Hi I’m Matthew Bates from Matthew Bates Hypnotherapy and as it says in the title I run a hynpotherapy business. So I deal with people with the sort of mental issues like anxiety disorders, depression, phobias, all that kind of stuff.

Gosh. How on earth did you get into that then?

Well, in a past life many moons ago, I became an IT specialist working as a project manager and on one of the projects I was working on, I got close to a very good friend at the same company, and when he was made redundant he’d already planned his path to become a hypnotherapist and was telling me all about it.

So I thought, well, you know what I could do that. I’d get a lot out of that, and I do. I really get a buzz out of seeing my clients out the other side of some really bad places.

So let’s pretend for a second that I’ve never heard about hypnotherapy ever. What is it, how do you describe it in its simplest form?

In its simplest form the hypnotherapy that I use is a combination of psychotherapies So it’s a talking therapy where we talk through the action plans of where you want your life to be, what you want it to look like and then once you’ve kind of got a sort of a, small steps towards that as an action plan, well then we go and and use a bit of hypnosis where I get you to relax really deeply, both physically and mentally. And when you are mentally relaxed, well then you have access to the subconscious brain and it’s there that we can implant sort of positive suggestions to make sure that the change that you are looking for really sticks.

It sounds incredible.

It’s, it really is. The hypnosis part of it isn’t really the business end. The business end is the therapy where we talk about it. but the hypnosis part of it, the relaxation, of the trance is what all my clients love, You know. That’s about 20 minutes out of an hour session and that’s the bit they love the most because they just come out, they open their eyes and they go, ahhhh.

Oh wow. Like a weights been lifted.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah. It must be really powerful and you must really have a lot of satisfaction in your job because you’re really changing people’s lives, aren’t you?

You do and it can get quite emotional even from my perspective. And a couple of times I sort of got to the end of the journey with a client and theres sort of like tears in the eyes and you just think, you know I’m not breaking down here. I’m not breaking down. But yeah, it can be quite emotional for myself as well as them because you get to hear their story and you go on a journey with them.

So what kind of clients would you be looking for? Who would be reaching out to you?

Anybody that really is suffering from anxiety disorders or stress from work or day-to-day life, you know where they’re really pulling their hair out or they’re at the end of their tether, people who are depressed. I’m not talking about just feeling low for you know, a few days or so, or a week or so.

Clinical depression is defined as feeling low for more than two weeks. But we know people that are depressed, really when they come out and say yeah I’m really depressed, and actually go to see the doctor, they’ve been like it for months.

Yeah.

And they just can’t see a way through. So it’s all about helping them, well they know what they don’t want to feel like but they can’t work out what they do want to feel like they can’t see what life could be like on the other side. So it’s my job to help them find out what that is and then help them make small changes to get there. Because you can’t go from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain in one leap. No. You’ve got to take it step by step and it’s just small, easily made adjustments and combined they’re what get you to the other side.

I bet. So if people would like to get hold of you because they think “I could do with some of that in my life, I’ve reached the point where it’s time to ask for help”. Which I think is sometimes the hardest thing to do, and the biggest leap.

It is, it’s that leap of faith and yeah, I mean anybody that needs that help and guidance, they can get me. I’m on the web. It’s www.MatthewBatesHypnotherapy.co.uk and my contact details are on there.

And if you go there and you just want to hear the sound of my voice going through some relaxing trance, there’s a free download. So you just need to register with your email address and you can download that and listen to that to your heart’s content. It’s all free.

Brilliant. Well thank you so much Matthew. Such a pleasure to chat to you and so interesting to learn about what you do as well. One of the amazing things about being on the radio and learning about all these incredible people and everything they do is meeting people from different walks of life. Absolutely. And it’s, it’s just wonderful. So thank you so much. Best of luck with the business.

Thank you.

And I’m sure somebody will reach out to you. Thank you.