Many people quit smoking all by themselves, but many more seek outside help and support. One option that helps a great number of quitters is psychotherapy. Psychotherapy to quit smoking means seeking the help of a trained professional to help you stay on target and deal more effectively with withdrawal, cravings and the negative thoughts and feelings that come with quitting.
How Psychotherapy Helps
Nicotine is extremely physically addictive. But it’s the psychological aspect of addiction that makes it even harder to quit. If it were just a matter of getting over the withdrawal symptoms, you could lock yourself in a smoke-free environment and sweat it out. The psychological part is serious.
Psychotherapy can help you by:
- Combating the depression and anxiety that accompanies withdrawal from nicotine
- Revealing to you the underlying anxieties that make you smoke
- Clearing up misconceptions about smoking and quitting that you have
- Suggesting ways to make quitting easier and more effective
Types of Psychotherapy
There are a number of methods and approaches used in psychotherapy. Behavioral therapy seeks to understand the ways in which behavior effects feelings. It can teach you new behaviors that can make quitting easier.
Cognitive therapy focuses on incorrect, unhelpful or negative thought processes, many of which contribute to your addiction.
Interpersonal therapy is a depression treatment that focuses on relationships and psychodynamic therapy works on the unconscious processes that make you smoke.
It’s not important for you to be an expert on all of these types of psychotherapy, but when you meet with a therapist, it’s important to know which methods they’ll use to help you quit.
The Many Approaches to Therapy
There are several different approaches to psychotherapy for quitting smoking. You can meet with a therapist one-on-one to discuss your feelings and challenges. They can listen to you and suggest ways you can modify your behavior and thinking for better results.
Many people trying to quit smoking find group therapy highly effective. Group therapy is where you get together with others who are trying to quit or who have quit and discuss your experiences. You have a chance to talk and get feedback. Other members of the group will make suggestions or tell you their stories. Group therapy also offers an element of accountability.
Alternative Approaches
There are also alternative approaches such as hypnotherapy, meditation and acupuncture. Studies don’t show these methods to be terribly effective, but in conjunction with psychotherapy, nicotine replacement therapy, coping strategies and other methods, they can help to mitigate certain symptoms of withdrawal.
For example, if you learn meditation, you can learn to ignore your cravings. Like the thoughts that pass during meditation, you acknowledge the craving and let it pass without taking control of you. This is just one element in a strategy to quit smoking.
While addiction isn’t all in the mind, a great deal of it is. Psychotherapy can help you cope with the mental part of quitting smoking as you deal with the physical withdrawal and cravings.
