From Storytelling to Soul Work: My Journey to Hypnotherapy

I’ve always been a storyteller.

I started my career as a documentary TV producer, chasing real-life stories that revealed the complexity of the human experience. That path evolved into becoming a novelist, creating layered inner worlds on the page. And now, I’m also a clinical hypnotherapist. Those careers might seem wildly different, but to me, they’re connected by one powerful thread: the desire to understand people deeply - how they see the world, how they hold themselves back, and how they can finally set themselves free.

I’ve always had a rich, deep inner world. Even as a child, I felt the quiet pull inward - to listen to my own body, to connect with nature and the rhythm of the universe. But I didn’t grow up in a world that encouraged that kind of listening. I had to follow that pull myself. Especially when life became loud and overwhelming.

Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first baby, I found that everyone wanted to tell me their awful birth stories. The number of hours, the pain level, the terror of not knowing what was happening. Those stories – along with the idea of medical interventions like epidurals, IV’s and being a patient rather than a person - brought up a level of fear in me that I wasn’t willing to live with, so I turned to hypnobirthing. I wanted a calm, natural birth, and I wanted to trust the wisdom and design of my body. I signed up for a prenatal hypnobirthing class to teach me how.

I visualized my baby’s birth – smooth, easy, calm – and me relaxed, confident, capable. I taught my body how to soften, how to release tension and trust the process. The instructor’s voice was so soothing that my husband and some of the other parents fell deeply asleep while we worked through fears, doubts and negative self-talk. And after five sessions, I had discovered how powerful my mind was.

My daughter was born after only four hours of labour. My boys were born after only 90 minutes each. With all three births, I was calm and relaxed, and my body did all the work. Hypnosis taught me that calm is powerful. That the mind can lead the body. That healing and strength come from within.

But it wasn’t until years later when I again needed those tools for myself.

I experienced debilitating anxiety. It seemingly came out of nowhere, but of course now I know that it was triggered by anxious thoughts and a dysregulated nervous system. My heart would race - so fast and loud that I could hear the pulsing in my ears and feel my heart beating throughout my entire body. Especially at night when I would wake up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I became hyper-aware of my heart, and the more I noticed it, the worse it got.

There were two episodes where my heart rate got so high, so suddenly, that I ended up in the emergency room. They ran all the tests. The results: I was “fine.” It was just anxiety. I was referred to a cardiologist for more tests—Holter monitors, stress tests, ultrasounds. And still, the verdict: my heart was perfectly healthy. Use it, they said. Exercise. Live your life.

It was liberating - and humbling. Because now I had no choice but to face the anxiety head-on. It wasn’t my heart that was the problem. It was the relationship between my mind and my body that needed healing.

Over the next 18 months, I rebuilt myself. I made small but consistent changes. I let go of things that weren’t supporting me — like caffeine, alcohol, and stressful content. I gave myself permission to rest more, sleep earlier, and speak to myself with compassion. I moved my body in ways that felt good. And most importantly, I practiced noticing fear without letting it run the show.

And when I need support, I return to self-hypnosis: following my breath into calm, shifting brainwaves into safety, and rewriting the thoughts that once sent my body into panic. 

The Software and the Hardware

This is how I now understand it — and how I explain it to my clients:

• Your unconscious mind is like your internal software — full of old programming, beliefs, memories, and survival strategies.

  
  

• Your nervous system is the hardware — it receives those messages and reacts accordingly. If your unconscious is running a belief like “I’m not safe," your nervous system will respond with panic, tightness, racing thoughts, or shutdown.

  
  

• Hypnotherapy is the tool that helps update the software — and when that happens, the hardware (your body, your felt experience) starts to regulate and run more smoothly.

  
  

Once I understood that, it all made sense: my unconscious mind wasn’t broken. My body wasn’t broken. They were trying to communicate with me.

That journey brought me here.

I do this work because I’ve lived it. I’ve walked through fear and found my way back to trust. And now, I help others do the same.

In the middle of my own healing, I took a marketing course. One of the instructors used timeline work to help people clear money mindset blocks. I was amazed by her clarity - her ability to see people’s blind spots and guide them through. When I discovered she was a hypnotherapist, something clicked for me. The idea took root.

I wrestled with changing course but when I finally said it aloud to my husband—"I want to become a hypnotherapist"— I felt it as a full-body yes.

I took my first certification course and felt like I was seeing behind the curtain. The secret to living a fulfilled, ease-filled life was revealed. I was touching magic, and I wanted more. I completed a Clinical Hypnotherapy Diploma program. And now here I am, doing the work that has changed me profoundly both professionally and as a human.

This work ties everything together for me: storytelling, deep understanding, the beauty of the mind-body connection, and the sense of awe that always accompanies acknowledging the human spirit. It’s neuroscience, and somatics, and soul. And it’s what I’m here to do.

I want to share what I’ve learned: that we are not broken. Our society just isn’t very good at teaching people how to understand how their bodies work, the purpose of their emotions, how to process trauma, and what to do with outdated beliefs and patterns. Either they’re from previous versions of ourselves that we’ve outgrown, or we’ve inherited patterns and traumas that aren’t ours to keep and carry with us. And we don’t have to pass them on to our children.

Healing is possible. Freedom is possible. Safety and joy are possible.

It starts small - by learning to breathe. By listening to your body. By tuning in, instead of numbing out. And when you do… something shifts. Something opens.

This work isn’t just about you - it’s about the generations that come after. As they say, “hurt people hurt people” - but healed people also heal people.

That’s why I do this work.

And I’d love for you to join me.

If any part of my story resonates, if you're in a time of transition, or if you're ready to stop carrying the emotional load that was never meant to be yours - I invite you to book a free discovery call. Let’s talk. You can ask questions, feel into this work, and decide if it’s the right path for you.

You can live in peace. You can feel safe in your own body. You can reconnect to who you really are.

Find out how