MELANIE  – THERAPIST & TRAINER - THIS IS MY STORY

A love of life, travel and people have shaped my approach to therapy. Born in England I soon started to get the travel bug. Living around Europe, Israel, Gibraltar and then settling in Spain, I soon got a feel for what happiness was and how I started to achieve it. My friends used to ask me, “Will you please write a book on how you stay so happy, then we can all learn as well”. I started by studying counseling at 23 thinking, yes I can begin to help people and I have not stopped since then really.

Life lessons - My Father died at a young age, I struggled through my teenage years, myself and my partner split up and I learnt how to be a single parent.  We all have bumps and shocks along life’s path, it’s how we deal with them that counts. Over the years I have learnt a lot about people and the way we tick. We are so much more different on the inside than we are on the outside. Just knowing that, doesn’t it make you think differently about what the other people in your life are going through internally? Just knowing that we never really know what someone else’s thinking, even after being together for 30 years. It’s impossible.

I learnt at an early age that we cannot change other people, and if we do force changes on them, they only start to resent us and change back to their own ways at an alarming rate, leaving us wondering “what did I do wrong”.  We can however, change our reaction to them and the way they behave, and in learning how to do this brings a quiet acceptance and peace, making huge differences to our lives in a very short period of time.

Throughout my career I managed huge projects and worked for some wonderful companies in senior roles. Learning more and more about how people tick, how to get the best out of people individually and in large teams. I studied DISC a personality profiling system. This enabled me to help organisations to get the best out of their teams and to use it within my own career. We need a diverse team for most projects; however, this can prove to be challenging as they don’t always understand how each member of their team ticks.

On learning different therapies over the years it became more obvious that what you focus on becomes your reality – is it then your responsibility to focus on good stuff?  Stuff that will enhance your life not take away from it or make you very miserable.  This made me wonder “mmmm, how then do I translate that to my clients?”. On learning more about how the mind works, I again began to incorporate more techniques. NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) opened my eyes to the way we tick as humans and the way that we can trick our minds into dealing with very traumatic times and experiences in our lives. Once the mind sees these things in a different way, it can then deal with the trauma and file it safely in the past where it belongs.

Driven by a passion to help people achieve their happiness in a relatively short period of time I studied more and more. On completing a 2 year Life Coaching Course I realized how setting and achieving goals helped people to stay motivated and taught them how to keep moving forwards in their lives. This enables us to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. Coaching also taught me how to bridge the gap between leadership and management in a productive way.

But it still wasn’t enough!  What about the really stuck trauma from childhood or from our parents?  Timeline therapy from within the NLP practice was a real find for me. The more I worked with people using timelines, taking them back to their childhood the quicker changes were made. Seeing people go back and fix a trauma from birth and come back to the now a different person still amazes me to this day.

My trainer Mr Chris Grimsley – a right Northern chap and a fantastic teacher – introduced me to IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy), which explores undesired emotions and can create rapid change. Mr Andrew Austin who created IEMT is someone I admire for creating this.  I have worked with clients with PTSD, extremely abusive backgrounds and anger issues to name a few and each  time the conclusion from clients is the same – “how has this trauma been removed so quickly and effectively without me having to relive it all?!”

I spent years studying sound meditation, sounding the yoga sutras in Sanskrit. I believe that this led me to a deeper understanding of the conscious and unconscious mind and how I believe that it is our responsibility to find a way to allow the two to communicate. The unconscious mind runs the body and the conscious mind runs riot if we are not in control of our thoughts. Either we are in control of the conscious mind or the conscious mind (wild dog) is in control of us. The latter normally ending in confusion, frustration and an inability to think straight.

After studying hypnotherapy for 8 months and learning the ability to work directly with the unconscious to make huge changes in people very quickly, I knew that I had an eclectic mix of very powerful tools to change people’s lives and that’s what I now do every day. It’s my passion.  I get to witness huge changes in my clients. I marvel every day at how resilient we are as human beings and how we can now manipulate the mind to our own benefit. Our minds are incredible – we just need to learn to use them for our greater good.

The latest string to my bow is OldPain2Go and was created by Steven Blake. The Unconscious mind runs the body and if you don’t listen to its messages of despair (stress, anxiety, stuck trauma) it can create a physical symptom so that you do listen. Long story but it works! Reduces pain in one session. I have had to help people with arthritis into my office only to watch them almost touch their toes and skip down the stairs an hour later. Swelling is reduced and joints move freely in a lot of cases. Every session is different every person’s experience and recovery is different and you know why, because it’s their unconscious and their body that is doing the work. IT IS INCREDIBLE to witness. It works on things like COPD, Fibro Myalgia anything that has been assessed by the medical profession and they have told you that there is nothing they can do for you. People who have been in 10+ pain for 20 years are reduced to a 1 or a 2. If you don’t believe me, come and have a go for yourself.

I now believe that people can change quickly and substantially in a relatively short and trauma free period of time. Once we learn to love and believe in ourselves, once we learn how to be selfish and have a proper balance in our lives we can Achieve Happiness in a great way.

Just remember 85% is perfect !

I love myself. I am perfect just the way I am !