In this diary‑style monologue, hypnotherapist Caroline Cavanagh reflects on a week that included celebrating her husband’s birthday and uses the contrasting attitudes toward birthdays to illustrate a core therapeutic principle: the stories we tell ourselves shape our reality. She explains how her own excitement about birthdays stems from childhood experiences that framed them as special, while her husband’s indifference reflects a different personal narrative. Caroline then connects this insight to her clinical work, sharing two brief case examples. In a weight‑loss session, a client’s limiting stories about food are unpacked, revealing that the narratives are not fixed and can be rewritten. In a trauma‑focused session, a client’s story about childhood trauma is examined, highlighting how repeated retelling can distort the original event, much like Chinese whispers. She concludes by urging listeners to examine their own narratives, recognize their power, and consider consciously reshaping them. She signs off with a hopeful message for the weekend and previews a future diary entry that will explore how these ideas apply to anxiety work.
Chapters
Hi and welcome to the latest edition of Diary of a Hypnotherapist, my personal way of practicing what I preach, which is something that's really important to me. And something I ask a lot of my clients to do is to reflect on the past as a way of helping change the future by repeating things that were good and not repeating the things that didn't work. And so this is my way of reflecting on my week, and it's been a slightly different week because My husband had a big birthday this week, so I allowed myself some time off to celebrate with him. And from that, a really interesting concept has come to mind. When I was growing up as a child, birthdays were a big thing. Christmas was for everyone, and because there wasn't much to go around, there wasn't much activity that went on. But birthdays were special, and you were made to feel really special as an individual. So I, even though I may be a little bit more mature now as well, still get really excited about birthdays. My husband, however, is completely the opposite. He wouldn't even know if it was birthday most of the time unless I reminded him. And so when it came to his birthday, and a big one, I was trying to do something really special for him, and he frankly didn't give a jot. And what that reflection on those 2 very different perspectives on exactly the same event comes down to is a very common therapeutic practice, and that's about the stories we tell ourselves create our reality. I've just told you my story that birthdays for me are exciting because I associate them with special and being made to feel as if that was your special day. Nick has a very different experience where birthdays just wasn't important, but he's like a kid at Christmas. So the stories we tell ourselves create our realities. And to reflect that principle on a couple of sessions that I have done with people this week, One of them is about someone with weight loss. Hypnotherapy is really, really effective with helping people change their relationship with food, and this particular individual had a lot of stories that they were telling themselves about their relationship with food, about what must happen, what couldn't happen, based on what had gone on in the past, but they were just stories. And as we started to unpick those stories, they became equally aware of, actually, that doesn't have to be true. You can change the story. The other example was with a client that had dealt with childhood trauma. The trauma was real, but the story they were telling themselves about the story— sorry, about the trauma Was being made up. And the thing with stories, it's much like Chinese whispers. The more we tell it, the more it changes a little bit. We can embellish on the things that were good, or we can embellish on the things that were bad. We change slight details based on new learning about context changes. So very few stories ever end up. Close to how they started. So my kind of message to myself and to share with you today is think about the stories that you are telling yourself and how they create your reality. My story of how birthdays should be create my reality of my birthday, but it's not the reality for my husband's birthday because his Story is different, but we can change stories, and he's kind of learning that birthdays should be special too. So that's my message for today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead, and I look forward to sharing some of my reflections and relating to the— how they impact on the work that I do with people that struggle with anxiety in my diary edition next time. Take care for now. Bye.
