"WINNER"
"R" was working through lifelong addictions when I met with her the first time. She was charming and ready to leave 40 years of bad habits behind. The last one she needed to conquer was smoking. It had impacted her health, her fitness, and was threatening her life with COPD and the inability to walk without becoming breathless. She was post heart attack with a chronic cough. She described her skin as leathery. It was time to quit.
After all she'd accomplished and all the therapy she'd experienced, R was very enthusiastic about trying Hypnotherapy to quit smoking. I told her it would take 6 sessions and she was fine with that. Things were moving along. Her skin was glowing and her eyes were bright. She was juicing in the morning and had gone from a pack and a half a day down to 3 cigarettes a day with one session remaining when trouble struck. R encountered several troubling and very stressful situations in her life and was forced to cancel our sessions 3 weeks in a row. Through that time, she struggled with managing her cravings. Cigarettes were her "go to" for stress, but even though she knew that the nicotine always made a stressful situation a little worse, her manifestation of stress was to grab a cigarette. I was delighted when she texted, "I am ready to get back on track".
We sat down in her home for this session and were just chatting when a knock came at her door. A "friend" shouted, "Hey! You want to go out for a smoke?" I opened the door and said, "No thank you". We laughed and moved into our session. This time we talked about how to handle those "friendly" invitations and spent time talking about and practicing other diversions to manage stress.
At the end of our session, R told me, "It was different this time". She handed me her pack of cigarettes and told me she was done with smoking!
Two days later, I received this text from her:
"Good Morning Bev! I hope everything is well your way....and guess who is nicotine free! It has been 48 hours and I'm not craving! It's really remarkable. By now, normally, the cravings would be so intense I would have caved!! I can't thank you enough, Bev. You have changed my life!! I'm a walking miracle!! Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you!!"
R remains nicotine free. She refers to herself as a "Winner"! And she most definitely is!