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Using the Swish Pattern to Stop Smoking By Thomas J. Humpton My sister requested my help to stop smoking. She knew that I was a hypnotist of many years, and wanted me to hypnotize her to help her quit. While I am currently making an in-depth study of therapeutic trance (particularly of Erickson, Rossi, Bandler and others regarding Ericksonian techniques)m, most of my past hypnosis experiences have been for entertainment only. I elected to help her, however my primary focus was on practicing NLP patterns. After a short talk with her, to assure rapport, I had her get comfortable and close her eyes. I began by actually going through an Ericksonian hypnosis script aimed at leaning, indirectly, how to not smoke. When I was through this, I utilized the "Swish" pattern. I had her pick an external cue that made it apparent to her that she was about to smoke. To her, this was the sight of her pulling a cigarette out of its package. I elicited the submodalities to find that it was associated, life-size and placement, a still picture, no sound and a slight feeling of tightness around the chest. I then had her imagine seeing herself, dissociated, as she wanted to be - someone who chose not to smoke, who was confident and enjoyed the company of others and herself, and someone who relieved tensions in constructive ways (these were her concepts, not mine). She was instructed to make this image of her future self so that, to her, it was compelling - something she was naturally drawn to. Whenshe did, I checked the submodalities of that picture, just to know that they were different than those of the cue picture. I then explained how she was to make a picture of the smoking cue, just as she had done before, and then how she was going to have the picture of her "future self" burst through her cue picture, destroying it completely. The "future self" picture was to begin as an unnoticeably small point in the center of her cue picture. And then, on command within 1/2 second, she was to have the "future self" picture grow to life-size and position, bursting through and into the cue picture completely destroying the cue picture. I had her do this 5 times, each time looking for non-verbal signs that she had succeeded. As a follow up, she has been able to quit, and is now smoking again. She knows that she can quit again, but is sure that if she does, she will gain weight. She claims her smoking habit is primarily to reduce stress. That is how she consciously understands it. When I see her again, I plan to use the NLP 6-step reframe pattern to address her smoking and "secondary" gains. Having studied so much of the Ericksonian hypnosis techniques lately, I may be inclined to do the 6-step reframe with her in trance.
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