Sally Garozzo | Clinical Hypnotherapist Brighton & Online

In my twenties, I decided I wanted to learn to ride a motorbike.

It didn't go well.

On the day of my test, it was raining. I fell off the bike just before the exam and promptly decided that perhaps motorcycling wasn't for me after all. I went home, licked my wounds, and put the dream in a box. 

Fifteen years passed.

Then life presented me with another opportunity.

This time I had a boyfriend who rode a motorbike, which certainly added fuel to the fire. I signed up for lessons and convinced myself that this was going to be the year.

The problem was that reality looked very different from the fantasy.

The lessons were expensive, it was January, the weather was ice cold and the bikes were h.e.a.v.y.

And whilst nobody likes to admit it, learning to manoeuvre a large motorbike can be physically demanding, particularly when you're a relatively small woman trying to control a machine that seems determined to remind you of the laws of gravity.

But even so, week after week I turned...

When Your Mind Won’t Switch Off

Have you ever felt like your brain is a hamster wheel you can’t step off? The same thought circling round and round, "what if this happens? did I really lock the door? what if something terrible occurs because I didn’t check again?" For people living with OCD or obsessive thinking, this isn’t just the occasional worry. It can feel like incessant torture.

I know, because so many of my clients in Brighton (and beyond) arrive at my door exhausted by their own minds. They don’t want to think these thoughts, they don’t believe the thoughts, but they feel compelled to obey them, repeat them, or neutralise them in some way.

The truth is, OCD isn’t about being “quirky neat” or “a bit controlling” (despite what the media often portrays). It’s about living in a body that never feels quite safe, a nervous system that’s constantly scanning for danger, and a brain that has latched onto repetitive thoughts and rituals as a form of control (and as an attempt to turn...