Case studies are written to protect client privacy. Each example is based on real sessions, with details only changed if needed to preserve anonymity.
NOTE: I’m the shopping addiction Alan Carr, not the stop-smoking Allen Carr (RIP). This client reached out and asked if my approach would work for smoking. He said he already knew his root cause. I took the case anyway.
Situation
Started smoking at 12 after his father died of lung cancer and he heard relatives say it was his father’s own fault for smoking, that he knew smoking was bad for you. He felt he was being a rebel, defending his father’s memory and being loyal, by defiantly smoking. Continued for decades, then could not stop, despite multiple quit attempts. He knew this story consciously, had told his wife and told a close friend, but still couldn’t quit. Patches, gum, willpower – nothing held. A friend had quit smoking after hypnotherapy, so could I do that for him?
Breakthrough:
During our session, I explained I don’t program anyone, and don’t use hypnotherapy suggestions, such as “cigarettes taste horrible.” As he felt he already knew the deep root-cause of why he started, we explored why he couldn’t stop. What emerged wasn’t loyalty to his father – it was terror of dying slowly from disease. His unconscious logic: “If I smoke I’ll die young, before I grow old.” Once he heard himself say that out loud, the addiction collapsed. He wasn’t honoring his father. He was trying to avoid his father’s fate – by rushing toward it and dying young. That may have served him and made sense at 12 years old, but not at 47.
Outcome:
Threw out his expensive Dunhill lighter and ashtrays that same night. No “one last cigarette.” The compulsion just wasn’t there anymore. He reached out to me on a Discord server months later, saying he has been very irritable for two weeks but zero desire to ever smoke again.
How this maps to shopping
The behavior, such as buying things you don’t need, is rarely about the shopping or the things you buy. It’s about what the behavior is doing FOR you that you’re not consciously aware of, how your subconscious thinks it serves you. Once you see the actual mechanism, you can’t unsee it – and the compulsion just dissolves.
The breakthrough was private. Yours will be too.
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