So discovering your dopamine.

When I first started my hypnotherapy practice, I focused mainly on clients who wanted to quit smoking.

I had given up a two-pack-a-day habit myself using hypnosis, so it was an area I felt

very comfortable in. And when I first met with a client, I would talk to them about self-soothing.

You see, many of them described their relationship to cigarettes in these very personal terms,

like, cigarettes are my best friend, or cigarettes help me to handle things.

And that's when it made sense to talk about self-soothing,

and specifically the role that dopamine plays in the addiction

to cigarettes. You see, we all have dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and also a hormone

that signals a reward to the brain. It's a good feeling that we give ourselves. And it's important to understand

that we supply our own dopamine. It doesn't even exist outside of us. Like cigarettes do not

contain dopamine, nor does heroin, or even chocolate, my favorite. They trigger our dopamine, but we supply the

dopamine ourselves. We're getting high on our own supply. So addictions are really sort of roundabout

ways of getting to our own dopamine.

And wouldn't be nice to just get straight to the dopamine without the messy addiction?

So one of the reasons that hypnosis is very effective with smoking cessation

is that it helps the client to secrete their own dopamine,

to disentangle it from the cigarette, and to helps the client to secrete their own dopamine, to disentangle it from the cigarette,

and to help the client see that they've been soothing themselves the whole time. And no cigarette is actually necessary anymore. So we're going to practice self-soothing. You are going to secrete all the good chemicals that you think you get from things outside of you. Your chemistry set has always been inside of you and always will be. Isn't it about time you got to play with it?

Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.

Every child has big feelings, whether it's bedtime worries, school day jitters, or just a wobbly moment in between.

I'm Evie Pickerel, and in my podcast, Evie asks, I help children slow down, reflect and find calm.

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