Really pleased to meet you, I am Carol Hickson
I am a mental health professional specialising in individual therapy, life coaching, and workplace mental health training.
I am also the author of ‘The Resilience Template‘ – 7 Steps to Improve Your Mental Health‘ and ‘Beeston The Anxious Pup’.
I spent over fifteen years working in pastoral and teaching roles in Secondary and Primary education. When this no longer inspired me, I re-qualified as a multi-disciplined therapist and life coach. After a time I realised that there is a great lack of solid information and a great deal of misinformation about mental health. This is why I have created community and workplace training in addition to my individual therapy work.
The focus of my work is very much science and evidence based. This was the key which helped me understand what was happening in my own life when I experienced issues with my own mental health.
There have been periods in my life when I struggled with anxiety. Although I couldn’t always see it at the time, I now know that much of that anxiety stemmed from a difficult childhood. For a long time, like many people, I wasn’t ready to explore this. Instead, I could be quite belligerent if anybody tried to suggest a link between how I was feeling and my childhood experience. I know now of course that unresolved childhood trauma blights many adult lives.
A time for change…
The turning point came for me when I found myself struggling with chronic insomnia. This lasted for more than 4 years and left me on my knees struggling to function. I was also a disabled blue badge holder, living with chronic pain from five prolapsed discs, and a diagnosis of dystonia. I knew that stress worsened my back pain, but I had no idea how much it increased my symptoms and so for a long time I took the medication I was prescribed and resigned myself to living a restricted life.
Then something quite significant happened, I lost my mother and the whole history of my mental health unravelled.
My purpose…
I am determined to share what I know about mental health, stress and the impact it can have on our bodies. There are three important drivers behind what I do:
- The effect of childhood and adult trauma.
- Chronic pain and how to manage it better.
- Insomnia – supporting people with the condition and helping them learn how to manage it.
My purpose is to help each of my clients build a toolbox that they can use to transform their lives. The tools come from various disciplines including Hypnotherapy, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), ACT therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness and Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Anxious people, stressed people are not broken. We are not helpless victims. In fact, we are often incredibly strong people who manage to live our lives under the weight of old experiences and old expectations. We’re superheroes and it’s time we recognised that in ourselves.
I love what I do because quite simply I help others get unstuck and there is nothing more rewarding.