The Art of Restoration: What Upholstery Taught Me About Therapy

Did I ever tell you how much I love traditional crafts like sewing and upholstery? Love might even be an understatement. I loved them so much that, in my spare time, I went to college just to learn how to do them properly. There's something about threading a needle, feeling fabric under your fingertips, coaxing it into place; it's meditative, grounding and really satisfying.

And then there was this chair.

A battered 1960s Parker Knoll I stumbled across on Facebook Marketplace, listed under "free to good home" with the kind of photos that made you wonder if anyone would actually want it. The fabric was faded beyond recognition, springs poking through like arthritic fingers, and one arm was more duct tape than upholstery. The seller's description was brutally honest: "Seen better days. Probably only good for parts."

But I could see past all that.

I could see the beautiful oak frame underneath. The solid construction that had weathered decades. The elegant lines that just needed... restoring.

Looking Beyond the Surface

There's something about working with your hands that teaches you to see potential where others see problems. When you're stripping back layers of old fabric, you're not just removing material, you're uncovering a story.

Sometimes you find surprises. Newspaper stuffing from 1962. A child's lost toy wedged in the springs. Evidence of repairs done with love, even if they weren't quite professional. Each layer tells you something about the life this piece has lived.

And it’s not so different from what happens in therapy.

The Assessment

When someone sits in my therapy room for the first time, they often arrive a bit like that Parker Knoll chair. Worn down. Carrying the weight of years. Maybe held together by coping mechanisms that worked once but aren't quite fit for purpose anymore.

"I'm probably beyond help," they'll say. Or, "I don't even know where to start."

But I'm looking at the structure underneath. The resilience that got them through everything that brought them here. The strength that's still there, even if it's buried under layers of anxiety, trauma or old beliefs that stopped serving them years ago.

Just like with furniture restoration, the first step isn't diving in with tools blazing. It's assessment.

What are we working with here? What's solid? What needs support? What can be saved and what needs to be completely rebuilt?

Stripping Back the Layers

In upholstery, you work backwards. Carefully removing each layer, photographing as you go so you remember how it all fits together. You're not destroying, you're revealing.

Therapy works the same way.

We don't bulldoze through someone's coping mechanisms or dismiss the patterns that have kept them functioning. Even if those patterns are causing problems now, they were probably brilliant solutions at some point.

That hypervigilance? It kept you safe when safety wasn't guaranteed.

That people pleasing? It secured attachment when love felt conditional.

That perfectionism? It protected you from criticism when criticism felt dangerous.

These aren't character flaws to be ashamed of. They're evidence of a mind that learned to adapt, to survive, to find ways through. But just like old upholstery, sometimes what protected us in the past starts to restrict us in the present.

The Delicate Work

Here's what they don't tell you about furniture restoration, you can't rush the process. Try to rip off old fabric too quickly and you might damage the frame underneath. Skip steps and the whole thing falls apart.

Each layer has to be respected, understood and gently removed.

Some days you make visible progress. Other days you're dealing with stubborn staples that just won't budge or discovering damage that's worse than you initially thought. And some days, honestly, you wonder if you should have just bought a new chair from IKEA instead.

Therapy has the same rhythm.

Carrie and the Stubborn Staples

Carrie came to see me after years of what she called "failed therapy attempts." She'd tried talking therapies, counselling, self-help books; all the standard approaches.

"I must be one of those people who can't be fixed," she told me. "I understand my problems. I know where they come from. But nothing changes."

She was like a chair where previous restorers had used industrial strength staples instead of the gentle tacking that belonged there. All that force, all that trying to make change happen through will and logic alone, had actually made the original fabric harder to remove.

We had to work differently. More gently.

Using IEMT and Hypnotherapy, we weren't trying to rip out old patterns. We were carefully, softly helping her nervous system release what it had been holding onto for decades. The change didn't look dramatic from the outside. But inside? She was finally free to become who she'd always been underneath all those protective layers.

The Hidden Structure

One of my favourite moments in any restoration project is when you finally see the frame clearly. No padding, no fabric, no distractions. Just the essential structure that's been supporting everything else.

And almost always, it's more beautiful than you expected.

That solid oak. Those elegant joints. The craftsmanship that's lasted decades precisely because it was built to endure.

In therapy, we have these moments too.

When someone stops apologising for taking up space and you see their natural confidence.

When the anxiety lifts and their curiosity emerges.

When they stop trying to be who they think they should be and remember who they actually are.

That essential self was always there. It just got covered up along the way.

The Rebuilding

When you're rebuilding a piece, you don't just copy what was there before. You use better materials. More supportive padding. Fabric that's more durable, more suited to how the piece will actually be used.

You keep the beautiful frame, but you update everything else.

This is what happens in really good therapy.

We're not trying to go back to who you were before life got complicated. We're building on that solid foundation but with better tools, healthier boundaries, more supportive beliefs.

Your resilience is still there. Your sensitivity, your creativity, your particular way of seeing the world; all of that stays. But now it's supported by nervous system regulation instead of chronic anxiety. Self-compassion instead of harsh self-criticism. Authentic connection instead of people-pleasing.

The Finishing Touches

The final stage of any restoration is the most satisfying.

Choosing fabric that honours the original design while making it work for modern life. Adding details that make it uniquely yours while respecting what came before. Standing back and seeing not just a restored piece of furniture, but something that's ready for the next chapter of its life.

In therapy, this looks like someone walking into a social situation without rehearsing their exit strategy. Applying for the job they actually want instead of the one they think they can handle. Setting a boundary without three days of emotional preparation.

Speaking up in meetings. Dating without panic. Sleeping through the night.

Living like someone who knows they belong here.

Both Are Acts of Faith

Whether it's a chair or a person, restoration is fundamentally an act of faith.

Faith that what looks broken can be beautiful again.

Faith that what's been damaged isn't beyond repair.

Faith that with the right tools, enough patience and genuine care, almost anything can be brought back to life.

The work isn't about stripping away who you are. It's about uncovering the frame that was always there and enhancing it so it becomes stronger, more supportive, and more beautiful than it's ever been.

Just like you.

Why People with ADHD Are Actually Perfect for Hypnotherapy

"But I can't even sit still for five minutes - how could I possibly be hypnotised?"

I hear this from almost every ADHD client who walks through my door. They've been told their whole lives that they're "too distractible," "too restless," or "too all-over-the-place" for anything that requires focus or stillness.

Here's what might surprise you: People with ADHD are actually some of the best candidates for hypnotherapy.

I know it sounds counterintuitive but I've witnessed this truth play out in my therapy room countless times. Let me share why your ADHD brain might be exactly what makes hypnotherapy so powerful for you.

The Beautiful ADHD Brain: Built for Deep States

Remember the last time you got completely absorbed in something you loved? Maybe you were researching a new interest and suddenly realized three hours had passed without you noticing. Or you were so engrossed in a conversation that the world around you seemed to disappear.

That's hyperfocus - and it's actually a form of natural trance state.

People with ADHD are naturally prone to slipping into these deep, imaginative states. Your brain already knows how to do this. We're just learning to direct it intentionally.

What Your ADHD Brain Does During Hypnosis

Recent brain imaging research has shown us exactly what happens when someone with ADHD enters hypnosis:

• Enhanced connectivity between brain regions that control attention

• Increased activation in areas responsible for emotional regulation

• Strengthened networks that support cognitive control

In simpler terms? Hypnosis helps your ADHD brain do what it's been trying to do all along - focus, regulate and feel in control.

"But I've Tried Everything..." - Why This is Different

I get it. By the time clients find me, they've often tried medication, traditional therapy, mindfulness apps, organizational systems, and countless self-help strategies. Some worked for a while, others didn't work at all.

Here's what makes hypnotherapy different for ADHD:

It Works WITH Your Brain, Not Against It

Traditional approaches often try to force your ADHD brain into neurotypical boxes. Hypnotherapy embraces how your mind naturally works - through imagination, storytelling and those deep dive states you already experience.

It Targets the Root, Not Just Symptoms

While other treatments might help you manage ADHD symptoms, hypnotherapy actually rewires the underlying patterns by updating your brain's automatic responses.

Beyond Focus: The Emotional Game-Changer

Here's what the research doesn't fully capture but I see every day: hypnotherapy doesn't just help with ADHD symptoms like focus and attention. It transforms the emotional experience of having ADHD.

Many of my ADHD clients carry decades of shame, frustration, and feeling "not good enough." These emotional patterns often drive the symptoms more than the ADHD itself.

During hypnotherapy, we can access and gently update these deep-seated beliefs:

• "I'm lazy and unmotivated" becomes "I work differently and that's my strength"

• "I always mess things up" becomes "I'm learning and growing"

• "Something's wrong with me" becomes "My brain is unique and valuable"

The Science That Changes Everything

The research backing hypnotherapy for ADHD is becoming impossible to ignore. Recent neuroscience shows us that the same brain networks involved in hypnosis are the ones that regulate attention and emotion - exactly what ADHD affects.

But perhaps most compelling is the Hiltunen study (2014) - the first controlled trial specifically comparing hypnotherapy to CBT for ADHD. What they found challenges everything we thought we knew about ADHD treatment:

While both treatments helped initially, only hypnotherapy created lasting change. Six months after treatment ended, the hypnotherapy group maintained significantly better outcomes in psychological wellbeing, anxiety, depression, and ADHD symptoms compared to those who received CBT.

This isn't just statistical noise - this is your brain showing us the pathway to sustainable healing. When we work with these networks through hypnotherapy, we're not just managing ADHD - we're creating the neurological foundation for long-term wellbeing.

Your ADHD Brain Isn't Broken - It's Different

If you're reading this and thinking "this sounds too good to be true," I understand. You've probably been disappointed before. But here's what I want you to know:

Your ADHD brain isn't a problem to be fixed. It's a different operating system that needs the right approach to thrive.

Those traits that have caused you struggle - your vivid imagination, your ability to hyperfocus, your sensitivity to your environment - these same traits make you an ideal candidate for hypnotherapy.

Taking the Next Step

If you're curious whether hypnotherapy might be right for your ADHD, here are some signs it could be a perfect fit:

• You can get lost for hours in activities you enjoy

• You have a vivid imagination

• You've tried traditional approaches but still feel stuck

• You're tired of just "managing" your ADHD and want to actually transform your experience

• You're open to working WITH your brain rather than against it

Ready to Discover What Your ADHD Brain Can Really Do?

Your ADHD brain has been preparing for hypnotherapy your whole life - through every daydream, every deep dive into special interests, every moment you've gotten beautifully lost in something you love.

What if instead of seeing these as distractions, we saw them as your superpower?

What if your "scattered" attention is actually incredibly flexible and adaptable?

What if your ADHD brain isn't the problem - but the solution you've been looking for?

The Science of Rapid Therapeutic Change: Why Your Brain Can Transform Faster Than You've Been Told

What if the right approach could help you make meaningful change in weeks rather than years?

Rethinking the Timeline of Change

For decades, we've been told that real psychological change takes years. That healing is slow. That you need to "process" everything inch by painful inch, session after session, month after month.

But here's what I learned during my training in Psychology and Neurological Rehabilitation: your brain is designed to change rapidly.

Think about it. If you touched a hot cooker, would your brain take months to learn "don't touch hot things"? Of course not. You'd learn instantly, completely and the lesson would stick forever.

So why do we accept that emotional healing must be different?

How Your Brain Actually Changes

Every experience you have creates neural pathways. When something traumatic or significant happens, your brain doesn't file it away like a document. Instead, it creates a whole network of connections: sensory memories, emotional responses, physical reactions and behavioural patterns.

Your brain is remarkably adaptable. It can form new neural pathways relatively quickly and under the right conditions, update automatic responses faster than traditional therapy timelines suggest.

The question isn't whether change can be rapid, but whether we're using approaches that allow for it.

How These Approaches Work Differently

While traditional talking therapies certainly have their place, approaches like Hypnotherapy and IEMT work more directly with the brain's natural processing systems:

Integral Eye Movement Therapy Your eyes aren’t just cameras recording the world, they’re active participants in how you access and process memory. Notice how your eyes naturally move to certain positions when you recall emotional experiences. IEMT works with these natural movement patterns, helping the brain access and update stuck emotional material.

Hypnotherapy bypasses conscious resistance by accessing the subconscious where emotional patterns live. Clinical studies demonstrate its effectiveness for anxiety, pain relief, phobias and habit change.

Identity level work addresses the deeper almost invisible, beliefs we hold about ourselves, which often drive our emotional responses and behaviours.

This is why these approaches can often create meaningful shifts more quickly, as they access the brain's subconscious processing systems rather than working primarily through conscious analysis.

Why Some Changes Happen Faster

Here's what I've observed in my practice, certain types of issues seem to respond particularly well to these approaches:

• Trauma responses tied to particular memories

• Negative beliefs that feel "stuck" despite logical understanding

• Habit patterns that feel automatic and hard to control

• Specific phobias

A Different Kind of Therapeutic Approach

When clients come to see me, they're often surprised by what doesn't happen. We don't spend months talking about your childhood (though we might address specific memories if needed). We don't slowly build up to change over many sessions.

Instead, we work directly with the neurological patterns that are creating your experience. We use techniques that help your brain process information in new ways. We create conditions where lasting change becomes not just possible, but natural.

Meet Andrew, a client of mine that struggled with stress blinking for 40 years and we resolved it one session using Integral Eye Movement Therapy (see Google review for more details)

Your brain's particular wiring, your specific experiences, your readiness for change and the nature of what you're dealing with all influence how quickly shifts can happen.

This doesn't mean therapy becomes easy, breakthrough work is still work. But it does mean you don't have to carry the burden of believing that healing must take forever.

Your Brain Is Already Ready

The most beautiful part of this work is realizing that your brain isn't defective.

Your brain created the patterns that are causing you difficulty to protect you. And the same incredible capacity that created those patterns can create new ones that serve the person you're becoming rather than the person you used to need to be.

The same is true for you.

Moving Forward

If you've been told that real change takes years, I invite you to question that belief. Not because I'm promising magic but because neuroscience suggests something far more hopeful: your brain is designed to adapt, heal, and transform more quickly than you've been led to believe.

The question isn't whether you can change rapidly. The question is whether you're ready to try approaches that work with your brain's natural capacity for transformation rather than against it.

Your brain has been ready for rapid change all along.

Integral Eye Movement Therapy vs Traditional Therapy: Why Eye Movements Work When Talking Doesn’t

If you’ve ever sat in a therapy session feeling frustrated because you know exactly what your problems are but still can’t seem to resolve them, you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve spent months or even years discussing your childhood, analysing your patterns and developing coping strategies, yet that knot in your stomach still appears when certain situations arise. That familiar anxiety still washes over you, despite all your hard work and insight.

Here’s what many people don’t realise: it’s not that you’re not trying hard enough, and it’s certainly not that therapy “doesn’t work.” It’s that traditional talk therapy, while incredibly valuable, sometimes can’t reach the deeper places where our emotional wounds live.

Think of it like trying to convince your heart to stop racing during a panic attack by having a logical conversation with it. Your heart simply doesn’t speak the language of logic.

The Hidden World of Non Verbal Trauma

Imagine your brain as having two different operating systems.

The first is your thinking brain - articulate, rational, and great at forming insights. This is the part that engages beautifully with traditional therapy.

But running underneath is your feeling brain - more like an ancient, instinctive alarm system: fast, emotional and non-verbal. It doesn’t think in words or reason through situations. Instead, it reacts instantly to perceived danger based on past emotional experiences, aiming to protect you before your thinking brain even has time to catch up.

When something traumatic happens, whether it’s a single overwhelming event or years of subtle emotional wounds, your feeling brain creates a kind of emotional imprint. These imprints don’t respond well to reasoning or analysis because they weren’t created through thinking in the first place. They’re stored as sensations, images and instant emotional reactions that can hijack your entire system before your thinking brain even knows what’s happening.

This is why you might find yourself having the same emotional reactions over and over, despite understanding them intellectually. Your thinking brain gets it, but your feeling brain is still operating from old programming.

Anxiety gets encoded at a pre-verbal, emotional level. It’s not a thought process, it’s a protective reflex that bypasses your thinking mind entirely.

IEMT: Speaking the Language of Emotions

Integral Eye Movement Therapy works differently because it communicates directly with the feeling brain. Instead of trying to think your way through trauma, IEMT uses the natural connection between your eyes and your emotional processing system to reach those old imprints at their source.

You might wonder, “How can moving my eyes possibly help with emotional pain?”

Your eyes aren’t just cameras recording the world, they’re active participants in how you access and process memory. Notice how your eyes naturally move to certain positions when you recall emotional experiences. IEMT works with these natural movement patterns, helping the brain access and update stuck emotional material.

Rather than focusing on the memory itself, IEMT targets the kinaesthetic imprint - the emotional response encoded in the brain’s emotional system and reflected throughout the nervous system.

The Science That Makes It Work

When you engage in guided eye movements while holding a particular memory; you create optimal conditions for your brain to do what it already knows how to do, process and integrate difficult experiences.

These structured eye movements can support neurological pattern interruption, reduce overactivation of emotional responses and help the brain register that an old threat is no longer present.

IEMT helps your brain and nervous system register safety, allowing it to release emotional charges that no longer serve you. In other words, your system shifts out of protection mode and finally lets go.

Think of it as giving your brain’s natural healing systems a gentle, focused nudge in the right direction.

Why Insight Alone Isn’t Always Enough

To be clear, traditional therapy isn’t wrong or ineffective. For many, it provides essential insights, coping strategies and a safe space to be heard and understood.

But if you’ve ever felt like you’re doing all the “right” therapeutic work and still feel stuck, it’s likely because you’re trying to solve an emotional problem with cognitive tools.

It’s like trying to fix a broken bone by talking to it. You can have all the insight in the world about how the break happened, but actual healing requires intervention at the level where the injury exists.

The Relief of Rapid Resolution

One of the most striking things about IEMT is how quickly it can produce change. While traditional therapy often measures progress in months or years, IEMT can create significant shifts in just a few sessions, often even in one.

This isn’t because it’s a “quick fix”, it’s because it works at the level where the emotional problem actually lives.

When your emotional system finally gets the message that an old threat is no longer relevant, the shift can feel immediate and profound. Clients often describe it as a weight being lifted or tension switching off. The memory doesn’t disappear; it just loses its emotional charge and becomes something the brain can finally file away.

The Beautiful Partnership: Integration and Wholeness

The most exciting developments in trauma treatment show us that we don’t have to choose between approaches. We can integrate them.

IEMT excels at clearing emotional blocks and calming the nervous system, creating space for the insight and self-reflection that traditional therapy offers to take root and flourish.

When your feeling brain isn’t constantly hijacking you into survival mode, you can explore your patterns with curiosity instead of fear. You’re not working against your system anymore; you’re working with it.

A New Chapter in Healing

Rather than trying to override your emotional system with logic or willpower, we’re learning how to work with your brain’s built-in mechanisms for healing and integration.

If you’ve been feeling stuck despite your best efforts in therapy, please know that it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It might just mean that your emotional system needs a different kind of attention. One that speaks the language of safety and emotion.

Your brain already knows how to heal. Sometimes it just needs the right conditions and the right kind of support.

IEMT offers one powerful way to create those conditions by opening doors to healing that words alone cannot reach.

Because sometimes, the breakthrough you’ve been seeking really is just a few eye movements away.

When Chronic Anxiety Feels Normal (And Why It Doesn’t Have to)

"I thought that was normal."

I hear this phrase often, usually spoken with a half-smile or nervous laugh, just after someone has described what it’s like inside their world.

The constant feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Replaying conversations, scanning for mistakes or hidden meanings.
The worry about how others see them and whether they’ve said or done the “wrong” thing.
The second-guessing of even the smallest choices, what to eat for dinner, which route to take, whether that message sounded okay.

The way it feels impossible to fully exhale and just be.

And then, with genuine surprise, they’ll say:
“I thought everyone lived like this.”

It can be such a powerful moment. Almost like living underwater and believing that’s how the world works, until you find out there’s air above the surface.

The Fish Doesn't Know It's Wet

Here's what interesting about chronic anxiety: it's invisible to the person living with it. When your baseline is hypervigilance, hypervigilance feels normal. When your nervous system has been in overdrive since childhood, overdrive feels like... Tuesday.

I had another client who, after her second IEMT session, called me almost panicked: "Something's wrong. I'm not thinking about anything."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'm just... sitting here. My mind isn't racing. I'm not worrying or replaying conversations. Is this... is this how other people feel?" she asked genuinely curious.

She'd lived forty three years believing that mental chaos was the human condition.

It can feel unsettling, seeing how much of your energy has been spent just keeping things together. And yet, that same realisation can be freeing, because suddenly you can begin to imagine living differently.

The Underwater Life

Imagine you’ve been underwater your entire conscious life. You’ve developed incredible skills down there; you’re efficient, you can hold your breath for ages, you’ve learned to navigate in low visibility and you’re always alert for danger.

From down below, you can see the surface, it shimmers above you. But you assume everyone lives in the depths, just like you. The pressure in your chest? Normal. The muffled, distant feeling of the world around you? That’s just how life sounds.

Then one day, for reasons you can’t quite explain, your head breaks the surface.

And suddenly, you realise: you’ve been holding your breath for far too long.

How Adaptive Anxiety Develops

Early Learning: Your nervous system is incredibly smart, it learns what keeps you safe. If you grew up in an environment where:

• Conflict felt dangerous (parents arguing, walking on eggshells)

• Love felt conditional (only got attention when you were "good")

• Unpredictability was the norm (chaotic household, inconsistent caregivers)

• Your emotions weren't welcome (told to stop crying, be strong)

Your brain develops anxiety as a survival strategy. It starts scanning constantly for signs of danger, rejection, or abandonment. This hypervigilance actually worked - it helped you navigate those early challenges.

How It Gets Sustained

The Reinforcement Loop:

1. Anxiety warns you of potential social threats

2. You adapt your behaviour (people-please, avoid conflict, over-prepare)

3. Bad thing doesn't happen (because you prevented it through anxiety-driven behaviour)

4. Brain thinks: "See! The anxiety worked! Keep doing this!"

Example: You spend ages crafting the perfect text so you don't sound rude → Person responds positively → Your brain credits the anxiety/over-thinking for the good outcome → Pattern reinforced

Neuroplasticity Factor: The neural pathways for hypervigilance get stronger with use (like a path through grass that becomes a motorway). Your brain becomes efficient at anxiety - it can spot potential problems from miles away.

Why It Feels Like Personality

After decades, these responses become automatic and unconscious:

• You don't choose to scan rooms for threats - it just happens

• People-pleasing feels natural, not effortful

• The mental rehearsing happens without you deciding to do it

• The chest tightness becomes background noise

Your identity forms around these adaptive strategies:

"I'm just very detail oriented" (I catastrophise every possible outcome)

"I'm naturally empathetic" (I absorb everyone's emotions as my responsibility)

"I'm a planner" (I can't exist without controlling every variable)

 "I care about people" (I shape shift to avoid any hint of conflict)

You just think you're naturally cautious. Naturally considerate. A natural worrier.

Your nervous system learned to hold its breath, metaphorically speaking, to keep you safe. The problem is, it never learned when to exhale.

The Breakthrough

This is exactly why IEMT is so effective for this type of deep rooted anxiety. We're not just treating symptoms; we’re updating your nervous system's threat assessment.

It's like showing your brain new information: "The danger you're protecting against isn't here anymore. The strategies that kept you safe when you were seven don't need to run your life when you're thirty seven."

IEMT helps your nervous system recalibrate what requires that hypervigilant response and what doesn't.

The Before and After That No One Talks About

What's remarkable isn't just what changes, it's what stays the same. People worry they'll become lazy or careless or somehow "less than" if they're not constantly vigilant.

Instead, they discover they can be thoughtful without being obsessive. They can be responsible without being rigid. They can care about outcomes without being paralysed by them.

One client put it beautifully: "I'm still me, just... at a manageable volume."

 What Awaits Above the Surface

If any of this feels familiar and if you’ve started to wonder whether your “normal” might just be your nervous system stuck in survival mode, here’s something important to know:

There’s air up here.

There’s a version of you who doesn’t spend every moment preparing for what could go wrong. A you who can make mistakes without it feeling like the end of the world. A you who can walk into a room and simply be, without performing. A you who can have needs without apology, who doesn’t have to keep proving your right to exist.

You don’t have to become someone new. You only have to reconnect with the parts of you that already know how to breathe.

The Perfectionism-Procrastination Cycle (And How To Break It)

You know that feeling when you're staring at a blank screen — frozen, overwhelmed and quietly panicking because whatever you're about to create needs to be brilliant? So instead… you open Instagram. Or deep clean your kitchen. Or convince yourself you need just a bit more research before you start.

Hours pass. The project remains untouched. The deadline gets closer. The anxiety builds. And you're left wondering: "Why do I keep doing this to myself?"

This, my friend, is the perfectionism-procrastination loop. And if you're caught in it, you're definitely not alone.

The Truth About Perfectionism

Perfectionism gets mistaken for ambition. High standards. Drive. But it's rarely about wanting things to be excellent. It's usually about needing to feel safe.

Where It All Begins

For many, this pattern began in childhood. Maybe you grew up in a home where standards were high and tongues were sharp. Maybe praise was rare, but criticism came easily. You learned early that love was earned, not given. That approval came with conditions.

So your brilliant, adaptive brain came up with a strategy: Be perfect. Stay accepted. Don't give them a reason to find fault. Stay small, or stay impressive, just don't be vulnerable.

And slowly but surely, that strategy didn't just shape how you behaved, it shaped who you believed you had to be.

When Perfectionism Becomes Your Identity

Over time, perfectionism stops being "something I do" and becomes "who I am." You might not say these things out loud, but you probably feel them in your bones:

"I'm the one who gets it right."

"If I don't do it perfectly, I've failed."

"My worth is measured by what I produce."

"If I make a mistake, I'll lose people's respect."

"I have to control every detail, or it will all fall apart."

"If I'm not achieving, I'm falling behind."

These are identity level beliefs. They're not just passing thoughts. They're survival strategies stored in your nervous system. They formed through experience and repetition and they don't shift just because you now know better.

The Perfectionism - Procrastination Cycle

Perfectionism and procrastination aren't opposites, they are dance partners. The loop looks like this:

Here's how the perfectionism-procrastination cycle actually plays out:

1. High Standards + Fear of Failure: You set unrealistic expectations and fear making mistakes

2. Overwhelm + Anxiety: The pressure feels too intense, leading to stress and avoidance

3. Procrastination: You delay starting because it feels too big or risky

4. Last Minute Rush or Avoidance: You either scramble to finish under pressure or avoid it completely

5. Temporary Relief or Guilt: If you finish, you feel exhausted. If you don't, you feel guilty

6. Reinforced Perfectionism: The cycle repeats as you vow to "do better" next time, raising standards even more

This cycle is exhausting because your brain never learns that "good enough" is actually... good enough.

The Hidden Costs

This loop doesn't just steal your productivity. It steals your peace. Your creativity. Your sense of self. It leads to chronic anxiety , constantly scanning for flaws, always on edge. Emotional burnout, your inner critic never sleeps. Stalled creativity, fear squeezes out spontaneity. Strained relationships, either from holding others to impossible standards or hiding your own struggles. And perhaps most painful of all: a lost identity. When your worth is wrapped around your output, rest feels like failure, and softness feels dangerous.

Why Logic Isn't Enough

You can't think your way out of this because this isn't a mindset problem , it's a pattern stored in your nervous system.

You might know that it's okay to make mistakes. But if your body still believes that imperfection = danger, your nervous system won't let you relax. That's why affirmations or pep talks only go so far. This isn't about logic. It's about safety.

A Different Way Forward

To really shift, you need to work at the level where the pattern lives. And that's where modalities like IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) and Hypnotherapy can be transformational.

How IEMT Works

With IEMT, we work directly with the emotional memory system, the part of your brain that stores the felt sense of those sharp words, the disappointed looks, the times you were shamed for not being "better." It helps to safely reduce the emotional charge around those memories, so your body no longer reacts as if you're still in danger. The old survival strategies lose their grip. You begin to feel something new: Maybe it's okay to get this wrong. Maybe I don't have to prove anything anymore.

How Hypnotherapy Helps

Hypnotherapy helps access the subconscious beliefs driving the pattern, the ones that tell you you're only valuable when you're performing, achieving, or keeping it all together. In a relaxed, receptive state, we can gently rewrite those beliefs. We don't just tell you "you are enough." We help your system feel it, integrate it, live from it.

You begin to shed the identities that never really belonged to you: The one who always has it together. The one who doesn't make mistakes. The one who's only lovable when they're impressive.

And you start to embody new ones: I'm allowed to be human. My worth isn't up for debate. I can create from a place of freedom, not fear.

A Gentle Step Forward

If any of this resonates, here's a gentle reflection to try. Next time you notice yourself procrastinating, ask: "What am I afraid it would mean about me if this isn't perfect?" Then pause. Listen. Be curious, not critical. What you find there isn't proof that something's wrong with you, it's a clue. A doorway. A map toward healing.

What Freedom Looks Like

Freedom from perfectionism doesn't mean you stop caring. It means you stop cracking under the weight of caring too much. It looks like starting before you feel fully ready. Allowing room for imperfection. Trusting that who you are is enough, even when the outcome isn't polished or impressive.

The Journey Forward

If you've been living inside this loop for years, it makes sense that letting go of it might feel scary.

Perfectionism isn't your personality. It's a protection strategy you no longer need.

With the right support, you can unlearn the pressure. You can soften the inner critic. You can remember what it's like to simply be, not perform.

Because you don't need to be flawless to move forward. You just need to feel safe enough to begin.

When Being the 'Perfect Child' Becomes Your Prison: Understanding Golden Child Syndrome

Do you remember being the child who could do no wrong? The one everyone praised, the straight-A student, the responsible one who never caused trouble? Perhaps you were told how lucky your parents were to have such a "good child," or maybe people would say, "I wish my child was more like you."

If this sounds familiar, you might be nodding along with a heavy feeling in your chest. Because while being the golden child might sound like a privilege, it often comes with a hidden cost that can follow you well into adulthood.

What Is Golden Child Syndrome?

Golden child syndrome is a widely recognized pattern in family dynamics where a child is consistently elevated above their siblings or peers, often becoming the family's source of pride and achievement. While not a formal clinical diagnosis, this dynamic is well-documented in family systems therapy and psychology research.

On the surface, this might seem positive. After all, who wouldn't want to be praised and celebrated?

But here's what happens beneath the surface: when love and approval become conditional on performance, the child learns that their worth is directly tied to meeting others' expectations. They can develop "approval addiction" which a deep, often unconscious belief that they must be perfect to be loved.

The golden child learns to suppress parts of themselves that might disappoint others. They become hypervigilant about others' needs and emotions, often at the expense of their own. They may struggle to identify what they actually want or need because they've spent so long focusing on what others want from them.

The Hidden Struggles of the Golden Child

Many people who were golden children describe feeling like they're living behind a mask. They've become so skilled at being what others need them to be that they've lost touch with who they really are.

This experience is incredibly common. You might recognize feeling completely burned out despite external success or having the sense that everyone thinks you have it all together while you feel like you're drowning inside. Perhaps you don't even know what you want anymore because you've spent so long doing what you thought you should do.

This is incredibly common. Golden children often experience:

Imposter syndrome — feeling like a fraud despite their achievements, always waiting to be "found out"

Perfectionism — setting impossibly high standards and feeling devastated by even minor mistakes

People-pleasing — struggling to say no or set boundaries because disappointing others feels unbearable

Identity confusion — not knowing who they are beyond their achievements and others' expectations

Relationship difficulties — either becoming controlling (trying to maintain the "perfect" image) or attracting partners who need "fixing"

Anxiety and depression — the constant pressure to maintain their elevated status becomes exhausting

The Identity Crisis: Who Am I Beyond My Achievements?

Perhaps the most devastating impact of golden child syndrome is what happens to your sense of identity. When your worth becomes so deeply intertwined with performance and others' approval, you can lose touch with who you actually are beneath all those expectations.

Many golden children develop what psychologists call a "false self" - a carefully constructed identity built around being what others need them to be. Meanwhile, their "true self" - their authentic thoughts, feelings, desires, and quirks - gets buried deeper and deeper.

This creates a profound identity confusion that can persist well into adulthood. You might find yourself asking:

• Who would I be if I wasn't constantly achieving?

• What do I actually enjoy, versus what I think I should enjoy?

• What are my real values, separate from what I was taught to value?

• How do I even access my own feelings when I've spent so long managing everyone else's?

• What do I even want?

You might realise you don't even know what kind of music you like, or what activities bring you genuine joy, because you've been so busy being the person everyone expected you to be that you never stopped to ask yourself what you actually enjoyed.

This identity crisis often intensifies during major life transitions; career changes, relationships ending, children leaving home, when the external structures that defined you are no longer there to lean on.

The Deep Work: Transforming Your Identity at the Core

This is where identity level work becomes crucial. Surface level changes  like learning to say no or setting boundaries are important, but they often don't stick if we haven't addressed the deeper identity beliefs that drive our behaviour.

At the identity level, golden children often carry beliefs like:

• "I am only valuable when I'm achieving"

• "I am responsible for everyone else's emotions"

• "I must be perfect to be loved"

• "My needs don't matter"

• "I am not allowed to disappoint others"

These aren't just thoughts, they become part of how you see yourself at the deepest level. They shape not just what you do, but who you believe you are.

True healing happens when we can identify these outdated identity beliefs and gently replace them with more empowering truths:

• "I am inherently valuable, regardless of what I achieve"

• "I am allowed to be imperfect and still be loved"

• "My authentic self is worthy of love and acceptance"

• "I can honour both my needs and others' needs"

• "I belong, just as I am"

This identity transformation work goes beyond changing behaviours, it's about fundamentally shifting how you see yourself and your place in the world.

Why This Happens

Golden child syndrome often develops in families where parents, often unconsciously, use one child to meet their own emotional needs. Maybe the parent was struggling with their own self-worth and needed the child's success to feel good about themselves. Perhaps there was instability in the family, and the golden child became the source of stability and pride.

It's important to understand that parents who create golden children aren't necessarily malicious. They often believe they're being loving and supportive. But when praise becomes the primary way a child receives attention and affection, it creates a blueprint in their brain: "I am only valuable when I'm achieving, pleasing or being perfect."

The Ripple Effects in Adulthood

The patterns established in childhood don't just disappear when we grow up. Many golden children find themselves:

• Taking on too much responsibility at work and in relationships

• Struggling with decision making because they're so used to doing what others expect

• Feeling guilty or selfish when they prioritise their own needs

• Experiencing relationship conflicts because they either become controlling or attract people who take advantage of their giving nature

• Feeling empty despite external success because achievements feel hollow

You might have the life everyone thinks they want, but it doesn't feel like your life. It can feel like you're playing a character that everyone loves, but you don't know who you are underneath.

Breaking Free: The Path to Authentic Self

The good news is that it's absolutely possible to heal from golden child syndrome. The patterns that feel so automatic and ingrained can be changed when we work directly with how the brain stores and processes these emotional experiences.

Recovery often involves:

Recognising the pattern: Understanding how being the golden child shaped your beliefs about yourself and relationships. This isn't about blaming your parents, but about gaining awareness of how these dynamics affected you.

Identifying your authentic self: Learning to distinguish between what you genuinely want and what you think you should want. This often involves reconnecting with parts of yourself that you learned to suppress.

Healing the underlying beliefs: Addressing deep seated beliefs like "I'm only lovable when I'm perfect" or "My needs don't matter." These beliefs often operate below conscious awareness but drive much of our behaviour.

Learning to set boundaries: Developing the ability to say no, disappoint others, and prioritise your own needs without overwhelming guilt.

Rebuilding your identity: This is perhaps the most profound part of the healing journey. It involves questioning everything you thought you knew about yourself and slowly, gently, discovering who you really are beneath all those expectations. This might mean exploring interests you dismissed as "impractical," honouring emotions you learned to suppress, or simply giving yourself permission to not know who you are yet and being okay with that uncertainty.

Your Worth Isn't Conditional

If you recognize yourself in this description, I want you to know that your worth was never conditional on your achievements, your ability to please others, or your capacity to be perfect. You were worthy of love and belonging simply because you existed.

The child who learned to dim parts of themselves to maintain approval was doing the best they could with the tools they had. But as an adult, you have choices. You can learn to love and accept all parts of yourself, not just the achieving, pleasing parts.

Recovery from golden child syndrome isn't about becoming less successful or caring less about others. It's about learning to succeed and care from a place of authenticity rather than compulsion. It's about building a life that feels genuinely yours, not just one that looks good from the outside.

The mask you've been wearing so well served its purpose, it kept you safe and loved in the only way you knew how. But now you have the opportunity to gently remove it and discover the incredible person who's been underneath all along.

Anxiety v Panic Attacks (And How To Resolve Them)

That crushing feeling in your chest. The racing thoughts. The overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen.

If you've experienced intense anxiety or panic attacks, you know how terrifying and isolating they can feel. But here's something that might surprise you. Despite how similar they seem, panic attacks and severe anxiety episodes are actually quite different experiences.

Anxiety v Panic Attacks

Anxiety : The Slow Burn

Think of anxiety episodes as your nervous system's way of saying, "I'm overwhelmed and I need this to stop." They typically:

• Build gradually over minutes or even hours

• Have a clear trigger (that presentation, the difficult conversation, financial worries)

• Feel intense but you're still aware it will pass

• Involve racing thoughts about specific concerns

• Can last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours

• Peak and recede rather than hitting maximum intensity immediately

Panic Attacks: The Lightning Strike

Panic attacks, on the other hand, are your brain's fire alarm going off when there's no actual fire. They:

• Hit suddenly and intensely, reaching peak intensity within minutes

• Often have no obvious trigger (which makes them even more frightening)

• Create an overwhelming sense of impending doom or death

• Involve intense physical symptoms: heart palpitations, sweating, trembling, feeling like you can't breathe

• Usually last 5-20 minutes but can leave you shaken for hours

• Feel like you're losing control or going crazy or having a heart attack

What Actually Causes Panic Attacks (And Why They Keep Happening)

Both panic attacks and severe anxiety episodes have something crucial in common: they're not character flaws or signs of weakness. They're your nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do — protect you from perceived danger.

The Initial Trigger: Why Your First Panic Attack Happened

Your first panic attack usually occurs when your brain's threat detection system gets inappropriately activated. This can happen due to:

Physical triggers:

• Caffeine, alcohol, or drug use

• Lack of sleep or fatigue

• Physical illness or hormonal changes

• Intense physical sensations (rapid heartbeat, dizziness)

• Certain medications or withdrawal from substances

• Blood sugar fluctuations (skipping meals, eating too much sugar)

• Certain weather changes or barometric pressure shifts

• Flickering lights or specific visual patterns

• Strong smells or perfumes

• Dehydration

• Vitamin deficiencies (particularly B vitamins or magnesium)

Psychological triggers:

• High stress or overwhelming situations

• Specific phobias (heights, enclosed spaces, social situations)

• Traumatic memories or reminders of past trauma

• Major life changes or transitions

• Feeling trapped or unable to escape a situation

• Catastrophic thinking ("What if something terrible happens?")

• Health anxiety

• Feeling out of control

• Anticipatory anxiety about future events

Environmental triggers:

• Crowded places

• Bright lights or loud noises

• Hot, stuffy environments

• Driving or being in vehicles

• Specific locations associated with previous panic attacks

The Role of Anticipatory Anxiety in Creating New Triggers

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of panic attacks is how anticipatory anxiety can create entirely new triggers over time. Once you've experienced a panic attack, your brain becomes hypervigilant for any sign that another might be coming. This creates a secondary layer of triggers that didn't exist before your first panic attack.

For example, if you had your first panic attack while driving, your brain might start associating cars, motorways or even the act of leaving your house with danger. The anticipatory anxiety about potentially having another panic attack in the car becomes a trigger itself. This is why people often say their panic attacks seem to be spreading to new situations, the fear of the panic attack is literally creating new pathways for panic to occur.

Avoidance of Triggers

When we avoid situations where we've had panic attacks, we inadvertently send a message to our brain that those situations truly are dangerous. This avoidance might provide temporary relief, but it strengthens the neural pathways that associate those situations with threat.

Each time you avoid the supermarket where you once panicked, you're reinforcing your brain's belief that supermarkets are unsafe. The fear remains unprocessed and often grows stronger. Additionally, avoidance can lead to a shrinking world . What starts as avoiding one specific store can expand to avoiding all shops, then all public places, then leaving the house at all.

But understanding the initial causes is only part of the picture. What really keeps panic attacks going is what happens after that first terrifying experience.

The "Fear of Fear" Cycle: Why Panic Attacks Continue

Here's where it gets really important to understand what's happening. This anticipatory anxiety actually raises your baseline stress level, making your nervous system more reactive. It's like having a smoke alarm that's become so sensitive it goes off when you toast bread. Your brain is now on high alert for any sensation that might indicate danger.

Why Panic Attacks Can Seem to Come From Nowhere

This explains why panic attacks often feel like they strike "out of the blue." While it seems random, your nervous system has likely been primed by this background anticipatory anxiety. Your brain has been running two alarm systems:

1. The original alarm (responding to perceived threats)

2. A second alarm that's constantly watching for the first alarm to go off

It's an exhausting cycle that keeps your nervous system stuck in a state of chronic vigilance.

The Physical Reality: Your Brain on Panic

During a panic attack, your brain activates the same response it would use if you were facing a genuine life-or-death situation. It floods your system with stress hormones, increases your heart rate, and redirects blood flow to your muscles. This is why panic attacks feel so physically intense — your body is literally preparing to fight or flee from danger that isn't actually there.

The problem isn't that this system is broken; it's that it's working perfectly for a threat that doesn't exist.

Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT): Breaking the Cycle at Its Source

IEMT works directly with how your brain stores the emotional memories that fuel both the original panic response and the anticipatory anxiety that keeps it going.

When you've experienced panic attacks, your brain creates powerful associative pathways. A racing heart becomes linked to danger. A certain location becomes "unsafe." Even the memory of panic can trigger the same physical response.

During IEMT, we use specific eye movement patterns while you think about these triggering memories or sensations. This helps your brain reprocess and "defuse" the emotional charge attached to them. We're essentially updating your brain's threat assessment system so it can accurately distinguish between actual danger and false alarms.

I'm currently working with David, who developed severe panic attacks around supermarket shopping. After experiencing his first panic attack during a routine shopping trip, his brain created a powerful association between supermarkets and danger. Now, just walking through the entrance triggers his fight-or-flight response - the fluorescent lights, crowded aisles, and sense of being "trapped" all signal threat to his nervous system. He either avoids the weekly shop entirely (leaving it to his partner) or rushes through as quickly as possible, heart racing and desperate to escape.

Through IEMT, we're working to reprocess that original panic memory and break the emotional charge it holds. His brain learned that supermarkets equal danger based on one overwhelming experience, but we can update that outdated threat assessment so he can recognise that the supermarket is actually a perfectly safe place.

Hypnotherapy: Rewiring Your Automatic Responses

Hypnotherapy creates the ideal brain state for deep change. In that focused, relaxed state, we can work directly with your subconscious mind to install new automatic responses where the old panic patterns used to be.

During hypnotherapy sessions, we might:

• Teach your nervous system to respond calmly to physical sensations that used to trigger panic

• Address the underlying beliefs fuelling the anticipatory anxiety ("Something terrible is going to happen," "I can't handle this")

• Create new neural pathways that lead to calm confidence instead of fear

What Change Actually Looks Like

Real recovery isn't about learning to "manage" your panic attacks or severe anxiety episodes forever. It's about your brain genuinely updating its threat assessment so these responses simply don't get triggered in the first place.

My clients often describe it as:

• "It's like someone turned down the volume on my anxiety"

• "I can't even remember why I used to be so afraid of that"

• "My brain just doesn't go to those scary places anymore"

This isn't about suppressing your feelings or pretending everything is fine. It's about your nervous system learning to accurately assess what's actually dangerous (very little) versus what's actually safe (most of life).

The Path Forward

If you're tired of living on edge, wondering when the next overwhelming episode might hit, know that there is a way through this that doesn't involve years of therapy or a lifetime of coping strategies.

Your brain created these patterns as a way to protect you, but they've outlived their usefulness. With the right approach — one that works with how your brain actually processes emotional experiences — you can update these responses and reclaim your sense of safety in the world.

The episodes that feel so powerful and permanent right now? They're like faulty wiring in your home's electrical system. Just as an oversensitive smoke alarm keeps going off at the slightest hint of toast, your brain's alarm system has become hypersensitive to false threats. But here's the good news, the faulty wiring can be rewired and your brain's threat detection system can be recalibrated to work properly again.

Deconstructing Trauma: What Big T And Small T Actually Mean

You know that feeling when someone mentions the word "trauma" and your brain immediately goes to war zones and car crashes? Like trauma is this big, dramatic thing that only happens to other people in extraordinary circumstances?

I get it. That's exactly what most people think when they first hear the word trauma.

But through years of working with people from all walks of life, I've learned something important: trauma isn't just about the big, dramatic events. It can be subtle, it's deeply personal and it's probably more common than you think.

What Is Trauma, Really?

Here's the thing that might surprise you, trauma isn't actually about what happens to you.

It's about what happens inside you when something overwhelms your ability to cope.

Think of it like this. Imagine your nervous system is like a circuit breaker. Most of the time, it can handle whatever life throws at you. But sometimes, an experience is so intense, so overwhelming or so threatening that it trips the whole system offline.

Your brain, in its infinite wisdom, basically says: "Right, this is too much. I'm going to store this differently so we can survive." And that's where trauma lives, not in the event itself, but in how your system responded to protect you.

The tricky part? Sometimes that protection mode gets stuck on. Years later, you might find yourself feeling unsafe when you're actually safe or shut down when you want to connect. Your body is still running the old programme, even though the danger has passed.

Breaking Down Big T and Small T Trauma

When most people think of trauma, they picture what we call "Big T" trauma, the obvious stuff that would make anyone go "Oh my God, that's terrible."

But here's what's been a game-changer for so many of my clients: understanding that there's also "Small T" trauma, experiences that might not seem "traumatic enough" to count, but absolutely do.

Big T Trauma: The Obvious Wounds

• Car accidents or serious injuries

• Physical or sexual assault

• Natural disasters

• Sudden loss of someone you love

• Being attacked or robbed

• War or violence

• Life-threatening medical emergencies

• Domestic violence

These are the experiences that everyone recognizes as traumatic. They're sudden, overwhelming and clearly threatening.

Small T Trauma: The Hidden Wounds That Cut Deep

These are the experiences that can quietly shape how you see yourself and the world:

• Being bullied (at school, online, at work)

• Feeling emotionally neglected — like you were invisible in your own family

• Constant criticism or being made to feel like you're never good enough

• Growing up with parents who fought all the time

• Feeling rejected or abandoned

• Watching someone you love get hurt, even if it wasn't happening to you

• Living with ongoing stress — poverty, chaos, instability

• Medical experiences as a child that felt scary or painful

• Simply feeling unsafe or unwanted as a kid

However, just because something seems "smaller" doesn't mean it hurt less. Sometimes the quiet, repeated experiences cut the deepest. Small T trauma is like water slowly wearing away stone, it happens so gradually that you might not even notice the erosion until years later.

Complex Trauma: When Small T Becomes Big T

And then there's what happens when Small T trauma accumulates over time, like small cracks in a foundation that eventually compromise the whole structure. This is sometimes called complex trauma:

·       Growing up with a parent who had untreated mental illness or addiction

·       Being the family scapegoat or "identified patient"

·       Living with chronic family conflict or walking on eggshells

·       Having siblings who were consistently favoured or treated differently

·       Moving frequently and never feeling settled or belonging anywhere

·        Being in toxic relationships that gradually erode your sense of self

·       Chronic workplace harassment, bullying or toxic environments

The thing about Small T trauma is that it's often dismissed, sometimes even by the person experiencing it. You might think "It wasn't that bad" or "Other people have it worse." But your brain and nervous system doesn't compare your pain to anyone else's. It just responds to what feels threatening or overwhelming in the moment.

How Trauma Shows Up Later

The thing about trauma is that it doesn't always announce itself with a neon sign. Sometimes it shows up years later, disguised as other things:

• Anxiety that seems to come from nowhere

• A persistent feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with you

• Terror of being rejected, abandoned, or failing

• Struggling to trust people or maintain relationships

• Feeling emotionally numb, like you're watching life from behind glass

• Perfectionism, people-pleasing, or working yourself to the bone

• Self-sabotaging just when things start going well

• Chronic fatigue or health problems that doctors can't quite explain

• Hypervigilance - always scanning for danger or threats

If any of this is resonating with you, know that your system isn't malfunctioning. It's actually working exactly as it should, protecting you in the only way it learned how. Your nervous system didn't develop these trauma responses randomly or carelessly; they were crafted with incredible precision during moments when your survival genuinely depended on split-second adaptations. These responses weren't just psychological, they were neurobiological adaptations that helped you survive when fight, flight, or freeze were your only options.

Tools For Trauma Recovery

I see this transformation regularly in my practice. People arrive feeling broken, having tried therapy after therapy, ready to give up. But something shifts when we work together. They start remembering who they were before the trauma took hold.

The methods I use help your brain and body do what they're naturally designed to do, process and release the trauma that’s been trapped there.

IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) — This approach uses simple eye movements to help your brain reprocess stuck memories and emotions. It's remarkable how quickly people find relief. That memory that used to feel like a lightning bolt? After IEMT, it often feels distant, neutral, like something that happened to someone else.

Identity Work — Trauma has a way of distorting how you see yourself. "You're not safe." "You're not good enough." "You're broken." We work together to untangle these old stories and reconnect you with the truth of who you are underneath all of that.

Hypnotherapy — This isn't about being "put under" or losing control. It's about accessing that gentle, relaxed state where your subconscious mind becomes more open to healing. We can work with the negative emotions left by trauma, helping to shift the beliefs and responses that keep you stuck. It's like having a compassionate conversation with the part of you that's been protecting you all these years.

Creating Safety — Before any healing can happen, your nervous system needs to know that you're safe now. We build practical tools to help you feel calm and grounded in your own body again.

A Final Thought

The work we do together doesn't just help - it transforms. Because when you're ready to stop managing your trauma and start releasing it, everything changes.

Yes, trauma may have shaped how you respond to the world. But it doesn't define your worth, your potential, or your future.

You are still in there - the real you, the whole you. Trauma simply built a protective wall around that person for a while.

And walls, no matter how thick or how long they've been there, can be gently dismantled.

Summertime Sadness: The Depression We Don't Talk About

It's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in July. The sun is blazing, the air smells like barbecues and freshly cut grass, and your Instagram feed is a relentless parade of beach bodies, festival wristbands, and golden hour selfies with captions like "living my best life " and "summer vibes only! "

You should be happy. Everyone else seems to be.

But you're not.

If you've ever felt like summer is some exclusive party that everyone got invited to except you, you're not alone. In fact, you're part of a quiet majority that nobody talks about . The people for whom summer's pressure to be constantly happy, social and adventure-ready feels more overwhelming than liberating.

The Myth of Universal Summer Bliss

Summer has become this cultural performance where we're all supposed to be our most vibrant, social, adventurous selves. But here's the thing about performance , it's exhausting and it often bears little resemblance to reality.

There's something deeper happening here than just social media envy. What many people don't realize is that summer can actually trigger real depression, creating a perfect storm of internal struggle and external pressure that leaves you feeling more isolated than ever.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. You might be experiencing something that millions of people struggle with in silence: summer depression.

The Seasonal Sadness We Don't Talk About

When most people think of seasonal depression, they picture the classic winter blues , those grey, cold months when daylight feels like a rare commodity. But there's another, often overlooked form of seasonal affective disorder that strikes during the warmest, brightest months of the year.

Summer depression, also known as reverse seasonal affective disorder, affects an estimated 10% of people who experience seasonal depression. While that might sound like a small number, it represents millions of people who find themselves struggling with their mental health at the very time when society expects them to be at their happiest.

Why Summer Can Trigger Depression

The reasons behind summer depression are complex and deeply personal, but there are several common triggers that many people experience:

The pressure to be happy — Summer comes with an unspoken social contract: you must be joyful, active, and social. There's an expectation to have exciting plans for every single sunny day.

Disrupted routines — The structure that keeps many people mentally healthy — regular sleep schedules, consistent work patterns, predictable social rhythms — often gets thrown out the window during summer. Children are home from school, work becomes more flexible, holidays interrupt normal life and social calendars explode with events. For some, this freedom feels overwhelming rather than liberating.

Physical discomfort — Not everyone thrives in heat and humidity. Some people feel sluggish, irritable or physically uncomfortable during warmer weather. When your body doesn't feel good, your mind often follows suit. Additionally, longer daylight can disrupt sleep patterns, leading to fatigue and mood changes.

Social anxiety amplified — Summer is inherently more social: barbecues, festivals, outdoor events, holiday trips. For people who struggle with social anxiety, the season can feel like months of high-pressure social situations. The fear of missing out (FOMO) battles with the desire to isolate, creating internal conflict and exhaustion.

Financial stress — Summer often means increased spending on holidays, activities and social events. Financial stress can trigger or worsen depression, especially when it feels like everyone else is living their best life while you're worried about money.

Why Summer FOMO Hits Different

There's something uniquely brutal about summer FOMO. Unlike winter, where staying in feels cozy and reasonable, summer makes being home feel like a personal failing. The longer days mean more hours to fill, more opportunities to feel like you're "wasting" the good weather, more time to scroll through other people's highlight reels.

And if you're someone who's naturally more introverted, sensitive or dealing with mental health challenges, the pressure can feel suffocating. It's as if the world has collectively decided that this is the season for being "on" and you're sitting there feeling like your batteries are already drained.

Here's what I want you to know , your nervous system doesn't operate on a seasonal schedule.

The Isolation of Summer Depression

One of the most painful aspects of summer depression is how isolating it can feel. When you're struggling in winter, people understand. They nod knowingly when you mention feeling low during the dark months. But admit to feeling depressed during a beautiful summer day, and you're often met with confused looks or well-meaning but unhelpful advice like "just get outside more!"

This misunderstanding can lead to additional shame and self-judgment. You might find yourself thinking:

• "What's wrong with me that I can't enjoy this beautiful weather?"

• "Everyone else is having so much fun, why can't I?"

• "I should be grateful for these sunny days"

• "I'm being dramatic or ungrateful"

These thoughts create a secondary layer of suffering on top of the depression itself.

What Summer Depression Actually Looks Like

Summer depression doesn't always manifest as the classic image of sadness we might expect. Instead, it often shows up as:

• Feeling agitated or restless despite being tired

• Having difficulty sleeping due to longer daylight hours

• Feeling overwhelmed by social expectations and activities

• Experiencing decreased appetite or weight loss

• Feeling anxious about body image or appearance

• Having difficulty concentrating or making decisions

• Feeling disconnected from others despite increased social opportunities

• A persistent sense of missing out on life, even when you're participating

Your Summer Doesn't Have To Look Like Anyone Else's

Here's a radical idea: what if your version of a perfect summer day looks nothing like the ones flooding your social feeds?

What if your ideal summer involves:

• Reading a book in your garden instead of at a crowded beach

• Having deep conversations with one close friend instead of making small talk at parties

• Taking quiet walks at dawn instead of staying out until 2 AM

• Cooking a simple meal at home instead of trying every new rooftop restaurant

You are allowed to have a summer that nourishes your soul rather than exhausts your nervous system.

When FOMO Becomes A Signal

Sometimes, though, FOMO isn't just about social media comparison, it's your system telling you something important about what you need. Often, that persistent feeling of missing out is actually a signal that some of your deeper needs aren't being met.

If you find yourself constantly feeling left out, it might be because:

• You're genuinely craving more connection, but anxiety is making it hard to reach out

• You want to try new experiences, but fear is keeping you stuck in your comfort zone

• You're longing for joy and spontaneity, but depression is making everything feel flat

• You want to feel more comfortable in social situations, but past experiences have made them feel unsafe

The good news? These feelings are information, not life sentences. These are all things we can work on. When FOMO is pointing to unmet needs, it's actually giving you a roadmap for what might need attention in your life

You're Not Missing Out On Life

Here's what I know after years of working with people who feel like life is passing them by: the people who seem to be living the most aren't necessarily the ones posting the most.

The richest lives are often the quietest ones. The deepest joy is often found in small moments. The most authentic connections happen in spaces that never make it to social media.

Your summer story doesn't need to be loud to be meaningful. It doesn't need to be public to be real. It doesn't need to look like anyone else's to be absolutely perfect for you.

Summer depression challenges our cultural narrative that sunshine equals happiness. But mental health is far more complex than weather patterns, and your emotional experience doesn't have to match the season outside your window.

Your mental health matters in every season.

Cold Case Therapy: What Dept Q Gets Right About Healing Old Wounds

I’ve been absolutely glued to Netflix’s new series Dept Q,  the Edinburgh based crime drama that’s got everyone talking.

But underneath all that gorgeous Scottish architecture and noir atmosphere, there’s something deeper happening that’s got me thinking about basements. Literal ones. Metaphorical ones. And why we avoid them both.

Carl Morck, the lead detective, is rough around the edges — scarred by his own past mistakes and haunted by guilt. When he’s assigned to Dept Q, the cold case division, leading a team of brilliant misfits, he’s basically been told: “Here…. deal with the problems everyone else gave up on.”

Sound familiar?

The Basement of Forgotten Things

While Carl and his team sift through dusty, abandoned case files deep in their Edinburgh office basement, most of us have our own emotional archives we avoid opening.

That childhood humiliation. The heartbreak that changed us. The moment we quietly decided we weren’t enough.

Cold cases, every one of them.

And just like in the show, we’ve often been told those cases are closed.

“That was years ago.” “You just need to get over it.” “Why are you still thinking about that?”

Or maybe you’ve done the opposite.  You’ve analysed it to death. You understand exactly why you react the way you do, where it came from, what triggers it. You know the psychology textbook explanations by heart. And yet you are still stuck.

But here’s what Dept Q gets absolutely right: Old wounds don’t vanish just because we ignore them. They don’t expire with time. They become patterns.

When the Past Starts Driving the Present

Carl’s past trauma drives his obsessive need to solve cases but it also isolates him, makes him difficult to work with and keeps him stuck in patterns of guilt and self-punishment. Yet when channelled through the right framework (his team, proper support, fresh perspectives), those same intense responses become investigative strengths.

It’s the same with our emotional cold cases.

That time you were rejected? Your brain quietly filed it under “People leave.” Now it runs that programme every time someone gets close.

That moment you were criticised? Filed under “I’m not good enough.” Still running twenty years later, every time you try something new.

Your subconscious doesn’t know time. It just knows this pattern kept you safe before. Let’s run it again.

You Can’t Solve It with Logic Alone

What I love about Dept Q is how Carl’s team approaches cold cases differently. They use new angles, fresh thinking and spot patterns where others don’t.

Akram has this brilliant ability to sift through hundreds of dusty case files scattered across the floor and instantly know which ones are worth pursuing. He organizes them, prioritises them and puts the most relevant ones on Carl’s desk. Rose, meanwhile, brings an almost obsessive attention to detail and refuses to let anything slide, her persistence often uncovers the crucial evidence everyone else missed.

Good therapy works the same way.

Your logical mind has already tried to solve your stuff. You’ve analysed it. Read about it. Understood it. You know exactly why you do what you do.

But here’s the frustrating truth, understanding a pattern doesn’t automatically change it.

You need someone who can look at all your emotional “case files” — the jumbled mess of memories, triggers and patterns — and quickly identify what’s actually driving your current struggles

That’s where approaches like IEMT come in. Think of it as spring cleaning for your mental basement. Your brain stores emotional memories in a jumbled, unprocessed way that keeps triggering your alarm system inappropriately. It’s like having boxes of old case files scattered everywhere, and every time you accidentally kick one, it sets off a whole emotional reaction that doesn’t even belong to your current situation.

IEMT uses specific eye movement patterns that help your brain properly file away those scattered emotional memories. Instead of leaving them lying around like open case files, constantly nagging at you, they get stored as “historical information” rather than “current threat alerts.”

Hypnotherapy works differently. It’s like having a direct conversation with the case manager who's been running those old files, updating the threat assessments to match your current reality rather than the survival protocols you needed years ago.

Here’s the thing. You don’t need to spend years down in that emotional basement. You just need someone with the right investigative approach to properly close those cases that are still affecting you today.

Your Investigation Starts Now

So what emotional cold cases are gathering dust in your basement?

What patterns keep showing up that feel frustratingly familiar? What old hurts are still running the show, decades later?

You don't need to keep living like the crime is still happening. You just need the right tools to close the case.

Just like Dept Q, your emotional cold cases can actually be solved - properly processed and filed away where they belong.

And you can finally move forward, free from those dusty basement files that have been running your life for far too long.

Why Another Coping Strategy Won't Fix Your Anxiety (And What Will)

You've tried everything. The meditation apps, the breathing exercises, the mindfulness courses. You've read the self-help books, practiced gratitude, and probably have more coping strategies than you know what to do with.

Yet here you are, still anxious.

If you're reading this wondering why you can't seem to get better despite doing all the "right" things, or you've just been told to "try another technique" when you're already drowning in them, I get it. I really do.

The Coping Strategy Trap

Here's what nobody tells you about coping strategies: they're designed to help you live with anxiety, not live without it. It's like being given a really good umbrella when what you actually need is to get out of the storm altogether.

Your anxiety isn't a character flaw that needs managing. It's not a permanent part of your personality. It's a learned response that got stuck.

Think about it. You weren't born checking your phone seventeen times before bed, or rehearsing conversations that haven't happened yet or feeling your chest tighten every time someone doesn't text back immediately. Something taught your nervous system to react this way.

Why Your Brain Keeps the Anxiety Switch On

Your brain is absolutely brilliant at keeping you alive. When you were younger, something happened that made your nervous system decide "We need to be on high alert to stay safe." Maybe it was obvious trauma, or maybe it was something that seemed small at the time - criticism, rejection, feeling unsafe, watching a parent struggle.

Your brain filed that experience under "DANGER: NEVER FORGET" and created anxiety as your personal bodyguard. The problem? That bodyguard never got the memo that the danger has passed.

So here you are, decades later, with a brain that's still protecting you from threats that no longer exist. No amount of deep breathing is going to convince a part of your brain that thinks you're still in danger.

What Actually Works (And Why)

Here's the thing, you can't think your way out of something that was never created by thinking.

Most anxiety doesn't start with a thought.

It starts with an experience.

Something that happened to you that your brain interpreted as dangerous. Maybe it was a car accident, harsh criticism as a child, watching a parent struggle, a medical emergency, or even something that seemed "small" but felt huge to your young brain.

When these experiences happen, your brain doesn't file them away as nice, neat memories with a logical narrative. It stores them as emotional imprints - raw feelings, body sensations, and survival responses. No words, no analysis, just pure "DANGER - REMEMBER THIS."

So the anxiety pattern gets encoded at a pre-verbal, emotional level in your brain. It's not a thought process, it's a protective response that bypasses your thinking mind entirely.

Years later, when something triggers that old imprint, your brain activates the same protection pattern. Your heart races, your thoughts spiral, your chest tightens,  all before your conscious mind even knows what's happening.

That's why you can logically know you're safe, understand your triggers, and analyse your patterns until you're blue in the face... but you still feel anxious. Because the anxiety isn't coming from your thoughts, it's coming from that deeper, wordless part of your brain that's still trying to protect you from an old danger.

Your racing mind is just the symptom, like a fire alarm going off. You can muffle the alarm all you want with coping strategies, but until you address what's setting it off in your brain, it'll keep going.

This is where approaches like IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) and Hypnotherapy come in. Instead of trying to convince your logical mind of anything, we work directly with your brain at the same level where the anxiety was created, in the emotional, non-verbal parts.

With IEMT, we use specific eye movements to help your brain process and resolve those old emotional imprints that are keeping your anxiety switch stuck in the 'on' position. It's like helping your brain finally understand that the danger has passed.

Hypnotherapy works with your subconscious mind - the part that runs 95% of your life without you even realising it. While your conscious mind has been trying so hard to stay calm, your subconscious has been quietly running old protection programmes in the background. We update those programmes so your whole system can finally relax.

Monica's Story

Monica came to me after fifteen years of managing anxiety. She had a drawer full of self-help books, three meditation apps on her phone, and could tell you exactly how many counts to breathe in and out.

She was still having panic attacks on the M8.

"I feel like I'm not coping," she told me in our first session. "Everyone else seems to manage fine, but I just can't seem to get on top of this."

Here's what Monica didn't know: she wasn't failing at coping. She was trying to fix the wrong thing.

After three sessions using IEMT and Hypnotherapy, Sarah called me from her car. She'd just driven the entire length of the M8 without a single anxious thought. Not because she'd managed her anxiety better, but because her brain had finally filed away the car accident from her twenties that had been keeping her on high alert every time she got behind the wheel.

"I keep waiting for the anxiety to come back," she told me a month later. "But it just... doesn't."

The Resolution Revolution

What if I told you that the goal isn't learning to live with anxiety? What if the goal is remembering what it feels like to live without it?

You don't need another coping strategy. You don't need to become better at managing your mental health. You need resolution for whatever taught your nervous system to be anxious in the first place.

Your brain created these patterns to protect you, which means your brain can release them when it understands they're no longer needed. Not managed, not coped with - resolved.

Moving Forward

If you've been trying to manage your way to peace and it's not working, please know this: you're not doing it wrong. You're just trying to fix something at the wrong level.

Coping strategies have their place. They can be helpful tools once your brain remembers how to be calm. But using them to try and create calm is like trying to build a house starting with the roof.

Your anxiety isn't a life sentence. It's unfinished business. Let’s finish it.

The Shepherd’s Cottage: Why Your Brain Fights Every Good Decision You Make

It's 6 AM on a drizzly Glasgow morning. Your alarm goes off. You've promised yourself you'll start that morning workout routine. You've bought the yoga mat from Argos, downloaded the app, set out your gym kit the night before. You are ready.

And yet, as you lie there listening to the rain against your window, your brain begins its familiar song: "Just five more minutes. You can start tomorrow. It's absolutely chucking it down anyway. What's one more day?"

Sound familiar?

Here's what nobody tells you: Your brain isn't sabotaging you. It's trying to save your life.

Meet Your Brain's Security System

Your brain has one primary job that trumps all others: keeping you alive. Not happy, not successful, not fulfilled — alive. And from your brain's perspective, anything new equals potential danger.

This isn't a design flaw. For 99% of human history, this system worked brilliantly. The humans who were cautious about change, who stuck to familiar caves and known food sources, were the ones who survived long enough to become our ancestors.

But here's the plot twist: we're no longer running from sabre-toothed tigers. We're running from spreadsheets, social anxiety and the crushing weight of our own potential. Yet our brains haven't gotten the memo.

The Neural Highways of Habit

Think of your brain as having two types of roads:

The Highway — These are your established neural pathways. They're fast, efficient, and well-maintained. When you automatically reach for your phone when you're bored, brush your teeth before bed or feel anxious in social situations, you're cruising on the highway.

The Dirt Road — This is where new behaviours live. It's bumpy, slow, and requires constant attention. Every time you choose the salad over the pizza, meditate instead of scrolling or speak up instead of staying quiet, you're taking the dirt road.

Your brain, being the efficiency expert it is, always wants to default to the highway. It's simply easier.

Why Willpower Isn't the Answer

We've been sold a lie that change is about willpower. That if we just want it enough, we can override our biology through sheer force of will.

Here's the truth: willpower is finite. Studies show that people who seem to have "good willpower" aren't actually using willpower at all. They've structured their environment to make good choices automatic.

They've turned dirt roads into highways.

The Resistance Is Real (And It's Trying to Help)

When you decide to make a change, your brain immediately begins calculating risk:

• "What if this new diet makes you sick?"

• "What if people judge you for being different?"

• "What if you fail publicly?"

• "Remember last time you tried to change? That didn't go well."

This internal resistance isn't your enemy, it's your brain's ancient alarm system working overtime. The key isn't to fight the resistance, but to understand it and work with it.

It's a bit like having a cautious Highland shepherd living in your head. Someone who's spent generations learning that change can bring storms and who'd rather keep the flock safely in familiar pastures than risk the unknown mountain paths.

The Neuroscience of Making Change Stick

Your brain evaluates threat level partly based on the size of the change. Want to start exercising? Start stupidly small. Don't commit to an hour at PureGym. Commit to putting on your trainers. That's it. The goal isn't the workout itself , it's proving to your brain that this new behaviour is safe.

Pair new behaviours with old ones you already do automatically. Your brain loves patterns it already trusts. "After I pour my morning coffee, I will meditate for 2 minutes." You're essentially using the established highway to build your dirt road.

And remember, change often feels absolutely rubbish before it feels good. This isn't you doing it wrong, this is your system recalibrating. Your brain is essentially having a proper strop because you've disrupted its careful balance.

If You Really Want to Turbo Charge Your Results

Here's where things get properly interesting. While the strategies above work brilliantly, there are two approaches that can dramatically accelerate your progress by working directly with your brain's deeper operating systems.

IEMT: Spring Cleaning for Your Mental Cottage

Think of IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) as helping your cautious Highland shepherd have a massive spring clean of that cluttered mental cottage. You know how sometimes you can't move forward because you're constantly tripping over old baggage? IEMT sorts that right out.

Here's the fascinating bit: your brain stores emotional memories differently from regular memories, often in a jumbled, unprocessed way that keeps triggering your alarm system inappropriately. It's like having boxes of old photographs scattered everywhere, and every time you accidentally kick one, it sets off a whole emotional reaction that doesn't even belong to your current situation.

IEMT uses specific eye movement patterns that mirror your brain's natural processing mechanisms, the same ones that happen during REM sleep when your mind sorts through the day's experiences. It's like giving your Highland shepherd a proper filing system, helping them organize all those scattered emotional memories so they're stored away properly instead of lying around waiting to trip you up.

The brilliant thing about IEMT is how quickly it can clear emotional blocks that have been sabotaging your efforts for years. That fear of success? That anxiety about being seen? Those feelings of not being good enough? IEMT helps your brain file them away as "historical information" rather than "current threat alerts." Suddenly, your internal security system stops treating your job interview like a sabre-toothed tiger encounter.

Hypnotherapy: Making The Cottage a Home

Once you've cleared out the emotional clutter with IEMT, Hypnotherapy is like helping the shepherd rearrange the furniture, hang new curtains and create a space that finally reflects who they are now - not who they had to be to survive the past.

Instead of shouting over the fence, Hypnotherapy invites you into the shepherd’s now tidy cottage for a cup of tea and a proper chat about new plans. It’s like lighting the hearth — bringing warmth, safety and fresh stories into the space. It’s where the shepherd begins to dream again.

Hypnotherapy works so remarkably well because it bypasses your brain's usual security checkpoints. Remember that overactive alarm system we talked about? In the relaxed, focused state of hypnosis, those alarm bells quiet down enough for your subconscious mind to actually listen to new suggestions without immediately flagging them as dangerous.

Suddenly, you can install new, more helpful beliefs that actually serve your current life . Ones that tell you that speaking up is safe, that you're worthy of success and that change can lead to wonderful things.

The beauty is that your conscious mind doesn't need to wrestle with resistance because you're working directly with the part of your brain that controls those automatic responses. It's incredibly efficient, often achieving in weeks what traditional approaches might take months to accomplish. Your Highland shepherd finally gets the memo that the storms have passed and it's safe to explore those new mountain paths after all.

The Long Game

Here's the beautiful truth about neuroplasticity: your brain is constantly changing anyway. Every thought you think, every action you take, every experience you have is literally reshaping your neural pathways.

The question isn't whether your brain will change, it's whether you'll participate consciously in that change or let it happen by default.

Change isn't about becoming a different person. It's about becoming more of who you already are underneath all the outdated programmes. It's about updating your internal software to match your current life, not the life your ancestors needed to survive.

Your Brain Is Not Your Enemy

The next time you feel that familiar resistance to a good decision, try this: instead of fighting it or judging yourself for it, get curious.

"Oh, there's that security system again. What is it trying to protect me from?"

Sometimes the protection is outdated and you can gently override it. Sometimes it's pointing to something legitimate that needs attention. But always, it's trying to help.

Your brain isn't sabotaging you. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do — keep you safe in a world that no longer requires the same survival strategies.

The path forward isn't about overpowering your neurology. It's about partnering with it, understanding it and slowly, gently, updating it to serve the life you want to live now.

Your brain isn't fighting against you, it's waiting for you to show it a new way forward.

And when you understand the game, you can play it like a Pro.

Why Your Childhood Survival Patterns Are Running Your Adult Life (And How to Update Them)

After more than 20 years of working with adults navigating complex challenges — from brain injury recovery to trauma and beyond — I've noticed something profound: the patterns we developed as children to survive difficult situations don't just disappear when we grow up. They become the invisible operating system running our adult lives.

The remarkable thing is that these patterns once served us perfectly. They kept us safe, helped us navigate unpredictable environments, and allowed us to cope when we had limited resources and understanding. But what worked brilliantly for a 7-year old trying to make sense of their world can become the very thing holding back a 37-year old trying to build the life they want.

The Invisible Operating System

Think of it this way, your mind is like a computer that downloaded its operating system during childhood. Back then, you didn't have the luxury of choosing which programmes to install — you just adapted to whatever environment you found yourself in. If your household was chaotic, you might have developed hypervigilance as your default setting. If love felt conditional, you might have installed a "perfectionism" programme to earn approval. If emotions felt unsafe, you might have created an "analytical override" to bypass feelings altogether.

These weren't conscious choices. They were brilliant adaptations by a developing brain doing its best to navigate the world with limited resources.

When Survival Mode Becomes Your Default

The challenge is that these childhood patterns don't come with an expiration date. That hypervigilance that once kept you safe now shows up as chronic anxiety. The perfectionism that earned you approval now drives you to burnout. The emotional disconnect that protected you from pain now leaves you feeling isolated in your relationships.

What's particularly fascinating is how deeply these patterns embed themselves in our sense of identity. We don't just have anxious thoughts — we believe "I am an anxious person." We don't just engage in perfectionist behaviours — we identify as "someone who has to get everything right."

These aren't just habits; they become who we think we are.

The Identity Shift: From "I Am" to "I Do"

This is where the magic really happens and honestly, it's my favourite part of the work. In my practice, I've witnessed the most profound transformations when we gently help people recognise the difference between their behaviours and their core identity. It's like watching someone remember who they truly are beneath all the protective layers.

Using approaches like IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) and Hypnotherapy, we can access and update these deep beliefs about who we are. What I find beautiful about this process is that we're not trying to convince someone they're different — we're helping them recognise what was always true.

Instead of carrying the heavy identity of "I am broken," people discover the lighter truth: "I learnt to protect myself brilliantly." Instead of the painful belief "I am not good enough," they reconnect with "I adapted beautifully to an environment where I felt I had to earn love." This isn't positive thinking or affirmations — it's recognising the actual truth of what happened and honouring the incredible wisdom of your younger self while giving your adult self permission to choose from a fuller range of options.

Releasing the Emotional Charge: Working with Negative Emotional Imprints

Here's something fascinating I've observed over the years: these childhood patterns aren't just stored as thoughts or beliefs. They're held as emotional imprints — those sudden rushes of shame, panic, or dread that seem to come from nowhere but feel absolutely real and urgent.

You know that feeling when someone's tone of voice suddenly makes you feel like you're in trouble, even though you're a capable adult? Or when a certain look makes your stomach drop with familiar dread? Those are emotional imprints from past experiences, still firing in your nervous system as if the original situation is happening right now.

Traditional talk therapy often tries to understand these feelings, but I've found that sometimes we need to work directly with the emotional charge itself. These imprints live in a different part of our brain than our rational understanding, which is why you can logically know something isn't your fault whilst still feeling guilty or understand that you're safe whilst still feeling afraid.

Through IEMT, we can help process and release these stuck emotional charges. It's remarkable to watch someone's face soften as a decades-old feeling of "not being enough" literally dissolves from their system. They don't just think differently about themselves — they feel fundamentally different in their body. The emotional weight lifts and suddenly there's space for who they actually are to emerge.

Rachel's Story

Let me share a story that illustrates this beautifully. Rachel came to see me feeling completely exhausted by her own life. She couldn't say no to requests, constantly worried about disappointing others, and felt this gnawing guilt whenever she even thought about prioritising her own needs. "I know I shouldn't feel this way," she told me in our first session, "but I can't seem to stop."

As we worked together, a picture emerged. Rachel had learned early on that being helpful and agreeable was her lifeline to connection with her overwhelmed single mother. This wasn't manipulation — it was love and survival instinct working together. Her young mind figured out that being useful meant being valued, and being valued meant being safe. This strategy worked beautifully when she was little — it helped her feel precious and maintain a crucial relationship during a really difficult time.

But at 37, this same pattern was quietly running her life into the ground. She was overcommitted at work, struggling in her marriage because she couldn't express her needs, and feeling increasingly resentful while simultaneously feeling guilty about that resentment. The emotional imprint was still there — that old familiar panic when someone might be disappointed, that sick feeling in her stomach when she considered saying no.

Using IEMT, we worked gently with both the identity beliefs and the negative emotions. Instead of seeing herself as "someone who has to please everyone to be loveable," Rachel began to recognise herself as "someone who values connection deeply and learnt to create it through incredible thoughtfulness." We worked with that panicky feeling in her body when she imagined disappointing someone, helping her nervous system understand that adult Rachel had many more resources than little Rachel did.

Through Hypnotherapy, we reinforced her expanding identity as someone who could be caring and boundaried, helpful and selective, connected and autonomous. The change wasn't just behavioural — it was fundamental. Rachel wasn't learning to "manage" her people-pleasing; she was updating her entire ‘operating system’ whilst honouring the love that created the original pattern.

The most beautiful moment came when Rachel told me, "I finally understand that caring about people doesn't have to mean disappearing myself. I can love people and still take up space." That's identity work in action.

The Good News: Patterns Can Be Updated

Here's what I love about this work: you're not trying to delete or override your childhood adaptations. You're recognizing them as the brilliant solutions they were, appreciating how they served you, and then consciously choosing what serves you now.

Your nervous system learned these patterns for good reasons, which means it can learn new ones for equally good reasons. The neuroplasticity that allowed you to adapt as a child is still available to you as an adult. You just need approaches that speak to the deeper levels where these patterns live — not just your thinking mind, but your nervous system, your identity and your unconscious beliefs about how the world works.

Moving Forward: You're Not Broken, You're Running ‘Outdated Software’

If you're recognising yourself in these patterns, I want you to take a moment and really let this sink in: you're not broken. You're not fundamentally flawed or damaged. You're simply running operating system software that was perfectly, brilliantly designed for a different time and situation. And just like any software, it can be updated.

Those patterns that feel so permanent, so much a part of who you are? They're actually just learned responses that can be gently unlearned and replaced with something that serves you better. The identity beliefs that feel so absolutely true — "I'm not enough," "I have to be perfect," "I can't trust anyone" — these are just conclusions your young mind drew based on the limited information available at the time. They can be updated too, with patience and the right approach.

What moves me most about this work is how people's faces change when they finally see these patterns for what they really are — not character defects, but evidence of their incredible adaptability and resilience. You survived. You figured out how to navigate difficult situations with the resources you had. That's not something to be ashamed of — that's something to honour.

This is the work that I love- helping people recognise the incredible wisdom of their adaptations whilst creating gentle space for new choices. Because you deserve to live from your full adult capacity, not just the survival strategies of your younger self. You deserve to feel at home in your own life.

When Empathy Becomes Overwhelm: The Hidden Struggles of Highly Sensitive People

Have you ever felt like the weight of the world's emotions rests on your shoulders? Like the sadness of someone you barely know can leave you exhausted or a room full of happy people can feel unbearably chaotic? If you've experienced this, you may be one of the many highly sensitive people (HSPs) navigating life with a profound and often overwhelming, sense of empathy.

Understanding High Sensitivity

Highly Sensitive People, as defined by psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron, make up approximately 15-20% of the population. This trait isn't a disorder or something to be "fixed"—it's simply the way a person's nervous system is wired. While HSPs possess a remarkable attunement to others' feelings, this empathy can become a source of emotional overload.

What Makes HSPs Different?

At its core, being highly sensitive involves how the brain and nervous system process sensory information. The nervous system of an HSP is more responsive than most. They notice subtle details that others overlook—changes in tone, body language, or the emotional energy of a room. This heightened awareness means they often experience emotions more intensely, both their own and others'.

While this sensitivity is a gift in many ways, it comes with challenges. For HSPs, the world can sometimes feel like a sensory storm—intense, noisy, chaotic, and emotionally draining.

Why HSPs Are More Prone to Anxiety and Overwhelm

According to Dr. Elaine Aron, HSPs have a more finely tuned nervous system that processes information deeply. Brain imaging studies have shown that HSPs exhibit increased activity in regions like the insula and mirror neuron systems—areas responsible for awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation. This deep processing trait means HSPs not only feel things more strongly but also spend more cognitive energy analysing and reflecting on those feelings. While this can lead to profound insight and compassion, it also makes them more susceptible to sensory and emotional overload. When daily life includes constant noise, social demands, or the distress of others, it can quickly become too much, triggering anxiety, overwhelm, and eventually, burnout—especially if they don’t have effective coping strategies or space to decompress.

The Dark Side of Empathy

Empathy is often celebrated as a beautiful trait—someone who can truly understand and feel the emotions of others. And indeed, for many HSPs, their ability to tune into the emotional states of others can be a deeply connecting experience. But what happens when this gift starts to feel like a burden?

For some HSPs, the emotional weight of others can feel overwhelming. The ability to absorb and mirror the feelings of others can leave them feeling drained, especially when the emotions are heavy or negative. A person going through a breakup, a friend dealing with illness, or a colleague struggling at work can unknowingly dump their emotional baggage on the HSP, who soaks it up without realizing.

Over time, this emotional contagion can cause burnout. The sensitive individual may begin to feel emotionally overwhelmed, anxious, or even physically exhausted

The Inner Conflict: Wanting to Help, Needing Self-Protection

Highly sensitive people often experience a profound inner conflict: they want to help others, yet they need to protect their own emotional boundaries. Empathy drives an urge to nurture and care for others. But what happens when they have no energy left to nurture themselves? This is where burnout begins to take hold.

The challenge for many HSPs lies in knowing when to say "no" and when to create emotional distance from others' feelings. Without clear boundaries, they become constant receptacles for everyone's emotional storms. When their own emotions are ignored or minimized, they feel unseen, unheard, and depleted.

Empathic Overload: Recognizing the Signs

Empathic overload manifests in various ways. Here are key signs that you might be experiencing emotional overwhelm as an HSP:

• Physical exhaustion: Feeling drained after spending time with others, especially in large groups or emotionally charged situations

• Emotional burnout: A sense of emotional numbness or detachment from your own feelings, sometimes leading to anxiety about social engagement

• Over-identifying with others' emotions: Difficulty separating your feelings from those of others—if a friend is sad, you feel their sadness so deeply it becomes your own

• Heightened anxiety or stress: Feeling anxious in situations where others seem calm, due to your sensitivity to subtle emotional cues

• Avoidance behaviours: Retreating from social situations or emotionally charged environments to protect yourself from overwhelming feelings

How To Protect Yourself While Preserving Your Empathy

Learning to manage and balance your empathy is crucial for HSPs. Here are effective strategies to protect your energy while still embracing your natural ability to connect with others:

1. Establish Emotional Boundaries

Setting clear emotional boundaries is essential for preventing empathic overload. You don't have to absorb every feeling you encounter. Learn to differentiate between your emotions and those of others. You can still empathize without taking on emotions as your own.

2. Practice Intentional Self-Care

Regular self-care isn't a luxury for HSPs—it's essential. Engage in practices that ground you, such as meditation, journaling, deep breathing, or walks in nature. These activities help you recharge and create emotional space between yourself and others.

3. Honor Your Limits with "No"

Saying no is an act of self-preservation. It's okay to decline social invitations, limit time spent in emotionally intense environments, or give yourself space when you need it. Saying no allows you to prioritize your well-being.

4. Use Grounding Techniques

Grounding yourself in the present moment helps detach from overwhelming emotions. Focus on your breath, listen to calming music, or engage in activities that keep your body present and your mind centred.

5. Practice Emotional Release

After spending time in emotionally intense situations, make sure to release accumulated emotions. This might involve journaling, meditation, physical movement, or simply taking time to process what you've absorbed. It's a way to release what doesn't belong to you.

Embracing Your Gift Without Losing Yourself

While being highly sensitive can feel like a burden at times, remember that it's also a profound gift. The ability to deeply connect with others, understand their struggles, and offer compassionate support can be transformative. But like any gift, it must be nurtured and protected.

If you're an HSP, know that your sensitivity isn't something to fix or minimize. It's an integral part of who you are, and with the right tools, you can learn to harness your empathy in a way that's sustainable and fulfilling. By setting boundaries, prioritizing self-care, and protecting your emotional energy, you can live as a deeply compassionate person without being consumed by others' emotions.

The world needs your sensitivity but it needs you to honour your own energy first.

Struggling with Anxiety or Overwhelm as a Highly Sensitive Person?

You’re not alone — and you don’t have to navigate it all by yourself. I help HSPs gently calm their nervous systems, release emotional overload and build inner resilience using Hypnotherapy and IEMT.

Ready to feel lighter and more in control? Get in touch to book a free consultation or find out how I can help.

Shelf-Help Syndrome: When Buying the Book Feels Like Doing the Work

You know the look.

That Instagram perfect bookshelf — colour-coded spines, artfully arranged candles, maybe a trailing plant draped casually over Atomic Habits. The Self-Help Shrine.

Maybe you’ve got one. Maybe it’s starting to rival the personal development aisle at Waterstones (RIP Borders, you beautiful paper palace). And maybe — just maybe — you’ve read more about your problems than you’ve actually done anything about them.

Welcome to the curious world of Shelf Help.

The Knowledge–Action Gap

Here’s the thing: most of us already know what’s “wrong” with us. We’ve done the quizzes. We know our attachment style (fearful avoidant, anyone?). We can spot a limiting belief at twenty paces. We've highlighted all the juicy bits in Daring Greatly and nodded solemnly while reading Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

And then — well — we felt the fear… and did absolutely nothing anyway.

Because knowing isn’t doing. Understanding your patterns doesn’t automatically change them.

If it did, most of us would be fully healed and floating around in white linen by chapter three.

The Waterstones Syndrome

But there’s something deliciously hopeful about buying a self-help book, isn’t there?

You wander past a display of pastel notebooks and mood-lifting pencils, flick through a few pages, and think “Yes. This. This will sort me out.”

You bring it home. You read the intro. You nod vigorously. You get to page 28.
And then it quietly joins the other 17 unread (but emotionally significant) titles already living on your shelf.

That isn’t personal growth. That’s hope hoarding.

When Information Becomes Avoidance

Understanding why you do what you do can feel like progress — and to be fair, at first, it is. But eventually, all that information gathering turns into a sneaky form of procrastination.

• “I just need to finish this book on childhood emotional neglect before I confront my mother.”

• “Let me read one more chapter on assertiveness before I ask for that raise.”

• “I should really understand the neuroscience of habit formation before I try to quit smoking.”

Sound familiar?

It makes us feel productive while helping us neatly sidestep the uncomfortable work of actually changing.

Your Subconscious: The Bossy Flatmate You Never Chose

Meanwhile, as your logical mind is reading, learning, and evolving, your subconscious is downstairs in a dressing gown, eating cold Weetabix, saying:

“Good effort. But we’re still doing things my way.”

See, your subconscious doesn’t read self-help books.

It runs patterns.

Old ones.

Stuff your nervous system learned way back when you were tiny — about what kept you safe, what got you attention or what triggered rejection.

And until you update those patterns, you’ll keep hitting the same emotional walls - no matter how many books you’ve underlined.

So… How Do You Actually Break the Pattern?

You use tools that speak your subconscious’s actual language. Tools that don’t just make sense — they make changes.

Here are two of my go-to pattern-breakers:

 IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy)

This powerful method uses eye movements to help your brain process stuck emotional imprints.

Think of it as emotionally decluttering your hard drive — unhooking a memory from its charge without needing to relive the drama. No hours of talking. No digging. Just… relief.

Hypnotherapy

Nope, not mind control. You’re not asleep, either.

You’re simply deeply relaxed — the perfect state to communicate directly with your subconscious and gently update the scripts it’s been running on autopilot for decades.

Instead of going around the block, we go into it — and rewrite it from the inside.

Lisa the Self-Help Junkie

Lisa was a self-confessed “self-help junkie”. Her bookshelf? Basically a therapist’s Pinterest board. She could name every pattern, trace every trigger, and quote Brené Brown like gospel.

But she still couldn’t speak up in meetings. She still felt like she’d break out in hives if someone really saw her.

In our sessions, we traced that freeze response back to a humiliating moment in her teens. Her subconscious had decided: visibility = danger.

I didn’t try to talk her out of it. I helped her reprocess it — safely, gently, using IEMT.

And that’s when things shifted. Within a few sessions, Lisa didn’t just know she was safe - she felt it.

And when your body gets the memo? Change doesn’t feel like a battle. It feels like a release.

“But Shouldn’t I Finish All My Books First?”

Nope.

You can absolutely keep them. They’re not the enemy. They’ve already done something important: They’ve shown you that you’re not broken, and that change is possible.

But now?

Now it might be time to go deeper — past the part of your brain that understands,
into the part of you that needs to feel safe enough to live differently.

Because real change doesn’t come from becoming the perfect version of yourself.

It comes from becoming free.

You don’t need more information.
You need a new pattern.

Let’s update the script.

What Hypnotherapy Actually Feels Like (And Why It's Nothing Like TV)

Picture this - a darkened room, a swinging pocket watch and suddenly you're clucking like a chicken with no memory of how you got there.

That's hypnosis, right?

Wrong.

Despite what Hollywood has taught us, real hypnotherapy has about as much in common with stage hypnosis as actual surgery has with playing Operation. Yet this persistent mischaracterisation keeps many people from experiencing a therapeutic approach that could genuinely change their lives.

The Reality Behind the Curtain

Modern hypnotherapy is a sophisticated, evidence-based approach that works with your brain's natural abilities—not against them. It's less about mind control and more about mind collaboration.

Think of it this way. Your conscious mind is like a well-meaning but overprotective bouncer, filtering what gets through to your deeper self. Sometimes that's helpful, but sometimes that bouncer is keeping out exactly what you need to heal and grow.

Hypnotherapy simply asks the bouncer to take a short break, allowing helpful suggestions and new perspectives to reach parts of you that are normally guarded.

What Hypnotherapy Actually Feels Like

"So I won't be unconscious?" clients often ask nervously.

No, you won't. In fact, many describe the experience as feeling:

• Deeply relaxed but mentally alert — like being in that perfect zone between wakefulness and sleep

• Pleasantly focused — similar to being absorbed in a great movie or book

• More emotionally open — as if the usual mental barriers have softened

• Physically comfortable — often with a pleasant heaviness in the limbs

• Still fully in control — able to speak, move, or end the session at any time

As one client put it: "I was aware of everything, but I just didn't care to analyze it all for once. It was... peaceful."

The Science: What's Actually Happening in Your Brain

When researchers put people under fMRI machines during hypnosis, they see fascinating patterns:

• The brain's salience network (which decides what to pay attention to) becomes less active

• Connections between brain regions responsible for action and awareness shift

• Activity in the prefrontal cortex—home of your inner critic—decreases

• There's increased activity in regions related to focused attention and emotional regulation

Translation? Your brain literally quiets its analytical, judgmental parts while enhancing its capacity for focused attention and emotional change.

Myth Busting : 10 Myths That Need To Go

The misinformation around hypnotherapy is both amusing and frustrating to practitioners. Let's set the record straight:

Myth Vs Reality

Myth #1 "You'll lose control and won't remember anything" You remain aware and in control throughout. Most people remember everything.

Myth #2 "Only gullible or weak-minded people can be hypnotized" Actually, intelligent, focused and creative people often respond best.

Myth #3 "Hypnosis is mind control" Nothing happens without your permission and cooperation. You cannot be made to do anything against your values.

Myth #4 "I might get stuck in hypnosis" Physically impossible. You'd either naturally emerge or simply fall asleep and wake up shortly after.

Myth #5 "It's the same as sleep" Brain scans show hypnosis is a unique state of relaxed awareness—closer to deep meditation than sleep.

Myth #6 "It only works if I believe in it" While openness helps, "blind faith" isn't required. Skeptics respond well too.

Myth #7 "You'll dig up all my painful memories" Many hypnotherapeutic techniques don't require revisiting trauma at all.

Myth #8 "You can recover repressed memories like in crime shows" Ethical hypnotherapists don't use it this way—memory is malleable and unreliable.

Myth #9 "One session will fix everything" Some experience significant shifts in one session, but lasting change usually develops over several.

Myth #10 "It's just relaxation" Relaxation is only the doorway. The real work happens in the subconscious emotional patterns being updated.

What Can Hypnotherapy Help With?

The applications are surprisingly broad:

• Anxiety and stress — Reducing both the mental rumination and physical tension

• Emotional triggers — Updating unconscious responses to situations that set you off

• Sleep problems — Falling asleep faster and staying asleep longer

• Psychosomatic conditions — Alleviating IBS, migraines, and tension-related pain

• Confidence and self-image — Shifting negative self-talk and limiting beliefs

• Trauma responses — Gently reducing hypervigilance and emotional reactivity

• Habits and behaviors — Working with the unconscious drivers of unwanted patterns

• Performance enhancement — Accessing flow states and optimal performance

• Tinnitus management — Reducing emotional reactivity to the sound

• Motivation and focus — Aligning conscious goals with unconscious drivers

The Research Backs It Up

This isn't just anecdotal—the science is compelling:

1. For Anxiety and Stress
   Dr. David Spiegel's review in Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics (2010) found hypnosis highly effective for treating anxiety disorders, with results showing improved emotional regulation and reduced overwhelm.

2. For Pain Management
   A meta-analysis of 20 controlled studies published in Anesthesia & Analgesia (2000) found that hypnosis significantly reduced pain, anxiety, medication use, and recovery time in surgical patients.

3. For Trauma Recovery
   Research in the Journal of Traumatic Stress (2000) demonstrated that hypnosis helps trauma survivors reduce hyperarousal without needing to relive traumatic experiences.

A Client's Journey: From Skeptic to Believer

Lisa came to her first session with crossed arms and raised eyebrows. "I don't think I can be hypnotised," she announced immediately. "My mind never stops."

Like many clients, Lisa had tried cognitive approaches to her anxiety, she understood it intellectually but couldn't shift the feeling. Her anxiety manifested as constant vigilance, disrupted sleep and a harsh inner critic that wouldn't quiet down.

After explaining how hypnotherapy actually works, we proceeded with a session focused on emotional safety and updating her nervous system's response to uncertainty.

Her feedback afterward? "That wasn't what I expected at all. I felt completely present, just... calmer somehow. Like I was watching my thoughts instead of being caught in them."

Three sessions later, Lisa reported sleeping through the night for the first time in years. Her colleagues noticed she seemed "more comfortable in her own skin." Most importantly, when stressful situations arose, her response had shifted from automatic panic to a manageable, appropriate concern.

"It's not that I never feel anxious anymore," she explained. "It's that it doesn't take over. Something fundamental has shifted."

Why It's Not About "Fixing" You

Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of hypnotherapy is that it doesn't approach you as broken. Instead, it recognizes that your mind created certain patterns for good reasons—they just might not be serving you anymore.

Hypnotherapy helps you:

• Acknowledge these protective patterns with compassion

• Update emotional responses that are no longer helpful

• Access your own inner resources for healing

• Create new neural pathways for responding to life's challenges

Is Hypnotherapy Right for You?

Hypnotherapy might be especially valuable if:

• You understand your issues intellectually but can't shift the feelings

• Traditional talking therapies haven't created the change you want

• You're looking for relatively rapid results

• You want an approach that works with your mind's natural abilities

• You're open to a collaborative, solution-focused process

Your Next Step

Curious about experiencing hypnotherapy yourself?

Visit https://www.stillmindtherapies.com/consultationform to book your consultation today.

Your mind already knows how to heal. Sometimes it just needs a little guidance to remember.

The Relationship Between Trauma and Addiction: Paths to Healing with Hypnotherapy and IEMT

Trauma and addiction often walk hand in hand through a person's life, creating a complex relationship that can be difficult to untangle. As someone who has worked with individuals navigating these challenging waters, I've seen firsthand how understanding this connection can be the first step toward healing.

When Past Pain Becomes Present Coping

Many of us have experienced trauma in some form, whether it's a single catastrophic event or the slow erosion of well-being through repeated smaller traumas. Our brains, remarkable in their ability to protect us, develop coping mechanisms to manage overwhelming experiences. For many, substances or addictive behaviours become a way to numb pain, regulate emotions, or temporarily escape from distressing memories.

This isn't weakness—it's adaptation. What begins as a solution to unbearable feelings can eventually become its own problem as the brain begins to rely on these external regulators rather than developing healthier coping strategies.

The Neurobiological Connection

Research shows that trauma actually changes how our brains function on a structural and chemical level. Key brain regions affected include:

• The amygdala: Often hyperactive in trauma survivors, this "fear centre" triggers heightened stress responses and anxiety, which substances may temporarily relieve.

• The prefrontal cortex: Responsible for rational decision-making and impulse control, this region shows reduced activity following trauma, making addiction recovery particularly challenging.

• The hippocampus: Critical for memory processing, this structure can shrink following chronic trauma, affecting how memories are stored and retrieved.

• HPA axis: This stress-response system becomes dysregulated after trauma, affecting cortisol production and stress management capabilities.

According to a landmark study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, individuals with PTSD are 4.1 times more likely to develop a substance use disorder compared to those without trauma histories (Kessler et al., 2017). This striking correlation underscores how trauma creates vulnerability in the very neurobiological systems that regulate reward, stress, and emotional processing.

When we understand addiction not as a moral failing but as a response to pain—often an attempt at self-medication—we open the door to compassion rather than judgement.

Breaking the Cycle: Modern Therapeutic Approaches

Fortunately, effective treatments exist that address both trauma and addiction simultaneously. Two particularly promising approaches are Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) and hypnotherapy.

Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT)

IEMT works by combining guided eye movements with carefully structured linguistic patterns to disrupt negative emotional responses to traumatic memories. Unlike some therapies that require extensive retelling of painful experiences, IEMT often works quickly to reduce emotional distress without repeatedly revisiting trauma narratives in detail.

Many clients report that memories that once triggered intense emotional responses become noticeably less distressing, often after just a few sessions.

Hypnotherapy for Trauma and Addiction

Hypnotherapy utilises the power of focused attention and heightened suggestibility to access subconscious patterns and create meaningful change. For trauma , hypnotherapy can offer a gentle way to process painful experiences by maintaining a sense of safety and control throughout the therapeutic process.

In addiction recovery, hypnotherapy helps strengthen motivation, manage cravings, and install new, healthier responses to triggers. The relaxed state achieved during hypnosis allows clients to visualise and rehearse new behaviours, essentially creating a blueprint for change that the subconscious mind can follow.

Integration: The Key to Lasting Recovery

What makes both IEMT and Hypnotherapy powerful is their ability to work with both conscious and subconscious aspects of trauma and addiction. They recognise that lasting change requires addressing not just behaviours, but the underlying emotional wounds driving those behaviours.

Recovery isn't just about stopping an addictive behaviour—it's about healing the pain that made the addiction necessary in the first place. It's about learning that you can tolerate difficult emotions without needing to escape them. It's about reconnecting with your inherent worthiness and capacity for joy.

Begin Your Recovery Journey

Trauma and addiction may have shaped your past, but they don't have to determine your future. If you're ready to explore evidence-based approaches to healing, IEMT and hypnotherapy offer powerful pathways forward.

I work with clients throughout the UK and internationally to address both trauma and addiction through integrated therapeutic approaches. For more information or to schedule an initial consultation, email Nicola@stillmindtherapies.com

Who Do You Think You Are? The Transformative Power of Identity Work

Releasing Identity Level beliefs that Keep You Stuck

True transformation begins when we let go of who we think we are.

Narratives form the foundation of our identity.
They shape how we see the world and ourselves.
But what happens when those stories limit rather than liberate us?

What if the beliefs you hold about who you are are the very things keeping you from the life you want?

That quiet, inner story I’m not enough, I always mess things up, I’m just not that kind of person, can become a kind of prison. One that’s invisible, but no less real.

And it doesn’t matter how many affirmations you use or how much insight you gain, if the belief lives at the level of identity, it will keep influencing your choices, emotions and sense of self.

The Prison of “I Am…”

Identity level beliefs are some of the deepest convictions we carry, usually beginning with the words “I am…”

• I am not enough

• I am broken

• I am a failure

• I am unlovable

• I am not smart enough

These aren’t just passing thoughts.
They’re the frameworks through which we interpret everything — our potential, our worth, our relationships, even our future.

What makes them so insidious is how they often operate beneath conscious awareness.
They don’t feel like beliefs, they feel like facts.
And so, we rarely question them.

A Different Way to Transform Using IEMT

Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) offers a gentle, focused way to work with these beliefs, not by analysing them, but by releasing the emotional imprint that holds them in place.

Rather than spending hours talking through the past, IEMT targets the emotional wiring of beliefs like:

• “I’m not good enough”

• “I can’t cope”

• “There’s something wrong with me”

Using precise patterns of eye movements, IEMT helps interrupt the neurological loop that keeps these beliefs active, allowing the emotional charge to soften and creating space for a new internal experience to emerge.

Clients often describe feeling lighter, clearer and more themselves — sometimes after just a few sessions.

A Client Story: When Belief Loses Its Power

One client came to me carrying a lifelong belief: “I am not good enough.”
It had shaped every area of her life — her career, her relationships, even her ability to rest.

She was constantly overworking, dismissing praise and holding herself to impossible standards, all in an effort to prove something to a belief she didn’t even consciously choose.

During IEMT, we identified the emotional roots of that belief and worked with them directly. What surprised her most wasn’t just the emotional shift, it was the sense of distance. For the first time, she could see that belief as something she had learned, not something she was.

In the weeks that followed, everything changed:

• The voice of self-criticism softened.

• She could receive compliments without immediately batting them away.

• She found herself resting without guilt, something she hadn’t done in years.

Beyond Belief Change: Identity Evolution

The real gift of this work isn’t just that it dissolves painful beliefs, it creates the space for something new.

When “I am broken” becomes “I am whole and evolving,” entire landscapes of possibility open up.

This isn’t about slapping on positive affirmations.
It’s about reclaiming your sense of self from old emotional imprints and stepping into an identity that feels flexible, empowering and real.

For example:

• “I am a failure” becomes “I’m someone who learns and grows through experience.”

• “I am unlovable” becomes “I have the capacity to give and receive love.”

• “I am not enough” becomes “I bring value, even in my imperfections.”

It’s not about perfection, it’s about truth.
And truth, when it’s freed from the weight of old wounds, has the power to transform everything.

The Ripple Effect of Identity Work

When identity shifts, the ripple effect is profound.

• Relationships become more authentic.

• Boundaries get easier to hold.

• Confidence becomes something you feel, not just something you try to project.

• Even your physical body may begin to relax, as the stress of trying to live up to a false self begins to fall away.

And perhaps most powerfully:
You begin to realise that your identity isn’t fixed.
It’s not something that was decided long ago.
It’s something you can choose. Something that can evolve. Something you can heal and tranform.

You are not your beliefs.
You are not your conditioning.
You are not the survival self you had to become.

When you release the story that’s been keeping you small, you make room for something much bigger:

The truth of who you really are.

Why The Best Therapy Feels Like Magic

Let’s be honest, most people don’t expect therapy to be fast.

They expect it to be a long, drawn-out process. A weekly appointment where you sit in a chair, talk about your feelings, dissect your past, and try to piece together why you feel the way you do. And maybe, just maybe, after months (or years), things will start to shift.

That’s the expectation.

But what if I told you that real, deep change doesn’t have to take that long?
What if the right kind of therapy could create a shift so immediate, so viscerally different, that it felt… almost magical?

The Moment Everything Clicks

You know those moments in life where everything just clicks?

Like when you’re struggling with a problem, going in circles, feeling stuck—and then, suddenly, something shifts. You see it differently. The struggle disappears. And you can’t quite explain why… you just feel different.

That’s what happens when therapy works with your subconscious, not against it.

Instead of endlessly analysing the problem, we go straight to the source: the deep, automatic patterns that run your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. And once those patterns shift? The change is instant.

This is why clients often say things like:
"I don’t know what just happened, but I feel completely different."
"I’ve been carrying this for years… and now it’s just gone?"
"I tried everything before, but nothing worked like this."

It’s not magic. It just feels that way.

Why Traditional Therapy Feels Slow

Most traditional therapy models focus on managing symptoms—helping you cope with anxiety, reframe your thoughts, or process your emotions little by little. And while that has its place, it’s like trying to untangle a knot one tiny thread at a time.

The work I do using Integral Eye Movement Therapy, Hypnotherapy and Identity work, cuts straight to the core. It’s like finding the exact thread that, when pulled, unravels the whole knot in seconds.

It’s fast. It’s powerful. And it’s the reason people walk out of sessions feeling lighter, clearer, and different—sometimes after just one session.

The Science Behind the ‘Magic’

Here’s the thing: your subconscious mind is always running the show.

• It’s the reason you feel a sudden pang of anxiety in certain situations, even when there’s no logical reason for it.

• It’s why certain memories still sting, even though they happened years ago.

• It’s why you keep falling into the same patterns, reacting the same way, and feeling stuck—even when you know better.

Your subconscious doesn’t work in words. It works in patterns, emotions and deeply ingrained responses.

So instead of spending months talking to the conscious mind, we go straight to where real change happens.

• Instead of managing anxiety, we resolve the underlying fears that keep you stuck

• Instead of coping with negative emotions and memories, we address and neutralise them at the root .

• Instead of pushing through emotional blocks, we resolve them at their core.

This is why it feels like magic. Because unlike traditional therapy, which chips away at the surface, we shift the foundation.

Who Would You Be Without the Struggle?

Here’s something to think about:

If that anxiety, that fear, that self-doubt was gone… who would you be?
If you no longer carried the weight of your past, how would you feel?
If you woke up tomorrow and everything that held you back had disappeared… what would you do?

This isn’t a fantasy.

It’s what happens when you use the right tools to communicate with your subconscious and create changes that last.

Because real transformation doesn’t take years.
It just takes the right approach.

Are You Ready for a Shift?

If you’re tired of endlessly talking about the problem and ready to experience real change, I can help. Let’s make therapy feel like magic.