http://www.focusedhypnotherapy.co.uk/

Focused Hypnotherapy, Stamford (2026)

12/01/2026

Anxiety isn’t the problem.
Anger isn’t the problem.
Sadness isn’t the problem.
Fear isn’t the problem.

They are all natural and normal experiences and feelings.

Being anxious doesn’t mean something is wrong, it doesn’t mean you aren’t safe.
Being angry is healthy it’s good to feel mad, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
Being sad can mean anything, it’s just a feeling, it’s not a warning.
Feeling scared just means you’re not sure what will happen, or your brain thinks it does and it’s actually replaying the past.

The longer you have to ruminate and think about what might happen, what it means, you’re unlikely to be in immediate danger.

It means you are most likely physically safe and not in harm.

If you can learn to experience thoughts and feelings without your nervous system responding as if it’s really life or death, you can stop trying to avoid or distract yourself from the thoughts and feelings and they will just become normal and uninteresting.

The more interest or concern you place on them the more your nervous system pays attention and automatically attempts to ‘save you’ from the threat.

My approach is the imagine you don’t care about the feelings anymore and you can live your life as if they are incidental, normal, expected parts of living a full and interesting life.

Stop trying to remove the normal feelings and start living in spite of them.
You will be amazed how it changes your outlook and beliefs about life and the future.

06/01/2026

Children don’t always tell us how they are feeling, they often show us.

If your child is coming to tell you they want to lose weight firstly that’s a great thing as they feel safe and want your help.

Saying no can feel like we’re not understanding them, often what our children want is to be seen and validated.

Listening and trying to understand how they are feeling, helping them to understand what the real problem is, isn’t the same as endorsing their request or not acknowledging the risks.

We have to act as the responsible adults and cause no harm which does often mean we have to stop them from taking actions that are harmful or detrimental.

But how we do this is key, especially around body image and food.

If we say no or you look fine or you don’t need to, to the child it feels like we’re dismissive or even lying to them. They have no autonomy so saying no is taking even more of their choice away and this is likely to lead to them doing it behind your backs or not coming to you in the future.

Instead a tool such as acknowledgment, labelling feelings, validation and unconditional positive regard (believing them regardless of what we think or feel) is going to help you both work out the best way to understand and handle the problem.

An example might be:
Emma I am so glad you have come to talk to me about this, tell me what’s going on with you at the moment?
Followed by:
I can see you are feeling really sad about this, I this is obviously really bothering you and I’m sorry you’re feeling like this right now.
It makes sense that you want to be like your friends, I get that is making you feel like you don’t fit in.

This is an opportunity to explore what the child really believes. It might be a chance to take that belief and talk about it together. Depending on what the desire to lose weight is then you can think about if it’s reasonable or realistic.

In this example you could look at how every body is different, not better or worse and some examples.

It’s not easy and you might get it wrong, but it builds trust and creates a better relationship so you can work it out together.

29/12/2025

Are you an emotional jellyfish? 🪼

Understanding our emotional responses can be helpful, we all have a more dominant emotional response which we can override in certain situations but will default to when we have a full stress bucket.

These innate and learnt traits are neither good or bad and can be helpful as much as they can be unhelpful.

The Jellyfish 🪼
💜 Feels all the feels, it’s hard to not react emotionally, particularly to difficult situations and other people’s emotions.
💜 Emotions come like a huge wave and can sweep you off your feet.
💜 When the wave hits everyone knows about it, you can’t hide how you feel.
💜 You go into reactive mode and can sometimes let your sting out reacting before you have time to calm down or think rationally.
💜 You may find yourself apologising or feeling bad after you have had some time to reflect.
💜 Rejection feels unbearable, you feel like you’ve been stung by a thousand jellyfish and you might become defensive or withdrawn consumed by the pain.
💜 When the situation has passed you can feel self critical and feel ashamed, prolonging the emotional suffering

Jellyfish are feelers and reactors. This isn’t a negative quality as you feel all the good too and can be extremely empathetic and caring.
People might feel confused at times when your reaction isn’t expected, but they also appreciate knowing what you are feeling and be drawn to your honest and genuine nature, feeling safety in the transparency.
Jellyfish can make others shut down or feel unsure how to respond, however, sometimes the direct and open emotional response can allow others to see their own behaviour was not helpful. It can also act as a motivation for change in others, particularly those who are default avoiders or struggle with self awareness.

Jellyfish need to control their stings so it didn’t get them in trouble or create situations they don’t want.
They can use their transparency and honesty to create better relationships and make a life that feels genuine.
They need to assess the situation to see if perhaps an emotional reaction is the best response or if it would be better to revisit when things have changed.

26/12/2025

Despite what your brain may have you believe, you my love are not a burden.

It’s okay to need help sometimes, it’s okay to not know what to do, it’s okay to not be able to pull yourself together all the time.

When you’re not feeling yourself you can be self critical and self conscious . Your thoughts might creep into mind reading mode and come up with a story that says everyone thinks I’m useless, stupid, pathetic, annoying.

But it’s just your thoughts, not others.

Don’t let your brain convince you the thoughts must be real.

For therapy that works with your subconscious patterns and responses to automatic thoughts in 2026 follow

16/12/2025

It’s that time of year, social media highlights, Xmas festivities, perfect decorations, family fun; perfectly wrapped presents.

It’s impossible to stop the comparison as it’s literally in your face, and that’s also okay.

And so when you do compare your own situation to someone else’s remember you are only seeing part of the story. You don’t know what else is happening offline, you don’t know their situation and most importantly you are not them.

So say to yourself, it’s okay that I feel like I should have that, or that I want my life to be like that, and I don’t know what that persons life is really like. I don’t know if I would really want it if it meant I couldn’t be me. I don’t know if it would really work for me or be right if I had to take everything else that comes with it.

Often we want the pretty and desirable thing without the costs that come with it.

So just remember, your life is yours, you own it and you want it to work for you.

Compare with compassion for yourself and others ❤️❤️

05/12/2025

Hold on, what was I talking about?

ADHD is always lying when it says let me tell you the short story, it’s never short. Never.

I’m not sure enough people appreciate this type of story telling but please god never try and do it to us ADHD folk, we are aware of the hypocrisy but we will zone out immediately.

ADHD content created with a sense of humour, as it’s the best way to deal with these things.

04/12/2025

I hate the object permanence explanation for ADHD.

I forget people birthdays because I don’t store the date in my long term memory, I often have no idea what date it is, the association with that person and a date isn’t always triggered, my working memory is terrible and I get distracted before I can remember to contact that person to say happy birthday before I then forget it’s today.

Object permanence suggests I don’t have the awareness that my friends exist if I’m not with them or reminded of them. I do of course know they are still here. I often think of them without being prompted by a clue of their existence.

I often think of contacting them with some funny story or a meme, but then I get distracted and forget I was going to.

I read their message and forget I didn’t respond because I thought of my reply and you guessed it, I got distracted again, then my working memory discarded the information.

I often forget to take my medication even with a reminder on my phone, walking past the box on the kitchen side several times, not because I forget I have medication or that I need to take it, but because, I am distracted by the many other thoughts, objects, people, tasks, noises that exist in my awareness that my brain decides to make more important.

I am very much aware of the things I don’t do. I am very aware of the mounds of clothes to be folded, the food shop that needs to take place, the admin. I don’t forget it exists, it just has to compete with everything else in my world.

Object permanence isn’t the problem, object competition is.

If my medication was a delicious chocolate bar on the side, believe me I would not forget about it. But if it was in the shop and I had to go to the effort to get it the chances of me eating it would be seriously decreased.

ADHD is complex, we remember random things and forget your birthday, do tasks that we have put off for weeks when we’re procrastinating on something we want to do even less or is overwhelming, can pull a 10,000 dissertation out I in 24 hours but the thought of replying to a txt is too much.

If you relate give me a follow and let me know if you love or hate the term object permanence.

25/11/2025

📢 PSA: NOT EVERY THOUGHT IS TRUE OR REAL

That means we don’t need to pay attention or give importance to every single thing we think.

Learning how to decide which thoughts you want to focus on and which you want to do something with is a skill that everyone can learn.

We just need to practice it. Like everything else we are good at, the more we do it the easier and faster it gets.

When you spot a sneaky negative automatic thought that makes you feel a bit anxious, you can call it what it is and not get carried away with the feelings.

When you realise you have more control over your response than before you start to behave in ways that feel more supportive.

Ready to start… get in touch.

28/10/2025

Your subconscious is pretty much running the show.

So much of life is run on autopilot, learned and repeated action and information.

When we do anything we’ve done before or when we have a thought we’ve had many times our brain runs a sequence of responses automatically.

We become aware of this when the signal reaches the conscious brain by which time we just accept it as happening without really thinking about where it started or why.

It feels like we have little control over our brains, that they must be doing things intentionally or with a valid reason.

But, if you programmed it to start with, that means you are in control. You can re-program it to the new settings.

Your brain will do what you tell it to do. If you reinforce old behaviour and thoughts it will continue to run them. If you change them it will update them.

Willing yourself to change isn’t enough, you have to do the things you want to change and believe this is the best way.

If you want to be happy you have to do things that make you happy and notice what makes you happy and feel happy about that.

If you want to feel calm you have to create calm. You can’t wait to feel it, you have to actively look for it, notice where it is and then repeat it.

If you want to feel love, you have to create situations where you feel love. You have to spend time here in this connection.

If you want to feel like you belong, you have to look at our similarities not differences, look for the shared desires, see how you can be accepted.

All of this takes effort. It is supposed to, our brains thrive on challenge and effort. It’s literally what we were designed to do. It’s not supposed to just happen we have to make it happen.

So if you are really serious about getting control over your life you have to train your brain and teach it how to do that.

25/10/2025

Chat GPT is not your therapist Boo.

Use it to help plan, to find recipes, but do not take mental health advice from an AI.

If you really want to try self help buy a book by a trained and experienced professional with clear guidance on what you should do.
Even then tread carefully as some things are too big and hard for us to deal with on our own.

Can you cut your own hair? Yes.
Will it look good? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

23/10/2025

F*ck it all I’m done. No seriously, I’m out.

Is something you may hear if you’re walking past my house after a particularly challenging day juggling work, kids, husbands, dogs and peopling.

Am I dramatic - hell yeah. Do I care, F*ck no.

I am a drama queen always have been. I have no filter, my emotions are always fully on display (even when I’m trying really hard to be cool)

We are emotionally attached and emotionally driven (quite literally)

Energy is released from our physical body’s as a way of signaling to others how we feel and what might be happening. Long before we could tell people how we felt we showed them.

Our behaviour, tone, expressions, volume, movements all express our mood.

This is a mixture of personality and learnt behaviours.

We run automatic patterns and it happens before our conscious and intelligent mind has had chance to intervene.

How we handle this is again down to our unique wiring.

Here are just some of the less helpful things you might do after an emotional reaction:

Shutdown - if we don’t feel safe with emotions or know how to express ourselves withdraw our feelings
Shame - beat ourselves up and regret our reaction, disconnect and withdraw
Ruminating - winding ourselves up by replying the situation on a loop
Defensive - feeling a need to protect ourselves from being vulnerable
Reassurance - seeking validation
Fawn - seeking approval, apologising or hiding true feelings

Healthy self esteem allows us to be open and nonjudgmental to our reactions, to see our automatic responses as just that, to accept feedback from those we love without hurt or pain, to apologise for the reaction not the feelings, to identify what needs to happen to resolve the situation, to see our emotions as reactions not who we are, to accept those that know and love us understand who we really are beyond our emotional reactions.

If you would like to explore this I offer free discovery calls to discuss how hypnotherapy can help.

21/10/2025

Has your brain started to process every minor challenge in life the same way it would being chased by a lion?

The more anxious and vigilant your brains threat processing the less chance your conscious brain has to regulate it and tell it to de-prioritise the threat response.

This means even signals to rest and relax can get overridden and less powerful, the parts of your brain that can decide you are physically safe and out of danger is shouting but the message isn’t getting through.

The physical signals of threat keep getting sent from the body to the mind and the mind assess this as anxiety, this is why we can’t stop the loop of negative thoughts flooding our awareness.

So we have to get our body back into safety and then allow our subconscious mind to understand the association between the situation and the feeling of safety.

This is why our thoughts at night are triggered by what we do in the morning and how we feel throughout the day.

The more you can learn to release some of the stress and physical anxiety the better chance your thinking brain has to get involved and regulate yourself. The more you fire this message the better your connection and easier it becomes.

Practice calming your body and your mind will follow.

You can increase this with your imagination using safety as an anchor and grounding to allow your mind to see the situation as over and complete.

Speak to me to find out more about how this works

Focused Hypnotherapy

12/01/2026

06/01/2026

29/12/2025

26/12/2025

16/12/2025

05/12/2025

04/12/2025

25/11/2025

28/10/2025

25/10/2025

23/10/2025

21/10/2025

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