Safety, Trust and Emotional Permission
I was around thirty-five when I reached a point I could no longer ignore. One evening, alone with my thoughts, I searched for a psychologist in Cheshire. I didn’t fully understand what was happening inside me, only that something wasn’t right. There was a destructive inner voice I’d been battling for years, and a growing confusion about why I could see the right thing to do but felt unable to do it, while still doing things I knew were wrong. I knew I needed help. I knew I needed to talk to someone. What I needed most was a space that felt private, safe and confidential.
Those sessions became the first time I spoke openly about things I had never shared with anyone - not even my own wife. Childhood experiences. Thoughts I didn’t know how to name. Feelings I had carried silently for years. Over the next five years, I returned to therapy on and off. Sometimes regularly, sometimes after long gaps. There were moments I genuinely believed I was healed and no longer needed to go back. Yet beneath those periods of relief, there remained a deep longing - to be free from the prison of my own mind and to experience real inner peace.
That freedom didn’t come. Despite insight, despite progress, despite moments of hope, I was still trapped. I was still wearing a mask - at work, with clients, with colleagues - appearing functional and successful while carrying an unseen weight. By the time I was forty, I knew something deeper was going on. Believing this would finally bring lasting change, I turned to hypnotherapy. After several intense sessions, I was told I was healed and free to move on. For a short while, I believed it. But not long after, I realised the same inner battle was still there.
What grew in me through all of this was not judgement toward the help I sought, but compassion for those who know they are carrying something heavy and don’t yet know where to turn. My heart is for men and women who may look like they have everything together - successful, stable, progressing - yet privately feel a heaviness they can’t explain. People who need a place to speak honestly without fear of being judged, exposed, analysed or rushed. A space that feels calm, confidential and non-threatening.
That is the environment I desire to offer. Not answers on demand. Not pressure to perform vulnerability. Just a safe first conversation - where what has been carried silently for years can finally be spoken, and where that heaviness can begin to lift, gently and in time.
