Your health touches every corner of your life
The ripple effect goes far beyond your symptoms, touching the life you love and the people you hold close.
Your mornings can begin with uncertainty about how you’ll feel that day. Plans become harder to make because you don't know what you'll be capable of tomorrow, next week or next month. Things you once did without thinking can suddenly require more energy, preparation or compromise.
Your routines change. Your work can be affected. Relationships and family dynamics can shift. Your social life may become smaller. Medical appointments, treatment, meal planning and lifestyle changes can start taking up time and mental space you never expected to give them.
And somehow, your health can become the central theme of your life. What you think about. What you plan around. What you talk about. What you can and can't do.
But perhaps one of the hardest changes is what happens to your sense of self.
You may no longer feel like the person you were before. Your independence, confidence and the roles you once took for granted can change. At work. In your relationships. In your family. Even in how you see yourself.
Sometimes it can feel as though there are two versions of you: the person you were before, and the person you are now.
That shift isn't often talked about.
There can be frustration, sadness, uncertainty and even grief for what has changed. A loss of predictability. A loss of freedom. A loss of how life used to be, or of a future that once felt much more certain.
And all the while, you're still trying to live your life. Navigate the healthcare system. Find answers. Manage symptoms. Keep appointments. Meet responsibilities. Make changes. Be there for other people.
It’s not one thing. It’s layer upon layer, all happening at once.
This is the part people don’t always see.
The part no one really prepares you for
You’re often given medical advice, treatment plans, or lifestyle recommendations.
But very little support for what happens next, in real life.
Knowing what you need to do is one thing. Actually doing it while you’re dealing with everything else is another.
You may be asked to change how you eat. Move more. Sleep differently. Reduce stress. Lose weight. Rest. Pace yourself. Follow treatment plans. Build new routines. Give up habits you've relied on for years.
And somehow, you're expected to make all of this happen at the very time you may have the least capacity to do it.
Because you're not making these changes in a vacuum. You're making them while you're tired, stressed, in pain, frightened, overwhelmed or simply trying to keep your life going.
And knowing something is good for you doesn't automatically change the thoughts, emotional responses, habits and coping patterns that influence what you actually do.
That’s why knowing what to do and being able to do it can be two very different things.
This is where many people quietly struggle.
Not because they don’t care.
Not because they lack willpower.
But because lasting lifestyle and behaviour change is more complex than it looks from the outside.
This is where I work differently
I work with the mental, emotional and behavioural side of health.
And I work at both the conscious and subconscious level.
Insight matters. But insight alone doesn’t always create change.
You can understand why you think, feel or behave a certain way and still find yourself responding automatically when it matters.
- You know you’re safe. But your body is still on high alert.
- You’re exhausted, on the verge of burnout. But you push through because there’s just one more thing to do.
- You tell yourself not to worry. But the what ifs keep coming.
- You’re in pain. You tense up, brace yourself and fear it getting worse.
- You’ve eaten well all day. Then stress hits and you’re standing in the kitchen at 11pm looking for something to eat.
You know better. You want something different. But the old response can happen before you’ve even had time to think.
Knowing and doing aren't always the same thing.
Because you’re influenced by more than conscious thought. Your beliefs. Your sense of identity. The stories you tell yourself. Conditioned emotional responses. Learned behaviours and ways of coping. Self-sabotaging patterns that work against what you really want.
And when you’re stressed, these automatic responses can become even harder to override.
My approach works with the parts of you that reason things through, and the parts that react before you’ve had time to think.
I combine Strategic Psychotherapy and Clinical Hypnotherapy with evidence-informed mind-body approaches.
Strategic Psychotherapy builds understanding, practical skills and new ways of responding.
Clinical Hypnotherapy uses focused attention, relaxation, dissociation, visualisation and mental rehearsal to deliver therapeutic interventions and work with responses that can be harder to change through conscious effort alone.
You build understanding and new skills. But you also practise and rehearse how you want to respond when it matters.
- Facing a medical appointment with greater calm.
- Recognising when fear is driving your decisions and knowing what to do instead.
- Quietening the critical voice that says you’re not good enough, or you should be doing more. Being able to say, “That’s enough for today,” and actually mean it.
- Responding to uncertainty without immediately imagining the worst.
With repetition, these responses can begin to feel more natural and automatic. You don’t have to work so hard to make them happen.
This is brief, focused and active therapy, centred on what matters to you and the changes you want to make.
I help people at a turning point in their health feel better, create meaningful change and have more influence over the direction of their life.
How we work together
All sessions are held online via telehealth, so you can work with me from the privacy and comfort of your own home.
Research shows online psychological therapies can be as effective as face-to-face therapy for many concerns. It’s also private, accessible and convenient, with no travel, parking or waiting rooms to navigate.
When you’re already managing a health challenge, removing those extra demands can make a real difference.
IT STARTS WITH LISTENING TO YOU
This is your opportunity to feel really heard.
There is time to tell me what’s been happening. Not only the symptoms, diagnosis or medical history, but what all of this has been like for you.
The fear you may not talk about. The thoughts that keep going around in your head. The frustration, exhaustion or uncertainty. The things that have changed. What you’re finding difficult. And what you desperately want to feel different.
Because there is a person living through all of this, not just a health condition to manage.
I want to understand what you want to focus on, what you’ve already tried and what seems to be getting in the way of feeling or coping the way you would like to.
Sometimes I’ll ask questions that help us look at things from a different angle. How you’re making sense of what’s happening. What you’re expecting or fearing. The beliefs, patterns or automatic responses that may be adding to the load.
Through Strategic Psychotherapy and psychoeducation, I’ll introduce new perspectives, distinctions and practical skills that can help you feel more capable and give you more choice in how you respond.
You may begin to see possibilities where things felt impossible.
Your therapeutic hypnosis session
After our telehealth session, I create a 20–30 minute Modern Clinical Hypnosis session just for you.
You’ll receive it later that day as a therapeutic audio recording, tailored to what you’re going through, the health and life challenges you’re facing, and what you want to be different.
You can keep it on your phone and listen to it each day over the next two weeks before we meet again.
And perhaps one of the nicest things about this part of the therapy is that you don’t have to work hard at it. Simply relax. Find somewhere comfortable. Close your eyes. And allow yourself to stop for a while.
When you’ve been living with pain, worry, uncertainty, stress or exhaustion, your mind and body can spend an enormous amount of time on alert. Thinking. Anticipating. Problem-solving. Bracing. Trying to keep everything going.
This is time when you don’t have to do any of that. As your body settles and your mind becomes quieter, your attention can become deeply focused and absorbed. And this is where the therapeutic work happens.
Hypnosis is the vehicle for delivering that work, not simply the relaxation itself.
Within that deeply relaxed and focused state, I draw on therapeutic interventions from Strategic Psychotherapy, CBT, ACT and Mindfulness, delivered through Modern Clinical Hypnosis using metaphor, dissociation, visualisation, mental rehearsal and therapeutic suggestion.
This is where therapy can become something you experience, not simply something you understand intellectually.
You may begin to see something from a completely different perspective. Make a connection you hadn’t made before. Imagine possibilities that have been difficult to see from inside what you’re going through. Draw on strengths and capabilities you’ve used elsewhere in your life. Question an old belief. Change the story you’ve been telling yourself. Or experience yourself responding differently before you ever need to do it in real life.
It can be restorative and therapeutic at the same time.
You may finish feeling deeply relaxed and refreshed. Perhaps clearer. Lighter. More hopeful. Or simply with a little more space between you and something that has felt all-consuming. And tomorrow, you get to do it again.
Why listen every day?
Not because you need another task or project. Because repetition gives the therapeutic work time to take hold. Something you hear today may land differently tomorrow. An idea can become a new perspective. A possibility can begin to feel believable. A response you’ve mentally rehearsed can become increasingly familiar.
With repetition, new learning and experiences can become more deeply integrated and strengthened as new patterns in the brain. What once required conscious effort can gradually become easier and more automatic.
But perhaps most importantly, this is a daily opportunity to reconnect with what is still strong and capable within you.
When a health challenge has been taking centre stage day after day, it’s easy to lose sight of that.
My role isn’t to tell you what’s wrong with you. It’s to help create the right environment for you to discover what’s still very right with you.
The strengths. The resources. The capacity to heal, adapt, grow and influence the direction of your life.
Modern Clinical Hypnosis
NOT HOCUS POCUS. NOT A PEP TALK. THIS IS THERAPY.
If your idea of hypnosis comes from a swinging watch, someone clucking like a chicken on stage, or a generic YouTube recording, Modern Clinical Hypnosis is something very different.
And this distinction matters.
Relaxation isn't therapy. Positive thinking isn't therapy. And simply imagining a life without the problem isn't therapy.
Modern Clinical Hypnosis uses hypnosis to help create the right environment for therapeutic work.
Think of planting a seed. It won't grow easily in hard, compacted soil. But plant that same seed in soft, rich earth and it has the opportunity to take root and flourish.
Our minds act the same way.
When you're stressed, frightened, in pain or overwhelmed, the mind can become hypervigilant, critical, noisy and protective. Hypnosis helps quieten some of that noise and creates a state of focused, absorbed attention where the mind can become more open and receptive to new ideas, perspectives, possibilities and ways of responding.
Psychotherapy plants the seed. Hypnosis provides the fertile soil where it can take hold and grow. The deeper the roots, the more established and automatic the new pattern becomes.
Hypnosis can amplify therapy.
AND THERE'S SERIOUS SCIENCE BEHIND IT
Modern Clinical Hypnosis is being studied across psychology, neuroscience, medicine and health at leading universities and medical institutions in Australia and around the world. And we're not talking about a handful of small studies.
A major review brought together 49 previous meta-analyses covering 261 separate clinical studies of hypnosis across mental and physical health conditions. Across that large body of research, more than half of the reported effects were medium or large, with the researchers concluding that hypnosis has the potential to positively influence a range of mental and physical health outcomes.
Read the major review of clinical hypnosis research
Research has also explored the therapeutic use of hypnosis across many of the health and psychological challenges I work with, including:
Anxiety | Stress | IBS | Pain Management | Cancer-related Anxiety & Distress | Depression | Migraines
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ADD HYPNOSIS TO PSYCHOTHERAPY?
This is where the research becomes particularly relevant to the way I work.
A meta-analysis led by researchers at the University of Western Australia compared Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) alone with CBT enhanced by hypnosis. It examined 48 treatment comparisons involving 1,928 people.
The combined approach produced better outcomes than CBT alone, with statistically significant benefits after treatment and an even greater advantage at follow-up. The researchers concluded that the findings support hypnosis as a way of enhancing the effectiveness and durability of CBT.
Read the CBT + hypnosis meta-analysis
That's the power of combining hypnosis with psychotherapy. Hypnosis helps create the right environement for therapy and can amplify its impact.
This is important.
Relaxation isn't therapy. Positive thinking isn't therapy. And simply imagining a life without the problem isn't therapy.
A generic YouTube hypnosis recording is created once for anyone who presses play. It doesn't know what you're going through, what's keeping you stuck, what you've already tried, what you need to be different, or the strengths and resources you already have.
Modern Clinical Hypnosis is different because there is genuine therapeutic work behind it.
The hypnosis has a specific therapeutic purpose, informed by what we've uncovered together. It becomes the vehicle through which psychotherapy, therapeutic strategies, new perspectives, imagery, metaphor, mental rehearsal and suggestion can be experienced and reinforced.
It's not magic. It's not mind control. And you don't lose awareness or surrender control.
It's a researched therapeutic approach designed to help create meaningful change. It helps you access your own capacity to adapt, cope, heal and move towards feeling better and living more fully again.
Test the Water - Free Consult
You’ll get immediate answers to your questions, see if we connect and decide whether this approach feels right for you. When it comes to your health, the person you work with matters. A FREE 20-min telehealth consultation, by phone or Zoom, gives us a chance to talk before you decide what comes next.
The First Step
First session, pay as you go
1 x 75 min
Your first session gives us the time to explore your situation in depth, clarify what you want to change and identify where our work together should focus.
It includes Strategic Psychotherapy and psychoeducation, with practical insights and strategies you can begin using straight away.
After our session, I’ll create a personalised 20–30 minute Strategic Hypnosis recording based on our work together. Listening daily between sessions is an important part of the process, using repetition to reinforce the therapeutic work and help new ways of thinking and responding become more familiar and automatic.
The Shift
Single sessions, pay as you go
1 x 60 min
What feels impossible isn’t missing. It’s just not accessible right now. This is where things start to shift.
Available after your initial session, The Shift builds on the work we’ve already begun, focusing on what you need most right now.
Each session uses Strategic Psychotherapy, psychoeducation and evidence-based therapeutic interventions to build new skills, perspectives and responses.
After each session, you’ll receive a new personalised 20–30 minute Strategic Hypnosis recording to listen to daily, reinforcing the therapeutic work and helping new patterns become more established and automatic.
The Way Forward
MEANINGFUL CHANGE OFTEN TAKES A FEW STEPS
Thoughts, emotions, behaviours, limiting beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves can become intertwined. Sometimes there’s more than one thread to unravel.
That’s why I offer different ways to continue working together. You can book as you go, or choose a multi-session option that makes ongoing support more economical.
What we focus on and how we move forward is always shaped around you. We’ll work out what makes sense together.
