How my own journey led me to the path of helping others
Hi, I'm Kate.
I'm a trauma-informed transformational hypnotherapist and the creator of Inner Gardening™ and the Evolve Your Perspective® framework.
I work with sensitives, creatives and change-makers who feel stuck - not because they haven't tried, but because what they're trying to change lives somewhere that surface-level approaches can't reach.
If you've landed here, there's a good chance you already know that feeling.
My story
I didn't come to this work just through an interest in therapy. I came through my own life.
As a child I was split. There was a deep inner Self - the real me - and a surface self that learned to adapt to whatever was needed to feel safe and connected. The deeper part checked out early. The surface part became very good at its job.
I became the good girl, the clever girl, the fun girl, the quiet girl, the achiever, the people-pleaser - whichever version felt safest depending on who I was with. As a highly sensitive child, I didn't just read the room. I became the room. I would mirror the personality of whoever I was with, sometimes even their accent. I had super-active empathy and almost no sense of who I actually was underneath it all.
Because the truth was - I didn't know. The deeper Me had checked out. And the adaptive parts had taken over so completely that I had no idea they weren't the real me.
The deepest part of me held onto one belief: that adulthood would fix it. That once I was away from the chaos and harm of childhood, I would finally be free to start living. The real me would be able to come through. Everything would be different.
But that's not what happened.
Because those adaptive parts - the ones that had worked so hard to keep me safe - didn't stand down when the original threat was gone. They didn't know how. They had become so thoroughly wired into my personality, my nervous system, my way of reading every room and every relationship, that they simply found the same patterns everywhere they looked. And where they found them, they took over again. Doing what they knew. Keeping me in what was familiar.
The deeper Self never got a look in.
What adult life looked like
What followed was what always follows when this goes unaddressed. I unconsciously rebuilt the same familiar dynamics. The same relationships. The same roles.
I became the buffer - the one who understood the people causing harm well enough to try to protect others from them, whilst remaining in the direct path of that harm myself. I was the caretaker, the fixer, the one holding everyone else together whilst quietly falling apart.
I exiled the parts of myself that felt shameful or inconvenient rather than understanding what they were trying to do for me. I numbed emotionally - and found that alcohol loosened the grip on those suppressed parts just enough to let them surface, but without the safety or understanding needed to integrate them. So they would emerge chaotically, create consequences for me, and then be pushed back down again.
I built a career in areas I had no passion for because I had so completely lost touch with my own desires. I maintained friendships where I was never truly myself. I struggled with chronic pain, fatigue and low immunity - my body trying to get my attention in the only way left to it.
Everything changed when I hit a crisis point. When I realised that everything I had been clinging to so hard wasn't even what I wanted. And so I let go.
The only way through was to put down every rock I had been carrying and surrender to finding a better way. That better way was the long journey back to myself.
How my journey became the method
Everything I experienced - every wound, every adaptive strategy, every moment of exile and numbing and waiting - directly shaped the way I work today.
I know from the inside what it is to split off from yourself to survive. So I never ask clients to eliminate or exile the parts of themselves that feel like problems. I help them understand those parts, work with them, and let them finally relax - so the deeper true Self can lead.
I know what it is to be failed by surface-level strategies that never reach or understand the personal roots. So I go to the roots, your own roots.
I know what it is to have the body carrying what the mind couldn't process. So I work with the whole system - subconscious, unconscious, body, and higher mind.
I know what it is to be the empath in the room, the mirror, the one who understood and felt everyone else's pain better than their own. So I see my clients - often more clearly than they see themselves - and my greatest desire is to help them see themselves too.
This is why Inner Gardening™ isn't just a remix of a methodology I trained in. It's one I lived my way into.
What it's like to work with me
Deeply compassionate and entirely non-judgemental. Whatever you bring into a session, you are safe here. Nothing will shock me - I have my own lived experience of complex trauma, abuse and complex PTSD, and the long work of unlearning the adaptive behaviours that came with it. I don't sit across from you as someone who only studied your experience from the outside. I sit with you as someone who has navigated their own version of it from the inside - and then spent years in study understanding exactly why it works the way it does.
That combination matters. Personal experience without study can lack precision. Study without personal experience can lack depth. The two together is what allows me to meet you where you actually are.
Highly intuitive. I follow what's present in a session rather than a fixed script. My intuition - honed through both my own healing journey and years of clinical practice - guides my questioning in ways that can get to the root of a problem quickly. Often reaching in a single session what might take months to arrive at through talking therapy alone.
I go deep, fast. This is something clients often comment on. If you work with me, come ready for that. We don't stay on the surface.
I see you in your widest potential. Not the version of you that's currently stuck, struggling or hiding. The version that's been waiting. My greatest desire is to help you see yourself there too.
What I specialise in
The three types of problems I work with most:
- Deep-rooted issues - long-standing subconscious and perhaps deeply-unconscious patterns that have manifested physically or behaviourally
- Resistance - the invisible blocks and fears that keep pinging you back into what's familiar
- Programmed perspective - the gap between what you want and where you keep finding yourself
If any of these sound familiar, we should talk.
How to work with me
My one-to-one work happens through Inner Gardening™ - trauma-informed integrative hypnotherapy for deep subconscious change. Find out more
The Evolve Your Perspective® framework is available through retreats, online courses and the EYP book - for those who want a practical lens for understanding their patterns and evolving how they respond to life. Find out more
I work mainly online with an international client base across multiple time zones. If the available slots don't work for your timezone, let me know - I can usually find a way.
A note on timing
I work with people when they're ready. Not perfectly ready - nobody arrives perfectly ready. But genuinely ready to look at what's underneath and take new steps off the back of what they find.
If that's you, I'd love to hear from you.
"Kate was so kind, gentle, focused and alert. She understood my problem and led me to new insights - reflecting my own words back to me in a way that was surprising and deeply beneficial"
Isabella I
"A positive, proactive, highly intelligent woman who works with compassion and dedication. If I could recommend one person to guide and care for someone's wellbeing and success, it would be Kate every time"
Ray B
"Kate is a phenomenal therapist who really takes the time to understand your needs. Professional, understanding, and extremely good at helping you get to the root cause"
Taryn J
Ready to begin?
Book a free conversation with Kate