There is an ever-increasing number of studies that demonstrate hypnosis to be an effective—in fact probably the most effective—approach to getting rid of a smoking habit. Research in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia, have shown that hypnosis offers a fast, permanent, and relatively inexpensive way to stop smoking.

There are many ways that hypnosis works for stopping smoking.

First, there is the physical problem. Nicotine is an addictive substance. Over time, smokers develop physical dependence. When they stop smoking, they experience physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms—irritability, headaches, trouble focusing, and craving, among other things. The period of withdrawal is short but intense.

Hypnosis blocks withdrawal symptoms. In a trance state, you do not experience negative feelings or sensations. You are pleasantly relaxed and calm. As well, one of the things that a competent hypnotist like Gold Coast’s Greg Thompson will teach you is how to put yourself into a trance. You will have learned a new skill that you will be able to use in all types of situations.

Smoking is also a habit. It is a conditioned response. Your mind and body have learned to respond to any number of situations and feelings by lighting up. Waiting for dinner? Light up. Just finished dinner? Have a cigarette. Upset by something a coworker says? Pull out that pack and have a smoke.

Hypnotherapists have tools to help you recognise those smoking triggers and snuff them.

Many smokers also have underlying emotional issues that they have typically dealt with by smoking, because nicotine is a mood-altering drug that can calm you down when you are tense, jazz you up when you are down, and just generally mask over bothersome feelings. A competent hypnotherapist will help you identify such issues and deal with them.

If you really are ready to stop smoking, the route to success goes through the door of your hypnotist.

Alcohol abuse is something that develops gradually. It starts small, and then it grows. Think of it as a road. It begins as a gentle footpath, a drink now and then that eases social situations, or offers a way to wind down at the end of a hard day.

Then that footpath widens into a graveled country lane, and before you know it the country lane merges into a paved road, and then the paved road becomes a superhighway littered with beer cans, whiskey bottles, car wrecks, lost family and friends, disease, and ultimately, death.

If you are anywhere along that road, and beginning to realise that you need to get off, there are off ramps. The trick is to know which one to select.

One of those off ramps is AA—Alcoholics Anonymous. It has been around for a long time, and it has helped some people, but not that many compared to the number who need help. The success rate for AA is, at best, ten percent.

Then there are programs based on the AA approach, designed mainly for severe, addicted alcoholics and often based in residential facilities. Their success rate also leaves much to be desired.

Some physicians try to treat alcoholism and alcohol abuse with drugs, but those tend to work even less well than AA.

Fortunately, there is another way—hypnosis.

Alcohol abuse is a problem with many different parts. A hypnotherapeutic approach works because it operates on multiple levels to deal with those problems.

First of all, you need to deal with cravings. For most problem drinkers, cravings are triggered by particular situations—being around other drinkers, for instance—or by specific feelings—anger, fear, sadness, or sometimes even elation. Hypnosis is a powerful tool to stop cravings. In a trance, you do not feel cravings, period. They simply do not exist.

Sometimes excessive drinking is tied to old trauma, often from childhood. A skilled hypnotherapist can help you go back in time, examine those old traumatic experiences calmly, and resolve them.

Hypnosis can also help you discover your strengths and talents, some of which you may have no idea that you possessed, and use them, not only to get your drinking under control, but to take charge of every part of your life.

So if you are concerned about your drinking, think hypnosis.

Anger is a normal response to frustration. When we are trying hard to get something done, and can’t, it is natural to feel at least a degree of irritation. Anger can also be a healthy response to threat, even if we decide that, in a particular situation, flight is better than fight. But while anger is normal, how we respond to it can be a problem.

Most of us begin learning to deal with anger early in life. Our parents, and our experiences, teach us that most things are not worth getting into a hassle over, and that cooling down works better than picking a fight.

For some people, however, anger is a constant issue. They don’t control their anger; the anger controls them. It drives friends and family away. It gets them in trouble at work. It impairs their physical health. Sometimes it lands them in jail.

It isn’t unusual for people with chronic anger problems to wind up—either by court order or because a loved one told them to get help or else—in what is known as anger management counseling. This is usually group or individual counseling—talk therapy. It offers strategies for dealing with anger, ways of avoiding situations that trigger anger, and ways to talk yourself out of being angry.

And, sadly, it doesn’t work all that well. It usually doesn’t deal directly with angry feelings, and doesn’t touch on the emotional roots of the anger.

Hypnotherapy offers a much more effective approach. Anger is a multi-layered problem, and hypnosis offers a multilayered solution.

For example, people with anger problems tend to be tense and aggravated much of the time, not just when they are actively upset about a particular situation. With hypnosis, they can learn to develop a relaxation response that will be there day in and day out.

Hypnosis can also help develop an immediate response to angry feelings the moment they start to arise—for instance, going into a light, calm altered state, using a simple physical trigger like pressing your thumb and forefinger together.

Anger is often tied to poor self-image, which makes you vulnerable to feeling put down, which of course makes you angry. Hypnotherapy is an effective tool for dealing with self-image and self-esteem problems.

Anger is also a frequent defense against depression, because being angry feels better than being sad. Hypnotherapy is a well-accepted tool for dealing with depression.

So, if you have anger issues, and live in the Gold Coast area, give clinical hypnotist Greg Thompson a call.

Australians really like to gamble; and it’s easy to do here, what with all the race tracks and casinos, four thousand-plus poker clubs, and about two hundred thousand poker machines spread across the continent. Plus, there is on-line gambling, which generates approximately $800 million a year.

Eighty percent of Australians gamble at least a few times a year, and that is more than any other country in the world. For most of us, it’s just something to do for a little fun—taking an occasional trip to the tables or the track, playing cards with friends for spare change, or throwing a few coins into the pokies on a weekend.

Where a need for hypnosis and hypnotherapy comes into play is for those who can’t stop after a few rounds of cards. For almost one and a half million Australians, gambling is a disease. It’s called a Pathological Gambling Disorder, and it chews up their income, impoverishes their families, and destroys their lives.

Compulsive gambling has many facets and many causes, and hypnotherapy with a skilled, competent professional offers powerful help. If you are reading this, and wondering if you are one of those at risk, ask yourself these questions:

• When you gamble, do you experience an intense emotional high, whether you are winning or losing?
• Do you daydream about gambling on a regular basis?
• Do you tend to feel restless or bored when you are not gambling?
• Are the important people in your life concerned about your gambling?
• Do you have trouble admitting how much or how often you gamble?
• Do you avoid telling people when you lose?
• Would people describe you as super competitive, restless, and easily bored?
• Do people tell you that you care too much about money?

If you answer yes to several of these questions, you may be at risk. In that case, ask yourself three more questions:

When you are gambling and losing, do you keep on putting money down, and even increasing the size of your bets, trying to recoup your losses?

Have you ever sold, or even stolen, property to get money to gamble with?

Have you tried to stop gambling and not been able to?

If you answered any of these questions in the affirmative, you are a compulsive gambler. You are addicted.

In our next blog, we’ll look at the ways a trained hypnotist can help you get your compulsive gambling under control.

Here’s some good news. There are fewer problem drinkers in Australia these days. Young Aussie’s are starting to drink at a later age than they were a couple of decades ago, and the amount of binge drinking is down.

But the problem has not gone away. Australia still logs thousands of deaths, injuries and illnesses tied to alcohol use and abuse every year. And while education and work at prevention have helped, treatment is still lagging.

Alcoholics Anonymous continues to be the primary road for most problem drinkers. Sadly, going to those meetings only helps a small minority. Depending on whose figures you look at, AA has a success rate of ten percent, tops. In addition, most formal treatment programs are mainly variations of the AA approach, and also have a dismal success rate.

Then there are treatments using drugs. The oldest is disulfiram, sold as Antabuse. If you take it daily, then have a drink, your blood pressure drops, and you feel like you’re about to die, which makes for a pretty effective slapdown. The weakness of the approach is that people learn they can lay off the Antabuse for a week or so, and then drink with no negative effects, so they just schedule their binges.

Physicians sometimes prescribe other drugs. Naltrexone, for instance, blocks endorphins, so that the drinker doesn’t get the rush. However, this and other drugs have shown little or no effectiveness in actually reducing pathological drinking.

There is a better way. Hypnotherapy is beginning to get more attention in the battle against alcoholism and alcohol abuse. It is effective, and it works on more than one level.

For starters, hypnotherapy works on the physical addiction. When you drink chronically and then stop, you have withdrawal symptoms that go beyond that weekend hangover, up to and including seizure, and those symptoms can recur over an extended period of time. Hypnosis blocks the symptoms.

Chronic drinkers also suffer from physical cravings. Once again, hypnosis works against those, and with training in self-hypnosis, the recovering drinker can stay in charge.

Most alcohol abusers have self-esteem issues. Poor self-image is one of the things that got them drinking to begin with. As any good alcoholic will tell you, when you’ve had a few drinks you can be anyone you want to be—brilliant, talented, charming, adored—at least until you wake up the next morning. Hypnotherapy has a long and proven track record when it comes to dealing with self-esteem problems, not to mention the depression and anxiety that many problem drinkers suffer from.

A skilled, competent hypnotherapist can help you deal effectively with excessive drinking, as well as the other problems that so often go along with it. Moving Minds Hypnotherapy helps alcoholics become non-drinkers. At it’s central location in Coomera on the Gold Coast, it is easy to get to from Brisbane to Tweed Heads. You have nothing to lose but your hangover.