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Hypnosis Brainwashing

Hypnosis Brainwashing the therapists

    Hypnosis Beliefs

    The other night I was talking to someone with quite a long interest in hypnosis. Something she said reminded me of why the medical profession finds it easy to write us off.

    I mentioned that I had a genetic health disorder which caused my body to retain iron. It is treated completely by me donating a unit of blood every three months. The listener looked at me strangely.  When I asked her what she was thinking, she said "Why don't you just use hypnosis to cure it?"

    I was quite taken aback at this. I asked her what sort of hypnotherapy she thought might work. She quite confidently told me that all I would have to do was to visualize all the iron collecting together and leaving my body, and I would be cured.

    Hypnosis Brainwashing

    This level of naivety is quite astonishing. But this is not the first time I have come across it. It appears that some hypnotists have been brainwashed into the belief that hypnosis can fix everything. Apparently, according to some people, hypnosis can cure cancer, grow hair on a bald head, make you taller, increase the size of your bra cup and let you learn a new language while you sleep. The fact that all of these are obvious nonsense does not seem to prevent people from repeating them as self evident truth.

    Hypnosis Brainwashing the therapists

    Hypnosis is often accused of being a form of brainwashing. The accusation is that hypnotists put innocent people into a hypnotic state and plant anything they want into their mind. I feel the reality is a bit more worrying. When I was first training in hypnosis, I believed what I was told, and the trainer pretty much believed in hypnosis totally. He had an endless fund of stories about how this person or that person had been cured miraculously by hypnosis. None of this was ever backed up by any evidence.

    I think that this is repeated in most hypnosis training schools. Students are told that they are about to get the keys to a toolbox that will cure anything. In some cases they are told that traditional medicine has reached its limits and the world is waiting for all these new students to spread out and fix what medicine can't.

    No wonder doctors and scientists tend to reject everything to do with hypnosis when ludicrous beliefs like these are put forward in all seriousness.

    What do you think?

    Which side of the debate are you on? Can hypnosis cure everything? Should we be much more realistic about what we can and cannot do, and leave the physical ailments to the doctors?

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    client sexual attraction

    Client Therapist Sexual Attraction

      Client sexual attraction 

      Hypnotherapy is a very intimate profession. Two people spend many hours talking about deeply personal things in a secluded, private location. It is inevitable that issues of client sexual attraction will arise. This is especially the case when the hypnotist is in control and is working with the other person's subconscious mind.

      Issues of sexual attraction between clients and hypnotists have been around for as long as hypnosis has been around. Before Freud developed psychoanalysis, he was a hypnotist. One day the maid unexpectedly entered his office when he was hypnotizing a young female patient. It was reported that the patient had her breasts exposed. Freud claimed that she had come on to him while in trance. The exact circumstances will never be known, but he never used hypnosis again after that.

      Research on client sexual attraction

      There have been a few surveys looking at the issue of sexual attraction client interaction. It appears that about 4% of therapists of various sorts have admitted to having sexual contact with current or previous clients. Around a fifth of therapists reported that some of their clients had admitted to a sexual relationship with other therapists. About 40% of therapists said they had heard of other therapists getting into a sexual relationship with one or more clients.

      Some research tried to predict the risk factors. Gay therapists were more likely to have sexual contact with their clients. Therapists who themselves had an affair with their supervisor in training were more likely. Therapists who spend the most time in a training or mentoring relationship were also more likely to stray with their own clients. However, the numbers surveyed were small, and you should not give too much reliance to these indicators. 

      How to deal with client sexual attraction

      Some of the therapists in the survey felt that client sexual attraction was not something to avoid. They took the view that both parties were adults and both parties got something out of it. More than one well-known hypnotherapist has said that it is good for the client. According to him, a sexual relationship was exactly what they needed.

      However most therapists said that they avoided client sexual contact for ethical reasons. They believed that the therapist client relationship is always one of power. Therefore it is never acceptable for the therapist to take sexual advantage, no matter how willing the other party might be.

      Most therapists also thought that if such a relationship by another therapist was to come to their notice, then they were duty-bound to report it to their professional Association.

      The same considerations apply in the supervisor-student relationships.

      What do you do about sexually attractive clients?

      I personally have had many clients who I would happily have had a relationship with, if I wasn't their therapist. I have actually had two clients who hinted heavily that they were very interested in pursuing something outside the office. However, I believe that such a relationship is always inappropriate. So I just ignore these overtures. 

      I have also heard of two local hypnotists who have pursued relationships with current clients. And I have had quite a few clients tell me that they came to me after refusing to go back to a different therapist who they described as "creepy".

      What has your experience been?

      Have you heard of sexual relationships in your area? What would you do if a client suggested a different type or relationship. 

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      online therapist

      The Online Therapist in your living room

        The Online Therapist

        No one knows what hypnotherapy future developments will be. But technology may be coming to a home very near you. Will we all soon have an online therapist?

        Amazon, Google, Apple and other companies are offering voice activated connections to the Internet. These devices are on all the time. They listen out for commands. Once they get a command they can turn on the TV, close the curtains, start the dishwasher running, place a Skype call to your mom.

        The technology depends upon artificial intelligence to work out, not just the words you said, but the meaning behind them. This might mean that you will never be able to talk to yourself aloud again.

        How long will it be before you find yourself standing in the middle of the room saying aloud "what was that I came in here for?", and Alexa gives you a meaningful answer?

        What are the odds that one day soon you will be sitting on yourself asking aloud "why can't I find someone to love?", and the automated therapist begins to answer you?

        The online therapist – threat or opportunity?

        Some people will see this as the most helpful advance in mental health for centuries. Some people will see it as the final arrival of Big Brother. And some people will see it as a splendid opportunity for their business.

        These personal assistant devices are already in homes. They work fairly reliably. They connect to the deep Internet. You can ask for news, weather, TV schedules, reviews, tickets, whatever you want. You can also ask for help with your feelings. Because these devices connect you directly to the Internet they can connect you to pre-recorded hypnotherapy resources. These can be sound or video. They can also be questionnaires, flowcharts, checklists – almost anything.

        It seems to me that there is a great market for good quality hypnotherapy libraries. These would be accessed online via the listening device. The listening device would actually use its artificial intelligence to choose what the appropriate therapy resource would be. The online therapist would be available 24 hours a day, in total confidence, at very low cost.

        Perhaps in the distant future you can replace a flesh and blood therapist with the online artificial intelligence therapist. But in the meantime pre-recorded flexible material is perhaps something you should be thinking about.

         

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        Controlling Clients

        Hypnotizing Controlling Clients

          Hypnotizing Controlling Clients

          Controlling Clients are always difficult. Today I saw what was perhaps the most difficult client I have ever had. She was not being deliberately difficult, but every techniques I tried just didn't seem to work. I first saw her last August. At that time I could not hypnotize her. She was constantly internally challenging everything I said. She analysed every word, doing everything except doing what I wanted her to. My policy in those cases is to send her home with some hypnotic CDs to listen to. Then come back when she has learned to let go enough to go into trance reliably.

          Today she said the CDs annoyed her. The imagery did not suit her. She was constantly analyzing why I used certain words, and frankly the whole recording irritated her. The recordings might have made her a little more physically relaxed. But she was never hypnotized.

          Anxiety and the need for control

          She clearly has anxiety and hypervigilance but she was still unable to tell me what trauma she had. She said that there is nothing there to find. Her problem was a fear of earthquakes in high buildings. The obvious approach is to use regression. I thought that she might have had some effect from the CDs. So I again tried to hypnotize her, going very slowly and carefully. But as I approached the feeling the fear part she smugly told me that she wasn't feeling anything.

          However,  I saw clear signs of trance. It seemed to me that she actually was going into trance, but as soon as she felt herself losing control she popped right out again. She could not reduce the rate of her breathing during the induction. She was breathing very shallow. This  was to me another indicator that she has some sort of chronic anxiety.

          Controlling Clients means giving them control

          So decided to approach hypnosis indirectly. We talked about our options and how I didn't have any. I told her I really didn't know what else to do. I explained the theory of hypnosis. The best I could do was to teach her self hypnosis, but  I warned her there was a danger of an abreaction.

          She asked me how she would do that . So I proceeded to show her. I told her that I was going to take her through the steps of self hypnosis.  She should pay close attention because she needed to control the stages. That way she would be able to do it herself when she gets home.

          I therefore started on physical relaxation, then breathing focus, then finding a safe place. Then told her to empty her mind, stack any stray thoughts over to one side, treat them like puppies and shoo them out the door. Then I suggested that now her body was relaxed and her mind was empty, she need to practice controlling her mind. I did a long series of suggestions about finding a color and shrinking it down to a point of light. Then I suggested she might find herself floating inside that light. Her head started to nod, and her eyes were moving under hey eyelids in response to my suggestions. She was clearly in trance.

          Getting a Controlling Client into trance

          I then led on a metaphoric journey with lots of symbolic interactions as a form of therapy. Then I got her to count herself out. The moment I suggested that she opened eyes she told me she hadn't been in trance!

          Now she obviously had been, so I asked her to tell me what I had talked about. At that point she realized that in fact large chunks were missing. What she had done was to go deep into trance in some parts, and then start to come out of trance before I deepened her again. She was remembering only the times when she was in light trance. The times when she was in deep trance she had no memory of. She finally agreed that she had indeed been in trance.

          The technique for hypnotizing controlling clients is to let them think that they are in control. Telling her that I was going to teach her self hypnosis by-passed all her defences. As she followed along with my instructions she naturally led herself  down into trance. All the same, I was very relieved when she finally did succumb. 

          What do you think?

          I wonder what other hypnotists do to deal with clients who won't give up control? What do you think is the best technique?

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          food aversion

          Food Aversion removed in one session

            Food Aversion

            I had an interesting client this week, and a great result. The client was a young man with food aversion. He could only eat a limited range of foods, and hated trying anything new. The idea of eating something different raised powerful negative feelings and made him feel sick inside.

            He had been like this for as long as he could remember. His mother told him that up to age two or thereabouts he would eat anything, but then one day he refused to eat something and it all got worse from there on. Now he is embarrassed to go out to a restaurant. If he does force himself to eat something new, even if he quietly spits it out, he feels sick for the rest of the meal and usually can't eat anything.

            Indicators of Food Aversion

            He had been dragged round nutritionists and doctors for most of his childhood, and nothing worked. He came to see me because his girlfriend was tired of uncomfortable social situations and thought that trying a hypnotist could not do any harm, and might possibly do some good.

            When I saw him he was embarrassed and nervous, but open to new ideas and willing to give it a go. He described his condition to me and how he was trying to extend the range of things he could eat, with little success. He felt it was the texture in his mouth that he hated, rather than the flavor. I got him to describe in detail how he felt when he was faced with having to eat something different. He was a bit hesitant but said that he felt strong discomfort in his stomach at the thought of it.

            I wanted to get as strong a feeling as possible for me to work with. My wife had been given a present of  halva, a middle eastern dessert. I got a piece of that, and placed it in front of him. It was unlikely that he would have eaten it before and it looked like an unappetizing lump of greyish stodge. I asked him to look at it and then asked him to eat it. He looked panicked and wanting to get away. I used this feeling to get him to explore his own reactions to it.

            Working with his feelings

            I asked him to close his eyes. Then I got him to describe out loud what he was feeling inside. It took quite a bit of encouraging and cajoling to get him start describing what he was feeling. He overcome his reluctance and described his feelings about it first as a big, messy bundle. On further pressing he said it was "darky, purply, gray" in color. Then that it felt light and not heavy. And round like a big round ball. It was made of stringy stuff all tied up together.

            This was perfect material for Metaphor Replacement, so I tried getting him to imagine it shrinking. He couldn't do that. Then I asked him to imagine holding it in his hands, and to bring to mind the image of a potter moulding clay. He could do this, but the original big messy bundle just kept coming back.

            That obviously wasn't working so I switched to the Attribute Reversal. I got him to name the opposite of big, the opposite or messy, the opposite of "darky purply gray", and so on. In a few minutes he had reversed every aspect of his feeling.

            Removing the Food Aversion

            I then tested him and asked what feeling he was getting now when he thought of eating the halva. He said 'Nothing much'.

            This was exactly what I was looking for, so I asked him to open his eyes again. I asked him to look at the halva. I said "what do you feel about eating that now?" He said, 'Nothing'. Then I asked him to take a bite of the halva. To his surprise he picked it and ate a bit. He said he didn't like it, and wouldn't be eating it again, but there was no phobic reaction whatsoever.

            I then called his girlfriend into the office and got him to demonstrate his new ability. He took another bite of the halva - and got a great big hug from the girlfriend.

            An excellent result, no formal hypnosis at all, and the whole thing took less than thirty minutes.

            A few days later I got this:

            Hi David,

            I just want to thank you again for how you helped Bryan. 

            After the session we went out for lunch and he had venison and red wine sausages, and has tried something new every day! Its amazing what you do 🙂

            Many thanks

            It very gratifying to be able to help people get over their problems.  What do you feel when you know that you have helped someone? Or when you can't help?

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            overeating loss of control

            Overeating loss of control

              Overeating loss of control

              Many of my clients come for weight loss. The seem to be as many reasons for overeating as there are people who want to lose weight. This client was obese. She told me that she had  battled with weight all her life. The problem seems to center around issues of control. Right now she feels she is out of control. She just feels compelled to get into the cookie tin, even though she knows she shouldn't.

              I asked her when all this had started. She said that it got worse six months ago. Previous to that she had lost 15 kg. Now she has put it all on again, plus more. I asked her "what happened six months ago?"

              "Six months ago, one of my children dumped their four young children on me because they couldn't cope with them." I asked her why the children's parents couldn't cope. She said "The pair of them are into drugs and alcohol and just can't cope with the children."

              The cause of the overeating

              The result is that my client now feels imposed upon, but cannot do anything about it. She feels that this is so unfair. She brought up her own children and was looking forward to spending the next 10 years as an indulgent grandma to her grandchildren. And now she's back having a full-time job and looking after for young children. She sees no way out of it and no one else is offering to help.

              She is beginning to resent the children and acting grumpy with them. These are classic depression symptoms.  I asked her how she felt about the children. She told me she loves them, but they're not her children. She is done with children. Her own children are all grown up and gone. She had 18 years of motherhood and all the hard work that goes along with that. As soon as they got married she expected to have a lovely retirement, and it hasn't happened.

              Overeating, loss of control and resentment

              She feels at everything she planned for and worked for has gone wrong. The dream was of taking the grandchildren to the park on a Sunday and buying them ice cream, having a lovely time, and then handing them back. But instead she is now feeding and dressing four young children full-time.

              She feels resentful of the children and their parents. She feels helpless. The children can't just be put out on the street. Somehow, she has ended up being responsible for them. She feels that there is nothing she can do about it. No one is helping her. Social Security will not intervene because the children are in a safe environment as far as they are concerned. None of her sisters are lining up to help. It has all spiraled out of control.

              Getting your weight under control

              The classic response to lack of control is either anger or despair. In her case she has just given up.  She eats for comfort. And as soon as she's eaten it, she feels unhappy at putting on weight, gets resentful, and the whole cycle starts again. It's all getting too much for her and she is rapidly sinking into despair.

              I investigated a bit more and confirmed that she has had symptoms of depression on and off most of her life. What was most apparent is that she has Categorical Thinking. People with categorical thinking believe that things should be a certain way, and if they are not then they reject them totally. In this case, her expectation was of an easy relaxed retirement, with the bonus of grand kids to play with. What she actually got was an endless amount of work, dealing with someone else's responsibility, and no way out of it. That triggered her categorical thinking, and so she has just given up. The weight gain is a direct consequence of the feeling of losing control.

              She said that her weight had yo-yo'd up and down throughout her life. I think that a great many other people are similarly affected by loss of control issues.

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              Stress from childhood

              Is your Stress from childhood memories?

                Stress from childhood

                My client was a senior manager in a construction company. He came to me because he was getting more and more stressed. It was affecting his work, and it was beginning to show. He could nut understand why he was getting stressed so badly. His job was high powered, he had been doing it for many years, he was successful and had a great future. He was a big tough guy in an industry full of big tough guys. And yet, something was really getting to him. He not only had stress, he was getting distressed. 

                I started trying to find out exactly what he meant by "stress". He told me there was only one thing worrying him.  He had personally championed bid for a big government contract, and had got it. That contract was going to make the company truckloads of money. If they could pull it off. It was going OK, but as it ramped up, he could see shortages of key components, and of the skilled labour needed. He worried he might not be able to source these. Somehow, this was really winding him up.

                Stress from childhood feelings

                He was not able to identify any specific thing about this contract that was different from any other contract. He had thought about it himself, but could find no explanation. I asked him, "How do you feel about the problems with that contact? How it make you feel inside?" I encouraged him to go inside, to allow the feelings to come out. 

                This immediately brought out a whole lot of unhappy memories. He was not close to his stepfather. His mother left his father and married his father's best friend, my client's stepfather. My client was distressed that he in fact had been named for this other man. The memories caused him to get more distressed and he started crying. His emotions were clearly right at the surface so I decided to go for a metaphor replacement therapy.

                Exploring his feelings with Metaphor Therapy

                I asked him "what are you feeling right now? What is it like?" He said it was like a ball about the size of a fist. A  heavy weight. Black, cold, not smooth. He said it was all screwed up and smashed. It was dark and solid. I got him to think about how he could change that thing. He said that when he could get rid of it he could forget all that stuff.

                I got into think about that ball. He said that he was carrying it around with him. And got him to make it bigger and smaller and to get it to change. It became full of colours and green. Eventually I got it to go away. But he was still upset.

                I explored this remaining feeling. He told me that when he was a child his parents broke up. His mother left his father. She broke off all communication with him. The complete break meant that he was not allowed to see his nana anymore. He loved his grandma, and she was taken away from him. This was what it was all about.

                Being unable to have his nana. This was the source of the feelings of unfairness, of the unhappiness, of the feeling of being cheated and deprived. This was what the uncertainty and loss of control of the contract was about. The feelings about the contract were triggering memories of the same helplessness. Every time he thought about the contract going wrong, it brought up those ancient feelings of despair and loss. The current stress was actually rooted in childhood. 

                Healing his inner child

                So I did inner child work on his feeling about being taken away from his nana. I got him to go back to that little boy. He comforted the boy. I told him to tell that little boy that it was not his fault. "Tell him he did nothing wrong." He changed the boy's feelings and led him out of that place. Then I got him to watch  over the boy as he grew up, and finally reintegrated and reconciled the adult and child.

                I think this is the first time I've done inner child work with a man. But the results were spectacular.  He said "I felt a great weight  lifting off me. That feeling just isn't there anymore."

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                smoking block

                Smoking Block stopping stopping

                  I had an interesting session today. My client was an Indian IT guy, recently arrived in this country. He came from a traditional Indian family. There is a lot of pressure to conform. They don't like him smoking.

                  He wants to stop smoking but can't. He stopped for two years but then started again due to stress in his marriage. Says he smokes because it is always the easy way out of stress. He feels that he's got some sort of mental block. He doesn't want to smoke but keeps doing it. The block was mentioned several times in his description of the problem.

                  Targeting the block

                  Because he mentioned the block so often I decided to use that as my starting point. I asked him to think about going to work, walking up the steps, with his cup of coffee. Not wanting to smoke but feeling that block that stops him stopping. I developed the idea and he then began to talk about the block.

                  He said it was shapeless and limitless. I got him to describe what it looked like and eventually he said it just looks like smoke. I got him to talk about how he felt about that smoke. He said he felt that it was like smoke under a glass jar. It kept changing. I asked him what he wanted to have happen to the smoke. He said he wanted to disappear. I asked "And if that disappears what would that mean for you?".  "I would be able to see through it." "And what could you do then?". "I could manage it, I could get away from that black smoke, and manage to stop."

                  This confirmed the link between "disappearing" and "manage to stop".

                  Clearing the smoking block

                  I then said "and what would have to happen for that smoke to disappear". He hesitated for a long time. I said to him "look around you and see what else is there in that place." To my surprise he said "there is a painting."

                  I developed the painting.  He said "it has flowers. It is beautiful." I suggested to him "this is the source of power for you." "You can use this to get rid of that smoke." I used that resource until he agreed that the smoke had disappeared.

                  When the smoke had disappeared, I deepened him to a deeper level of trance. To be sure, I did an eye catalepsy test. He could not open his eyes.  Then I did the DRAIN metaphor therapy. This had him clear the block so that it drained out the soles of his shoes.

                  Organ talking

                  I then used the TALK TO THE PARTS method. I got him to talk to his lungs and listen to what they said. I got him to talk to his heart and listen to what that said. Then I suggested that he listen to all the other parts of him that are being affected by smoking. He said there were all complaining about his smoking. I got him to apologize to those parts for having betrayed them by smoking.  Then I got him then to ask for their forgiveness. He negotiated all this internally.

                  Then I used direct suggestion and him that he would never smoke again. I told him that he owed it to his organs to live for a long time. It was his job to keep himself healthy. He owed it to those parts to live for a long time.

                  Reinforcing the message

                  I tried for a hand ideomotor signal. I am not sure that I got one. But I suggested that this was his unconscious mind signaling to him. Then I told him to thank his unconscious mind for having made this change and making him a non-smoker. I suggested that he might get a message back of some sort. I am not sure what he got. His fingers did not move as I expected.

                  I then counted out and back to the present. He was clearly still partly in trance. I explained what had happened in terms that he would understand using a metaphor about operating systems. He could barely remember what had happened, except when I prompted him.

                  I was interested to see if his cultural background would have suggested something unusual in terms of his unconscious mind communicating something to him. Apparently not.

                  Interesting session.

                   

                  Open post
                  fear of everything

                  Fear of Everything

                    Fear of Everything

                    I had a really interesting client today. A young woman came in complaining of being anxious all the time, of worrying about things that might go wrong, of distrusting everyone, of never feeling safe except in a group of friends.

                    Her symptoms were getting worse, she was finding more and more things made her uneasy, and she was getting anxious about whether this would ever stop or if she was slowly going mad. She had started losing all her friends and could see no future if this continued. Her anxiety itself was making her more anxious. She was beginning to think that her life was closing down, and that she was losing her mind.

                    Sudden violence

                    She said that she used be the most easy going person around, but that changed about three years ago. I asked her what happened at that time and she described a home invasion by some criminals. They had gone to the wrong house and started to demand things with violence. The client was punched, thrown around, and her father terrorized by these men.

                    She said it was not a problem as she had seen a psychotherapist and although they did not talk about it directly the psychotherapist said that it did not matter and the anxiety come from something else in her childhood.

                    I started talking about the home invasion and immediately she looked distressed and tearful. I told her that is was obvious that she had not gotten over it, and that I thought that was the cause of all her problems.

                    Embodied fear of everything

                    I explained that what she was experiencing was the body's natural reaction to a sudden unexpected trauma. She had never resolved the fear of the home invasion and that fear was now generalizing to more and more aspects of her life. The fear was made worse because it was totally unexpected. Far from having a bad childhood, as the psychotherapist had said, she actually had a lovely childhood, and felt safe and secure and loved right up to the time that the home invasion occurred. The contrast between her life up to that point and the sudden out of control situation made it even worse. She had no personal experience of violence up to that point, and it made her terrified.

                    I believe that PTSD is the result of a situation where the person feels that they have had the rug pulled from under their feet; that everything they ever believed in is no longer true; nothing can be relied on; that the world is suddenly seen as a dangerous place. This woman had all of these things and had not been properly counselled as to how to deal with it.

                    Relieving the fear of everything

                    I got her to relax, and to think back to the home invasion. She immediately got the feeling of anxiety. I asked her to locate it in her body. Then I got her to turn the feeling into an object, to describe that object in ever increasing detail. Eventually I had her move the object out into her hand and asked her how it seemed now. She replied that it was smaller and not important now. She said she wanted to throw it far away so it couldn't come back.

                    I got her to do that. Then I brought her back to the present and asked how she felt now. She that all the anxiety had gone, and she was quite looking forward to going out with her friends that night instead of dreading it. As far as I could tell all the problems had disappeared completely.

                    I thought this case was particularly interesting because it showed clearly how one incident can then expand to dominate the client's life. It also shows that the theories about the mammalian response to life threatening events is correct. 

                    Open post
                    smoking my time

                    Smoking Stress and My Time

                      SMOKING AND MY TIME

                      Smoking is often claimed to be addictive, more addictive than heroin. But a moment's thought will bring up any number of examples of people who have smoked for decades and then gave up overnight. Or of people who can smoke a whole pack at the weekend and never think of a cigarette again during the week. Or who can smoke like chimneys on holiday and then stop completely until the following year. So smoking cannot just be a simple substance addiction.

                      The reasons why people smoke are as different as the people themselves. One reason that I come across again and again is that smoking is 'my time'.

                      'My Time' is how smokers describe the period after all the kids have been put to bed, or all the customers have been dealt with. It is a time to withdraw from the demands of others. A time to satisfy yourself, to have a break and chill out with your cigarette. They can put up with anything as long as they know that they can have some time to themselves later. Over many years they have come to associate having personal time with having a smoke. They now think that it is the cigarette that is making them feel better. In fact the cigarette is just incidental, the benefit is coming from the break, not the cigarette.

                      Smoking and addiction

                      This type of smoker has very little 'addiction' to tobacco. What they do have is a strong association between smoking and getting away from the incessant demands and responsibilities for others. This type of smoker is actually quite easy to get to stop smoking. Essentially all you have to do is to assure them that they are still entitled to their own quiet time, but to link this to doing something else. The smoking habit will go into extinction quite quickly, since it was never about nicotine in the first place.

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