The 1 Thing The £100 Per Hour Therapists Never Told Me In 5 Years

It started when I was around 19.

Thoughts coming into my mind which confused me.

Thoughts which made me feel uncomfortable.

Thoughts which started making me feel a bit paranoid.

Thoughts which seemed to contradict what was happening in my life.

What I didn't realize back then, around 19 years young, was that this dark, destructive voice that I was now becoming aware of and that was now beginning to have an effect on my outlook of my life and my inner peace, and that it wouldn't be until I was 41 years young, over 20 years later, that I would finally have the revelation of what voice is that I had been battling with.

At times that voice wasn't affecting me day to day, and it's almost as if it had just gone away. But, all of a sudden it would come back again, leading me to have uncomfortable thoughts, wondering thought patterns, questioning, doubting, worrying.

I was able to contain the battle that I was having in my mind for probably over 12 or 13 years, so that my immediate family, my wife and close family and friends and colleagues had no idea about this prison of my mind that I was trapped in.

In my early 30s this voice had been almost wearing me down for so many years that the different thoughts and feelings that it was leading me to have in my mind led me to start behaving and acting in negative ways towards my wife.

When I was asked why I am acting this way, why am I behaving this way, why do I seem so distant, why do I seem so perplexed or why do I just not seem happy and peaceful, I blamed work. I blamed the stresses of running a small but growing digital agency, PRWD.

That was a lie.

I'd been battling with that voice for many years, years before I started working for myself.

This voice would lead me to have thoughts about me as an entrepreneur, that I'm not good enough, that I'm going to get found out, that I'm winging it.

This dark, destructive voice was really starting to have an effect on my day-to-day life.

This voice would come and it would go, but whenever it came back, it would always just make me feel uncomfortable and make me question and doubt what's going on.

There were many times I'd feel like I was a rabbit in the headlights, not knowing which way to turn and what to do. At other times, that voice wouldn't be there, and I would be quite happy and quite peaceful and fun loving.

It was a roller coaster.

My mental wellbeing was a rollercoaster, and this rollercoaster was now very much a part of my marriage.

This voice was now, in my early 30s, having such an effect on my actions and behavior and my posture, particularly behind closed doors at home, that it was now causing damage in my marriage. This was mental and psychological damage.

It got to a stage when I was around 35 years young, SOMETHING had to change.

I knew I needed help.

My wife had always tried to help, but she didn't know and realize the truth of the wrong thought patterns that I'd been battling with over the last 15+ years.

We had recently moved home. We'd had a significant upgrade in our standard of living, from a quite humble four bedroom home to now a much larger home in the Cheshire countryside.

Through the growing successful agency, we were able to save a lot of money, and we also were driving round in very expensive company cars.

So now, living this picture-perfect Cheshire family life, it was anything but perfect, and when things hit a breaking point, I went on my phone and I searched for “psychologists in Cheshire”.

One of the search results was for an independent psychologist, and when I looked on this man's website and I looked on the page that had a few testimonials, I found myself reading a testimonial that seemed like it was describing my life - a man that had been struggling and battling with his mental health, but then he came to see the psychologist, and after a period of therapy his life began to really transform, and he couldn't speak highly enough of the therapist.

I thought, “This is the one. This is who I need to go and speak to.”

I sent the psychologist an email, and it was the following day from what I recall that he contacted me, and I explained that I'm having some real challenges in my marriage, with wrong thought patterns and I don't know what to do. We arranged for me to come for a first session.

I asked, “How much will it be?” and he said, “It's £100 for one hour.”

I went along for my first session, and once we sat down and I had a drink of tea in front of me, the psychologist asked me his opening question, which was “I'd like you to tell me about your childhood and your family when you were growing up.”

I recall at that moment thinking to myself, “Why is he asking about that? Why is he asking about my childhood? That's nothing to do with my marriage now and what I'm experiencing. Why is he not asking about my relationship and what's been going on?”

Although I thought that, I was happy to explain to him about my family when I was growing up in different circumstances. In that first session with this psychologist, I learnt something that was going to lead to me having this cloud hanging over me over the next five to six years.

The psychologist taught me that from when we're born to when we're around eight, nine years of age, what we experience in those formative years, particularly through our parents and immediate family and those who are caring for us, what we experience fundamentally shapes how we will live and experience our adult life.

When I heard this I was absolutely devastated, because myself at that time was was a father to two young girls, who at times were seeing things behind closed doors, which weren't good, which weren't healthy, and as I was reflecting on how some of my early childhood wasn't good or healthy, this cloud of guilt and condemnation came upon me - now starting to worry about the effect that I'm having on our daughters because of my behavior and actions, when that destructive voice was pushing me to hurt the people closest to me.

It was good to talk to the psychologist. At that time, it felt like there was maybe just a little bit of pressure being released by talking. Before I knew it, the one hour was up, I paid my £100 and arranged to go and see him again, maybe a few weeks later.

I saw him quite regularly for perhaps around six months, by which stage I got to a place where I thought I was okay now, I was good, and that voice had been kind of silenced. The psychologist was more than happy to conclude our sessions, and he just said, “Get in touch if you'd like to see me again.”

Over the next 18 months, slowly, at different times, that rollercoaster of my mind set off again.

During that time, negative thought patterns, paranoia, resentment, bitterness, mistrust, fear, worry, condemnation, would come upon me at different times, and those things would have a DIRECT IMPACT on my mood, my behavior, and how I was as a father and as a husband.

I very much sought to put a mask on in the workplace to my colleagues, as PRWD was thriving, as we were working with incredible world leading brands, as I was authoring a book, as I was delivering talks at conferences, as I was delivering training.

I was always putting that mask on to make the people around me think that “Paul's got it all together, and Paul's got a wonderful life.”

Around 18 months after I'd stopped seeing the psychologist, I had a period where for about a week I was hardly sleeping. That voice, that dark, destructive voice, was tormenting me, particularly at night time.

I would go to bed at maybe 11pm. I'd have my alarm set for six in the morning to get up and get a train and maybe go to a client presentation or a pitch down to London. But then I'd wake up at maybe two, three o'clock in the morning, and wrong thoughts would start to come into my mind. My mind would start to race.

I'd start to reflect on what I could have done or what I should have done. I started to worry about the things coming up.

I was absolutely exhausted. This was the middle of the night. My alarm is going off in three hours. I've got an important client presentation or a pitch with my senior leaders in the morning, yet I'm wide awake and it's three o'clock in the morning and my alarm is set to go off in a few hours time.

The more I tried to get to sleep, the harder it became.

No matter whether I put on some relaxing music, no matter whether I laid on my left side or right side. No matter what I did, could I get to sleep? No.

It was torment. Tossing and turning, desperate to get back to sleep, seeing the clock ticking.

It's now four o'clock, still not able to get to sleep. Before I know it, five o'clock in the morning, an hour before my alarm is going off.

During the course of about seven days, which were torturous, mental torture, this destructive voice, my wife would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and see me and ask if I'm okay and try to help in some way, but there was no helping me.

Night after night, this went on, and after about seven days, my wife Clare said, “Paul, you need to go to the doctors, you need to see someone.”

I hadn't been seeing the psychologist for about 18 months, and that following day we went to the doctors. The very friendly doctor asked, “How can I help?” and I just began to explain that I've hardly been sleeping for about a week, really struggling, and I explained about my life with, of course, my wife and children and growing business and everything seemed picture perfect, yet my mind was all over the show.

I mentioned to the doctor that I had been seeing a psychologist previously, but had been about 18 months since I'd been with him over about a six month period.

The doctor said to me that she could prescribe me some sleeping tablets or perhaps some antidepressant tablets, but she said, “I don't want to do that, Paul, because I feel that that would just be masking the deeper issues.”

She said, “I strongly recommend that you go back and speak to your psychologist. But what do I know? I'm just a bog standard doctor.”

At that moment of the doctor saying that I knew, firstly, that I have to go back seeing the psychologist, but secondly, I knew that this doctor was NOT a bog standard doctor. I remember thinking to myself, “Why has she just put herself down in that way, when she's just given me some incredibly valuable advice?”

Little did I realize that this doctor saved me from becoming trapped, potentially for years and years and years, taking drugs - just like the hundreds of millions of people upon the earth today, as I share these words on Thursday the 30th of January 2025, who are currently taking prescription drugs for any kind of mental health affliction.

Thank God for this doctor.

Myself and Clare got in the car. Clare asked “Do you feel a little bit better having come to see the doctor?” I said, “Yeah, very much so” and she said, “Are you going to ring the psychologist now?” and I said, “Absolutely.”

So I rang the psychologist. I booked in, and I was back seeing the psychologist maybe a week later. I carried on seeing the psychologist over the next three to four years.

I was now 40 years young.

Including the 18 month gap, I had been spending time with the psychologist for over five years.

The year was 2018.

That dark, destructive voice had never gone away.

Sometimes it would be quiet. Other times it would be almost shouting at me.

At one point in my life, which I will never forget, I was stood on a balcony high high up in Vancouver, Canada, on a prestigious business trip. As I was looking out across the Vancouver mountains, that dark, destructive voice whispered to me, “Just do it Paul, jump.”

I thank God that the devil did not get his way that day, on that balcony.

I thank God for His grace and His mercy and His love for me and His love for you.

When I was with the psychologist in 2018, having been going back and forwards over the last five years, I said to him, “This just isn't changing anything. I'm still battling the same things.”

The therapist agreed. The therapist said that he just feels like we're going around in circles, and he doesn't feel like he's offering me anything anymore. We were still speaking about things which I first spoke on five years earlier.

It was absolutely clear I had absolutely ZERO healing from the experiences I'd had when I was younger. After ALL that time, after ALL those therapy sessions, after ALL that money spent, I was still desperate to be set free from the prison of my mind.

I said to the therapist, “I believe there could be something deeper that I've not spoken about with you, even though I'm open with you”, and I said “I'm thinking that I need to maybe see a hypnotherapist.”

The psychologist agreed. He gave me the name of someone that he met a few years ago, a hypnotherapist, and I got in touch with the hypnotherapist. I briefly explained that I've been in therapy with a psychologist for the last five years but I'm still in no way feeling peaceful or happy or free or healed, and the hypnotherapist said, “That's absolutely fine. That's what I'm here for. Usually within just a few three, four, maybe five sessions, you'll be absolutely healed and free to move on and get on with the rest of your life.”

I thought this was it.

I thought this was the breakthrough.

I thought this is what I'd been searching for and what I've needed for over 20 years.

I went for the first session with the hypnotherapist. Once again, £100 pounds for an hour.

In that first session, he just asked me to share with him all the things that I want to be free from, what I want to be healed from, and I opened my heart, I began to cry and shared about the paranoia, about the fear, the worry, the condemnation, the guilt, the paranoia, the lack of gratitude for the incredible life that I was living, that to the outside world was still picture perfect, and I also shared with the hypnotherapist that I just don't have peace. I just don't have inner peace. I was so desperate for inner peace.

Nothing what I shared with the hypnotherapist fazed him, and he set out what would be a number of hypnotherapy sessions, each session tackling and dealing with the root cause of the particular things that I was battling with.

In my mind, it sounded like a wonderful plan that was going to bring me healing and freedom, and over the next few months, in late 2018 to early 2019, I had altogether around six hypnotherapy sessions.

They were deep. They were emotional. I was reliving certain experiences from my childhood.

This was all about supposedly healing my inner child.

It was around February 2019, where I finished the last session for the last area where I needed to be healed in, and the hypnotherapist said, “Paul, it's all done now. You're finished. You're healed. You can just start to get on with the rest of your life, and you don't need to think about those things anymore, because you it's over. You're healed.”

I believed him. I trusted him. I thanked him.

I paid him, and I came away thinking, “This is it. I am finally free. I have been set free from that prison of my mind.”

I came home, I shared with my wife the incredible news. This was breakthrough for our family. This was breakthrough for our marriage, for our relationship. My wife believed me and trusted me because I believed and trusted the hypnotherapist.

Breakthrough. Freedom. Peace.

Around two weeks after finishing the hypnotherapy, that dark destructive voice, the devil, the father of lies, started whispering to me again, saying the same things that he had started to whisper when I was 19 years young.

Now I was 41.

I'd been in therapy and hypnotherapy over the last five or six years.

I'd probably spent over £3000 on private one hour £100 therapy sessions.

I was still trapped in that same prison.

I wasn't healed.

That voice hadn't gone away, and now, in fact, that voice was speaking even stronger, even more relentlessly.

I was being absolutely tortured by that voice.

I WAS ABSOLUTELY MORTIFIED. DEVASTATED. STILL TRAPPED.

It's like it had all been a lie. Everything I'd done.

I wasn't healed.

I was still trapped, this prison of my mind. The devil whispering to me, making me feel paranoid, mistrusting, angry, bitter, resentful, depressed, anxious, fearful. All the same things but just now even stronger.

Following the hypnotherapy, the prison that I was in was even darker.

I was helpless. I was hopeless. I didn't know what to do.

I've done what the world offers to be set free from that voice.

Not only was I mortified and devastated, my wife was too, and over the following weeks, things went downhill, and further downhill and further downhill, until our relationship hit rock bottom.

I will never forget the date, March 31st 2019.

I was like a zombie. I could not do ANYTHING to stop what was happening in front of my eyes.

I was absolutely helpless, totally hopeless.

My picture perfect life was crumbling in front of my eyes.

A few days later, not knowing what to do and where to turn, I searched on Google for “What to do when you feel completely lost”, and I started to read stories from other people of their experiences of life and when they hit a brick wall, when they suffered trauma, when they suffered loss, and what they did.

On one of the articles I was reading, I saw and read about “the dark night of the soul”.

I followed that link.

I didn't even know I had a soul at this point, and when I was reading about the dark night of the song, I was starting to realize and comprehend that this is what I was going through, the dark night of the soul.

It was about 10 days later, a night I will never forget, the night when I had the revelation that God is real, that God loves me, that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus died for me on that cross, that Jesus shed His blood to be the atoning sacrifice for MY lifetime of sins.

This was the night of me having the revelation of Jesus.

The peace of God came upon me, a peace unlike I'd ever experienced before.

I knew, with the entirety of my being, I had found what I had been searching for for over 20 years.

Without knowing anything about becoming a disciple of Jesus and what it means to be born-again, I knew I was going to get baptized and give my life to Jesus.

Around six weeks later, I had my baptism. June 16th 2019, I gave my life to Jesus, the one who surrendered His life to save my soul.

What was the ONE THING that I never heard through all those years of being in therapy and hypnotherapy?

Not once was I told that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.

Not once was I told that the peace that Jesus can give me is a gift the world cannot give me.

Not once was I told that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Not once was I told about Jesus.

Today, as I share my testimony on mental health on Thursday the 30th January 2025, only God knows how many hundreds of millions, and I would say billions, of men and women, teenagers and children are battling with that voice in their head, the father of lies, Satan, the devil, but what I do know is the ONE and ONLY solution for everyone who has ANY degree of mental health affliction, whether it's been diagnosed or not, the one solution is a PERSONAL, DEEPENING relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life, and no-one comes to the Father except through Him.

Abba Father, I lift up to the one under the sound of my voice or reading these words. I ask you, Lord, to give them the eyes to see, the ears to hear and a heart to understand what the Spirit of the Lord is saying. Lord, I ask you to open their mind to understand the scriptures. Holy Spirit come upon them. I ask that they be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Set them free, Lord. Break the chains. Destroy the yokes of bondage and slavery. Jesus, you are their healer. You are the healer of their hearts, their minds, their souls, their entire being. I ask that the healing balm of Gilead comes and washes over the one receiving these words of prayer right now. I proclaim that, Abba Father, you have chosen them, they are not forsaken. Your hand is mighty upon them. You have plans for their life, plans for good and not for disaster, to give them a future and a hope. Thank you Jesus for surrendering Your life on the cross for each and every one of us. Thank you Jesus for shedding Your blood on that cross to be the atoning sacrifice of all our sins. Thank you Holy Spirit, for being our helper, our redeemer, our comforter, our strength. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for bringing all those across the earth to receive these words of prayer and to hear the testimony of WHAT WAS ONCE my battle with the devil, before I knew that I was a child of God.

Abba Father, I ask that in this year of 2025 and beyond, you bring revelation of who your beloved children are to set hundreds of millions and BILLIONS of men and women and teenagers and children free from being under the powers of darkness. The father of lies is been exposed. Satan, the devil, it, is, finished.

Abba Father, I give You ALL the glory, ALL the praise and ALL the honor for everything that you are doing across the earth. You are once again shaking the heavens and the earth, and only that which is unshakable will remain, and for us to be unshakable, we have to be stood upon You, Christ Jesus, for You are the rock of all ages. For the one receiving these words now, may the peace of God, which surpasses all your understanding, guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Many are called but few are chosen. You have been chosen to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, to go and share the love of Jesus wherever you go in your day to day life. When the Lord says, “Who will go for me? Who can I send to be a messenger to those who I have not yet set free?”, you will say, “Here I am Lord, send me!”

Abba Father, I thank You for your undeserved grace for the entirety of humanity, Your rich mercy and Your unfailing love which lasts forever.

Peace, be still. Peace. be still.

I ask all these things in the mighty name of the one true living God, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the one who is the way, the truth and the life, Jesus Christ.

Amen.