If you've struggled with your weight, you've probably decided the problem is you. Weak. Greedy. No willpower. 

That belief is wrong and it's the very thing keeping you stuck.

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes takes weight apart the way he takes every condition apart: what's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps. And the answer is rarely about food.

Emotional eating isn't a character flaw. It's a normal brain running an ancient survival programme in a world that programme was never built for. Once you see the machinery, you stop blaming yourself and a way through starts to appear.

In this episode:

• Why weight is an emotional problem that plays out through eating, not an eating problem
• Cortisol, belly fat and the stress loop that feeds itself
• Low serotonin, that hollow "not hungry but need something" feeling, and why food is the fastest hit
• Dopamine, reward, and why the same food keeps giving you less
• The shame cycle: eat, guilt, feel worse, eat again and why being harder on yourself makes it worse
• Black-and-white thinking, poor sleep, and the other loops that keep it spinning
• Why diets aim at the wrong target and what the solution-focused approach does instead
• How the trance state lowers cortisol and puts the thinking brain back in charge
• One thing to try today: the pause-and-name question that puts a gap between the feeling and the food

Nearly half of UK adults are trying to lose weight at any one time. You are not a lonely failure. You're an ordinary human with a very common struggle and patterns can change.

Gary Johannes is a solution-focused hypnotherapist, founder of Inspired to Change, and senior lecturer at CPHT Hypnotherapy Training. 

He left school at 14, spent 30 years in sales and hospitality, retrained in his late 40s and completed an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health at King's College London at 60.

Need support?
 If your relationship with food feels out of control, Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity, has a helpline at beateatingdisorders.org.uk. If your weight has changed suddenly without explanation, see your GP.

For help with the emotional side of eating, Inspired to Change has solution-focused hypnotherapists across the UK, in person or online: www.inspiredtochange.biz   

Read the companion blog:

Timestamps
 00:00 Gary's story and the Moving Minds Forward approach
 01:30 "The problem is you" — taking the belief apart
 03:15 Weight isn't an eating problem, it's an emotional one
 04:20 You're not alone: the UK numbers and the mood link
 05:30 What's happening in the brain: cortisol, serotonin, dopamine
 07:20 The ancient survival wiring
 08:30 What causes it: emotional drivers, physical causes, eating disorders
 10:10 What keeps it going: the shame cycle, black-and-white thinking, sleep
 12:15 What actually helps: the solution-focused approach and the trance state
 14:20 The three pillars and getting your feel-good chemistry from somewhere else
 15:30 One thing to try today: pause and name the feeling
 17:20 You're not greedy, you're not weak
 18:10 Where to get help

#EmotionalEating #StressAndWeightGain #MovingMindsForward #SolutionFocusedHypnotherapy #MentalHealthPodcast #WeightLossMindset #Cortisol #ComfortEating #InspiredToChange #GaryJohannes

You can be brilliant at your job, sharp in meetings, the person everyone turns to  and then someone says "can you just say a few words?" and your stomach drops through the floor.

That's the fear of public speaking, and it has nothing to do with how good you are. 

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes explains what's really happening when you stand up to speak: why your brain treats a friendly room as a life-or-death emergency, why your mind goes blank at exactly the wrong moment, and why avoiding it only makes the fear stronger. Then, what actually helps — including one simple shift you can use the next time your heart starts racing.

Around half of us fear public speaking. One in seven call it overwhelming. Almost half say it's held their career back. If that's you, you're not a bad speaker. You're running ancient software in front of a modern audience — and that's a pattern, not a fact. Patterns can change.

In this episode:
 00:00 Intro
 01:20 Why capable people go to pieces
 02:40 What glossophobia actually is
 03:45 How common it really is
 04:40 What's happening in your brain
 07:00 Where the fear comes from
 08:20 What keeps it going: avoidance and safety behaviours
 10:40 What actually helps: the solution-focused approach
 11:40 Mental rehearsal and how hypnotherapy helps
 12:50 The three pillars
 14:15 One thing to try today: relabelling the fear

Gary Johannes is a solution-focused hypnotherapist, founder of Inspired to Change and a senior lecturer at CPHT. He left school at 14, spent 30 years in sales and hospitality, retrained in his late 40s and completed an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health at King's College London at 60.

Moving Minds Forward: one condition per episode. What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what actually helps?

If the fear of public speaking is holding you back, Inspired to Change has solution-focused hypnotherapists across the UK, in person and online.

Book a free initial consultation:
https://www.inspiredtochange.biz

Subscribe for a new episode every week.

#PublicSpeaking #Glossophobia #FearOfPublicSpeaking #Hypnotherapy #MentalHealth #Anxiety #SolutionFocusedHypnotherapy #MovingMindsForward

Men's mental health rarely announces itself. It comes out sideways - as anger, as a drink after work, as shutting down completely.

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, I'm joined by Peter Ely, solution-focused hypnotherapist with Inspired to Change and my co-host on Inspired Men Talk. Before he retrained, Peter spent 20 years in the security industry, a world where men were paid to look solid, unbothered and in control.

He knows what that costs. For years his own coping strategy was alcohol, finishing work, walking into the pub, getting his laptop out and carrying on working while he drank. Not socialising. Coping.

We talk about the statistic that changed everything for him: one in four men won't reach retirement age. We talk about why anger is so often vulnerability with nowhere else to go. And we talk about the stress bucket,why it's never the big thing that tips a man over, it's the parking space and the broken cup on top of everything he was already carrying.

If you're a man who's still functioning, still turning up, still getting on with it, but quietly exhausted underneath, this one's for you. If you love a man like that, it's for you too.

The message underneath all of it: you're not broken. Pushing it down isn't weakness or a character flaw. It's a strategy a lot of men learned and strategies can be swapped for better ones.

You don't need a crisis as your entry ticket.

In this episode:

• 00:00 — Why this episode exists: 76% of UK suicides are men
• 04:00 — Welcome, Peter
• 04:40 — The statistic that changed everything: 1 in 4 men won't reach retirement
• 05:50 — Why men wait until it's at its worst
• 07:20 — 20 years in security: what it taught him about men and feelings
• 08:00 — The doorman, the shooting, and unprocessed trauma
• 10:00 — What a struggling man looks like when he first walks in
• 11:00 — Why it comes out sideways: anger as vulnerability
• 12:20 — Peter's own story: alcohol as a crutch
• 14:00 — The laptop in the pub
• 14:40 — What's actually happening in the brain: the stress bucket
• 16:00 — A parking space, a broken cup, and a bad day
• 18:00 — The provider instinct: already a snowball before anything goes wrong
• 18:30 — You don't have to dig through your past to get better
• 19:00 — "I accepted I wasn't broken"
• 20:20 — The first small thing a struggling man can do this week
• 22:20 — Find your thing
• 23:30 — The man sitting in his car outside the clinic
• 25:00 — "There's nothing you can tell me I haven't done"

Where to go next:

Find your nearest solution-focused hypnotherapist, read more about how hypnotherapy works for men, and book a free initial consultation: https://inspiredtochange.biz

Peter practises in Islington, North London.

For more conversations like this, find Inspired Men Talk wherever you get your podcasts. Peter and I go further into exactly this territory, episode after episode.

If you're struggling right now, you can contact Samaritans free on 116 123, any time, day or night. Andy's Man Club run free weekly groups across the UK where you can turn up and just listen.

Moving Minds Forward - one condition per episode. What's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps. Hosted by Gary Johannes, solution-focused hypnotherapist and founder of Inspired to Change.

If this was useful, hit subscribe. There's a lot more to come.

#MensMentalHealth #MovingMindsForward #Hypnotherapy #SolutionFocused #MentalHealthUK #MensHealth #Anxiety #Stress #InspiredToChange

If you can't remember the last time you properly switched off, this one's for you.

Relaxation isn't collapsing on the sofa with the telly on. It isn't a glass of wine to take the edge off. Real relaxation is something your body actually does a shift in the nervous system from alert to calm, from doing to recovering. And for a lot of us, that ability has quietly faded.

In this episode, Gary Johannes explains what's really going on when you can't relax: the two systems running your inner state, why your alarm gets stuck on, and why the harder you try to force calm, the more it slips away. You'll learn why walking clears your head when sitting still won't, why guilt keeps so many people braced even on their day off, and the one breathing technique you can use today to press the brake.

Here's the part worth holding onto: relaxation is a skill. What faded through disuse can be rebuilt through practice. 

You're not broken, and you're not lazy, you're someone whose nervous system has been running hot in a world that keeps its foot on the accelerator. That's a pattern, and patterns can change.

Inspired to Change has solution-focused hypnotherapists across the UK, in person and online. Everything's at  www.inspiredtochange.biz.

More than a third of UK drivers feel anxious behind the wheel. Nearly a quarter now avoid driving as much as they can. If you're the one white-knuckling the steering wheel while everyone else seems fine — you're not, and you're nowhere near alone.

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes unpacks what driving anxiety actually is, in plain terms. Why your heart hammers before you've even picked up the keys. Why avoidance feels like relief but quietly makes the fear grow. And why none of it means there's something wrong with you.

Here's the truth at the heart of it: this isn't a driving problem. It's an alarm system doing its job a little too well. And alarms can be reset.

Gary walks you through what keeps driving anxiety going, the practical things that help straight away, and the deeper work, including how solution-focused hypnotherapy retrains the brain from "car, road, danger" to "car, road, calm." You'll hear what he's watched happen over and over: people who came in convinced they'd become a nervous driver for good, and left booking road trips.

You're not a nervous driver. You're a capable driver with a nervous system that needs a bit of reteaching and that's a very fixable thing.

Every therapist at Inspired to Change works with driving anxiety, in person or online, wherever you are in the UK. Find one near you at inspiredtochange.biz.

Trauma happens in the past. So why can your brain and body continue to react as though the danger is happening right now?

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes explores trauma and PTSD, what they are, the difference between them, and what may be happening in the brain when traumatic experiences continue to affect everyday life.

We look at why traumatic memories can feel so immediate, what happens when the brain’s threat system remains on high alert, and why flashbacks, hypervigilance, avoidance, disrupted sleep and seemingly unexplained triggers can persist long after the original danger has passed.

Gary also explores the difference between PTSD and complex PTSD, some of the factors that can keep the threat response going, and why avoiding reminders of trauma can sometimes make life gradually smaller.

Most importantly, the episode looks at what can help.

While some established trauma therapies involve deliberately working with traumatic memories, Gary explains how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy takes a different approach, focusing on reducing the brain’s threat response, building a greater sense of safety and helping people move towards the life they want without requiring them to repeatedly revisit the traumatic event itself.

There’s also a simple grounding technique you can use when you feel yourself being pulled into a flashback or overwhelmed by a sense of being back in the moment.

If you’ve been living with the effects of trauma, or you’ve avoided seeking help because you believed therapy would mean having to relive what happened, this episode offers another perspective.

You don’t have to go back there to move forward from here.

Moving Minds Forward with Gary Johannes explores one condition at a time: what’s going on, what may be keeping it going, and what can actually help.

Find out more about Inspired To Change and our nationwide network of Solution Focused Hypnotherapists at inspiredtochange.biz.

You've done it a thousand times. The stage, the classroom, the microphone, the penalty spot. 
And then one ordinary day, with no warning, your body decides it isn't safe anymore. 
Your heart races, your hands shake, your mind goes blank.

This episode is for the people that happens to. 
Not beginners, the ones with years of proof behind them, suddenly convinced they've lost it.

Here's the good news: you haven't. This isn't skill running out. It's an alarm system misfiring at a moment it's never misfired before and a misfire can be corrected.

Gary Johannes unpacks what sudden onset performance anxiety actually is, why it lands on seasoned performers out of the blue, why it sticks around once it starts, and what genuinely helps you get your nerve back. One condition. The same honest lens: what's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps.

If you've felt confident in your craft for years and then found yourself shaking, blanking or dreading the thing you used to do without thinking, this one's for you.

To find your nearest solution focused hypnotherapist and book a free initial consultation, visit www.inspiredtochange.biz

If you live with IBS, you already know it's about more than symptoms. 

It quietly shapes what you eat, where you go, and whether you say yes to things. This episode explains what's actually happening, in your gut, in your brain, and in the constant conversation between the two.

We look at why the gut becomes hypersensitive, why stress triggers flares in nearly 60% of sufferers, and why the cycle of worry and avoidance keeps it going. Then we get to what helps, including gut-directed hypnotherapy, recommended by NICE and showing success rates of up to 95% in classic IBS cases.

You'll leave with one simple technique you can use today to calm your nervous system and settle your gut. Because you don't have to keep planning your life around it. There's always a way forward.

Find your nearest solution-focused hypnotherapist and book a free initial consultation at inspiredtochange.biz Link in the description.

Chronic pain doesn't always mean ongoing damage, sometimes it's a nervous system stuck on high alert, sounding the alarm long after the danger's passed.

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes is joined by Claire Noyelle, a solution-focused hypnotherapist who spent over thirty years as an NHS pharmacist before retraining. Claire has seen chronic pain and fibromyalgia from both sides: the prescription pad and the therapy room.

Together they talk through:
 — Why pain can persist long after the body has healed
 — The biggest myth about chronic pain (and where it comes from)
 — What solution-focused hypnotherapy actually does for pain and fibromyalgia
 — How the nervous system learns pain — and how it can learn something different

If you're living with chronic pain, or love someone who is, this conversation is for you.

🔗 Find out more about solution-focused hypnotherapy for chronic pain and fibromyalgia, or book a free consultation with Claire or one of our nationwide team: inspiredtochange.biz

#ChronicPain #Fibromyalgia #Hypnotherapy #MovingMindsForward #NervousSystem #PainManagement

Why do I get so angry? 

If you've asked yourself that question after saying or doing something you regret, this one's for you.

Anger can feel like it owns you. The heat rises, the words are out before you've had a single useful thought, and twenty minutes later the calm, sensible version of you turns up with all the right things you could have said.

In this episode, I want to explain what's actually going on because once you understand it, anger stops feeling like a character flaw and starts making sense.

We'll look at what anger really is, and the difference between anger and aggression. We'll go into what's happening in your brain in that moment, why "just calm down" doesn't work, and what your amygdala is doing when it takes over from the thinking part of your brain. We'll talk about anger management, why it keeps coming back even when you don't want it to, and the difference between anger and the anxiety or hurt often sitting underneath it. And I'll leave you with one simple thing you can start noticing today, to widen the gap between the trigger and the reaction.

You're not broken. You're not weak. You have a brain that learned, somewhere along the way, to reach for anger to keep you safe. And the same brain that learned that can learn something different. That's not wishful thinking. That's neuroscience.

If this helps, subscribe and leave a review, it means more people find their way to this.

If you'd like support with anger, Inspired to Change has a nationwide network of solution-focused hypnotherapists across the UK. Find your nearest therapist and book a free initial consultation at www.inspiredtochange.biz.

If anger is frequent, intense, or affecting your life, please speak to your GP, it can sit alongside things worth checking. And if it's ever spilled over into harming yourself or someone else, please get proper support quickly.

#WhyDoIGetSoAngry #AngerManagement #InspiredToChange #SolutionFocusedHypnotherapy #MovingMindsForward #MentalHealthPodcast #Neuroscience #AngerIssues #EmotionalRegulation #HypnotherapyUK