I’ll start by telling you all a secret. I am and always have been a rebel at heart. I spent more time sat outside the headmistress’s office as a teenager than in lessons (or so it seems in my memory now) for the minor, silly rules that I broke on a daily basis.
Now, before you see me being carted off to Alcatraz, or the Lincolnshire equivalent in the 1980’s, I need to explain. I went to an All-Girl’s High School, where navy blue knickers were still essential parts of the uniform (and they checked), heels on uniform blue shoes were measured randomly by the head mistress with her ruler, to ensure they were of a decent height, and make up and jewellery were certainly not allowed. So, being a rebel was easy. Red shoes- go to the office. Caked on black eyeliner- go to the office. Large hoop earrings- Hannah, back to the office. Dyed pink hair…. You know where I’m going. Then there was a time we clubbed together to fight the system- and wore TROUSERS to school!!!! Jerusalem nearly crumbled!

So going out into the world I felt I was really going to be someone. I was going to make my mark on the world, and above all BE DIFFERENT.

Despite being a rebel, I have always loved to learn. Just not always what was on the curriculum. I spent my university years in the library- ask me anything about the JFK assassination and we could stay locked in a room for a week debating the options of who done it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t part of my course. But what was, was enough to spark my curiosity about mental health, and the changing perceptions of this, especially in terms of the social control of women.

After completing my degree in Social Policy and Administration (with a subsidiary study in America literature and history…. Ask me about Lee Harvey Oswald please) this led on to another three years of working and studying to become a registered mental health nurse, and a fabulous 30 years working predominantly with adolescents with complex mental health problems. And what a challenge and a privilege that has been.

During this time, I have seen so many changes to how mental health and wellbeing is perceived. Changes in law, culture and therapeutic response. During the 90’s we started talking about Goal Based Outcomes, and treatment pathways but still therapy was DONE to someone. You received the therapy or treatment offered in a passive way, or could otherwise be considered difficult of non-compliant. And then in the late 1990’s, while working at Guy’s Hospital in London, I discovered Solution Focused Therapy, and I was inspired once more. It was the same when I saw Wham for the first time, and just knew that we were a perfect fit. George, Andrew, Pepsi, Shirley, and not forgetting Dee C. Lee in those early years, just felt right. And they have never let me down. In the same way when I started to study Solution Focused Therapy, everything made sense again. Now I was able to fully embrace the notion that the people I worked with held their own answers. My job was to work along side them, respectfully, to enable these to emerge, to achieve the goals that they wanted, to uncover their own solutions and move forward with their lives.

From Freud onwards, therapies have come in and out of style. During the last few years, I have found myself out of sync again with what I was being asked to do.  I found myself on the sofa, wondering what had become of me, in quite a depressive fog that even “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” couldn’t lift me from. So, I spent some time trying to figure out what my dreams had been. What had I wanted way back when before I had been captured and placed on the old conveyer belt of life, getting the wage, paying the bills and keeping quiet. But nothing came to me.

So I was left thinking “How the hell did I get here?”, and not in a good way. Sitting on my sofa, the only thing going round it my head was a phrase uttered by Marlon Brandon in the Waterfront “I could’ve been a contender”. I wondered how I had become so small and scared. The funny thing is I can’t even recall seeing the film, but that phrase was like a mantra in my head.

I had a very clear picture of the bold, bright and daring girl who started the journey in mental health nursing over 30 years ago. She was innovative, funny and daring, challenging the system with such confidence. So how did I become so scared?
Over the years, bring up my son on my own, I learned to take the safe options. Keeping quiet, and becoming smaller and smaller in my own head, losing my own voice and opinions. And the best thing to do now? Continue treading the safe path despite feeling unfulfilled with unresolved ambition, or, dare to take a chance and chase the dream, using everything I had learned over the last 30 years to recapture that dream of who I wanted to be.

So I took that chance. I had a goal. Some time has passed and I am now a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, combining all my knowledge to make a difference.

I change perceptions of therapy, from one of fear, to one of excitement and possibility, so that every woman can take back the very best version of themselves, becoming who they want to be and really can be.
I guide action taking women, to identify their own solutions, transforming their visions of your future, from imagination to reality, taking them from stuck to unstoppable.