Case Study Quit Smoking

CASE STUDY QUIT SMOKING

ABSTRACT

SD is a 39 year old woman who works as a receptionist in a small engineering firm. Having recently met her new partner who has given up smoking for health reasons . SD wanted to stop smoking after 10 years of smoking twenty cigarettes a day.

We discussed her goal, what hypnotherapy is, the ways in which hypnotherapy could help and suggestion and visualisation techniques which could be employed to help her quit smoking using one session. She agreed to the submission of this case study. SD was also informed that as she was being treated by a student of hypnotherapy, no charge to her would be incurred.

INITIAL CONSULTATION

SD is a 39 year old woman who would like to stop smoking after enjoying the habit for 25 years. She began smoking at the age of 14 as it was the ' cool thing' to do and feels that she succumbed to peer pressure rather than just being inquisitive as to what smoking was all about. She has remained a smoker all of her adult life and has found it difficult to give up as it has been a crutch for her during times of stress and she actually quite enjoys it. SD has been diagnosed with mild hypertension and is on medication.

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The profession she has been employed in during the last two years puts her under a lot of stress in a male dominated environment, her into situations with builders and site managers who also smoke. She sometimes feels that by behaving like 'one of the lads' it helps her to close a deal and puts her at an advantage.

SD has decided that it is the right time for her to finally give up smoking once and for all and I questioned her as to how strongly she wanted to achieve this and asked her to rate on a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, how much she wanted to stop smoking, she said eight and a half.

I also expressed my curiosity as to was she purely doing this for her partner or herself and she replied that it was for herself as she wanted to try to get fit and healthy. She had also made an effort of cutting back the number of cigarettes she smoked to ten from twenty, but felt that she needed support of some kind to help her reach her goal, which was why she had chosen hypnotherapy.

I moved on to discuss her family background to try to gain more information which may be relevant to my previous statement. SD is the eldest of two sisters with a five year age gap between them. She has always had to be the 'strong' older sister and since her father died ten years ago, has taken on most of the responsibility of making sure her mother is well and cared for as this was always expected of her when younger and on returning to Bournemouth slotted back into the role. The sister works in London and appears to have a variety of reasons for not visiting their mother regularly and so SD feels responsible for her mother's welfare and is made to feel guilty by her mother if she does not fulfil her role. I asked if she felt more or less inclined

We moved on to discuss that as a student of hypnotherapy, no money would be exchanged between us and that everything discussed would be entirely confidential. She agreed for her treatment to be used in this case study as long as her personal details were omitted which I agreed to.

I discussed the ways in which hypnotherapy works and how it could help her to quit smoking and gave examples of other issues it can help on relaxation and positivity. I made it clear that she was in no way obliged to go ahead with the treatment and could 'walk away' from the treatment if she felt uncomfortable. She was very happy to do this as she was adamant that she wanted to stop smoking and that using hypnosis to quit smoking depended on how she felt after the initial 'taster' session.

Diagnosis

By paying close attention to SD's professional and private situations, it is apparent that she relies on cigarettes during times of stress and during situations where she feels that by being part of the smoking crowd she will reap the rewards. I feel that the main hurdle will be the fact that she actually believes smoking helps her to cope in stressful situations. As much as she feels she is in control of her life, it tends to be external factors, situations in which she feels powerless to change, which result in her reverting to her habit/destructive behaviour which makes her feel comfortable and more able to cope. These external influences are her job and the situations she will be putting herself into which encourage her to smoke and her family situation in which she is relied upon to care for her mother as and when required whilst her sisters carries on with life regardless. I would also imagine a little jealousy comes in to play as her sister can get on with life, leaving SD at their mother beck and call.

I do believe that she wants to stop smoking for all of the right reason and also to be supportive of her partner who has just given up, and I do question how much she is doing it to please him. However, she is adamant that her giving up is to support him, not because of him. I feel that future work could be considered in terms of confidence and positivity and assertiveness in her private life, but this would depend on whether SD would like to pursue this.

TREATMENT PLAN

I wanted the treatment to be agreed by the two of us rather than telling SD what would happen as I felt that this would help her to feel more included and in control of her experience. I felt that this would be far more beneficial for her and would improve the chances of the treatment working. We discussed beginning with one initial relaxation, positivity and confidence treatment before going ahead to determine if she felt hypnotherapy was the right choice for her and to allay her unease of this form of therapy. Assuming this to be successful, treatment to help SD give up smoking would commence. The main aims of the treatment were to help her to quit smoking, help her to understand that smoking does not equal stress relief and improve her will power by directing her subconscious to find her smoking habit distasteful and