We were Police Officers for many years before finding a fascinating new way of helping people. While trainers at the Metropolitan Police Training School in Hendon, we pioneered the use of NLP and hypnosis in a unit dedicated to improving the performance of students who were failing their training. Over a three year period we developed a learning system based on NLP principles that could guarantee an improvement of 10-30% with only two and a half hours of coaching. Simultaneously I (Trevor) was establishing a hypnotherapy clinic that I ran in the evenings and weekends – it made for a busy three years!
I discovered that many of the principles I’d developed with students who were scared of exams or had poor study skills, applied just as much to members of the public with a wide variety of presenting problems – and that they could be helped quickly too. Often it comes down to us not understanding how our brains work, and how to help them work better, so we’re often left at the mercy of a mental programme that runs for a positive reason, but with a negative effect. I believe that all such programmes, from smoking to phobias, to anxiety disorders, to confidence issues can all be changed. From this emerged the approach we’ve come to call Cognitive Hypnotherapy.
We both felt there was a niche for mainstream people who wanted to train in a modern approach to hypnotherapy based on sound science. We also felt that the public wanted to go to see those kinds of people too. We’ve been proven right on both counts. We attract students from a wide range of backgrounds who attract clients from a wide range of backgrounds, and we invest our time in helping them after graduation because it’s fun to see them build something they love and believe in, and also because they’re a great advert for us. In so many ways Quest is now much more than the two of us.
We hope you can tell that the principle of service is important to us. Our mission statement has become:
Jan is our right hand woman, and a dear friend. She makes any number of essential things happen that we have long forgotten need doing. She is likely to be your first point of contact if you ring or email. If you ring, notice how she says “Institoot”. We nearly changed our name to suit her. While you’re on, she is a graduate of Quest, so can offer a personal perspective on the training, while also being a practising Cognitive Hypnotherapist serving the Newmarket area. In her spare time she sings like an angel.
Anita Mitchell and Jackie Bastin are probably going to be the first people you meet face to face in Quest, although Rebecca often helps out. We think it’s vital that you choose the right course to fulfil your needs, and we’ve found over the years that meeting potential students makes a huge difference to who we attract into Quest. We couldn’t wish for two better examples of Quest graduates to meet and greet you. They’ll put you at ease and answer all your questions, while asking a few of their own in a very informal meeting – it’s as much about you choosing us as us choosing you.
In 2012 we started a research project to prove the effectiveness of Cognitive Hypnotherapy. It involved recruiting and training in outcome measurement and data entry a team of Quest-trained Cognitive Hypnotherapists who were prepared to have their work measured. A wonderful bunch of people volunteered, and we now have a growing data set, and an initial report accepted for publication that shows that Cognitive Hypnotherapy has a success rate very favourably comparable to CBT. We’re the first hypnotherapists to be able to prove that our approach works. Brenda is the lovely manager of the team. She recruits and helps to induct new people wishing to join our team, liaises with us and our band of research writers, and generally keeps the show on the road. Brenda has a thriving practice in North Essex, as well as being one of our supervision team.
Barney was a legend within Quest. He was there at the beginning and played an active part in our success all throughout the Noughties, including being the means by which several Quest students lost their dog phobias (plus using some of the techniques we teach, obviously).He had a wonderful gift for making people love him and we were bereft when he passed on in November 2010. To be honest, we couldn’t bear to take him off the page, so think of this as an ‘About Us’ page, past and present.
Anyone who follows my blog will know that, following the loss of Barney we brought Wilma, an adorable miniature Schnauzer into the company. Unfortunately we lost her after a year owing to a brain disease. Yet as one door closed somehow two more opened and we ended that same year with Fred and Betty (yes, we have pretty much exhausted the Flintstones theme now). Fred is the one with the attitude, Betty the obviously patient older sister. They have proven themselves too fond of ripping up paper for admin to be a career path, so we’re hoping that hospitality proves their forte.
