Welcome to the National Council For Hypnotherapy Podcast, where we dive into the fascinating world of hypnosis, lifting the lid on hypnotherapy, sharing insights and tips for change as we chat. So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the wonderful possibilities of hypnotherapy. My name is Tracey Grist, and I will be your host today. So, I'm here today with Bonnie Williamson. Bonnie is in private practice as a hypnotherapist, and is developing work around perimenopausal issues like weight loss, anxiety, all the things that come with the change that us women all go through at some point in our lives, inevitably. So you've been doing a lot of work particularly around weight loss and anxiety. And thank you for coming. Thank you for coming.

So

I'm happy.

Brilliant. How did you take the path of hypnotherapy? What what was your draw?

Okay. Oh, it could be a long story, but I'll try and try and make it as brief as I can. Okay. So I started out life. My main career was as a mental health nurse. So I was a mental health nurse for over 25 years, and, I did everything I wanted to do in mental health. And I suppose you can see that I already had an interest in the mind and and some what makes us do the things we do and how we can use our thinking and how we feel and and improve our lives. But I was always interested in, kind of like the wellness end rather than the the mental illness.

I was always kind of itching. So I always had a plan, but at some point or other, I was gonna take early retirement. I was going to do some kind of therapy and private practice. Anyway, so life carried on. And, like I said, I did everything I wanted to do in mental health. But what I kind of sort of on reflection, I can see that I don't in the don't quite know when this started to happen. Maybe it was my late thirties, forties, definitely my late forties, early fifties, the perimenopause. Yeah.

I started to very gradually lose my mojo, but it happens really, really slowly. And then it kicked in a bit more, like forties and fifties. And, well, you know, I battled through it as you do. I'm a nurse. You know?

Resilient and strong.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Carry on, and I'm I'm obviously expensive. So I did I did carry on. And then, eventually, I sort of I changed jobs searching, got a job out of mental health. I thought, well, maybe it's like just needing something else. I was always looking for something else to, to change things up a bit. But, yeah, then we're it really kicked in.

Right? And so, I I mean, most people think menopause. They think hot flashes. Well, that's what I thought. I knew nothing. Right? I didn't understand what was happening to me. I didn't understand where this anxiety was coming from, and the brain fog. I mean, it was all like I had cotton all in my head. And, Yeah.

I, I was just absolutely at my wit's end with it. And then we got the back of the end of the story. This is the job that it's like, you know, I had this person in my life who was quite toxic to me, and this person was quite good at amplifying all the things that I was anxious about. So I had anxiety and I was, yeah, stressed. And so they made me feel more anxious because they tend to amplify the anxiety. They tended to, well, increase my feelings of, lack of confidence, which was I already had.

Okay.

And this was gaslighting. I I didn't know what that was. Still, I didn't really feel good around this person. And what that told me is that you can actually change how people feel by planting little seeds in their mind, does this make sense? And you can use the way you say things again to sort of encourage people to think different ways. And, again, this is quite subtle. It was going over a period of years, so it wasn't like, you know, therapy. So it was going over a period of years. So then I kind of realized that actually, if you can do it in a negative way, you can really do it in a positive way.