I Take a Deep Breath.

So the wanting to stop smoking is a by me, for me. In the past it’s always been tried for the sake of others. That wasn’t wrong it was simply perhaps not heart felt enough. I have tried gums and patches. Herbal cigarette substitutes and vapes not like the real thing and I crave the real thing. It was a deep need that isn’t really rational when, as a well informed and intelligent woman, I know the harm it can do to my body and to others around me. I can visualise the money going up in smoke but that makes no difference to the drive to smoke. I wanted a quick fix, little effort required. Find a hypnotist in the hope and expectation that with a seeming magic wand and an ‘abra cadabra’ they would make that drive disappear. Vanish in the proverbial puff of smoke! An ‘on stage’ like hypnotic implanted suggestion to be averse to cigarettes. A Derran Brown type that would click their fingers and ‘ta dah’ it’s gone. I’m sure there are those around, a friend of mine did that decades ago. One session and a tape to reinforce that if needed.

It took a lot of courage to even dial the number for the researched and chosen Hypnotherapist. Even more to accept an appointment, then, at the appointed time, to climb the stairs to his office. I didn’t know what to expect but I walked in and felt at ease, most of me wanted to be there. To make changes to how I was. The man I met was calm and friendly, non clinical and although I know they are likely to develop skills to put people at ease this was all so comfortable. With little prompting I began setting out the where’s of when I started smoking. Accessing those known ‘facts’ of my life. He talked me through the process and took me on my first journey to meeting me. I recall revisiting that 8 year old who made a choice with what she thought she knew. Brought to see an alternative of how life would look without the smoking. Though I don’t recall all the session, I walked out of there and felt invincible. This was it, I was no longer going to be a smoker. No urge to light up, buoyant in step. That evening no drive to smoke, no antsy feeling. He did it. I seemed to have got what I wanted.

The next morning I was in floods of tears. Totally bewildered about what was happening to me. That was scary. I was awash in emotion that seemingly had no focus. I was just adrift in an ocean of nothing that I could, nor still can, give words to. I called Chris, the hypnotherapist, and asked what was all this about. He said that in all likelihood there was a lot more to the need to smoke than I had ever assumed. That it wasn’t simply a ‘habit’ to be changed. This was my next choice, and it was a no brainer. I was going to peep into the crack and see what was there. An appointment was made for a week later and in the intervening days see what arose.

I lit up a cigarette after the phone call, it’s a soother, and a deeply rooted identifier, and although it was a key to suppression it was also going to be a key to opening too. Life’s full of paradoxes. I seemingly knew I was going to radically change and that was going to rock the foundations of my relationships. Relationships with me and with those around me. As both me, and they, were going to have to get used to the shifts, it could make the transitions easier if somethings were obviously the same.

Perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t foresee the pain that this was going to bring. Though with the seeing that I now have, deep within it was known. I was more than ready to face the intensity of feeling that meeting my past would raise, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the invitation, and I wouldn’t have done it. I would have been able to continue in a denial that anything had ever been other than I knew on the surface.

So though I didn’t initially get what I wanted, which was to stop smoking, I got what I innately needed. A crack in the shell, a ladder into the void. Wings to lift me up.

So what arose in those intervening days will be in my next post, which, now I’ve found the will to write of my experiences again, shouldn’t be as long to wait for.