When people begin training as clinical hypnotherapists, they imagine learning inductions, deepeners, trauma protocols and powerful language patterns. They picture the therapy room. They picture transformation. They picture impact. What they don’t always picture is the hat stand. Because stepping into private practice means stepping into multiplicity. You are not simply a therapist. You are a facilitator, a hypnotic technician, a reflective practitioner, a business owner, a leader, a strategist, a communicator and, at times, your own HR department. This is where many practitioners feel the wobble. Not because they are clinically incapable, but because no one prepared them for the internal and external hat-switching that self-employment requires. There is a useful metaphor developed by Edward de Bono in his work Six Thinking Hats. He described different “hats” as deliberate modes of thinking, data, emotion, creativity, caution, optimism and process. What I love about this model is not just its practicality, but its permission. It reminds us that we do not have to think about everything all at once. We can consciously choose which lens we are using. In practice, this matters enormously. There are moments when you must wear the White Hat, the data hat. You review your client numbers, your revenue, your outcomes, your conversion rates. There is no guilt here, no story. Just facts. If the numbers say your fees are unsustainable, then compassion alone cannot override mathematics. There are moments for the Red Hat, your intuitive knowing. That subtle sense that something in a session is unresolved. That quiet inner voice that says, “Slow down.” As hypnotherapists, our attunement is one of our greatest strengths. But intuition without structure can drift. There is the Black Hat, the ethical guardian. Scope of practice. Safeguarding. Referral decisions. Financial caution. This is not negativity; it is maturity. There is the Yellow Hat, possibility thinking. The part of you that says, “If I niche into this, I could really serve deeply.” Without optimism, practices stagnate.

If you’re feeling that little pull towards hypnotherapy whether it’s a new career calling, a deeper life chapter, or that sense of “I know I’m meant to help people” I just want to say this: trust that nudge. And… choose your training wisely. Because the hypnotherapy world is a bit like the Wild West. A quick Google search throws up everything from weekend “become a master” certificates to long diplomas that actually build real clinical confidence. The difference matters. Pick the wrong school and you risk paying good money for a certificate that doesn’t hold weight when you try to get insured, join a professional register, or work ethically with real people. Pick the right one and you’re not just learning techniques… you’re building a foundation for a practice you can be proud of. Here’s what I’d look for. 1) Don’t Get Dazzled by Certificates, Check the Accreditation Hypnotherapy is self-regulated, which basically means anyone can create a “course” and put a badge on it. So accreditation is your safety net. Look for training that’s recognised by respected professional bodies, because that’s what helps you with professional registration, credibility, and insurance. If a school is properly accredited, they’re being held to standards outside of their own marketing. A big green flag: a school that isn’t just linked to one body, but has multiple recognised accreditations. That’s usually a sign they’re serious about quality, ethics, and professional outcomes. 2) Make Sure You Get Real Clinical Practice (Not Just Theory) I’m going to say this with love: you cannot learn to be a confident hypnotherapist purely from watching videos. You can learn information online. But confidence comes from practice. And competence comes from being supervised while you practise. So look for training that includes practical work, ideally in an immersive setting where you get to drop in, focus, and actually do the work not just “talk about” the work. The gold standard is when a school offers something like a clinical residency style experience, retreats where you practise properly, with supervision, feedback, and real people.

Recently, I’ve found myself having to use very strong, very explicit language in order to get the medical intervention I needed. Not dramatic language. Not poetic language. But crisis language. The kind of words that make people sit up, take notice, and act. It struck me how revealing that is. There seems to be an unspoken rule in many systems: if your language isn’t serious enough, you won’t be taken seriously. If you don’t use the right trigger words,pain, risk, trauma, severity, your distress may be minimised, delayed, or politely parked. And that made me think more deeply about the power of words, not just in moments of crisis, but in everyday life. As a hypnotherapist, I use words all day, every day. Carefully. Intentionally. With awareness of how a single phrase can soften a nervous system… or tighten it. How one word can open possibility, while another quietly shuts it down. This is something Peta Heskell explored beautifully in her article The Power of Words. She reminds us that words are not neutral. They don’t just describe experience, they create it. Language evokes physiological responses. Posture changes. Breathing shifts. Muscles tighten or release. Words land in the body. What stayed with me most from her writing is the idea that people attach deeply personal meaning to words. A word like “stress,” “anxiety,” or “confidence” might sound simple on the surface, but for the person hearing it, it carries years of memory, sensation, and emotion. When we repeat certain labels, especially to ourselves, we aren’t just naming something; we’re rehearsing it. And yet, look at how casually we use big words now. Trauma words for ordinary distress. Crisis language for normal human struggle. Harsh, absolute language when we’re simply tired, overwhelmed, or needing care. That kind of language can be useful when it needs to be useful, as I experienced firsthand. But when it becomes our default inner dialogue, it can quietly keep the nervous system on high alert.

Last year at the IHA convention I picked up some old journal articles and today I read a case study from Val Walker. Blew my mind, offering a striking illustration of the mind–body connection taken to an exciting biological edge. It quietly challenges the assumption, still dominant in much of mainstream medicine, that healing is purely a mechanical process driven by protein synthesis, cell division, and time. From a hypnotherapeutic perspective, the body does not merely repair itself automatically; it responds to instruction. The subconscious mind, in this view, functions as the blueprint-holder for physical integrity. What makes this case particularly compelling is not simply the speed of recovery from a severe injury, but the quality and completeness of that recovery, and the unexpected secondary healing that followed. At the centre of the case is Bruce, whose finger injury was surgically reconstructed with the clear medical expectation that recovery would be limited. His surgeon was explicit: 95% functionality was the maximum possible outcome, with permanent structural compromise and visible deformity. This prognosis became part of Bruce’s conscious understanding of his body’s future. Hypnotherapy intervened not by contradicting surgery, but by working at a different level of the healing process. In hypnosis, the theoretical foundation of cellular regeneration rests on the role of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The ANS governs digestion, immune response, circulation, and tissue repair, processes that occur outside conscious control. By entering a deep trance state, Bruce bypassed the analytical, critical mind that had absorbed the surgeon’s prognosis as fact. In that state, suggestions could reach the subconscious without being filtered through doubt or perceived biological limits. Rather than focusing on abstract positivity, the hypnotic work likely involved precise, embodied imagery: increased blood flow to the injured area, efficient nutrient delivery, and the gradual “knitting” of bone and tissue at a microscopic level. This form of visualisation I teach at The NCCH as body talk or primal imaging and it is not just symbolic in nature; it operates as a language the nervous system understands sensation, movement, and expectation.

Why Emotional Regulation Comes Before Pain Relief, Change, or “Fixing” Anything It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realise this: Most people don’t need fixing.They need safety. For years, I did what many well-intentioned practitioners do. I learned more techniques. I refined my language. I tried to get better at making change happen. And yet, the biggest shifts I ever witnessed didn’t come from doing more. They came from stopping. Stopping the rush.Stopping the correcting.Stopping the subtle pressure to “get better.” That’s when I began to see what was really going on underneath anxiety, emotional overwhelm, and chronic pain. What If Nothing Is Wrong? Somewhere along the line, we absorbed the idea that if we’re struggling, something must be wrong with us. If you feel anxious, you need to control it.If you’re in pain, you need to eliminate it.If you’re emotional, you need to manage yourself better. But what if those experiences aren’t problems at all? What if they’re signals from a nervous system that has been on duty for far too long? When I started explaining this to clients, gently, without jargon, something softened almost immediately. Not the symptoms at first.The shame. That quiet internal voice saying, “Why am I like this?” began to ease. And when shame reduces, the body listens. The Body Doesn’t Heal in an Emergency One metaphor keeps coming back in my work. There’s a difference between an emergency room and a healing room. In an emergency room, the body is alert, tense, scanning for danger.In a healing room, it can finally exhale. Most people living with anxiety, stress, or persistent pain are stuck in emergency mode, not because they’re weak, but because their system learned it had to stay there. You don’t heal by yelling at yourself to calm down.You heal when your nervous system no longer believes it has to brace. This is why regulation comes before insight.Before hypnosis.Before pain relief.Before emotional release. Without safety, nothing sticks.