Rosalyn Palmer – Change the Voice in Your Head

Rosalyn Palmer is an Emotional Wellbeing Expert, an Advanced Rapid Transformational (RTT) Hypnotherapist and a Certified Coach. As bestselling author of the award-winning self-help book: ‘Reset! A Blueprint for a Better Life’, Rosalyn makes emotional wellbeing accessible to all.

Rosalyn co-hosts the popular radio show Girls Around Town on Radio Newark (as the wellbeing expert), has a monthly newspaper column and features regularly on podcasts and in many publications, including most recently Psychology in Practice.

Formerly the MD/Founder of award-winning PR agency RPPR, Head of Marketing for an international charity and with an enviable CV from leading London agencies in the 80s and 90s, Rosalyn has grown from many challenging life experiences. This colour and tempers her writing, broadcasting and speaking.

What made you decide to become an Emotional Wellbeing Expert?

I believe life led me to being an emotional wellbeing expert. Both through my own interests and former career choices and also through the many challenges I’ve walked through.

My early career was in PR. When I got my first PR job I was led to believe that it was all about writing press releases, liaising with journalists, dealing with clients and hosting parties. What I soon found out was that it was primarily about how to handle people and also how to turn up and be seen yourself. I wore an effective mask, acting as an extrovert when at heart I was deep thinking and introverted. This led to much self-doubt and yet I was able to work for the PR agency of the 80s – Lynne Franks PR (in a world where breakfast with movie stars and launch events with the Rolling Stones were regular occurrences) and then launch my own PR agency – RPPR – aged 29. I built up that agency to win – eight years later – the coveted PR Week Award for Best Small UK Consultancy and a year after, I sold the company for a substantial profit.

Those nine years taught me a lot about emotional wellbeing. I handled the PR for some of the world’s leading personal development experts including Tony Robbins, Robert Holden and Edward de Bono and was exposed to their fascinating methodologies. I sought a greater understanding of human behaviour which led me to train in NLP with its founder Richard Bandler and in hypnosis with Paul McKenna. However, behind the mask and the mindset understanding, I was often exhausted and addicted. My fragile immune system was pushed to breaking point with stress and alcohol-filled days and the more successful I looked on the outside, the more unhappy I was on the inside. I turned to a myriad of therapies – including psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and complementary treatments such as Ayurvedic medicine, acupuncture and kinesiology. Some worked well and others didn’t. What I discovered was that good health is a path we all have to navigate for ourselves.

Thinking that I had dodged a bullet and got out with my health and sanity intact, I retired at 40 to the Bahamas but found myself without status or identity as a mother to two children in a foreign land. My mental health suffered and my physical health had been compromised due to years of stress. After a difficult year, I was hit with an even bigger blow – my father in the UK had a stroke and then became severely depressed. A year later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. For 18 months, I flew between the Bahamas and the USA for my treatment and repeatedly flew to the UK to attend the hospital visits for my father and subsequently for my mother who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

My life imploded and I returned to the UK as a single unemployed mother, completing my cancer treatment just in time to see my mother die of cancer. CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) saw me through the darkest of nights as I went through a divorce and started a new chapter in my life. A job as Head of Marketing and Communications for International Charity, The Leprosy Mission came at the same time as a second marriage and an early and agressive menopause that made me think that I was losing my mind. The doctor put me on anti-depressants when what I really needed was an understanding about the changes in my body and biochemistry. I didn’t receive the help or comfort I needed – shortly thereafter, my father died and my second marriage fell apart.

My time at the charity taught me about the crucial need to safeguard and help those most vulnerable of people. I was ready for another career change and wanted to help people. In 2015, by providence, an email popped into my inbox from leading UK hypnotherapist Marisa Peer who I had seen professionally in the 90s. She thought that I would make an excellent therapist and invited me to join her inaugural group of trainees in her new therapy method (now called Rapid Transformational Therapy or RTT). Feeling that I had nothing to lose I went. I found that I had an aptitude for it and great transferable skills with my background in communications, NLP, Personal Development, Organisational Change, Safeguarding and hypnotherapy.

My journey has not been easy, but providence has ensured that my own life challenges (and the therapy I had along the way), are what make me a highly empathetic and effective therapist, coach, and wellbeing ambassador.

Do you have a specialty, or help clients with a range of issues?

Much like a GP, I am trained to deal with a wide range of issues and have successfully treated both mental and physical problems with great effect. My biggest client cohort is high performing businesspeople. I believe that my strength as a transformational therapist and coach for this target market is that, along with my congruency and skills, ultimately I’ve walked in their shoes. I describe my go-to client as ‘Burnt-out-Barbara’ (or Bob) – someone who is living a life that looks great from the outside, but lies awake at night with their mind in overdrive after yet another panic attack in the office. They long for rest, for ease, to discover their purpose, to dare to feel joy and connection and be intimate with their partner, family, friends and themselves.

This was the blueprint of my own life when I was in PR and had all the trappings of success, but wanted the merry-go-round to just stop. This high stress lifestyle can cause many issues including confidence and self-esteem problems, anger, sadness, depression and self-sabotage. It can affect relationships causing a loss of sex drive, feelings of loneliness, conflict and even divorce. Physically the symptoms can include IBS, skin complaints, headaches, insomnia and chronic pain. It can also lead to poor coping behaviours such alcoholism, addiction to drugs, shopping, exercise or other things, eating disorders and panic attacks.

I treat all of these by going back to the deep seated beliefs and behaviours that we are hardwired with and working with the client to understand how these are now affecting their present life. With this deep level of understanding, we can create new beliefs, hard wired in the neural pathways of the mind, that then lead to new and better thoughts, feelings, behaviours, habits and ways of living and being.

What is the strangest problem you’ve been asked to help with?

My very first client came to me via a GP referral for erectile dysfunction. Whilst this is not a strange issue, it did make for a strange first client experience as I had to really draw on all of my training and professionalism to help him. He was cured in one session and this gave me massive confidence to go on. Later in my first year, I had a strange request to help with a lady who ‘could not jump’. Upon enquiry I found out that she wanted to be able to jump well as she was taking the highest level of Black Dan martial arts exam, and jumping well and high was essential for this. She just couldn’t leave the ground with her feet. We discovered, via hypnosis, that she had had so many painful experiences as a child that only by staying low, being grounded, playing small, could she stay safe. Her mind was stopping her from jumping as it felt unsafe and unfamiliar (something the mind will do anything to protect you against). Again, after discovering the root cause of this issue and reprogramming her subconscious mind, we were able to remove this block.

Which single case study has made it all worthwhile for you?

Every single client makes it worthwhile. Helping everyone, even those who come to see me saying something like, ‘It’s such a silly problem, I feel bad for even being bothered by it’, is totally rewarding. In the first year of my practice I did work with a young girl who gave me a testimonial saying that I literally saved her life and this was profoundly moving for me. She had severe anorexia and had given up the will to live. Even the eating disorder unit at the hospital had discharged her as she was not getting better or putting on weight. We worked together for several sessions, all held in quick succession, as it was crucial to get her better. She had to want to live again, to be well and to love herself again. With a new sense of self-worth and a desire to live, she naturally started to eat healthily again and was able to return to University the next year to complete her degree and resume her life. We are still in touch and I coach her from time to time as she faces any new challenges such as job hunting, new relationships and all that life has to offer.

Would you recommend Hypnotherapy and Coaching as a career to others? Why?

Yes I would. I was formerly a trainer on 10 courses for RTT and previously mentored many students. They came from many walks of life, some were already therapists or coaches, others not. Like me, many realise that they have transferable skills and wisdom from previous careers and life experiences that can help them be empathetic therapists. Having a fascination with human behavior and the workings of the mind really helps as there is a lot of study and continual personal development into brain neuroplasticity, the mind/body biochemistry and human anthropology.

For me, the chance to heal people or guide them to better, happier, healthier lives is a privilege. Therapy can be offered to clients anywhere in the world. Technology means that I can have an international clientele whilst working from home as over 70 per cent of my client sessions are conducted via Zoom, online platform. Because I want to reach more people, I’m developing some exciting new projects including online courses and an online community which will help make my work even more accessible across a wider price range.

You are a successful author as well. Tell us more about your books.

I have an award-winning book, ‘Reset! A Blueprint for a Better Life’ and am a contributing author to two Amazon no. 1 Compilation Bestsellers: ‘Ignite Your Life for Women’ and ‘Ignite Your Female Leadership’. All are self-help and motivational and my own book is semi-autobiographical.

My own book, Reset! is not a book about clichéd ‘positive thinking’ exercises. I am candidly open about my own story and offer the reader solutions should they find themselves challenged in similar ways, be it divorce, or illness, or depression, or ovewhelm, a mind chatter that won’t stop or other everyday challenges. A simple yet powerful framework to create a balanced life and effective exercises in each chapter reinforce the powerful messages of the book; that you can reset your life and reprogramme yourself for more joy and living at a higher level.

In the Ignite books I reiterate my signiture message “All that I need is already within me”. In these two books, together with 34 other inspiring women, I share an ‘IGNITE’ moment from my own life along with action steps so you can ignite your life and be guided through my life wisdom and transformational therapy and coaching skills.

What are some important tips for a better, fulfilling life?

My formula for a wealthy life (a life of balance) is simple. Stretch out the fingers of one hand and you have five (including the thumb) so to have a better life you need a balance of the 5Fs that comprise: Faith, Family, Friends, Fitness and Finance.

What is common to achieving success in all the five categories is being clear about where you are headed and what you want to change. In other words, being clear about goals, as evidence shows that successful people are goal oriented and clear about the process. Ithis is why I have an online Goalsetting course). Successful people anticipate what resources they will need along the way, what possible obstacles they may meet and need to prepare for, who they need to tell and involve and ask favours of, and what they need to stop doing in order to make it a success. They evaluate what the ticket for this journey will cost them and dare to ask themselves if they are willing to pay this price and determine how strong their resolve is to make this happen.

They make their goals into a ‘must’, not a ‘should’. And the secret to that is to understand your reason ‘Why’. What is your movitvation? If you are struggling, then change the voice in your head. Make it compelling. It is the difference between “I should get up early today to exercise as it is good for me” vs “I must get up early today as I choose exercise as my way of starting the day, as I am on course to lose that half a stone and look amazing in my bikini next month”.

What do you like to do in your spare time? Any hobbies?

I love to read. I play an active part in my town’s Book Festival and launched it this year by interviewing Joanne Harris who wrote the book Chocolat which was made into a film, starring Johnny Depp and Juliet Binoche. Naturally, this love of literature is taking me to my next adventure in 2020 which is to write a fiction book. It will be set in the Bahamas where I lived for five years and I already have the story and characters all mapped out.

I spend each weekend in the country with my boyfriend who is a very important part of my life, as are my family and friends. I love to walk in nature. I also practice yoga and/or pilates daily. Going to the movies with friends is a favourite hobby and I host an Oscar’s Party each year where we stay up all night to watch the results. I also love to cook and am excited that my Christmas present is a Thermomix which is already encouraging me to try lots of new recipes.

If you were to be hypnotised, what or where would be the most relaxing environment for you to visualise?

I am hypnotised regularly. Both listening to my own recordings and to others. For me, when I think of a really relaxing place, it is the beach in Eleuthera, Bahamas where I lived for two years. While I was undergoing cancer treatment in America we moved to a 10-acre organic farm that had 1,000 palm trees and fronted a pink sand beach with crystal clear waters. We lived on the land and sea. I grew my own vegetables and salad and would eat fish caught fresh that day. I didn’t drink any alcohol or eat anything processed (frankly there was nothing to buy there!) or with any additives. I called it ‘Eleutheratherapy’ and I chose it instead of Chemotherapy. I walked the beach with my dogs each morning, I painted, I wrote, I prayed, I meditated, I lived in nature. I healed my body and mind and that is the place I go in my mind now to relax, with the sound of the waves lapping on the beach in my ears.