Four years earlier, I had lost both my parents within four months of each other, while also helping to organise my sister’s wedding in between.

Over the next couple of years, I lost my two remaining grandparents.

By my mid-20s, I had already arranged four funerals and a wedding.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but all of this had taken its toll.

Moving to London to pursue my engineering career by day and my music career by night only added fuel to the fire.

I was burning the candle at both ends and the middle, acting indestructible while secretly self-destructing.

It was only going one way, but I was too blind to see it.

Then, my engineering contract was cancelled, along with my band’s tour and everything finally caught up with me.

Sitting on the floor of a run-down flat above a kebab shop in North London, I broke down.

Head in hands, I felt completely useless, hopeless, helpless, worthless, and alone.

That was when a voice in my head said clearly, “Find out about hypnosis.”

So I did.

I signed up for a distance learning course and paid for private sessions.

For the first time in my life, I found something that absorbed my attention more than performing.

I was hooked, devouring every word, and a major turning point came when I started clearing out my own issues as part of my training.

That was a real shock for someone who didn’t think he had any!

As the tears and stress of the past years dissolved, along with some adverse childhood experiences ...

... I also came to terms with something I had never fully acknowledged—the unspoken effect of having been adopted at just ten days old.

Finally, I felt ready to move on.

At age 27, I set up my private hypnotherapy practice.

That was back in 1992.

Since then, I have:

~ conducted more than 20,000 one-to-one client sessions,

~ trained around 500 practitioners in my advanced methods,

~ had a book published by Penguin Random House, and

~ run courses for doctors at Kings College

Hospital, London, to name just a few milestones.

Who’d have thought it? Certainly not me.

So, if you’re going through a tough time and wondering when it will end, sometimes you have to stop and take a real look at what’s really causing it.

If you don’t, life will do it for you.

It did for me, I stopped and listened.

I have since helped thousands of others do the same and now train others to help, too, using a unique combination of advanced hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, coaching and counselling, that helps deal with root causes.

Whether you need help yourself or are considering a career helping others, there is always a way - you just have to start.

~ Andrew Parr, www.andrewparr.org.