“Tami” (not her real name) had already worked on several emotional issues before coming for stop smoking treatment. This really is best, because she was able to completely collapse her cravings for cigarettes in the here and now, all in one session.

The success of a stop smoking treatment depends on the underlying factors that lead to a desire to smoke. The more factors there are, the longer it takes. By the same token, the less factors there are, the faster the road to success.

In EFT, which is short for Emotional Freedom Techniques, these factors are called “aspects”. An aspect is a specific part of a problem. EFT releases all aspects, one by one, until they are gone. Then the smoker no longer wants to smoke and sees themselves as a calm and satisfied non-smoker. EFT utilises a mixture of releasing wording mixed with special easy-to-apply acupressure. With EFT, we use the principle that the desire to smoke is caused by the need to medicate away an underlying anxiety, and that by releasing this anxiety, there will no longer be a need to self-medicate with nicotine, and the smoking desire goes away. The term anxiety here is used to describe any emotional nervousness, rather than necessarily the clinical kind.

“Tami” (not her real name) had already worked on several emotional issues before coming for stop smoking treatment. This really is best, because she was able to completely collapse her cravings for cigarettes in the here and now, all in one session. There may be other aspects that we did not catch, so she will be attending another session, which I will report on. However, what is different about Tami is that having worked on other issues first, her smoking desire went all the way to zero in the first session, for that point in time. This is in stark contrast to other clients I see in Cape Town, who attend stop smoking treatment without first working on their anxieties. They normally drop to a 5-3 out of 10 desire for a cigarette in the first session, having started at an 8 out of 10. Tami dropped to a 0 out of 10, from a starting point of 5 out of 10.

In the session, what were most poignant were the following aspects:

• The luxurious look and feel of the cigarette packet
• That the cigarette relaxed Tami when she was: Upset; feeling down; feeling angry.
• That the cigarette was her friend, never judging her, always there for her, her loyal friend. For example, we tapped the Setup of “Even though this cigarette is my friend, never judging me, always there for me, never letting me down, my loyal friend, I deeply love and accept myself”.
• The physical effect of the cigarette. This was done by smelling the cigarettes, tapping, smelling them again, tapping again, and keeping them close to her body as she tapped.

Tami had already been for treatment of some confidence and childhood issues, as well as a phobia. She was well-placed for success in stopping smoking. Tami was still happily a non-smoker two weeks later. She had taken out the last cigarettes from her packet, lit but not smoked them, and then lost interest in smoking altogether.

If you are curious about EFT, you can get information from here and get to know more about it. See if you gel with it, and take it on from there. And like Tami, you too could be on your way to your freedom from smoking.

© Suzanne Zacharia 2012. Complementary and alternative health education and empowerment is my passion. My name is Suzanne Zacharia and I am committed to empowering people to take control of their health and wellness. A virus caught along with 5 other students at university at the end of 1986, plus medical negligence, meant that I got smokers lung at a relatively young age. In desperation for help with my symptoms and quality of life, I turned to complementary therapy, and this is beyond a decade that I have outlived one doctor’s prognosis. I am now a complementary therapist, author and trainer. My big passion is to to help others stop smoking