A Storyteller's Past

Some of you may not know this but I was a clinical hypnotherapist and a PSH therapist for 11 years. I had four years of training prior to starting up my practice which was in the Macarthur area of Sydney in the first instance before I moved to the middle of the Sydney CBD. I loved it, and always thought I'd be juggling my writing career with my therapy career until I started getting a gut feeling that it was time to focus on the former. That intuition was constant for about six months and then I thought – okay, I've got to take the risk. I wound down my practice over an 18 month period, only seeing my established clients and referring new ones to my colleagues. The irony is that my business was doing really well and 50 percent of my clientele were word of mouth referrals. Although it was difficult to say goodbye, I took away a wealth of insight both into myself as well as the human spirit. For me it was an absolute privilege to have worked with many of my clients who took responsibility for themselves and their presenting problems despite great emotional trauma in their history. Many were able to move beyond their self-perceived limitations to find their authentic selves and begin realising their calling. Well, I just had a momentary flashback to those days because I just had a short case study printed in the Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists' (ASCH) The Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Hypnosis called "Accelerated Healing for Foot Surgery", which chronicles client Tamsin's (not her real name) hypnotic preparation for orthopaedic surgery and the aftermath. So why am I telling you this – firstly, it's good to get another publishing credit under my belt in an area I still feel connected with and secondly, because what I have learned from my clients is being channeled into my present and future – my comic book/graphic novel writing and the visionary fiction novels I want to write. So when you read Elf~Fin – Hyfus & Tilaweed and the various sequels – when you read about soul mate love, passion, betrayal, and intrigue in a fantasy setting – you will know that these issues were inspired by the very nature of our humanity and the modern day dilemmas we face from day to day.