In this episode of her weekly diary series, hypnotherapist Caroline Cavanagh reflects on the inconsistency of her video postings, using the lapse as a teaching moment about perseverance and the non‑linear nature of therapeutic progress. She introduces two metaphors she uses with clients: the "Onion" model, where anxiety is peeled away layer by layer with occasional dips, and the "Aeroplane" model, where progress feels like a steady runway followed by a sudden breakthrough. She illustrates these ideas with a recent client who overcame a severe bird phobia, noting the small but meaningful step of staying in the garden when a robin approached. Caroline also shares that she has submitted a five‑minute video for a TEDx talk, describing the challenge of condensing her message. She then demystifies hypnotherapy, countering common myths (e.g., being made to cluck like a chicken) and emphasizing that it is a method for learning to use the mind differently when existing patterns fail. The episode concludes with an invitation to view other videos, consider hypnotherapy for behavior change, and contact her for a consultation.
Chapters
Hi there and welcome to the next edition of Diary of a Hypnotherapist, and I'm going to start this one with a confession. I started this series with the intention of reflecting back on my week— what went well, what didn't go so well— as a way of informing the next week, because this is an activity I give to a lot of my clients and I love to practice what I preach. However, I've missed a couple of weeks. Life happens, things get in the way, and the Friday evening I was busy, so I then thought, I'll do it at the weekend. The weekend was busy, I'll do it Monday. Didn't happen, and suddenly, well, I'm closer to Friday again now, so I'll just do another one next week, and then it happened again. And so that left me a choice. I can either give up Or I can start again, because even though I'm starting again, it's not actually starting again because I'm not back at square one. I've got 9 weeks of videos where I have already done them. It's just a blip. And that's a common message that I often share with a lot of my clients. Sometimes people feel after they've had a session, they're much better, it's all working, and then There's a bit of a dip and they think, oh my goodness, it's not working. I'm a failure. I'm useless. But that's not the case. I tend to put most of my clients into one of two camps. I have what I call my onions. They have anxiety in layers, so they have a layer that's really struggling with, and we deal with that and it moves and then another one. Pops up. We deal with that. Another one pops up. And we keep going through the layers until either there's no layers left or the client feels they've got their own life to carry on cutting through the layers. And their journey through therapy is they feel better, there's a little dip, we deal with that, there's a little dip, we deal with that, there's a little dip. It's not linear. The other camp is what I call My aeroplanes. They go along the runway, there's progress, but nothing really is happening, and then suddenly we find the solution and there is a magical transformation. And there's not a right or a wrong. I'd say probably 3 out of 4 people are Onionians, but everyone gets to the same point in the end. And it's really important For those people to remember that even if there is a dip, that doesn't mean you're back at square one. You can never go back to square one because you've learned something, you have changed in some way. And as long as the general progress is up, you will still get to that point, whether it's a gentle whoosh or an up and down wobble to get there. And that's very relevant to some of the clients that I've worked with this week. I've worked with a lady who had quite an acute bird phobia to the point that she could hardly go outside for the fear of birds being around. And after the session, she sent me a message to say, I went out into the garden today and a robin came down quite close to me and I felt a bit flustered. Has it worked? Uh, yes, because not only were you outside, the robin was close by and you didn't run away screaming. Often we set this really utopian outcome that we wish to achieve that perhaps isn't even real, but we recognize that it's a journey. She'd gone from here wanting to get to there but got there. That's still really great success, and perhaps with a little bit more time and practice, she will be able to have birds around her and feel no anxiety at all. The other thing that's kept me really occupied this week is I've been doing a video because I'm applying to do a TEDx talk. TEDx are short talks, maximum 18 minutes, but I had to submit a 5-minute video, and they are really, really difficult to get across the messages that you wanted to communicate in a short space of time. Really makes you think about the language that you use. So it is submitted now, and whilst I'm in video mode, I thought I'd just do this. Hypnotherapy is a really powerful form of therapy, but it's often really misunderstood. Lots of things about, you're going to make me cluck like a chicken, or is it going to be some amazing miraculous transformation? The reality is it is just a way of learning to use your mind in a different way, a way that we're not taught in schools, in universities, anywhere. But this thing that we have in here is the most phenomenal resource, and that's really what I do as a hypnotherapist— help people use the mind in a different way when the way the mind is choosing to work isn't working for them. So hopefully, if you've enjoyed this, do take a look at some of the other videos. There's lots of examples of the sort of people and the work that I do, the results that they can achieve. And more than anything, if you'd like to learn how to use your mind differently to change a behavior or to pick yourself up if that drop has continued, just give me a call and we can have a chat. For now, I wish you a wonderful weekend.
