Power to heal is yours

Power to heal is yours

‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.’

Mahatma Gandhi


Occasionally in my line of work you are asked to help people you know. That’s both pressure and a blessing.

I trained with Lillieth, on the Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) Advanced Practitioner course. She does great, meaningful work as a children and mothers’ therapist.

When Lillieth was hit by crippling headaches while on holiday in the USA, she thought she was having another migraine. But the pain just got worse.

What transpired was she’d had a brain haemorrhage, which had left a blood clot in her brain. Hospital followed. So much fear and uncertainty, and then Lillieth had to wait for medical permissions to fly home. Back home in Holland, recovering, she was left with a weakened right side and her speech was affected. Her doctor advised her to prepare for a long recovery period..

I coached Lillieth via skype and gave her a bespoke, RTT hypnotherapy recording to aid her body’s recovery process. She immediately felt and saw results. She continued to listen to her recording at least daily and beyond the minimum 21 days we usually advise to embed a habit.

When she made this testimonial for me, just weeks after her getting back home, Lillieth says her speech is almost 96% back, her body strength is returning.

Her doctor thought Lillieth wouldn’t be working for a year. She’s already back helping mothers and children, doing the job she loves.

I spoke to her again in September. She looks really well. She’s full of life and love for her future, planning her first speaking engagement – in front of 150 people in October!

This transformation is not just my input. Lillieth was right there. Doing the work, listening to the recording, developing the ‘I can, I will’ mindset that has seen her through this trauma.

Therapists do not have magic wands. Recovery is a two-way process. We light the way with everything we have, but it’s the client’s journey. When the client works with the therapist, steps forward and puts whatever energy they can find into getting up and moving on, then it feels like transformational miracles can happen.

From ‘crippling perfectionism’ to ease and flow

From ‘crippling perfectionism’ to ease and flow

Suddenly my procrastination and crippling perfectionism is gone, my relationship with my body is relaxed and loving, I have much more acceptance for my own and other people’s flaws and I am constantly productive. Unless I’m resting: which I now do often and sans guilt.
Mrs C, international businesswoman

 

I’ve been recently working with clients around the area of Confidence. It’s curious how clients come in clusters, but also useful, because you learn from people’s different experiences in a way that helps you see patterns very quickly.

This is quite detailed feedback from an amazing professional woman who is focused on being all that she can be. It was an absolute pleasure to help her shift from procrastination and self-doubt into a state of ease and ‘flow’.

Because she is well known in her field, she was keen to remain anonymous; client confidentiality is always respected by therapists so that’s why she’s not named. However, this is published with her blessing.

I meet many swans, frantically paddling through life, desperately pretending to glide. I’ve been one. If this rings bells for you; know that change is possible and you have the answers locked with you. You just need the key.

What is so special about Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) is the way it uses hypnosis to help the client get right into their subconscious and the roots of their issue. One to three sessions are usually all you need. And for a busy swan, that’s a big bonus.

 

Testimonial from Mrs C, a business consultant
working across Europe

The Issue

I felt particularly vulnerable after a period of three massive personal challenges that I have had to overcome, one after the other. It felt like this has influenced my professional life: I was losing confidence in my abilities. 

Even though I was in the best possible place professionally – I was doing the exact thing I always dreamed of doing and I was aware that I was not particularly bad at it either – I was struggling whenever I tried to convince someone to hire me. Rationally I was quite certain that the client could benefit from my work, but silently I was doubting myself and it was crushing me.

Conventional therapy has helped me overcome most of my issues – at least the ones that I was aware of. However, this lack of confidence had surprised me, and I did not know how to approach it. It seemed like hypnotherapy might be something to try, even though I secretly harboured doubts about its powers.

But after the initial session I realised there were events in my remote past that have shaped me in unexpected ways. These little events, seemingly not at all relevant, have produced tidal waves of emotion. While I was unaware of their source, they were quietly sabotaging me in my daily professional life.

The Experience

It felt like someone had opened the door to a completely new part of me, where memories, emotions and rationalisations live beyond my control and awareness. 

However, even though it has been shocking in a way, it was utterly pleasant. But mostly it brought a big sigh of relief that comes with finally understanding why I sometimes feel things I can’t explain rationally.

I have been through conventional therapy very successfully, I have educated myself and I have found my focus in life. However, hypnotherapy showed me that I only think I understand myself. I think that until you manage the courage to peek into your subconscious, you have not really understood your motivations. 

Deana is an extremely gentle therapist. I think she understands that the revelations her clients are met with during her sessions can be a little shocking, so she takes extra care to make you feel safe and accepted. Also, she makes you feel like this struggle you are facing is now your joint obstacle: you will tackle it together. She helps her clients climb those barricades they have built for themselves and then she checks on them to see how they are doing once they are on their own path. 

The outcomes: what’s changed

It’s funny how difficult it is to explain this. I was hoping for more confidence and absence of doubt in myself professionally. What I got was this hard-to-describe feeling that there is no need to try this hard, because as long as you live your best life, everything you do is good enough.

Suddenly my procrastination and crippling perfectionism is gone, my relationship with my body is relaxed and loving, I have much more acceptance for my own and other people’s flaws and I am constantly productive. Unless I’m resting: which I now do often and sans guilt.

I think it is safe to say that I have been more genuinely productive since my hypnotherapy session than I have been in the last 20 years.

I am not denying that I was quite productive before, too, but it was always with a sense of having to push through. Always, I felt like I was climbing a very steep mountain. Everything felt like a chore, even the simple things. I wanted to do the work, but at the same time I somehow did not want to do it. So I had to battle myself and win every time something had to be done. Since the hypnotherapy session though, my work is easy. It feels natural and satisfying to sit down and do the thing that needs to be done – be it challenging or trivial. Almost no willpower needed. 

Somehow, Deana helped me find the reason I was trying to stop myself from doing my best work, showing me how silly this reason really is and helped me say goodbye to it. 

The value

Yes, I would recommend working with Deana because she is dedicated to helping her clients and she knows exactly what she is doing. She is gentle, loving and knowledgeable, which is precisely what you need in a hypnotherapist.

Give it a go, there are great advantages in understanding yourself fully. Deana will help you discover yourself and your invisible obstacles, she will help you dismantle them and your life will change. The change will be subtle, you will still be you, but suddenly there will be a positive ripple effect over several areas of your life.

Free yourself

Free yourself

‘You are not a victim. You may have been victimised, but you are not a victim.’
Mel Robbins

Listening to Mel Robbins explain this to a woman she was coaching made me appreciate her just a little bit more than I did already.

Why? Because she had so clearly and concisely articulated something that had been nagging the living daylights out of me whenever I heard the word ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’. Those words would set my teeth on edge. I felt my hackles rise. But I couldn’t work out why, to begin with.

A few years ago, when I was having a major crisis of confidence, even though I was a sobbing in the loos at work, over-exhausted, sugar-bingeing wreck, I was still railing against the idea of being a victim. I didn’t know why. I just knew, instinctively, that it felt wrong.

But now, as a fully trained RTT Therapist with a shedload of Continuous Professional Development and enough time in practice to have a lovely group of happy clients behind me, I know why.

Because  words like ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’, they put you, me, anyone in a box with a big label on it. And no one needs that.

Once you’re in that mindset – of being defined as a victim of bullying, or a crime, or your own procrastination… whatever the label says you are – you get stuck with that definition. ‘I’m a victim and therefore I am x and y and z.’ Whatever your x, y and z are for you, I’m willing to bet they are judgemental, negative and designed to keep you holed up in the past.

What Mel is saying, and what I am absolutely sure is true, is let someone put you in a box with a label on it and you’ll then have the added problem of breaking out of that and ripping off the label.

Dreadful things may have happened to you, there are some messed up people out there who damage others through their own tortured weakness. All the more reason to wash off their energy and step away from their cruelty. Not lock yourself in a box with it.

And of course there is another saying, one I’m particularly fond of… ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’.

Nothing cheers me more than looking back at all the bad bosses, the girl who bullied me at school and that very sad boy who sexually assaulted me when I was a teenager and I think ‘ha’. (I might think a few other words, you can use your own imagination there), because their weakness makes me stronger.

Every time I fall over, I learn. Every time I get up, I get up stronger. Every time I look back at them, I see their influence, no matter how painful at the time, pushed me forward into ways of thinking, learning and being that not only benefit me, but also allow me to serve others more powerfully.

And how good is that?

Stepping up to embody our confidence is available to us all of us. If you think I can help you move forward, get in touch.

‘I’ll be there for you’

‘I’ll be there for you’

‘So no one told you life was gonna be this way, your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA.’  The Rembrandts

Is there anyone who doesn’t recognise the opening lines to the theme tune from Friends? The ridiculously popular TV comedy centred on the lives six beautiful-yet-slightly-flawed friends living in New York.

So influential was Friends in our late 1990s culture that a friend then attempted to turn herself into the image of Rachel Green, complete with the hair cut. She later tried to turn herself into Carrie Bradshaw, (although notably, and perhaps not surprisingly, without all the Sex in the City) which is a whole other story about identity and I digress…

Here’s the point; friendship is not like on TV. And making friends takes does take confidence, which seems to get eroded in this area as we age.

September is national friendship month – yes, it gets a whole month. And rightly so: loneliness is reported as a growing problem in the UK. More than nine million people of all ages say they are lonely either often or always, according to research by The Co-op and the British Red Cross.

Friendships can help pull you through your darkest times, but they’re not always forever. People do fall out and sometimes they don’t make up over a cup of coffee in Cental Perk. Mostly, though, they just drift apart.

The cultural cues of friendship

This varies greatly from culture to culture. In the Middle East friendship is established quickly, in Korea friendship is based on affiliates. Did you go to the same school, do you work together etc. For Europeans, a shared interest can be enough to establish friendship, but we’re much slower to form friendships than people from some other cultures. Apparently, geographical location is also important to us. And that, as someone who’s moved about a lot, I have noticed.

What makes a good friend?

  1. Friends should encourage you to be your best. Sometimes they’ll tell you what you don’t want to hear. If you know it’s for your best interests, that’s a true friend. If they’re just plain mean to you though, that’s toxic. Walk away from that friend.

2. Equality. If one friend needs constant support but is never there for the other friend, that’s not friendship. That’s a user. Walk away.

3. A shared interest or past. Nothing holds people together like sharing a major event, whether that might be career-wise or through education or a momentous experience, like having your first child. Like surviving a natural disaster.

I say: ‘Friendships can be long-lasting and ephemeral. Some people are there for the long-haul. Some aren’t. That’s life. It’s not you. You can’t control this. Let them go. Make new friends.’

‘Making friends gets harder as you get older’

I hear this saying a lot, but is it really true? Or is it just a phrase people parrot in order to block self-critical judgemental thoughts? (‘They might not like me. I’m no fun. What if they think I’m boring?’) Or cover their discomfort with making themselves vulnerable because asking someone to be your friend feels vulnerable? I wonder…

I also wander, because in my adult life I have moved city more times than I can care to recount. Mostly because of work. Sometimes for love, sometimes just to flex my adventure muscles. Each time I have made new friends. I’m in my fifties now and I moved three months ago. I’m making friends. And it’s never been easier.

Meetups can change your life

Go online and look for groups who like what you like. Books. Dancing. Beekeeping… whatever. You turn up, you meet people, you start to form friendships. You start hanging out together, doing other things you both enjoy. You realise you have something in common that bonds you. You both faced a similar hardship. You both really like bumble bees. And before you know it, you feel like you’ve known each other forever. Seriously, it’s that easy. Will they be like your old friends? Probably not, but does that matter? Are you like you were 10 years ago? Probably not.

The Oddfellows organisation (strange name, but there you go) say on their website that they’ve spent two centuries championing friendship. And they’ve plenty going on for National Friendship Month if you want to see what they’re up to.

What do you do when a friendship ‘falls through’?

It is as well to remember not all friends are for life. If life is a journey, there will be few people who will know you from when you were a child. Some friendships are powerfully resilient. Some people are only destined to be with you for part of the journey. Those friendships may feel intense for a time, but they are not meant to last forever. And they might come around again, so relax.

When I upped and moved 300 miles to live by the seaside, I thought my friends from my old city would want to visit. Few have shown that much interest. Your geographical closeness is important to for some. For others, it’s of no consequence. I have friends who used to be colleagues 20 years ago and we still call each other to chat and swap news. We might visit every five years, but I still see them as friends.

This is just the way of life; let it be. It is easy to feel rejected, but that old saying ‘it’s not you, it’s me’… it’s very true. There is nothing wrong with you, you’re just friends with someone whose time to be with you is past for now. Move on. Make new friends.

Some friends come back again, on the great spiralling path of our lives. I am now friends with a group of people from my class at school who I hadn’t seen for 35 years, until we met up at a reunion. Now we meet once or twice a year, tell each other our hopes and dreams, advise each other on our troubles and then go our separate ways into the night.

People who knew you as a child do really ‘know’ you. Perhaps it is that shared experience of school, playing out together, knowing the same streets… but there is no need for your grown-up, adult mask with these people.

It is very comforting. Feeling seen for who you truly are. I recommend.