How To Quit Smoking, If You Have A Brain Injury

Successfully quitting smoking if you have a brain injury is a matter of acquiring help from a support team. Input may be required from several sources. In hypnosis we have a rule, you can't make someone do something they don't want to do.

So quitting must be a clear choice of the individual, and then they need to follow through with any strategies they are given by their therapist.

The problem with a client who has a brain injury is that they may not be quite capable of making a clear decision to quit. Those who care for them want to help them to make them healthier. Smoking may be not only a direct risk to their health but also a fire risk from smoking indoors and in bed.

Frontal lobe injuries, which can result from accidents or assaults, can cause a person to have reduced inhibition. With regard to smoking they can often be very heavy smokers.

Even fairly highly functioning people can have inhibition issues such as not recognising common courtesies and etiquette. They may not necessarily heavily addicted to nicotine but certainly habituated to frequent smoking, often smoking without thinking about it.

Another difficulty is that the popular quit smoking drugs such as Zyban and Champix may not be suitable for a person with a brain injury. Many non brain injured quitters have enough problems with these mind altering drugs. It would be potentially dangerous to expose these people to such chemicals.

This leaves nicotine replacement therapy. The real statistics for patches and gum show these to not be very successful at all. A problem would be that the client continues to smoke while wearing patches, resulting in them becoming ill.

Traditional hypnosis focussing on quitting smoking may not be appropriate. But gentle conversational hypnosis targeting stress management, may be critical to achieving a successful outcome.

As a rule quitting smoking using hypnosis is done in a single session. But when a brain injury is involved it may be more appropriate to do a series of short sessions with each one addressing a single aspect of smoking.

This may not be easy, and will most likely require some serious commitment of the part of everyone involved. Some may argue that the person should be allowed to enjoy their simple pleasure. But it is worth the effort and will definitely improve the quality of life of the person. Removing a toxic chemical from their brain can only be beneficial in the long run.

And now for more free info on how to easily and quickly quit cigarettes Ian Newton invites you to go to www.60minutestoquitsmoking.com.

Wishing you the best of health. Ian Newton. Providing quality quit smoking writings, articles and reviews online.