Smoking is an Identity, Not Just a Habit

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website, Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans each year, with more than 41,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke.1 In addition, smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $300 billion a year, including nearly $170 billion in direct medical care for adults and $156 billion in lost productivity.12

In 2016, an estimated 15.5% (37.8 million) of U.S. adults were current* cigarette smokers. Of these, 76.1% smoked every day.3

Many people mistakenly think that they smoke because they lack willpower or discipline. Or they label themselves as a badass because they smoke despite knowing the negative effects it has on their health. Other people think that if they could only find the right program or the right methodology or the right alternative substance, they could quit. Would you be surprised if I told you that the opposite is true. Willpower has nothing to do with whether or not a person smokes; willpower is a weak force relative to the pull of the imagination which craves a cigarette. The effectiveness of discipline also has less to do with one’s moral character than with a person’s ability to imagine themselves happily doing what they say they want to do. Lastly, replacing one addictive habit with a different addictive habit is not a recipe for long term success, regardless of whether the new addiction is healthy or not.

Becoming a non-smoker is about embracing a new identity as a non-smoker which includes learning how to change the focus of your mind so that you focus only on what supports your decision to be non-smoker, learning how to change your physical body so that your body craves being smoke-free instead of full of toxins and chemicals, and learning how to change your self-talk so that everything you say to yourself and others reinforces your new identity as a non-smoker for life.

In this article, you’re going to learn how to change your smoking identity through three simple steps that work regardless of how long you’ve smoked or how much you currently smoke or have ever smoked; regardless of your gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or any other quality or characteristic. Smokers everywhere smoke because they’ve learned to identify as smokers. This happened over time as a result of multiple exposures to cigarettes and smoking culture. There is a lot of emotion associated with smoking: cigarettes can be perceived as our friends in certain stressful situations, they can be our social buffer when going out, or they can be our shoulder to cry on when we are feeling sad. But just as easily as smoking can become one’ss identity, adopting the identity of a non-smoker can be just as easy using the three simple steps in this article.

Why Do You Smoke

When clients first contact us about our Smoking Cessation Program, we ask them about their reasons for smoking in order to understand what smoking means to them and how smoking has become part of their identity. Common answers we’ve received from clients when asked Why do you smoke? include:

I smoke to relax when I’m stressed.

I smoke to socialize when my friends and I hang out.

I smoke because I’m addicted.

I smoke when I’m out drinking.

I smoke because I like cigarettes with my coffee.

I smoke because it pisses off my spouse. (This is an actual response by the way!)

I smoke because I actually like it.

I smoke because it’s part of my day.

I smoke because it’s the last rebel part of me that I have left.

I smoke because I feel like failure.

I smoke because it’s the only way I can take a break at work.

I smoke because it’s easy and I always know I’ll feel better.

I smoke because I’ve always smoked

Every single one of these responses, at its core, involves a connection with self and with those others who form our extended sense of self: family members, friends, colleagues, and our social network. Smoking is not something that exists outside of ourselves and that can be plucked out magically with a few well placed suggestions. (At least not permanently.) When we meet with clients for the first time, we spend quite a bit of time during the Initial Assessment understanding clients motivations for smoking and identifying any potential secondary gains from remaining a smoker. Specifically, a secondary gain is a conscious or subconscious belief that would undermine a person’s long-term ability change. An example of a secondary gain is the belief that the only way a person would be able to get a break during the workday is by taking a smoke break. Clearly, the potential of losing their ability to take a workday break is a belief which would undermine that person’s ability to maintain their identity as a nonsmoker for long.

Does Hypnosis Work to Quit Smoking?

My client Brian*

Brian smoked as a means of escape and to experience a sense certainty and security that he believed he could not otherwise achieve through other activities. He turned to smoking primarily because of his fear about not being able to financially support himself and his family. Since he believed he had no ability to improve his financial quality of life and he had a pervasive fear that he would have to work forever, he desperately sought certainty and relief from worry which, for Brian, was achieved with the feeling of relief he experienced when smoking. If we could have glimpsed inside Brian’s mind, we would have seen this thought flash across his mind: When I smoke, I know what I will feel. Smoking is the one thing I can control. Smoking gives me certainty and comfort. I’m sure that as you read those words, you were probably able to recall a time when you felt similarly.
What Brian wasn’t initially aware of was that the very thing most important to him, his two daughters, would be crushed if they lost their Dad, regardless of how awesome their financial quality of life was. Because of his need for security, Brian had created a false dichotomy that Brian the smoker and Brian the family man were two different and unrelated people.
He had created a fictitious Brian that neededa to smoke in order to be able to support his family, not be cranky at work, and not be cranky at home. It was his identity. It was how he saw the world around him and he embraced this perception so strongly that it eventually became his reality.
Over the course of three sessions, Brian did connect the dots and discover that his trigger to smoke was actually the feeling of uncertainty about his family’s financial situation. His need for certainty stemmed from childhood: unpredictable parents who constantly told him he would never amount to anything and specifically his father whose erratic behavior fueled his desperate need for certainty as an adult.
At the second session, Brian realized that since childhood, he had been constantly asking himself, How will I ever amount to anything in this day and age?
The uncertainty he perceived in his life as a child sparked feelings of anxiety and stress which he then sought to erase by picking up his first cigarette at 14 years old. He experienced solace through smoking. Thus began Brian’s association of solace with smoking whenever he felt uncertain or fearful about things. This new identity was born the day he picked up his first cigarette and was reinforced every subsequent time he lit up. This is how the brain wires neural pathways together.
I feel fearful so I smoke.
I’m not sure how I will pay for my kids college or how I will put food on the table, so I smoke.
Pretty soon anything that caused him stress would trigger him to smoke.
Does this sound familiar? Have you found a certain level of certainty in the face of stress and anxiety by lighting up a cigarette? Do you sometimes feel lost and confused but take solace in the fact that you will feel better if you have a cigarette?
Does your relationship with cigarettes get reinforced on a daily basis because you always know that smoking is one of the few things in life that you know will give you the outcome you desire?

How to Let Go of Your Identity as a Smoker

The first step in letting go of your identity as a smoker and becoming a nonsmoker for good is to disassociate from those memories, words and feelings you have been used to as a smoker and associate into new memories, words and feelings that support and reinforce your identity as a nonsmoker. Here’s how to do that.

See, Say, Feel

As we go through life, we process and make sense of the world around us primarily through the words we Say to ourselves, the images we See in our mind, and the physical sensations we Feel through our bodies.See, Say, Feel. We call this trifecta of experience a State and it is often referred to as Mental State, Emotional State or Physical State. Every experience we have in life generates different mental, emotional and physical states and it is these states that result in associations of things, people, places, and activities with specific mental, emotional, and physical states. For example, if the only time you and your family were ever together in a calm and civil manner was at the dinner table, then you may probably associate dinnertime, and even eating in general, with happy times. This association of food and eating with happiness might then translate into overeating, especially during sit down meals, which can be a big reason why you might struggle with your weight. With that in mind, I’m sure you can think of infinite examples such as memories of ice cream at the beach being associated with the freedom of summer and childlike happiness, etc. Now, let’s break down Brian’s associations into the See, Say, Feel that created his powerful association of smoking with a sense of certainty.

Brian’s Association with Smoking

Briana’s mind, the part of his brain concerned with survival (i.e. not his rational, logical brain) had created false images of failure in his adult life as a result of things he had heard in childhood. Brian constantly imagined and saw his present day family struggling, his kids not being able to afford going to school, etc. These painful images are what BrianSees and they lay the groundwork for the powerful feeling of uncertainty that follows.

Brian would begin to Say to himself, Why are you so stupid? Why can’t you figure this out? Once again, these words came to him as part of his programming from childhood and every time these phrases were repeated in his head, they elicited an increasingly stronger negative stress response as immediately, because of those thoughts, his brain began to release stress chemicals (e.g. adrenaline, cortisol, etc.).

Now Brian’s body Feels stressed because of the chemical cocktail flowing through his system and he experiences uncertainty as a powerful and uncomfortable physical sensation. In Brian’s case, he experienced uncertainty as a choking sensation in his throat, a tightness in his chest, and a lightheadedness and sense of confusion, or mental fog.

As an antidote to this feeling of uncertainty, Brian would reach for a cigarette because, to him, smoking had been integrated into his identity as the only option to counteract stress. Brian would step away from the physical location where he was feeling stressed and uncertain in order to smoke, his attention would become diverted from the problem as he pulled out his cigarette pack, pulled out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, snap the lighter and light the cigarette. Then, the choking sensation in his throat would relax as he took the first long drag of his cigarette and the tightness in his chest would release as he breathed in deeply. As the chemicals absorbed into his system, the sense of confusion and mental fog would dissipate and Brian would feel better.

This is super important, so I’ll say it again.

Sees: Failure at work. Low sales. No Money. Father saying he’ll never amount to anything. Becoming poor like he was in his childhood. His own family struggling.

Says: Self-defeating stuff that is full of judgement. Why can’t you do this? What’s wrong with you?

Feels: Tension in his body from uncertainty. Brian felt it in his throat and chest as a tightness.

His old answer to this Sees, Says, Feels was to smoke. His identity had become synonymous with worry despite the fact that his life was rich with passion for his work, family and life as a whole. And over the course of his lifetime, he had learned to associate smoking with the antidote to that worry. It had became a powerful coping mechanism and a part of his identity through repetition.

The Associative Process

That’s the associative process in action. Through repetition conducted in an elevated, heightened emotional state, a simple activity like smoking or eating or nail biting can become a stubborn, hard to overcome neural program established in the mind.

In Brian’s case, his programming was: If I feel uncertain (i.e. heightened emotional state), then I will smoke (i.e. repetitive action) and then I will feel certain once again (i.e. reward).

This is how they program computers and artificial intelligence machines and this is also how we unwittingly program ourselves. In fact, if you heighten the emotional state sufficiently, you can install a neural program in an instant with zero repetition. That’s usually how phobias are created.

Neural programs like Brian’s smoking program can be so powerful that they leave us feeling as though we have no say in the matter and we become slaves to our habits and the action/reward cycle described above.

We begin to feel like Pavlov’s dogs who salivated uncontrollably at the sound of the dinner bell, regardless of whether food was being presented or not.

Likewise, in much of our lives, we too have been conditioned and programmed to react and follow our programming automatically because it’s familiar and it gives us the reward we are used to.

But just like negative neural programs are established through the associative process, they can be disestablished through the same associative process, only in reverse. Here’s how to do this for yourself.

Kill Your Bad Habits: The Associative Process in Reverse

When becoming a nonsmoker, the first step is imagining highly charged negative emotional images (usually negative consequences of continuing to smoke), feeling the negative emotion strongly, and then associating those negative emotions with your identity as a smoker in such a powerful way that smoking no longer has the same appeal that it once had.

  1. Take a deep breath through your nostrils. Inhale focusing on drawing the air into your belly and not the upper chest or shoulders. Hold the breath for 3 seconds. Then exhale through your relaxed mouth and let your eyes close down simultaneously.
  2. Take a moment now to let your focus shift onto the first negative consequence of continuing to smoke, in the past, present, or the future. Something that makes you feel really sad or angry.
  3. As the See or the Say or the Feel begins to develop, allow yourself to make the details more refined, more realistic, and more intense.Hear yourself criticize what you did or didn’t do more loudly. Or maybe feel more of the pain as if it’s going on right now in your life, all over again. Make the colors in the scene more intense. Maybe even that other person’s face or comments get more realistic.
  4. Notice the changes in your own body as you begin to experience the brain’s delivery of the chemicals that support the thoughts and images in your mind.Where in your body do you feel the emotions the strongest?What do those sensations feel like?Which element is more powerful for you?The See, the Say, or the Feel?
  5. Open your eyes, take a drink of water, and do it again. Only this time more intense.Do this at least 5 times with each time more vivid, more intense than the last time with the aim being to feel so strongly that you have a physical reaction to the feelings, like crying or shaking, etc.
  6. Do this until you feel disgusted at the mere thought of being a smoker.

The next step is to imagine highly charged positive emotional images (usually positive, happy events from your life), feeling the positive emotions strongly, and then associating those positive emotions with your identity as a nonsmoker.

  1. Take a deep breath through your nostrils. Inhale focusing on drawing the air into your belly and not the upper chest or shoulders. Hold the breath for 3 seconds. Then exhale through your relaxed mouth and let your eyes close down simultaneously.
  2. Take a moment now to let your focus shift onto a positive, confident, or content thought or version of yourself from the past. See yourself in this moment where you accomplished or achieved something awesome.It doesn’t have to be something earth shattering; it could just be a deck you are proud of building or a car you are proud of fixing or an event you are proud of planning. It would also just be a moment of pure unadulterated happiness. Or perhaps an interaction you really enjoyed with someone else. Anything that makes you really happy or confident.
  3. As the See or the Say or the Feel begins to develop, allow yourself to make the details more refined, more realistic, and more intense. Hear yourself resoundingly Say how much you are enjoying this moment. See the details of the scene, the time of the day, the environment, the expression on your face, the person you may or may not be with. Make the colors in the scene more vibrant.
  4. Notice the changes you Feel in your own body as you begin to experience the brain’s delivery of the uplifting chemicals that support these positive thoughts and images in your mind. Where do you feel these positive feelings the strongest? What do these sensations feel like? Which element is more powerful for you? The See, the Say, or the Feel?
  5. Now, tie into this moment to a physical action that you could almost anywhere, anyplace (like a hand clap, a deep breath, a smile on your face, or simply bringing your index finger and thumb together…the choice here will depend on what you feel comfortable doing and your own imagination) by performing this simply physical action while imagining the highly charged emotional scene vividly and in great detail.
  6. Open your eyes, take a drink of water, and do it again. Only this time more intense. Do this at least 5 times with each time more vivid, more intense than the last time with the aim being to feel so strongly that you have a physical reaction to the feelings, like smiling or laughing or standing up straighter, etc.
  7. Next, imagine yourself in the future as a nonsmoker, doing nonsmoker things, and simultaneously perform that simple action which you have just strongly associated with a positive, uplifting feeling. Imagine yourself as a nonsmoker in every way you can imagine and continue to fire that anchor (the physical action you selected earlier is called an anchor it allows you to instantaneously create a positive, desirable feeling inside yourself).I’m willing to bet the feelings of being a nonsmoker feel pretty good, don’t they and they will get stronger and stronger the more often that you fire that anchor and imagine that future you.

Soon, you will how the more resourceful feelings become stronger and stronger and develop faster and faster as you wash, rinse, repeat. Remember, simple and repeatable messaging to the brain is best.

Troubleshooting

Some items to consider when troubleshooting this process.

CONCERN: I can’t focus!

RESPONSE: This more often than not a result of environmental stimuli rather than an inability to focus. In the beginning, set yourself up for success by creating a helpful environment with no distractions. Reprogramming is best done without other inputs. You want to direct focus and attention to the senses you want to feel and not trying to test yourself to see if you manage distractions as well as the focused experience. Play smart, not hard!

CONCERN: I can’t feel anything!

RESPONSE: Nearly all people have the ability to feel. It is actually how humans reinforce their thoughts. Very few conditions exist where a person has the connections between feeling and thoughts stunted or disconnected. These conditions are rare and do not fall in the scope of our practice. When a client says, I can’t feel! what they are usually saying is that I haven’t given myself enough time to fully experience the emotion (usually due to impatience). Allow yourself more time in the experience. Create more details. Adjust stuff, move the feeling around. Move your attention around inside your body. With time, you will become aware. Here’s where repetition is very helpful.

CONCERN: I can’t visualize!

RESPONSE: If you have eyeballs, you can visualize. It may not be someone’s primary sensory input (although most people are primarily visual), but unless you were born blind, you have the capacity to visualize. For those that are adamant about their limitation (usually impatience exists in these cases as well), focus on an image in your current surroundings. Describe the details of that image to yourself. Intensely focus on all elements of an object in the room. Now close your eyes and recreate that image in your own mind. If you can’t remember, open your eyes, focus, and repeat the process. It’s exactly like memorizing with flash cards.

CONCERN: I don’t have anything positive in my life to reference for the positive part!

RESPONSE: Everyone has something positive in their life that they can reference and if you feel that you cannot find anything, start really small and work your way up. Did you brush your teeth today? A lot of people don’t brush their teeth so give yourself a pat on the back for doing that! Have you ever finished an assignment or project and felt proud of yourself (even if it was small)? Give yourself a virtual high five! This a valid reason to be proud of yourself. Stop comparing yourself to others. If you do, you will never find a reason to feel good about yourself because there will always be someone smarter than you, funnier than you, more accomplished than you, etc. Imagine that you are in a vacuum and nobody else’s accomplishments or life experiences matter and the only references you are allowed to consider are the positive things, events, relationships, etc. in your life alone. Find every single one of them and write them down. Aim for at least twenty. Once you have twenty positive references, then do the exercise again!

Conclusion

There you have it! That’s how simple it is! Out with old programming through negative association and in with new programming through positive association. Go out there and create your new identity using these three simple elements and if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time, send me a message. I would love to help! You can do this!

Want to quit smoking for good?

It’s time to change your identity from a smoker to a non-smoker. If you need some help, call (571) 295-7371 to schedule your Free 15-Minute Consultation with a provider, or click the link below.

Ready to take the first step?

Schedule a free, 30-minute virtual consultation with our Founder and CEO, Monica Marusceac, MBA, BCH

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