For the person who’s done the work — and is wondering why they’re still stuck.
You’ve been to the GP. Probably more than once. You’ve sat in the waiting room, filled in the questionnaires, ticked the boxes, and nodded along while someone explained that yes, anxiety is very common, and have you tried cutting back on caffeine?
You’ve done the CBT. Maybe a full course of it. You’ve got the thought diary somewhere — possibly under a pile of other things you meant to do. You’ve downloaded the apps. You’ve meditated (for about four days, then life happened). You’ve talked it through with a therapist, possibly several, and retold the same story so many times you can practically recite it in your sleep.
And yet. Here you are. Still stuck. Still anxious. Still doing that thing you can’t seem to stop doing.
First of all: you are not broken. And you have absolutely not “tried everything.”
Why Talking Doesn’t Always Do the Talking
Here’s something nobody tells you when you start therapy: the conscious mind — the bit that sits in a chair and answers questions and says “yes, I understand why I feel this way” — is only a tiny fraction of what’s actually running the show.
The real action happens in the subconscious. That’s the part that controls your habits, your emotional reactions, your automatic responses, your deeply held beliefs about yourself and the world. And here’s the thing about the subconscious: it doesn’t really do conversations.
You can talk *about* your anxiety every Tuesday at 4pm for years. And talking has real value — don’t get me wrong. But if the root of the problem is buried in a pattern your subconscious is running on autopilot, sometimes it needs to be reached in a different way.
It’s a bit like having a really thorough conversation about redecorating your living room. The talking is valuable — it helps you understand what you want, what isn’t working, what needs to change. But at some point, you also need someone to pick up a paintbrush. Hypnotherapy picks up the paintbrush.
Going One Layer Deeper
Clinical hypnotherapy works alongside — and builds beautifully on — other therapeutic approaches. Many of my clients come having already done some really meaningful work with a counsellor or therapist. They’ve developed insight, identified patterns, and built a solid foundation. What hypnotherapy adds is a way to take all of that understanding somewhere deeper.
It works in a state of focused relaxation — that in-between place where your critical, overthinking, “but what if I’m doing this wrong” conscious mind takes a little breather, and your subconscious becomes genuinely open to new information.
It’s not magic. It’s neuroscience. MRI studies show measurable changes in brain activity during hypnosis — particularly in the areas linked to habit formation, emotional regulation, and self-belief. Your brain is literally more receptive to change in this state.
Which means we can go straight to the source. The belief that’s been quietly running in the background since 1997. The response that kicks in before you’ve even had time to think. The pattern that’s been hard to reach through conversation alone.
I’ve had clients come to me who’ve already done some really valuable therapeutic work — and who find that hypnotherapy takes them to the next level. The previous work wasn’t wasted. It was the foundation we built on.
But What If I’m Not Hypnotisable?
Spoiler: you almost certainly are. This is one of the biggest myths that keeps people from even trying — the idea that hypnotherapy is some special club that only works on the highly suggestible.
In reality, if you’ve ever been lost in a good book, driven somewhere on autopilot, or found yourself crying at a film even though you knew it was fictional — you’ve been in a hypnotic-like state. Your brain does this naturally all the time. All I’m doing is guiding you there deliberately, and with a purpose.
You Don’t Have to Have It All Figured Out First
Here’s what I love about the people who come to see me after a long therapy journey: they usually arrive with brilliant self-awareness. They know their triggers. They understand their patterns. They’ve done a lot of the intellectual groundwork.
What we do together is take all of that understanding and help it land somewhere deeper — in the part of the mind that actually drives behaviour and emotion. We’re not starting from scratch. We’re going further.
And often, that’s the missing piece.
A Final Word for the “I’ve Tried Everything” Club
If you’ve been doing the work for years and you still feel like you’re running the same old loops — please don’t give up on yourself. Please don’t conclude that you’re a lost cause, or that your brain is uniquely immune to change, or that this is just who you are now.
You haven’t exhausted your options. You’ve just been using the same set of tools. And sometimes the answer isn’t to try harder with the same tools. It’s to try a different one entirely.
The reason I added hypnotherapy to my toolkit was because I saw it reach places that other approaches sometimes couldn’t, not because those approaches weren’t valuable, but because different tools suit different people and different problems. Over twenty years later, that decision still makes me smile every single day.
If you’re ready to try something different, I’d love to have a chat. No judgement about what’s come before. No retelling your story 17 times. Just a curious, compassionate look at what’s actually going on, and what might finally shift it.
Fancy finding out if hypnotherapy could be your missing piece?
You can book a cosultation from my website :) No pendulums, no pressure, just a conversation 😊
