ABOUT KATHRYN DUNN

"I’ve restarted my life more than once."

At eighteen I left rural Cornwall for London to study law. Not long after, I was elected Sabbatical Press and Information Officer at my students' union, which started a career in publishing.

Then life took a sharp turn.

Two weeks before my wedding, my fiancé had a serious accident and spent three days in a coma.

When he woke up, life was never quite the same. We got married, and I left my career to help him. We started a software mail order business together. Unfortunately, soon after, our son was stillborn. Not long after that, the marriage ended.

I've rebuilt, started again, and rebuilt again.

Along the way there were businesses that didn't quite work out, relocations, children, another marriage, another divorce, and eventually caring for my mother until she died of cancer.

Each time, life asked the same question... What next?

And each time I had to decide whether to drift with circumstances or choose what happened next.

For a long time I lived on autopilot.

Doing what was expected, carrying responsibility, keeping things running.

Eventually I noticed something. Being capable is not the same as being intentional. You can be responsible, hardworking and dependable and still be living a life that no longer fits.

Over the last decade I've been rebuilding again, this time on purpose.

I retrained as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist, studied behaviour and decision-making, started a business, and worked with other people at their own turning points.

Starting again is not failure. Sometimes it's the most honest thing you can do. I'm not interested in dramatic reinvention. I'm interested in what happens when capable women decide their lives belong to them again.

Where the work lives now

It's in three places, and confidence runs through all of them.

HypnoGirl

This site. Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy for women starting again who'd like their nerve back: in their body, in company, at work and in the networking room.

Mind Your Guts

Where I write every week about IBS and the gut-brain connection, and where the gut-directed hypnotherapy lives. Trusting your body is a confidence question as much as anything else, and for a lot of the women I see it starts in the stomach.

York and North Yorkshire Connections

The free monthly calendar of every networking event in the county, which I put together myself. I've stood at the edge of most of those rooms, so I know what it takes to walk into one.

Every woman I work with arrives carrying a different before. The work is the same. We find what's on the other side of it.

Training and qualifications

Level 4 Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy, UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
Trained in gut-directed hypnotherapy for IBS with Dr Elena Eliadou, consultant gastroenterologist, at the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
Member of the Federation of Holistic Therapists (MFHT), and insured through the FHT
Member of the Institute of Leadership
A law degree, and a MA in Leadership and Management
Fifteen years at the Electoral Commission, five businesses, and a good deal of life

Based in Acomb, York. Sessions in person or online.

Three things people often ask me

What kind of hypnotherapy is it?

Cognitive behavioural. The hypnosis sits inside a practical way of working with thoughts, habits and automatic responses, and you leave with techniques you can use on your own.

Who do you work with?

Mostly women over fifty who are starting again and have lost their nerve somewhere along the way, and women living with IBS. Men are welcome. The work is the same.