In my practice as a Clinical Hypnotist at the Mindsci Clinic, I see many sad cases, from the skeleton with skin who believes she’s obese, to the boy who eats his hands and feet.
People self-mutilate for all sorts of reasons. Most start damaging themselves in their youth. Some die before they get help. Some carry on throughout their adult life. Some stop of their own accord. Some get therapy that sometimes works.
The best known breed of self-harmers is the cutters. These tend to be well-educated, intelligent young girls and, very occasionally, boys. They cut themselves to relieve anxiety. This anxiety is often, though not always, associated with feelings of self-loathing that commonly stem from a sense of having been abandoned.
‘Cutters’ can do horrible things to themselves with sharp (and not so sharp) instruments. The skin grafts applied to cover their self-inflicted carnage can leave their arms looking like they’ve been cooked over an open fire. You have to be pretty troubled to do that to yourself.
Some cutters go even further and will pinch-out a lump of flesh from their thigh and cut it away with scissors. How horrible is that? I mean, you have to be very disturbed to cut chunks of yourself out like that, don’t you?
One other thing that characterizes cutters is that they try to sterilize their blades. You see, whatever else they are doing, they don’t want to kill themselves.
Every time a smoker lights-up, they KNOW they are killing themselves.
How crazy is that?
In our lungs we have thousands of little bubbles called alveoli. Oxygen is processed from the air into our blood through the surface area of these alveoli. The more little bubbles, the more surface area and the easier we breathe.
Every time someone takes a drag on a cigarette they collapse those alveoli into fewer and fewer, bigger and bigger ones. Eventually you get emphysema and cannot process oxygen fast enough anymore. Then you die.
Every time a smoker takes a puff they might as well take a pair of scissors to their lungs and cut a chunk away, and they needn’t bother to sterilise the blades because they are trying to kill themselves anyway.
In a way, the cutters are lucky. There’s nothing addictive about a pair of scissors. Smokers have to live with, and die for the fact that their chosen instrument of self-mutilation is a highly addictive narcotic. So smokers have not only to cope with being self-mutilators, but drug addicts too. What a death!
In years to come people will look back
at the last sorry 500 years of human history and marvel at the poverty of a
society which ever allowed such widespread drug addiction to prevail simply
because it was a good source of government revenue. Today we look at Hogarth’s
There are specialized, single session, quit smoking, hypnotherapy clinics charging up to £250 to help you stop smoking. They claim fantastically high success rates on the basis that few people return to them. Clinical research suggests that hypnotherapy is about 30% successful, as is acupuncture, patches, gum and no treatment at all.
Smokers smoke because they want to, whatever they say. I don’t smoke. I know I could pick up a cigarette, light the end and suck but I don’t, because I don’t want to.
If you don’t smoke, don’t ever start. If you want to do something stupid, break a finger instead. Your finger will mend.
If you smoke, stop. Stop now. Don’t do yourself any more damage. Don’t kid yourself you can stop later and your lungs will get better, because they won’t. The damage you’ve already done will stay done. Don’t make it worse. Stop.
Stop burning your money. Stop stinking. Stop polluting your lungs. Stop self-mutilating. Stop killing yourself. It doesn’t matter how much discomfort you have to go through for a week. Stop. Don’t smoke that next cigarette. It’s the only one you have to give up. Don’t ever smoke that next cigarette. Save yourself £250 instantly and JUST STOP SMOKING, and DON’T EVER START AGAIN.
If you can't do that and would like me to help you, read this for more information on my approach, or simply call the number below.
For enquiries and appointments call 020 8948 2439
or email bt@mindsci-clinic.com