Quitting smoking

Almost nobody who comes to PHC about this is trying for the first time. They describe a history of quits — four days, once a fortnight, once nearly a year — and each one ending somewhere they can still describe exactly.

What they describe is rarely craving in the abstract. It is specific and it is attached to things. The one after chai. The one in the car at a signal. The one outside the office at half past four, which is as much about the ten minutes and the company as about the cigarette. The one after a fight, at a funeral, on a bad night — the one that is the reason the last four attempts ended.

People describe it as the only thing in the day that is entirely theirs. That is worth taking seriously rather than arguing with: a quit attempt that removes the only ten minutes somebody gets to themselves and replaces it with nothing has a hole in it.

And there is the part that keeps people from trying again: having announced it last time. Starting again in front of people you told is its own small humiliation.

Recognising yourself in a paragraph on a website is not the same as knowing what is going on. This page describes; it does not assess you, and there is nothing here for you to score yourself against.

Plenty of people stop on their own and never need anybody. If that is you, good — this page is not an argument that you need help.

What brings people to a psychologist is usually one of three things. Quit attempts that keep ending at the same trigger. Smoking that has climbed alongside something else — stress at work, a bad year, low mood — so that it is carrying something. Or a medical reason to stop, arriving with a deadline and no plan for the part that happens in your head.

Two things this page will not do. It will not tell you that you have a problem, and it will not promise you an outcome. Nicotine replacement and medication are a doctor's questions, not a psychologist's, and PHC does not prescribe.

Only a qualified clinician can tell you what is going on — a website cannot. What a page like this can tell you is that the psychological half of stopping is a real thing to get help with, and that asking for it is not weakness.

PHC is an assessment-first practice, and the honest first question is what the smoking is doing for you before anybody discusses removing it.

1. An initial sessionWe ask what has been going on, for how long, what the pattern looks like across a day, and what previous attempts ran into. Nothing is administered before this conversation.
2. Emotional assessment and symptom screeningWhere the initial session points that way, a structured screening of emotional functioning and presenting symptoms is used, with internationally validated instruments — you will not be given tests you do not need. Smoking that has grown alongside stress, low mood or anxiety is a different piece of work from smoking that is mostly habit.
3. A psychologist matched to what the assessment foundPsychologists at PHC are not assigned on availability. Assignment is based on speciality, your presenting needs and clinical fit.
4. Therapy, reviewed as it goesTwo of PHC's modalities are relevant here. CBT is used at PHC for anxiety, depression and negative thought patterns, and applies to the trigger-and-routine side of a habit. Clinical hypnotherapy is one of the modalities PHC offers, and it is used where the assessment indicates it rather than as a default. Sessions are 50 minutes, in clinic at our DHA clinic or in PECHS, or online.A deliberate omission, so you are not misled. Quit-smoking services — hypnotherapy services especially — are usually sold on a number: a percentage, a one-session promise. There is no such number on this page. We are not going to tell you how likely you are to stop, because we do not know, and anyone who tells you they do is selling.

Prof. Dr. Tahira Yousaf and Sana Shameem are the two clinicians PHC name for this work.

We are naming them on the practice's own say-so: smoking, tobacco and quitting appear in neither clinician's published areas of practice, and we would rather tell you that than let a card imply otherwise. PHC offers clinical hypnotherapy and CBT, and the psychologist you would work with is confirmed at the initial session, on what the screening finds and on clinical fit. Ask us beforehand and we will tell you who that would be.

Confidentiality, session length, fees and choosing your psychologist are answered in full in questions people ask before booking.

• Addiction
• Work-related stress
• Anxiety
• Clinical hypnotherapy
• CBT at PHC