. We can also change the SC to the point that smoking means nothing to them and holds no attraction for them.
However we do recognize that the way they think consciously has a powerful hypnotic effect on their SC. And so to make sure that the job gets done even when we haven’t done a perfect job, we enlist the help of their 24/7 hypnotist, and that is their conscious mind, to fill in what we missed. We also want to make sure that they don’t fight what we put in there and reinstall the habit.
This concept applies to almost any change we make. If we enlist the on-board hypnotist (the conscious) and teach him how to use his power well, we can have our clients finish the job that we started when what we did wasn’t quite enough.
So it’s a lie that the client needs to want to quit, but one that seems to work in the best interests of all involved.
Because of the demographic I often work with in my private practice (male, 18-30, Lawyers, Engineers, and Scientists) I get a lot of clients with very active conscious minds. And so I have had to develop a whole range of techniques and ideas to work with them and ‘hypnotize’ the conscious. In my upcoming online group hypnosis supervision you will have a chance to learn my methods and practice them with live feedback in class.
You can find more information and sign up here.