Chris People - 362910^

Sleep - Stress - Anxiety - Habits - Resilience - Performance.

I have a particular interest in working with people who may not consider themselves a 'therapy-kind-of person' including working with men's mental health.  My aim is to help clients on their pathway from healing to resilience to life performance whatever this means for them personally.

As a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist, my emphasis is on building a strong, collaborative therapeutic alliance, using evidence-based CBT and ACT interventions and mindfulness alongside hypnosis.  

I am committed to being open and honest with my clients at all times, whilst creating place of compassion and empathy. I hope to avoid jargon and other barriers to client's participation and help my client's build agency and self-belief.  My goal is ultimately to help client's become their own therapist and to get them where they want to be as quickly as possible.

I draw strongly and increasingly on Donald Meichenbaum's strengths-based and constructive narrative approaches to tease out client's 'islands of strength' and stories of resilience and help them create a redemptive or healing story.  I frequently use both Socratic questioning and behavioural experiments and tasks to help with clients' restructuring of their own beliefs, and I also enjoy coaching clients in behavioural and inter-personal skills such as assertiveness and behavioural activation to help better prepare them for those situations that they find challenging.  Whilst I seek to find a psychoeducation model that best fits the client's preferences and strengths, I frequently make use of the ACT psychological flexibility model in order to help clients' 'open up, be present, and do what matters' which often seems to be a very accessible way for my clients to understand our collaborative approach, tasks and goals.

I strengthen all of these ideas and activities through the use of hypnosis where clients can rehearse and imagine how they want things to be, to develop hope for the future, and to expose them to those situations they find difficult. 

I work both face-to-face and online, and also often provide group workshops to certain groups (men's mental health and chronic illness sufferers). 

Separately I work as a martial arts and boxing coach and have done for more than 20 years. As part of this I have been involved in a programme that promote resilience through the vehicle of martial arts for about 10 years.  This is an evidence-based approach to coaching which focuses on the benefits of martial arts practice that mirror those found in cognitive behavioural psychotherapies such as breathwork and relaxation practice, mindfulness, stress inoculation, and resilience-building.  I have found this particularly useful in reaching many clients in need, who may not be considering a classical therapy route.

I am also a trainer and coach to trainee therapists with the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (UKCoHH) and hypnotherapy supervisor.