Hypnotherapy in Bristol, London and Taunton to quit smoking
The right type of hypnosis is the best way to quit smoking. (How best to quit smoking with hypnosis.) Yet the power of hypnosis has led to claims which are simply false. You've probably seen the adverts I mean: "Stop smoking in a single hour with hypnosis! - 85% success rate - guaranteed!"
Few such adverts set out to deceive; most, I think, are self-deception by the advertiser. But all are seriously misleading.
With smoking, the thing that counts is when you quit PERMANENTLY. The figure the NHS use to count success is the 12-month success rate. The fact is that, indeed, immediately after a single one-hour hypnosis session, 85% quit. But within a year easily 60% - 70% or more of those will have relapsed.
Yes, hypnotherapy is the best way to quit. New Scientist magazine reported a study-of-studies of 10,000 smokers which showed 12-month success to be better with hypnosis than anything else. Hypnosis websites quote this endlessly, but rarely tell you the success rate New Scientist reports: only 30%. How is 30% "the best" way to quit? - simple, all the other methods (including patchs) are worse! [Zyban is similar.]
Twelve-month success averaged 30%, but look at the range of the results. Some achieved a mere 4%, others an excellent 85%. So the "85% success" is real and is attainable. But that is not with single-session one-hour treatments. It comes only with multi-session approaches. The lesson of the New Scientist article is that you have to choose the right type of hypnosis - and this is always multi-session hypnosis. Stop-smoking treatments which work long-term are highly customised to you as an individual smoker, and typically take three or more sessions. This does work well. (How best to quit smoking with hypnosis.)
But, you tell me, the adverts for "quit in a single one-hour session" have research to back them up. Ah - no. They have claims of research. I religiously track down such claims and I have never found one single one which was true.
And that "guarantee"? Well, that's honest enough. All hypnotists I know who offer a money-back guarantee are real and sincere. But they know that few lapsed smokers bother to claim it. A smoker who lapses is a smoker who wants to smoke, not quit. Dr Jeckyll attends the quit smoking session, but Mr Hyde starts to smoke again. And Mr Hyde just can't be bothered to claim the guarantee. Also, often the guarantee only runs for a short period, normally three months, or requires you to attend a booster session or go back to the clinic to be tested on a carbon monoxide analyser. Few people can be bothered.
Of course, specific individual single-session hypnosis practitioners may well do better than 30% with a single session - this figure is an average. But not much better. One of Britain's leading single-session smoking cessation practitioners, the founder of a leading hypnosis training college and an excellent therapist for whom I have a high regard, claims in public no less than a 90% success rate. Yet in a private email he told me that the 90% applied at 2 months, but not at 6 months and "especially not at a year - it's much more likely to be 40% by then."
Now in the quit-smoking world, even 40% 12-month success is excellent - and is indeed much better than almost any other method of quitting. There is one non-hypnosis clinic which does equally well, and that is the Allen Carr method. (In my view Carr has integrity and I trust his research results.) Reading between the lines on his website, I rather guess that his success rate with clients off the street is similar to 40%. The success rates from nicotine patches and nicotine gum after a year can be a mere 10% - 15%.
Hypnosis is indeed impressive - to achieve even 40% after a single session is outstanding: the Alan Carr method takes almost 6 hours. It can feel just miraculous. But it's a lottery, and your odds are on average, according to the research, three to one against.
If, as a smoker, you wish to take a gamble that you can quit smoking through a standardised, one-size-fits-all treatment in which you are largely passive, then feel free to enter that lottery, and go to another therapist with my full blessings. You will lie back passively for one session, be hypnotised, and probably be astonished by the effortless short-term results. You have on average a 30% chance of permanent success. If you fail, it will on average be three years before you try again, with your health suffering on every day. You are unlikely to claim on any guarantee offered.
I have investigated quit-smoking in depth, and I am clear that the idea that hypnosis can "make" you quit in a single session is an urban myth. Those hypnotherapists who believe it are, in my view, simply creaming off the 30% who quit easily.
The plain fact is that some smokers quit easily and some don't. That's life. Some smokers hate smoking, while some depend on it as a crutch to deal with serious emotional conflicts. The first will quit permanently in one session, the second mayby not in ten.
Smoking is an addiction like any other. You would not expect addiction to cocaine, gambling or the internet to gauranteeably vanish in one session, and no more will smoking. The people who quit easily with hypnosis are the people who would have quit easily without it.
So I treat smoking as an issue like any other issue. Very many people quit in two or three sessions. Others take longer. However long you take with your unique situation, this is still the best and quickest way for you to quit smoking - better than any other method. (Actually, that's not quite true. Having a heart attack makes people stop smoking instantly. But given the choice, most people prefer hypnosis to a heart attack.)
If you are ready to make the sincere effort that it takes to have the best chance to break free from smoking FOREVER, call me now on 0845-351-0604. Leave a message (24 hours) and I'll call you back.
See here for fees, schedule, and money-back assurance for the first session, here for what makes the type of brief therapy and hypnosis which I do so effective.
"Keep smiling, nobody's going to die."
Gung-ho sign-off in a letter to Benson and Hedges Cigarettes' brand manager Lesley Stears, from advertising agency executive Simon North,
5 September 1995.
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To arrange an appointment, or for more information, ring and speak to me direct. Clinics for hypnotherapy & counselling in Clifton, Bristol, Avon BS9 1JE; Portobello Rd, London W11 3DL; and in Taunton, Somerset, TA2 7BZ
0845 351 0604
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