MELANIE – THERAPIST & TRAINER
THIS IS MY STORY
People often tell me that coming to see me feels different.
That things shift more quickly than they expected.
That we don’t just talk — we change things.
This is why I believe that I can help make that happen.
A love of life, people, and understanding what really matters
A love of life, travel, and people has shaped the therapist I am today.
Born in England, I quickly caught the travel bug and spent years living across the world. Living in different cultures gave me a deep sense of perspective, about happiness, resilience, and what truly matters beneath the surface.
Friends used to say, “You should write a book about how you stay so happy, we could all learn something.”
At the time, I didn’t realise that curiosity would become my life’s work.
At 23, I began studying counselling with a simple intention: to help people.
And honestly, I’ve never really stopped.
Like everyone, my life has had its shocks.
My father died young.
My teenage years were difficult.
My partner and I separated, and I learned how to become a single parent.
Life brings bumps and losses for all of us. What matters isn’t that they happen it’s how our nervous system learns to carry them.
For many people, those experiences don’t just live in memory. They live in the body.
Understanding people beneath behaviour
Over the years, I’ve learned something essential:
we are often far more different on the inside than we ever appear on the outside.
We never truly know what another person’s nervous system has learned to expect from life, even after decades together. And when you really understand that, compassion replaces judgement very quickly.
This understanding sits at the heart of my work.
What we can change (and what we can’t)
I learned early on that we cannot change other people.
And when we try, it usually ends in frustration, resentment, and disappointment.
What we can change is our response, our regulation, and how safe our nervous system feels in the world.
When the nervous system feels safer, behaviour changes naturally and often surprisingly quickly.
My favourite saying is
"Not My Cirus, Not My Monkeys"
Leadership, teams, and nervous systems under pressure
Alongside therapy, I spent many years in senior roles managing large projects and teams. This deepened my understanding of how people function, not just emotionally, but under stress, within systems, and under expectation.
Training in DISC personality profiling helped me see how differently people think, communicate, and respond to pressure. Diversity is essential but without understanding, it can feel chaotic rather than powerful.
What I didn’t know at the time was that I was already observing nervous systems in action.
The nervous system: the missing piece
As my therapeutic training deepened, I began studying polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation. Suddenly, everything made sense.
Why people “know” what to do but can’t do it.
Why talking alone doesn’t always help.
Why some people freeze, shut down, overreact, or feel constantly on edge.
These are not character flaws.
They are nervous system responses.
When the nervous system is stuck in survival, fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown the mind cannot access clarity, change, or calm.
So my work began to focus on something essential:
Regulation first. Change second.
The mind, focus, and safety
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) showed me how perception shapes reality.
Polyvagal theory showed me why safety must come first.
When people feel safe enough in their body, not just their thoughts, the mind becomes flexible. Trauma no longer needs to be relived. Painful memories can be processed without overwhelm.
This is why my work often feels gentle but effective.
We’re not forcing change.
We’re allowing the nervous system to come out of survival.
Why change doesn’t have to take years
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy), hypnotherapy, and coaching work because they don’t rely solely on talking or insight. They work directly with the unconscious and the nervous system, where emotional responses are actually stored.
In particular, IEMT works by changing the emotional imprint itself, rather than analysing the story attached to it.
When something difficult or traumatic happens, the nervous system learns an emotional response - fear, anger, shame, panic - and stores it automatically. Long after the event is over, that response can still be triggered, even when the person knows they are safe.
IEMT gently interrupts this pattern.
By working with eye movements and attention, the brain is given the opportunity to update how it stores that emotional response. The memory may remain, but the emotional charge no longer needs to fire in the same way.
Clients often say:
“How has this shifted so quickly without me having to go through it all again?”
The answer is this, the nervous system has finally been given permission to reorganise and release an outdated emotional response, without needing to relive the experience.
Change happens quickly because we are not forcing insight, willpower, or repeated exposure.
We are allowing the nervous system to do what it is designed to do, adapt and reset when the conditions are right.
The body always tells the truth
Years of sound meditation, hypnotherapy, and nervous system work taught me something profound:
The unconscious runs the body.
The conscious mind often runs wild trying to control it.
When emotional distress isn’t listened to, the body often speaks instead, through pain, illness, fatigue, or shutdown.
This understanding led me to OldPain2Go, a powerful approach that works directly with the unconscious mind. I have watched people arrive in severe pain and leave moving freely and sometimes after decades of suffering.
Not because I fixed them.
But because their body no longer needed to hold that safety message.
What I believe now
I believe people can change quickly, safely, and without reliving trauma.
I believe most people are not broken, they are stuck in survival.
And I believe that when the nervous system feels safe, clarity, confidence, and connection return naturally.
As my work evolved, I became more and more aware of something important:
real change doesn’t only happen in therapy sessions.
People need gentle support between sessions, something to lean on in the moments when life feels uncertain, overwhelming, or noisy.
This led me to create HappyMe with a friend, a mental wellness app built around nervous system safety, regulation, and kindness rather than pressure or performance. It’s designed to help people come out of survival and back into themselves, one small moment at a time.
Alongside this, I co-created the SoulSync workbooks, offering practical, human tools that help people understand themselves, their emotions, and their relationships in a way that feels accessible and safe.
These creations aren’t separate from my therapy work, they are an extension of it. They exist so support doesn’t end when the session does.
This is what Achieve Happiness means to me.
Not perfection. Not fixing. Just bringing humanity out of survival, back into life and their authentic selves.
After all…
85% is perfect.
AchieveHappiness LinkedIn Profile