Interview with Tricia Woolfrey a Professional Hypnotherapist in London, England

I am excited to write and publish this interview with Tricia Woolfrey who provides hypnosis services in London. She is a successful hypnotherapist who has a practice on Harley Street in London. I met her this year at the National Guild of Hypnotists Convention when she when through our Week of Power Advanced Hypnotherapy Certification Course. It was a wonderful class which also had three other hypnotherapists from London or the UK. I really enjoyed their English humor!

Tricia was already an experienced hypnotherapist with a private hypnosis practice before I met her so I thought it would be interesting to interview her and learn more about her hypnosis practice and how she is integrating what she has learned.

Cal Banyan: Thank you Tricia Woolfrey for doing this interview with me. I am very excited about it. Let's just get things started. How did you come to be interested in hypnosis?

Tricia Woolfrey: Hi Cal, I'm excited too. This is a great opportunity for me to talk about what I do. I am especially excited about telling everyone in the UK and London area about what I do.

It started when I was managing the HR function of an IT company and had heard a lot about NLP and how good it was for business and coaching. When I did the course, they taught hypnotic language which I found extremely interesting. I enjoyed the course but felt that it was more conducive to therapeutic work than the business world. Because I enjoyed the hypnotic module so much, I decided that I wanted to train to become a hypnotherapist. I haven't looked back since and so much enjoy my work and the positive impact it has. I also like the fact that there are no office politics at all! Heaven!

Cal: Tell us about your office. Where is it set up and why you chose your location or locations?

Tricia: I have two practices – one in Surrey and the other in Harley Street. The Surrey practice is essentially a room in my home which has been specially designed for my practice – it is professional and welcoming. Since I have quite a lot of corporate clients in the London area, it was important that I struck a professional tone which did not alienate my mainstream clients and I think I have struck a good balance there. It is designed in colors and textures which are soothing to the mind, body and spirit. I have a selection of my certificates on display so that my clients are reassured of my credentials. I have a leather reclining sofa which my clients love. Harley Street is the most prestigious medical area of the UK and I have a hypnosis office there which I attend one day a week. In some ways it is easier to work there because I have the use of a receptionist who can manage people arriving early. This can be very difficult when you work from home. Again, it is designed to be professional and welcoming. I think having the London address is important for my corporate clients and that is one of the main reasons I work there. It works well for me, though I could do without the journey!

Cal: That's great! So, I'm curious what kind of training do you have?

Tricia: Oodles! I have had most of my training in the UK and have trained with several organizations. There are a couple of reasons for this, the main one being that I wanted to find different ways of working so that I could flex my approach according to the needs of individual clients. I would certainly say that I have achieved this and I pride myself on being able to work with a wide range of people on a wide range of issues. I am trained also as an advanced hypnotherapist with The Institute of Clinical Hypnosis. I have specialist training in dealing with addictions, depression, anger, conflict, weight issues, irritable bowel syndrome, EMDR, EFT.

I also have had some training in nutrition which I find very useful for a lot of my clients – it is amazing how what you eat can affect your mood. I am a master practitioner with the National Centre for Eating Disorders and a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming.

This year I attended 5-PATH and 7th-Path training which I enjoyed enormously. I think it is safe to say that I am addicted to learning! My next course is to learn about creating metaphors with John Grinder.

Cal: That is really interesting. You already had a strong background in hypnosis before you chose to learn 5-PATH® and 7th Path Self-Hypnosis®. Can you tell us more about your approach to doing hypnosis?

Tricia: I would say that my approach is very solution focused.

Cal: I totally agree. Really, the only thing that matters is getting results for your clients!

Tricia: That's right. That is why I incorporate coaching into my work to build skills within the individual. To start with I want to know as much about the person as I can. There are two reasons for this – as I learn about the person I am developing suggestions and approaches which are specific to that individual, their language pattern and their problem. Also, this is a way to "loosen them up" and for them to start to get insights themselves. This makes subsequent work much easier and quicker to do. I like to use the Luscher profiling system. I stopped using it for a while when I started using 5-PATH but have started to use it again. I think that it simply helps the process along. (That is what is nice about 5-PATH® is that you can add what you already know to the system.)

I like to make my clients self-sufficient so I like to build their self-efficacy and emotional resilience to deal with life's challenges and I teach them techniques to help themselves. One of these is 7th Path Self-Hypnosis®. I also teach EFT, Be Set Free Fast and CBT all of which are extremely helpful.

Cal: I think that it would be very interesting if you could tell us about an interesting case. Could you do that?

Tricia: Hmmm, there are lots and it is difficult to pick just one. I think the most unusual was a woman who had a fear of things turning or swinging around. It could be anything – a swing, a circus where elephants are tethered up, anything like that. We did some timeline work and it turned out that she had experienced a difficult birth, having the umbilical cord caught tightly around her neck. This was very quickly resolved in just a couple of sessions.

By contrast, I had a young man who had very low self esteem following the break-up with a girlfriend. He was very agitated, teary, couldn't focus on his very high profile job and his confidence was just about on the floor. We did a lot of work around that and he became stronger. He couldn't get away from trying to prove to his girlfriend that he was a good person – he had done everything but everything to do this and she simply took advantage of his good nature and treated him quite badly. The real change came when we did age regression (Phase II of 5-PATH®) – the root of the problem was when he shouted to his mother that he hated her when he was just 4 years old. This led to a great deal of guilt (he loved his mother very much) and his mother died young which of course made the problem worse. He needed to show everyone what a good person he was and that he would do anything for them but this often led to toxic relationships. We did a lot of insight work and forgiveness (Phases III and IV of 5-PATH®) which were a tremendous release. He is now back on form at work, dating lots of beautiful women, making his needs known (unheard of before) enjoying a fulfilling social life and is no longer striving so hard to be loved – he knows he already is. There were a lot of very moving moments during treatment. This work is truly uplifting!

Cal: Oh, that is very interesting. Thanks for sharing those cases with us. It is wonderful to hear about the results that you are getting.

Now I'm curious, what areas does your practice serve or what particular population?

Tricia: Marketeers say that you have to specialize but I prefer to be a generalist. If I had to say that I specialized in something it would be hypnotherapy for self-esteem because I believe a lack of it is the foundation of most presenting problems. My clients are mostly based in Surrey and London though I have had people travel in from as far afield as Scotland and Germany on recommendation which is wonderful.

Cal: How does it work there in the UK, are there suburbs around London and you serve those communities as well? And, if so can you list some of them for me?

Tricia: I really have clients coming from all over for hypnosis. I suppose I work mainly with clients from Egham, Esher, Walton on Thames, Pyrford, Woking, Guildford, Byfleet, West Byfleet, Weybridge, Chertsey, Staines, Surbiton, Cobham, St George's Hill, Oxshott, Kingston, Ascot, Virginia Water, and of course from all around London.

Cal: You really know your area! So, why do you think your clients selected you over other hypnotherapists?

Tricia: They tell me that they like my warmth, humor and ability to get to the root of the problem quickly. I really care about my clients and am passionate about my work and I think that comes across. Most of my work comes from referrals which is great. I use humor quite a lot – it is a great way of reframing, though of course it has to be used sensitively, respectfully and appropriately.

Cal: Yes humor is definitely one of the most important tools any helping professional should use, and use wisely. I really like how you seem to connect with your clients. In addition to working one to one with individual clients do you teach any classes?

Tricia: I am a trainer in my other life (in the corporate world) so I do a lot of training – stress management, time management, leadership amongst others. I have held confidence workshops and would like to do a lot more of them. It works very well and I think there is a very good market for it. I am currently working on the 7th Path Self-Hypnosis® class and hope to do that soon.

Cal: Oh I am glad to hear that you are going to teach a 7th Path Self-Hypnosis® class! You can help so many people that way, and also you can connect with potential clients by giving classes. It really is a win-win situation.

So you are doing individual sessions and teaching classes, what do you wish everyone knew about hypnosis? I mean, if you could write up a public service announcement to educate the public what would it say?

Tricia: Anyone who would like to create positive changes in their life, skills, relationships and career can benefit from hypnosis. It is much more effective than conventional coaching and is totally empowering to the individual.

Cal: What would you like to see happen next in the world of hypnosis?

Tricia: I would like to see hypnosis as the first stop rather than the last resort and working more closely with the medical profession.

Cal: Excellent! Right now hypnotists and hypnotherapist usually work with people who seem to have tried everything else. We need to get the word out that before you go though all of that frustration and expense just give hypnosis a try first!

Well, Tricia this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this interview. By writing articles like this I think that we really can educate the public and the helping professionals that hypnosis is truly a viable option for so many things, not just for smoking cessation and weight loss but for just about any kind of self-improvement ranging from overcoming bad habits, improving motivation, improving mood, as well as medical issues such as pain management and working with psychosomatic illness, and so on.

Once again, thank you Tricia, thanks for helping me to get the word out there about hypnosis! I hope everyone interested in using hypnosis there in the UK gets to read this.