In 2025, I sat with hypnotherapy clients 211 times. That’s 211 conversations, 211 scripts, 211 inner worlds opening, resisting, softening, and sometimes shifting in ways neither of us expected. I’d like to share the top 10 lessons I’ve taken from those sessions.
As much as my clients come to me looking for solutions to their problems, they’ve taught me just as much in return.
It still fascinates me that I can see parts of myself in every single client I work with, even when their circumstances look nothing like mine on the surface. The specifics may differ or sometimes not. I have observed my own relationship to anxiety, depression, alcohol, porn, addictions, control, identity loss, panic, life transitions, at times throughout my life but the underlying human mechanisms are often the same.
I recognise them because I’ve experienced them myself.
That doesn’t mean I’ve lived the same lives as my clients. I haven’t.
But I understand how stress can build under pressure and how the smallest of things can tip you over the edge, when your stress bucket is full!
How thinking/day dreaming becomes a refuge.
How avoidance can feel safer and easier than feeling or taking action.
And how easy it is to lose trust and belief in yourself when life knocks you sideways.
It’s humbling to remember that we’re all just human beings, doing the best we can with the tools we currently have.
Being a therapist or coach doesn’t mean you’ve got all your shit fully together.
If anything, it should mean you’ve been willing to go on your own journey of self-discovery, to sit with discomfort rather than bypass it, and to meet your own patterns honestly.
That’s where real compassion comes from. From being able to see the other in yourself.
After 211 sessions, here are the ten biggest life lessons my clients taught me in 2025:
1. The ‘In-Between’ is where the magic happens.
Very few clients resist a better future. What they struggle with is the space where the old identity no longer fits and the new one hasn’t fully formed yet. Where forwards, backwards and side ways have no meaning or point of reference. This in-between phase is full of uncertainty, overwhelm, can be lonely, and unsafe, and most of the suffering lives here but it is also a place of opportunity and great potential…
It’s all about perspective…is life happening TO me or FOR me?
2. Sensory experience solves excessive thinking.
Thoughts are natural, always occurring but excessively thinking about the thoughts is not. This is where the ‘Loop of Doom’ begins, a cycle that can become so intense and powerful that people can suffer from all manner of anxiety related disorders, that can manifest in some very real physical problems.
The mind just wants something to focus on, to dissect and interrogate, if you keep giving it thoughts to focus on, it will do just that, x 100. So, give the mind something else to focus on, come back into the body, come back to your senses.
What are you seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting?
3. The body tells the truth long before the mind is ready.
Grinding jaws, tight chests, nausea, shallow breathing, skin sensations, fatigue. The body speaks quietly at first, then louder when ignored. When clients learn to listen somatically rather than cognitively, insight often arrives without force and much future suffering can be avoided.
4. Shifting from shame to curiosity, changes the game.
Real change happens when the work shifts from the shame of “Why am I broken?” to the curious enquiry of “Isn’t that fascinating why I do that?” Self enquiry, without force, is what creates lasting change and shifting from shame to curiosity is the key to seeing yourself as a complex and wonderful flawed being.
5. Alcohol is rarely the side issue, it’s the gateway.
Many clients arrive wanting to work on anxiety, sleep, confidence, vaping cessation, cocaine addiction or motivation while trying to manage alcohol alongside it. Time and again, alcohol turns out to be the trigger that feeds the very issues they want to resolve.
If they aren’t willing to accept this fact, then there’s very little that can be done, and after a small number of sessions I never see them again. The ones that recognise the problem, own it, and are willing to let it go from their lives, are the ones who come back and change their lives.
6. Numbing and distraction, just put off the inevitable.
This isn’t about judgement, it’s always about acceptance. Alcohol, distraction, and avoidance may soften discomfort temporarily, but they quietly erode resilience and self-belief. Saying ‘I have a problem’ reduces the need to numb, then strength and stability increase, with clarity often following naturally.
7. Most inner conflict is between protection and growth.
Rarely is it a battle between right and wrong. The part that wants control, certainty, or avoidance is usually trying to protect, it’s just been using dysfunctional tools to achieve it’s aim, which in the past probably worked for a short while. Healing happens when those parts are understood and integrated rather than fought and separated.
8. Shining a light on your habits and behaviours, gradually creates space, and space creates choice.
When thoughts, habits and behaviours are consistently observed rather than reacted to, a gap appears. In that space between trigger and reaction, a new path opens up, one that genuinely wasn’t visible before and the potential for a new choice emerges.
9. People don’t suffer because they feel too much, they suffer because they resist feeling.
Anxiety intensifies when sensations are judged or fought. Relief often comes not from managing sensations, but from allowing them to move through without commentary. We’ve all heard the analogy of thoughts as clouds, watching them float across the sky of your mind without resistance is the fastest way to let them go.
10. When someone feels safe enough, they already know what to do next.
Once the nervous system settles, and an internal feeling of safety is cultivated, clarity surfaces on its own. The boundary that needs setting, the chapter that needs closing, the direction that wants to be taken. Insight doesn’t need forcing, it needs safety and the right path unfolds.
After 211 sessions, the biggest reminder I’ve been left with is this:
We are far more alike than we realise.
Even when I haven’t lived the same story as a client, I can still look them in the eyes and say, truthfully, “I see you.”
Because I recognise the mechanisms.
And I recognise the courage it takes to sit down and look inward.
If you’re reading this and something has resonated, perhaps you’re in that in-between space yourself.
Maybe you’re feeling stuck, looping, tired of managing symptoms, or quietly aware that something in your life wants to change.
I offer a free 60-minute initial consultation for exactly this reason.
Not to diagnose or label you.
Not to push you into anything.
But to give you space to talk, reflect, and explore what’s really going on beneath the surface, calmly and without pressure.
If it feels right, you can book a session and we’ll see what wants to unfold next.
And if nothing else, you’ll leave with a little more clarity than you arrived with.
