Tamara is a hypnotherapist.

 

Which is a bit like saying a locksmith is someone who just jimmies open doors. Yes, Tamara works with the mind — but not the polished, well-lit mind we present to colleagues or social media. She works with the back rooms. The corridors we rarely visit ourselves.

 

I came to her not because I believed hypnosis would “fix” me. I came because I was tired. Tired of cracking molars and of waking up more stressed than I’d gone to bed.

 

Now let’s pause for a second. You may be the rational sort. A devotee of science, critical thinking, and sceptical eyebrow-raising. I’m with you. But let me tell you this: the subconscious doesn’t care about your opinion. It doesn’t check your Twitter feed. It just does what it does — storing slights from 1997, looping anxious scripts, chewing (literally) on unspoken words, repressed rage, unmet needs, and fears you’d never admit to your best friend.

 

Tamara doesn’t tell you what to think or feel.

 

She doesn’t make you cluck like a chicken or dig up childhood trauma for entertainment value. She invites you into that liminal space — part waking, part dreaming — where the mind is soft and pliable. And in  it is in that space that things shift.

 

In my sessions with her, I learned that bruxism — that charming term for grinding — often has less to do with dental issues and more to do with unresolved emotional tension.

 

Hypnotherapy, it turns out, is not about mind control. It’s about mind conversation. It’s the conscious saying to the subconscious, “Look, I know we’ve been doing it this way for years, but would you consider another route?” And the subconscious, surprisingly, sometimes says, “Sure.”

 

So yes, I’m still a city person. I still overthink. But I sleep better now. My dentist has stopped giving me that look. And sometimes, when I feel my jaw tighten at the end of the day, I close my eyes and remember: I can choose not to grind. Not just my teeth. But life itself.

 

 

And whether you call that healing, therapy, or just a very gentle recalibration of being — I call it relief.

 

– Jane Healey