It's a Charmed Life at Halkirk with new therapy business
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A Halkirk woman says she can help people turn their lives around with her new business called Charmed Life Therapy.
Anne-Marie Cassidy hails from West Yorkshire originally and upped sticks last year when she found a reasonably priced property in Caithness.
"I had to leave school at 12 as I had a phobia and depression so I've been on a long journey my whole life," she says.
"I spent a long time in my 30s researching all kinds of different therapies and came across Rapid Transformational Therapy [RTT] and had it for myself. I was very lucky there was somebody local to me in Leeds. It absolutely changed my life."
Anne-Marie said her mum had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and felt RTT helped her deal with a very traumatic time in her life. "There was a mixture of things that I'd never dealt with but I was functioning. I felt I could be better though and I was always on the lookout for what would help."
She says that RTT is similar to hypnotherapy but there are major differences. "We ask what the presenting problem that the person has and once we get them into hypnosis we regress them to things in the past that are the root cause of the issue they want to solve.
"It's amazing what your mind can come up with when you want to take it back and ask it 'where did this come from?'. It's subconsciously stored away and it can be quite surprising what comes up for people. Sometimes it's big and profound and sometimes it's a passing thought you once had that gets locked in and created a whole host of issues."
Anne-Marie said she qualified as a RTT therapist in 2022 and started doing treatments in July this year. She has been practicing with some people in the area without charging to see how RTT can make improvements to their lives.
She says she isn't aware of anyone doing the same work in the Highland region. "I think there are a couple of hypnotherapists locally but not this kind, as far as I'm aware. Traditional hypnotherapy doesn't regress you to things from the past. That's really key as you go back to where it started.
"We have techniques that can change beliefs. This is what happened to you but what's different about your life now? Would you think about what's happening then with your adult critical mind? Back then you were making decisions and using coping skills with the mind of a child."
She says that she has had a mix of clients so far including quite a few young people preparing to leave school and go to university. She talked about the pressures on young people and how lockdown created many issues that she can help resolve with RTT. "A lot of them seem to carry the burden to themselves and they don't like to share. You have to be ready to be helped as change can be scary for some people."
Anne-Marie talked about one therapy session in which a woman who had a "terrible skin rash" went back to a scene at work in which she admitted to not feeling safe in her skin. "That's how your mind works. It takes on board everything you say in a very literal sense. Her saying to herself 'I don't feel safe in my skin' triggered an actual skin irritation." She said that weight problems can also relate to past events in which the child wants to "be bigger" in order to cope with an issue at that time.
Anne-Marie is fully insured as a RTT practitioner and helps treat issues ranging from confidence and self-esteem, phobias and addictions, to distressing health conditions.
"I didn’t get the right kind of help I needed, which is why I am passionate about sparing my clients from spending any length of time in the wilderness.
"Today, as well as running a thriving practice, and loving the fact I can help so many people, young and old, I also spend my spare time writing romance novels. Something RTT helped me have the confidence in myself to put out there!"
Anne-Marie has a website with more information about RTT which can be found at: www.charmedlifetherapy.co.uk/
There is also a page dedicated to her books at: www.charmedlifetherapy.co.uk/brigleypriorbooks
Her Amazon author page can be found here: amzn.to/47XdK5F
RTT is a standalone therapy devised by world-renowned therapist, Marisa Peer. It uses aspects of hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming and cognitive behavioural therapy as part of a unique methodology that claims that it can bring rapid change in as little as one to three sessions.
