Before I trained to become a hypnotherapist, I had very limited experience of how it could help and what it could do. I had heard of using hypnotherapy for a couple of things – mainly giving up smoking and weight loss. I was aware of people like Paul McKenna, but I had never read any of his books. I guess you could say I’d heard about it but didn’t really understand how it worked. 

I was at a point in my life where I was concentrating on health and fitness and spending time a lot of time exercising and watching what I ate. However, I smoked, I loved to smoke and really enjoyed it. I had been a smoker since I was a teenager, my parents smoked, my brothers and sisters smoked. I wasn’t a heavy smoker, about 10 a day at most but I really loved those 10 cigarettes’ a day. I can’t explain it now looking back, but I did.

At this time, I had a personal trainer who I worked out with. He had recently been on an NLP hypnosis course and was offering stop smoking sessions. I was one of his first sessions. The reason I finally decided to give up was not because I had stopped loving it or even that it became too expensive. I decided to give up because I was asthmatic and finding it increasingly hard to breathe without wheezing. I got to the point where this outweighed any other perceived benefits I had from smoking. I just couldn’t take not being able to breathe any more! 

So my trainer asked me some questions about why I smoked, when I would find it difficult not to smoke and that kind of thing. He came and did one session with me, which I remember vey little of now, but I have never even wanted a cigarette since – and it has been about 7 years Which I find completely amazing!

After that, I told many people how hypnosis had helped me give up smoking and sang its praises for this reason. But I never really understood the true extent of what it could help with. I never looked into it any further. For me it had achieved its purpose and faded into the background again.

Many years later due to a distressing incident I was offered counselling. I had never really had counselling before but I had heard of things like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and I watched Fraiser and understood to some extent about the ‘talking therapy’ that counselling offered. So I searched the registered directory and contacted a therapist local to me. I was a bit nervous before my first appointment, not knowing what to expect. I had chosen someone who specialised in different forms of therapy and wanted to talk through the issues I had. 

I have to say the experience I had was very different from what I thought it might be. the therapist helped me to challenge beliefs I had about myself as well as understand that some things were not about me they were about other people. We talked about a lot of things and not just the initial incident that had led me to her door. However I came away from these sessions feeling better and understanding myself more and feeling like I had justification to feel the way I felt and how to deal with it.