Have you ever had a moment when you realised that the life, you’re living isn’t the life you dreamed of?

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to help people, but dealing with blood and other body fluids put me off being a nurse and instead I pursued careers in both the banking and legal systems. Later I became a wife and a mother.

I loved being a mother, but I intuitively knew that once my children were grown, that there was another part of me that needed to be expressed. I had always felt that my life would be in two parts and I felt that I was here for a reason although I didn’t know what it was or what to do about it. It was like a little secret kept inside of me that I felt and knew was there but nobody else did and I couldn’t really explore it for fear of the changes to my life that it might bring.

Spirit has a way of pushing us to explore ourselves though, and for me this exploration took the form of a spiritual awakening (you can read more about it here if you’d like to).  Of course, it took me into my own healing journey which is just as well because by then I felt like I had been in a pit of despair for years already and I desperately needed something to change. I actually thought I might be dying of something as my energy, my spirit actually, seemed to be ebbing away bit by bit but I had no idea what to do to fix it or how to get it back.

My marriage was disintegrating by the minute and ultimately led to divorce, my family were on the other side of the world and I had nobody to talk to.  I was terrified of being alone, I had no money of my own and my work skills were 20 years out of date.

But even through my own despair and emotional pain I had a desire to help others and eventually I realised that it stemmed from my need to understand and heal myself. Particularly those very hurt parts of myself that I had hidden deeply away and out of sight. This is a classic story of the Wounded Healer I suppose – a story which I know is common amongst healers, however I do believe that in order to be effective in helping others we must first have walked the path ourselves and I have walked that path.

My hidden emotional pains had given rise to a series of health issues, such as chronic migraines and anxiety as well as chronic/adrenal fatigue which put me in bed for pretty much three years straight. I tried to address these issues through natural therapies, meditation and energy healing – and that worked to some degree. But I kept asking why I could never get to the root cause of my emotional pain, and why I never seemed to really get ‘fully better’ either. I seemed to drag myself around never quite achieving anything and feeling frustrated about that because I seemed to know on a mental level exactly what to do but putting it into action and seeing any decent results from my efforts seemed to allude me.

I believe that in order to fix something we first need to understand it – but going to a psychologist for months or years to try to identify problems didn’t appeal to me at all and the idea of dredging up old stuff and talking about it endlessly didn’t either. I needed a different approach – a more empowering approach I think, but I didn’t know where to find it or even if it existed anywhere.

My life had been pretty OK, even really amazing at times, and there was nothing that I could readily identify as ‘trauma’ but there definitely was a feeling of deep inner sadness that had slowly developed into feelings of anxiety and had led to complete exhaustion. I had learned how to manage my energy much more since my spiritual awakening… I was saying all the right things, staying positive and I believed in the Law of Attraction but there were still pieces that I couldn’t work out and couldn’t fix and I wasn’t really attracting the life I wanted.  Something must be missing, but what?

I began to explore my subconscious mind through self-hypnosis and that’s when I really began to get somewhere. All of a sudden, the understanding opened up and a complete transformation began to take place within me. Hypnotherapy helped me very quickly to zoom right in to the spot where I could get the most impact and healing, yet without that feeling of poking at a sore spot with a sharp stick. Despite many years of personal and spiritual development work I had been unable to access some of the programmes and beliefs that were stored deep in my subconscious mind as energy blocks and I hadn’t realised how this mindset was affecting me on a day to day basis.

I was shocked to discover that I had carried these energy blocks and negative limiting beliefs for a very long time, and finally I could see how they had affected everything in my life. I could see now, why I lacked confidence and self-esteem, why I felt unsafe, and unworthy, why I felt ‘less than’ and put down and why I had such serious money blocks that unless I removed them, they were always going to hold me back from achieving my goals in business and in life. It was imperative that I shifted them if I was going to get anywhere near the life I really wanted, so step by step I began to set out a programme for myself that would continually uncover any limitations and fears that were still hiding within me.  In fact, this is the very same programme I use with my clients and students now – because I know it works.

I began to see how I had developed the physical, emotional and psychological issues that had weighed me down and held me back. I had stuff I didn’t even realise I had and all this, while appearing on the outside as if I had it all together and living what seemed to be an almost perfect life at times, but all the while feeling sad, stuck and unfulfilled on the inside. I realised that many of us go through life feeling exactly like this and you might feel this way too…

By now I’d found a way to get deep into my own mind and it was as if someone had just flicked a switch. One-by-one those old feelings of disempowerment began to pack up and go. My health improved, my life began to change, and I felt strong, confident, talented, worthy and deserving. All of the gifts I had been born with were suddenly available to me. They were always mine but now I really owned them, and I was beginning to feel really amazing.

Then something happened one day that would change the course of my life…

That year, I had decided to get a job in a homewares store over the Christmas period, but even though Christmas had passed many months ago, I’d stayed on.  Firstly, because I enjoyed it – selling pretty things in a lovely store – and also because it was an easy option to earn money.  Most importantly though, the fact is, that when I took this job, I was burned out from years of working as a healer, with clients who had major spiritual traumas and this job offered me the opportunity to live a somewhat “normal life”, dealing with normal, ordinary people.  They didn’t bring their traumas into the store with them and it gave me a break from having to feel or sense it.  In order to work there I’d had to turn my psychic senses off and even though I didn’t know it at the time, this gave me the chance to heal and recover.

On this particular day, I had popped out to run a work-related errand and I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window. I was shocked at what I saw. I just stood there looking at myself for what seemed like a really long time. I was confused and transfixed because I hardly recognised myself. I looked so small on the outside – yet my Spirit, inside of me, felt vast.

In that moment I realised that I’d found my Spirit again. I’d moved from a life that had completely depleted me and I knew that I was sufficiently healed to step out into the world again.  This time, to fully share my gifts and talents. I was finally ready to make a difference in the world.  To become visible. To Be Who I Came Here to Be and… to help others to do the same.

I handed in my resignation and left. By staying there, I would have been hiding away, staying small and not being a true expression of all that I AM.

But that moment, when I saw my reflection, was my absolutely transformational moment – the light bulb finally went on and I knew that there would be no going back this time.

Through my own journey of healing I have gained a powerful insight into what other people feel and what hurts them. We are not so different from each other. We all want to be loved and accepted for who we truly are, and I believe that we all have something special to share and give to the world.

From working through my own challenges in life I have discovered that I can help other people who are experiencing similar things in their life, because I understand what it feels like to be there and I know just what it takes to get out of that dark and disempowering place in order to begin to feel better and to love life.

I believe that it is my innate ability to understand and really feel what others are experiencing on a very deep (empathic) level, combined with my years of work as an energy healer, that sets me apart from other hypnotherapists or coaches. I have lived through the experience of a spiritual crisis – often called a Dark Night of the Soul – and I am transformed because of it.

I now have a vast experience of this “search to find ourselves”, to find our inner truth and passion and I understand just what it takes to be confident enough to speak our truth and live an authentic life.

We all want peace and happiness in our life and we actually want an abundance of it.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than helping my clients to find their inner prosperity so that they can create the life they really want. The Universe is infinitely abundant. Everything is available to us if we can free ourselves from what holds us back and limits us. When we can do that, then life feels beautiful again.

My prayer is that we ALL get to experience the Abundance of the Universe. To feel peace in our hearts and to create the life we really want.

From my heart to yours,
Karen