In part 1 and part 2 of this article series, we have discussed how the reasons a person started smoking at an early age helped to build the Psychological Smoking Mechanism. This mechanism begins to operate beyond conscious control because the IGET Hot Flavours has long since forgotten why they started smoking. The first part of the process to remove smoking is to use special techniques to recall these early reasons. After that is done, it is time to look at the reasons a person continues to smoke.
Smokers don’t consciously realize how hard it is to smoke. This is because the Psychological Smoking Mechanism has faded into the Subconscious. It runs automatically each time a cigarette is smoked. The mind pushes all complex learned tasks into the subconscious. An example with which most people can relate is driving a car. When you first learn to drive, it is an almost overwhelming task. So many things to do, just to operate the automobile and then, you have to watch where you are going and what other drivers are doing! This is very stressful. However, eventually, all this fades into the Subconscious. It’s still just as hard, but it has become automatic so your consciousness isn’t overwhelmed. The same thing happens to the complex psychological smoking mechanism.
Still the difficulty of smoking is evident. If you look at the face of a smoker, you can see the strain each time they take a drag. The face tenses and the eyes usually squint. It’s the same facial expression a weight lifter has trying to lift a heavy weight. Yet, at the conscious level, the smoker has pushed this aside; it is ignored. However it is there with each cigarette and during the course of the day, the more cigarettes smoked, the more tired the smoker becomes. This is why, when a smoker manages to stop, they feel that they have so much more energy! It’s not that they have more, it’s that they’re not wasting it fueling the Psychological Smoking Mechanism.
Although the conscious mind ignores the extreme effort to smoke, it still registers at some level. This causes the smoker to feel the need to justify why they smoke. The next part of the process is to identify these reasons. Since these reasons are also faded into the Subconscious and not examined, special techniques have to be used to retrieve them.
If you ask a smoker why they smoke, they will likely say, they like it. Yet, if you look at their behavior, it’s clear they don’t. For example, how many times have you seen a person smoking in their car in rainy weather, with the window rolled down to keep the cigarette away? With either the cigarette outside or the window cracked and the cigarette by the opening? If they liked it, why isn’t it in the closed car with them?