The Psychology of smokers:
And what it really takes to quit:

There are essentially 2 types of smokers.

One type is the person that smokes purely for pleasure or fun, and do so because they enjoy(ed) doing daring activities as a teen, etc.


This type of smoker will often find it not too difficult to quit the cigarette as long as they have some sort of motivation. They could drop it just as easily as they started, from one day to the next.

Then there is the other type of smoker, who at the time when they were a teen, possibly thought that they were smoking for the same reason as the above, but really they started the habit because they were seeking independence.
Whether it would have been from their parents, teachers or the world, they were seeking to make a statement, “I am my own person now, and I can act as I wish”.


What happens with this type of smoker is that they do end up feeling this way, as in super independent (or 'cool').
That is until; they lose that status of independence to the cigarette. That is the stage when the ciggy begins to control their life and they know that, when they cannot do anything or go anywhere without the cigarette, otherwise they will go berserk (you will know that if you have ever been around a smoker who is out of smokes!).

So the smoker has gone from trying to gain their own independence from other people to now becoming totally dependent on cigarettes instead.

So, what do they do? They try to quit smoking because it feels horrible, but they can’t can they, because ‘smokers’ are who they are, after all it was smoking that made them independent.

And the biggest problem of all is that they are not aware that they are seeking independence. All they know is that every time somebody (especially a parent/authority figure) remotely suggests that they quit smoking they get agitated and reject it (and smoke even more).

The beauty of this understanding is that as soon as they can get into the awareness, that they are in truth seeking to feel a sense of self and to experience what they used to call as a teen growing up, or independence, then quitting smoking becomes easy. In fact they wouldn’t even need to bother much with quitting it would happen almost naturally.
It has also been common for me to hear from individuals who did this process (it usually takes about 3 weeks) that they hardly had any cravings after quitting (which makes sense since a large part of the cravings are the psychological subjection to the cigarette and once they have made the decision to gain REAL independence they are not subjected to the cigarette anymore).

For many people the issue they need help most with in quitting, is to reconnect with a positive sense of self and hence feel an empowerment to do what they really would like to do in life with a true sense of freedom.

Having worked successfully in the past with a number of smokers, I have found that using different techniques to stop cigarette smoking becomes a lot easier when....

1.
If the smoker is in an environment around where people allow them their space and they do not feel pressured to quit.
Therefore, I would often suggest that the one trying to quit make a statement to people in their environment, saying that ‘they may be quitting smoking sometime in a few weeks’ and to request of people not to make an issue of it in any way.
2.
As mentioned above. To have the main goal in this process to gain independence and freedom in life and let the smoking be a by the way thing.
The point is, If you are not aiming to quit then there is no need for resistance at all.
On my part, I don’t mind if a smoker carries on smoking as long as they have freedom to experience life the way every person desires to...which is in a full-choice way.

P.S I myself used to be a smoker and doing this process worked for me where no other system worked (including Allen Carr’s easy way). BTW, I can count on one hand the amount of times I craved a cigarette since then.

Please feel free to contact me via email at MenachemSchloss1@gmail.com

Kind regards,
Menachem Schloss
NLP Therapist &
Educational Consultant