I Feel Happier Than I've Ever Felt - A Clients Journey

Get ready for a deep dive as I take you on an incredible journey.

I'm excited to share this with you. The most inspiring piece of writing, from Ben, a wonderful client I worked with who was struggling with anxiety and confidence.

Here is his story

I’d been putting off asking for help and convincing myself for years that I was in control and could manage my own mental health.

Thoughts like “I’m not good enough” would regularly affect my mood, confidence, self-esteem, and I’d struggle to even like and respect myself. Trying to seek reassurance or validation from others wouldn’t work because I couldn’t even love myself. Anxieties and ruminating thoughts would then intrusively spiral into destructive patterns of behaviour; causing withdrawal; and feeling hopelessness, affecting friendships, family, and work.

A common tactic of mine was to focus on work, which distracted; gave me confidence; and a sense of fulfilment. “I’m good at my job” I’d tell myself and would increase my workload to inflate these positive feelings. But with this came extra stress. Sure I could attribute this to the work and not myself, but stress is stress and my mind reacted as if they were the same. Then when the energy ran out, I would crash and with this, experience worsening of the original unhelpful feelings and beliefs that I had been trying to distract myself from in the first place. This cycle would repeat annually and with each passing year would come greater resentment towards myself and less fulfilment from how I was living my life.

I’ve spent most of my adult life reading self-help literature, practicing meditation, yoga, and generally keeping myself physically fit. All of which are still helpful but were only superficially and temporarily providing me with reprieve from the unhelpful feelings and behaviours I had recurrently experienced. “Enough was enough” and desperate to break the cycle I knew I had to reach out and ask for help.

Not exactly knowing how to go about this I initially Googled some local counselling services, but unimpressed by their websites and feeling it was too much of a gamble to try and contact someone new, I used these as excuses and decided not to bother. Then I remembered that Janine had visited my workplace a few years back, so decided that because I’d met her before this would be easier than contacting a complete stranger. There was a lot riding on the consultation and if Janine didn’t impress on this phone call, I’d have left it at that. It was therefore such a relief that she was lovely; I was immediately put at ease and felt comfortable explaining myself without any judgment.

She then made a bold promise to help me and change my life. Impressed by her confidence, we started working together.

?My first session was an introduction and informal chat about what I perceived to be issues and the goals I would like to work towards with this therapy. Janine was extremely easy to talk to and struck up a rapport immediately, which allowed me to talk freely and openly about feelings, thoughts, and beliefs that I hadn’t shared with anyone else up until that point.

She helped raise my awareness of my negative thinking; emotional responses; and where these originated. I was then introduced to many helpful techniques to help me change these unhelpful behaviours into ones that would better serve my goals and my overall happiness. She was able to explain things for my understanding, using examples that help me realise the concepts that had not been fully understood from all my previous self-help attempts. She was patient, attentive, and I never felt like she was clock watching.

Over the course of just a few weeks I was already experiencing noticeable progress. Even after sessions that left me emotionally drained, feeling vulnerable, and tearful, I could feel things steadily changing towards the better. Each new technique seemed to build on the previous and felt specifically tailored to holistically support my progression towards my goals. ?

Some of these early sessions were profoundly transformative experiences that helped to keep me ahead of my scepticism.

I would walk away feeling I’d gained some insight into the inner workings of my mind and over the course of the weeks that followed I’d notice changes with my mindset about myself, others, and my general outlook on life. Being a very cynical person, I questioned everything, including my own progress, but Janine didn’t let any of my attempts at self-sabotage get in the way of my progress and was always on hand to help me dismiss any doubts.

Of all the different techniques, Tapping was the weirdest and one I was initially most sceptical about, but in practice quickly became my favourite. This Emotional Freedom Technique is definitely Janine’s speciality; her enthusiasm and expert guidance have quickly allowed me to adopt this as my main go to strategy when I’m feeling stressed and anxious.

With Janine’s help I was able to feel much better about myself much quicker than I would have ever believed. Then reviewing my original issues from the start of this process, I could no longer recognise them as familiar to me, just distant memories and not a part of who I am right now. My goals are in sight, and I feel more confident and determined to achieve them now that I’m free from unhelpful beliefs, doubts, and stifling worries, which had been weighing me down for so long.

With inner peace has come greater clarity of thought; allowing me to react more rationally to situations both in life and at work. I feel calmer, work is less effortful, and stress is easier to manage, which allows me to experience even greater fulfilment than before.

Even though I feel happier than I have ever felt I chose to stay in contact with Janine and access regular sessions. I have learnt that the mind is just as important as the body, therefore, just like maintaining regular physical exercise I should not get complacent with my mental health if I want to keep achieving my goals.

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This is shared with the clients permission.

If you resonate with this and would like to feel happier than you've ever felt too, I can help.

Janine is the founder of Change for Success.

She is a wellness entrepreneur, published researcher and is a renowned leading authority in this field.

She specialises in transforming mental health and mindset working with individuals and companies and organisations by helping them improve their performance and productivity by reducing stress in the workplace.

She has a Masters’ degrees in Psychology, is a hypnotherapist, NLP and EFT practitioner.

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