How my method works

Why “pulling yourself together” doesn’t work

In every area of life it looks different, but the mechanics are the same: a person knows what to do — and doesn’t do it, for months. The matter stays exactly where it was, although every step has long been clear. The body doesn’t relax even on holiday, sleep falls apart for no visible reason. In relationships the same scenario repeats itself, although “everything is obvious”.

That is how automatic reactions work: the nervous system once learned to protect itself this way, and it runs that program faster than the will switches on. This is why willpower, motivation and “just stop it” give a week of effect — and the program stays the same.

The reaction fires before the will switches on. That is why “just stop it” doesn’t work.

My work is to find the root that makes the system react that way, and to reset the reaction at the level where it lives — in the subconscious. Not talking about the problem, but working with its cause.

How experience reaches the body

A symptom is rarely a breakdown out of nowhere. More often it is the work of a system that once switched on appropriately and then stayed switched on.

The body doesn’t tell a threat in a negotiation apart from a threat in a forest — in both cases the same chain fires:

1. Eventthe brain reads what is happening as a threat — real or imagined, it makes no difference
2. Commandthe hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands launch the hormonal response; the sympathetic nervous system switches on
3. Bodypulse, breathing, muscle tone, blood flow and digestion change — the body is getting ready to act
4. If it doesn’t switch offthe same chain begins to change the way immunity, digestion, the skin and pain sensitivity work

Over a short distance this response saves you. The problem starts where it doesn’t switch off for months.

Hence the familiar stories. The gut and the brain are connected in both directions: psychological stress worsens the course of inflammatory bowel disease, and inflammation in turn sustains anxiety and low mood9. The skin reacts by the same logic: itching and flare-ups are linked to stress through the brain–skin axis, where mast cells and neuropeptides are involved10. Chronic pain becomes a problem in its own right over time: the nervous system learns to carry the pain signal more easily than before.

The question isn’t what broke. The question is what task it was solving.

The second phase matters too. People often notice that they fall ill not at the height of the rush, but right after it — when things have finally let go. That is not a coincidence and not a “payback”: recovery is a process as well, and the body goes through it physically.

So in the work I look not only at the symptom itself, but at the task it was doing: what it protected you from, what it let you not do, what it was signalling. When the original tension is released at the level where it lives, the body no longer has a reason to hold that program. And there is an honest boundary here: this is not a replacement for examination and treatment. If there is an illness behind the symptom, a doctor treats it — and my work goes alongside, with the part that rests on your state.

What people come with

The people who come are very different: employed specialists and business owners, parents, students, those who have retired and can’t work out what to live for now. Everyone words the request in their own way, but the mechanics underneath are the same — which is why the method isn’t tied to a profession or an age. Below is what people come with most often.

If your request isn’t on the list, that doesn’t mean “no”. The simplest way to check is a free consultation: I’ll tell you honestly whether this is my work, or whether you should go to another specialist.

What the method rests on

The foundation is deep work with the subconscious: in that state a person safely returns to the situations where the reaction was first recorded, lives through them — and changes them in the language of their own images, not someone else’s formulas. Inside this work I use techniques from evidence-based psychotherapy; the tools are chosen to fit your request, not the other way round.

If the word “hypnosis” makes you sceptical — that’s the right reaction, and the science is on your side here:

For individual conditions the picture is the same: for symptoms of depression the effect size is 0.71 — comparable to Beck’s cognitive therapy and other established methods4; for anxiety it is 0.79, and noticeably stronger where hypnosis is combined with another psychotherapy rather than used on its own5.

The American Psychological Association runs a separate division for psychological hypnosis; in 2021 NCCIH — an institute within the US National Institutes of Health — says “there is evidence” about only one condition on that list: irritable bowel syndrome. On chronic pain its wording is more careful: evidence is accumulating and the method “may help”. The 2021 guideline from the American College of Gastroenterology is a conditional recommendation, made on low-quality evidence, and the institute says so itself8.

An important caveat about how these figures were obtained. Medical studies of hypnosis usually test a short standardised intervention — often no more than three sessions, and sometimes an audio recording with no live contact with a practitioner at all7. For simple tasks such as relaxing before a procedure that is enough, and the difference between a live voice and a recording is small there. But deep therapeutic work is built differently: it calls for a prolonged intervention rather than a single induction7, and its result depends a great deal on how well the suggestion is matched to the particular person2 — which a recording, by its very nature, cannot do. So the figures above are best read as a lower bound obtained on an averaged short protocol, rather than a ceiling on what work put together for you can give.

The same reasoning answers the question about timeframes. There is one study where the length of the course was not a detail but the very thing being measured: 448 people with irritable bowel syndrome were randomly assigned to six or twelve weekly sessions. Six weeks produced the same result as twelve — 78.8% against 73.9% on the reduction in symptom severity11. That is one condition, not a promise covering everything at once, but it explains why the count here runs in weeks: not because it sounds shorter, but because the timeframe was measured and turned out to be short.

This is the scientific background of the method, not a promise of a particular result for you personally: the outcome depends on the request, the starting state and how involved you are in the work.

How the work goes

First, about timeframes, because that is always the first question. The horizon here is weeks, not years. Studies record the effect on short protocols, often within three sessions7, and that is with an averaged intervention with no tailoring to the person. In live work one person needs a single meeting, another a short series — usually four to eight. How many you will need can be estimated honestly only after the first meeting: I will not guess before it.

Not “we talked and went our separate ways”

The work is a manageable process with a verifiable result. In the consultation we put the goal into concrete terms: what has to change and how we will know it did. Before we start and at the end there is a measurement on recognised psychological scales chosen for your request, and between sessions a short check on your state. The change is visible not “by feel” but in the dynamics: what it was, what it became, how far the intensity of the old reactions has dropped.

Frequent questions

See what it looks like in real life

Better than any description — clients’ stories in their own words: cases with video reviews →