Hello! I’m Susanne and I'm a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist offering sessions online and in-person in Surrey. I studied with the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (UKCHH), whose diploma is one of the most highly accredited hypnotherapy qualifications in the world. The UKCHH training programmes are entirely evidence-based, and one of the only hypnotherapy diplomas recognised by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and accredited by the National Council of Integrated Psychotherapists (NCIP).
ABOUT SUSANNE
MY STORY​
Understanding the reasons why I felt the way I felt and did the things I did always fascinated me. It led me to study psychology and explore philosophy and mysticism at a young age.
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But it was in my mid 20’s that I found a tool which went beyond the analysis of why I felt and behaved the way I did and actually offered direct (and what I came to find were surprisingly effective) tools to profoundly change it.
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This is when I discovered the art of self-hypnosis. I was living in London after finishing university, a bit lost and overwhelmed, and faced with constant thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and very low self-worth. The behaviours that manifested as a result of this were harmful, self-sabotaging and fairly wreckless at times.
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One day I stumbled across a book called You Are What You Think, written by Tycho Photiou (sadly now out of print). It was a short book, but I credit it with changing my life. What the book outlined was the technique of self-hypnosis. How to enter into a state whereby you could bypass the analytical mind, and plant suggestions directly into the subconscious.
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The more I applied the technique, the more my life improved. Rather than believing every automatic thought that popped into my head, I began to take control of my beliefs and my inner narrative. And I saw radical changes in my outer world as a result.
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I ended up venturing more in the direction of yogic practices and philosophy and eventually became a yoga teacher. However, something kept bringing my attention back to the mind. Even though my students felt great during and after class, there were common limits in terms of how these improvements translated into daily life. I had studied the nervous system and held the incredible power of meditation and relaxation in very high regard. But I wanted to do more.
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I did my training in Yoga Nidra which is a meditation practice that holds a lot of similarities to hypnosis. Progressive muscle relaxation followed by a refinement in focus and presence, followed by a ‘sankalpa’ which is essentially instructions given to the unconscious mind. I’m still very passionate about the power of Yoga Nidra and its modern day successor NSDR (Non Sleep Deep Rest) and love to share these practices wherever possible.
However, this deep-dive into Yoga Nidra is what brought me full circle back to hypnosis and wanting to train as a Hypnotherapist.
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The reason I chose Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) is because not only does it offer a vast tool kit of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) tools and techniques to use with clients, but because it is evidence based. Therefore, rather than explaining the technique in the fairly outdated language of traditional hypnosis, it uses the research from the relevant fields of scientific study to explain how and why this process actually works.
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I was also drawn to it because CBH is such an efficient model of therapy. The goal is to create the best therapeutic outcomes (positive, measurable and lasting change), in the most efficient treatment times possible.
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A key part of my personal approach is making these techniques feel as comfortable, accessible and as enjoyable as possible. I believe that if doing ‘the work’ can become a pleasurable experience in itself, then this leads to even greater improvements in even shorter time scales.