By Harald Eberson
Quite a while ago, a girlfriend of mine asked if I could help her quit smoking. First I said that I was not so experienced in relieving or stopping addictions, but it would be worth that we try several NLP techniques, like the Swish, Compulsion Blow Out, or even EFT, before trying traditional medical therapies/medications.
I tried several of the former known basic and more advanced NLP techniques, but none seemed to be very effective. Some stopped her smoking just for a few hours but her smoking habit didn’t resolve effectively. The habit seemed to return fast in certain situations.
So I started asking her several questions about her smoking, like when she started smoking, how she smoked, and many more different questions, trying to find out her stategy and what kind of associations she had with smoing. I knew that smoking cigarettes puts people in a kind of physical and emotional peaceful state when they desire and it’s often associated with good feelings or thoughts.
She always used to start smoking after a stressful situation at work or at home. So her strategy started by being in a stressful situation/environment (Kinesthetic internal) where she started negative self-talk (Auditory internal) telling herself that this situation was difficult to cope for her. In these moments, she needed a cigarette badly. After self-talk, she took a cigarette, which made her feel quite at ease, especially in her stomach (feeling of fullness, Kinesthetic internal). Then she told herself that it’s okay now (Ad). In short, this seemed to be her smoking strategy. Then I started reproducing this situation in our session and while listening, I noticed that she used a lot of kinesthetic representations and associated good kinesthetic feelings with smoking. I knew that I or she couldn’t always take away stressful work situations, but we could preferably try to connect, associate really bad feelings (Kinesthetic) with her smoking. So at least try to change her smoking strategy.
Some of the other NLP techniques I’d tried on her, which were more visual, didn’t work very well.
Then I started thinking, how Kinesthetic-oriented persons can use a combination of a simple physical anchor/association technique, which everyone can use by him or herself at home. I believe the simplest techniques are the most efficient ones. Because the more complex a technique, the more the person becomes disinterested or distracted by the process itself than the feelings associated with it. Long, difficult techniques are more favorable for Auditory digital oriented people, not for kinesthetic-oriented persons.
Here’s what we did:
1. I asked her how badly she wanted to quit smoking. She answered me with
ease, a little bit disinterested, yes, she really wanted to. Then I elicited
a state in her memory where she felt very stressed and felt the need of
a cigarette at this moment. We completed the strategy as what she does normally
and I let her smoke one cigarette.
2. After this, I asked her several times how badly and seriously she really
wanted to stop smoking (while raising my voice to a commanding tone). Again
she said she really wanted to stop, whatever it took. So it seemed I achieved
some leverage compared to the first statement for stopping smoking.
3. We again elicited the previous stressed state, but at the end of the
strategy, when she started smoking, I commanded her to stand up and turn
around in a circle while she smoked, noticing what happened to her stomach.
4. She hesitated, but I repeated the command.
5. She started turning in circles a couple of times, fast, which was of
course very unpleasant, especially to her stomach.
6. A few moments later after resting, I asked her, "How badly do you
really want to smoke?" And had her light up a new cigarette while spinning
around in a circle.
7. This exercise was repeated 5 times until she almost got sick from turning
around while smoking, which of course, was a negative kinesthetic anchor
to smoking.
8. After the session, which lasted nearly an hour, I told her if she really
felt like smoking to repeat the exercise.
9. I asked her to visit me a few weeks later. She reported that it really
did help. To test her, I took a cigarette from my desk drawer and asked
her to smoke it. By her facial expression, I could tell she didn’t even
like the sight of it; just the sight of the cigarette made her feel miserable.
10. Later I asked her to repeat this exercise or another one we worked on
whenever she felt the urge to smoke.