Hilary-Louise Elsy: The Journey to Healing and Self-Acceptance
The Reshape Podcast Episode 160
A Turning Point Story
This week Dave Algeo sits down with Psychotherapist and Hypnotherapist Hilary-Louise Elsy. Hilary shares her own weight-loss journey and the turning point that led to her embarking on her health transformation. We also explore the tools at the disposal of an accredited psychotherapist and hypnotherapist and how a person-centred approach can provide an effective combination to help a client move beyond weight issues and blocks to long-term success.
Hilary works as a GP and is also a Clinical psychotherapist General Hypnotherapy Standards Council and Hypnotherapist, she believes life experience is as important as clinical knowledge and has lots of skills ,learned from her own journey, which she is happy to share
Visit the podcast page or search for 'Reshape Reboot' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes visit davealgeo.com/podcast. Drop Dave a line at dave@midlifereshape.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.
Show Notes:
The Journey to Healing and Self-Acceptance
In this insightful episode, Dave Algeo sits down with Hilary Elsy, a GP, psychotherapist, and hypnotherapist, to explore the profound impact of our conscious and subconscious minds on personal health and healing journeys. Hilary shares her unique perspective as both a healthcare professional and an individual who has navigated a significant personal health transformation.
Episode Highlights:
• [2:34] Meet Hilary Elsy: Hilary introduces herself as a Locum GP with a diverse career in healthcare. She shares her personal journey after a horse-riding accident led to early retirement and a deep dive into her own health challenges and solutions.
• [4:14] Professional Background: Hilary details her training as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, which she discovered while working in an addiction and eating disorder clinic abroad. She emphasizes these as powerful tools for change.
• [5:24] Defining Psychotherapy vs. Hypnotherapy: Hilary clarifies that psychotherapy provides tools for conscious, logical management of psychological issues, while hypnotherapy works on the subconscious level, which doesn't distinguish between truth and reality, making it potent for profound, lasting change.
• [6:33] Dispelling Hypnotherapy Myths: Hilary explains that hypnotherapy is not mind control or stage hypnosis. It's about inducing extreme relaxation where the subconscious mind can accept positive suggestions, particularly when conscious decisions are sabotaged by subconscious patterns.
• [9:07] The Conscious-Subconscious Conflict: Discussion on how the conscious and subconscious minds can work against each other, with the subconscious often prioritizing "safety" through faulty programming, leading to negative behaviors or fears even when consciously illogical.
• [12:04] Safety vs. Happiness: The deeper subconscious drive for safety over happiness can lead individuals to accept misery or debilitating conditions like agoraphobia, creating narratives that rationalize these states.
• [13:07] Emotional Drivers and Health Manifestations: The role of strong, visceral emotions like fear and anxiety, and how high-functioning anxiety and perfectionism can be crippling, leading to exhaustion, burnout, and physical health problems due to the intertwined nature of mind and body.
• [16:46] Coaching vs. Therapy: Dave and Hilary discuss the distinction between coaching (working on narrative awareness and surface changes) and deeper therapeutic work ("under the hood" fixing, exploring, and diagnosing) that addresses underlying issues.
• [18:54] Hilary's Personal Healing Journey: Hilary bravely shares her battle with her own health, fitness, and significant weight gain (reaching 22 stone) after her accident, living in a tent in Portugal, and working in a healing clinic. She candidly discusses taking her eye off her own wellness, using physical inabilities as an excuse, and the eventual realization that she needed to address her health to be a credible medical professional.
• [25:07] The Path to Weight Loss and Accountability: Hilary recounts her five-year journey to lose the weight, emphasizing accountability, acknowledging the problem, and reversing her previous habits of inactivity and overeating. She highlights the importance of finding sustainable methods and the impact of books like "The Obesity Code".
• [30:00] Navigating Identity Shifts in Healing: A conversation about the difference between quick fixes (like GLP-1 agonists or gastric bypass) and slower, more sustainable journeys, and how the latter allows for the navigation of identity shifts, challenging unresolved fears, and forming new, ingrained habits.
• [33:00] Consistency and Functional Fitness: Hilary shares her current routine of intermittent fasting, meal prep, and strength training, focusing on functional fitness and maintaining activity into older age. Her message is to be consistent, forgive yourself, and keep going.
• [37:00] Therapeutic Approaches for Deep-Seated Issues: Using the example of eating disorders, Hilary explains how therapy aims to address the need for control, often linked to past trauma. Techniques include inner child work, thanking the subconscious for trying to keep safe, and aligning the conscious and subconscious minds to work together towards recovery.
• [40:00] The Power of Imagination in Hypnotherapy: Hypnotherapy is described as a guided therapy that taps into an individual's imagination (visual, auditory, kineasthetic) to help them imagine and strive for different outcomes. While some issues (like smoking) can be a one-off fix, self-development is an ongoing process.
• [44:00] Person-Centered Approach: Hilary stresses that there's no one-size-fits-all solution; therapy must be person-centered, tailored to individual attitudes, beliefs, and how they respond. Establishing trust and rapport with a client is paramount for effective outcomes.
Contact Information:
• Dave Algeo: dave@midlifereshape.com
• Hilary Elsy: Contact details available in the show notes on the podcast website. She encourages listeners to reach out with any problems or development needs, as she can either help directly or refer to someone who can.
Next Step: Would you like to delve deeper into Hilary's personal healing journey and the specific methods she used?