Well, I spent the last 30 years or so working in a professional services corporate environment working as a Chartered Tax Adviser. My specialism is in Global Mobility Services ie working with companies who needed to move employees from one country to another.
I have always had a People focussed role in my career, for example, being a People Manager, career coach etc that I really enjoyed. I had been thinking about making a change from Tax and wanting to work with people and help them in some way but I couldn’t work out what that might be.
It was one of those “lightbulb” moments that happen in Life. I was on a cruise and went to see a stage hypnotist who explained he was a Life Coach and hypnosis helped with that and that got me interested. However, it was at the end of the show where the hypnotist explained that when some of his volunteers went back to their seats, for the next 3 minutes at twenty second intervals they would do something e.g. roar like a lion, and they did, and I just thought: “How does that work?” And the rest, as they say, is history.
I did a lot of research into hypnotherapy and particularly how I could train to be a hypnotherapist. It was a minefield trying to find a good well regarded training company. However, I found one called “HypnoTC.” They were running a free taster day that I went along to, and I was hooked. I enrolled on HypnoTC’s Hypnotherapy diploma course so that I could train to be a qualified Hypnotherapist.
I am now qualified to diploma level with HypnoTC: The Hypnotherapy Training Company, whose training has been externally accredited by The General Hypnotherapy Register (GHR), The Federation of Holistic Therapists (FHT) and The British Institute of Hypnotherapy & NLP (BIH). I am also a Certified Hypnotherapist (C.H.) with the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH), of which HypnoTC are a recognised training provider. I subsequently obtained my Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma with The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) and am now a member (MNCH Reg). I am also a Full Member of The Federation of Holistic Therapists (MFHT).
Before studying hypnotherapy, I also decided to study Counselling at a local Adult Education Centre (Peter Symonds College) as I thought that would be a great complement to hypnotherapy. I qualified and now have a” SEG Awards ABC Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills.”
I have always had a genuine desire to help people and throughout my personal Life and my professional services career, I have always been described as a “People Person.” I have extensive experience in coaching and mentoring people and have had the recent training that enabled me to obtain a Level 2 Certificate in Counselling.
My philosophy is to have an “Unconditional Positive Regard” for whoever chooses to work with me; in other words, I leave any preconceptions, beliefs, prejudices etc to one side and just use all my experience and abilities to work with and help the person in front of me. In addition and most importantly, I now have the skill set using my hypnotherapy techniques to work with people to truly help change their lives for the better. One example of this is that I volunteer as a Hypnotherapist one day a week at the Macmillan Centre at The University Hospital Southampton, supporting patients and their families and friends.
