Istudied under Dr Richard Bandler, the co-founder of NLP, and [celebrity hypnotist] Paul McKenna, which was very enlightening. I've always had an interest in human development and potential – there's a lot of persuasion involved in it. A number of years ago, I had three prolapsed discs. I was told to forget about doing martial arts again, but with the power of my mind, I overcame that fear, and my back became stronger than it was.
On Tuesday I worked with a girl who was emetophobic – afraid of vomiting – and ended up agoraphobic. The symptom of fear is very real, so I have to work at a subconscious level. There's no such thing as an incurable fear. We've all had times when we've been afraid of things as children – from ghosts to leaving our mother's side. That same mechanism is with us later in life. You cure fears by creating new associations. I get someone to recreate a scene of the best moments of their life, then I get them to think of the fear, so they have a new neurological association. The trick is to reinforce good emotions.
On Thursday I saw a man with anxiety, depression and OCD, who also suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. He wrote to me saying that he felt his OCD was 90% better after one session: the brain works really quickly.
On Friday, I worked with a young girl who has been overweight for a number of years. With the weight issue, there is an overwhelming compulsion to eat food on seeing it. But I say that just because you have a desire for something, it doesn't mean you have to act upon it. Hypnosis has the highest success rate with weight loss.
Sunday brought me a guy with a chronic fear of flying: he hadn't flown comfortably for 10 years. I don't tend to work on Sundays but this was urgent. If someone needs help, I will be there. The only two things that hold human beings back from achieving anything in life are fear and hesitation. To overcome these I give people examples and metaphors. If someone said to you: here's a winning lottery ticket, come and collect it – would you hesitate?
It's getting the person to understand that they do have the ability to move forward. I get them to remember being a child at Christmas, or when they met someone and fell in love and couldn't wait to see them – to remember how it felt moving towards your dreams.
Habit patterns are formed in three weeks – if you can continually do something in your mind for three weeks it becomes autopilot. So, if a person stops reflecting on bad emotions and does that consistently enough, the brain goes on autopilot. I ask clients: if millions of people can overcome addictions, what makes you different from the rest of humanity?
• Clinical hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner Dominic Knight has a clinic in Harley Street. Details can be found at dominicknight.co.uk
