Q and A with Katie from Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
“You don’t need to talk to be heard.”
Q: Tell us about yourself.
A: Hi, I’m Katie and I’m a certified hypnotherapist and single parent to two boys. I live in Oxfordshire in the UK, but I’m a Manchester girl born and bred. I used to be a Samaritans Listener, which I loved doing. It always feels wrong to say I loved it because it involves answering the phone to people on the verge of suicide or at a crisis point in their life, but I really did enjoy it. It taught me that there’s great power in silence and a lot of the time that’s all people need–for you to be quiet and to really listen to them, to really hear them. Unfortunately, when I got divorced, I just didn’t have the time to commit to it anymore, but I do hope to pick it up again when my children are older. Having had that experience, I discovered a love for listening to people and their problems and that set me on the path towards searching for other ways I could help people.
I’m fascinated with how the mind works and, having experienced anxiety and depression in my life, I’m interested in learning about alternative ways to deal with mental illness and traumatic events. That led me to hypnotherapy. I specialize in enabling high-achieving professional women to overcome emotional trauma to they can reignite their confidence, but I do also practice in other areas too. The reason I chose to niche in this area is because I’ve experienced quite a lot of emotional trauma and, having done a lot of work to heal myself, I want to help others who have experienced similar events in their lives. I also love books and have quite a large collection…of ones I’ll probably never find the time to read, but I live in hope. I particularly love to escape into a world of spies and espionage, which is as far removed from my life as you can get. My favorite author is David Baldacci and I have most of his books. I’m not sure why I love the world of espionage so much, but I do wonder whether I have an untapped yearning to work for MI6. Too many Bond films as a child, I guess.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I always say I had a very normal and boring family, but as you get older, you realize that it was never as boring as you think. That said, there’s nothing negative that stands out from it which, having worked for the Samaritans, I’ve discovered is rarer than you’d think. I was a child of the 80s and I’m really grateful for that as I feel we had the best of times then. Being able to stay out all day on your bike with your friends, and no phones for your parents to check up on you. You just had to be home for tea. We had such freedom, but I can’t imagine letting my eldest son go out without his phone and not being able to track him. As a child, I always wanted to be a lawyer and was preparing to apply to study law at university, BUT I got a part-time job when I was at college, working in a restaurant, which I absolutely loved, so in the end, I applied to study hotel management instead. In my final year at Uni, I lived with a law student, and seeing how stressful revising for exams was, I have never been more thankful that I didn’t choose a degree in law in the end! Funny how life turns out.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: The power of silence. Seriously. I learned this as a tool with the Samaritans and cannot underestimate how powerful it can be. I was taught to never be scared of it and it’s a tool I use now within hypnotherapy. When I was volunteering with the Samaritans, I once took a call from a very angry teenage girl who, eventually, just stopped talking but didn’t hang up. I could tell she still needed to be on the phone so we sat there, in complete silence, for 10 minutes, at which point, she told me she felt a lot better and she rang off. It makes me laugh now to think that was all she needed, but just shows how you don’t need to talk to be heard.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: Equality, pure and simple; women being treated equally and respected as such. That said, I’m not averse to a man holding the door open for me….but I reserve the right to hold it open for him too.
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