Stop managing it.
Actually fix it.
I’m Helen Hanslow. For 17 years I’ve worked with more than 2,000 people in Ballina and at Goonellabah Medical Centre, helping them stop anxiety, addictions, low mood, overwhelm, burnout and trauma responses at the point where they’re actually generated: the brain’s predictions. No crystals, no vibrations. Just the science of how to stop doing what you don’t want to do any more, usually in two to four sessions.
You don’t just want to cope. You want it gone.
There’s a big difference between managing something and actually changing it. Most approaches teach you to manage. I’m interested in the other thing.
Change happens fast
Most issues clear in 2 to 4 sessions. Phobias often in the first. This isn’t years of talking about it. It’s targeted change at the level where the problem actually lives, which is the subconscious mind, not the conscious one.
We change the subconscious programming
90% of your behaviour is subconscious. When you make the change at the place your behaviour comes from the result is you just automatically respond and behave the way you want without having to think about it. No effort. The skills you leave with help you reprogram your subconscious mind for yourself. You leave more resourceful, more resilient and back in charge of your own life. Every session teaches you something about how your mind works. The changes stick, and you can apply the same tools to anything else you want to shift. The goal is for you not to need me, which is a pretty good goal for a therapist to have.
Based in a medical centre and based on science
Helen has practised at Goonellabah Medical Centre alongside GPs since 2010. GPs refer patients to her because they trust the work. She’s studying neuroscience at postgraduate level, and her approach is built on predictive processing, the current science of how the brain generates anxiety, habits and emotional responses.
Who I’m the person to see
I’m the person to see if you’ve done counselling and you still feel the same. If you’ve learned to manage your anxiety with breathing and grounding and you’re tired of managing it. If you want to quit smoking or drinking and you’re sick of white knuckling it. If you want to perform better, at work or in sport, without the nerves getting there first.
I’m also the person to see if you’d rather learn to change your own responses than keep seeing a therapist. My aim is that you don’t need to come back.
I’m not the person to see for past lives or energy work. There are plenty of people in this region who do that well. What I do is different. No crystals, no vibrations. Just the science of how to stop doing whatever it is you don’t want to do any more.
Resolved, not managed
Most anxiety help teaches you to cope. Breathing, grounding, challenging your thoughts, pushing yourself into the situation anyway. Those are useful skills, and they leave the fight or flight response exactly where it was. You’re still firing, you’ve just got better at riding it out.
I’m after something different. Anxiety is a prediction. Your brain has decided, somewhere below awareness, that a situation is dangerous, and it fires the alarm before you’ve had a chance to think. Change the prediction and the alarm stops. Not managed. Gone.
Take social anxiety. If the prediction is that talking to people is dangerous, that they’ll think you’re stupid, then every conversation costs effort. Fix the prediction and the person doesn’t have to push themselves into the room and regulate their way through it. They just go, and talk, and say yes to the invitation. Most of them don’t notice they’re doing something they couldn’t do before, because it feels normal. That’s the test I use. No effort needed.
I’m studying neuroscience at postgraduate level at the University of New England, and UNE has put forward a funding proposal for two of us to research anxiety through predictive processing: changing the prediction so the fight or flight response stops firing, and measuring that it’s actually gone rather than still there and being managed.
When the prediction changes, the effort disappears.
How it works
Three things happen that most therapists don’t do. Together, they’re why the results last.
Before your session
You get access to a short video course explaining how your subconscious mind actually works. How habits form, why willpower alone doesn’t cut it, and what’s really going on when you keep doing the thing you don’t want to do. You walk in already understanding the playing field. Most people say this alone shifts something.
In the session
We use a combination of NLP, hypnotherapy, conversational techniques, metaphor and visualisation. Whatever fits you and the problem. You’re always wide awake and completely in control. Helen works quickly and practically. No lying on a couch counting backwards from ten.
After your session
Within 24 hours, your personalised resources appear in your private portal. Audio tracks, brain training recordings, technique reminders, practical guides, all built around what we worked on in your session. They’re yours to keep and use for life. This is how the change compounds over time.
What I help with
All of these are subconscious patterns. Which means all of them can be changed.
Anxiety & Panic
Overthinking, panic attacks, constant worry, social anxiety, performance anxiety. Anxiety is a subconscious behaviour. It can be stopped, not just managed.
Phobias & Fears
Fear of flying, spiders, needles, heights, driving, public speaking. Phobias are usually the easiest thing to fix. Often cleared in the very first session.
Quit Smoking or Vaping
Most people quit after the first session. Smoking and vaping often go hand in hand with anxiety, stress or low mood, so sometimes we need to deal with that first. If it doesn’t stick straight away, that’s not failure. It shows us exactly what’s holding it in place, and that’s the key to letting it go for good.
Weight & Food
Emotional eating, food addiction, overeating, binge cycles. Helen has written an entire book on the seven things that drive weight issues. It’s not willpower. It never was.
Stress & Burnout
Chronic stress, work overwhelm, sleep issues, that feeling of never being able to switch off. Your biochemist (the one in your head, trained 100,000 years ago) thinks it’s a tiger. It isn’t. We let them know.
Confidence & Performance
Public speaking, exam nerves, sports performance, interview anxiety, leadership presence. We find the version of you that already knows how to do this, and put them in the driver’s seat.
Depression & Low Mood
Persistent low mood, lack of motivation, feeling stuck. Addressed alongside the anxiety or lifestyle patterns that often feed it. You don’t have to feel like this and it’s not who you are.
Children & Teenagers
Helen has worked with young people her entire career. Anxiety, fears, habits, confidence, school performance. Parent involvement is part of the process, because the changes a young person makes need support at home too.
Alcohol & Drinking
Reduce or quit drinking by changing the subconscious habit pattern behind alcohol. Most people find the urge to drink simply loses its hold after hypnotherapy and NLP.
Monthly Mind Coaching
Some people come once a month not because something is wrong, but because having a thinking partner for work, life and relationships is genuinely useful. We look at where your subconscious programming could use a tune-up.
Two clinics on the Far North Coast
The Goonellabah clinic is inside Goonellabah Medical Centre, so you’re seen in a proper clinical setting alongside GPs. The Ballina clinic is an upstairs professional suite at 48 Tamar Street, next door to Ballina Day Surgery. Sessions are also available online via Telehealth for anyone who can’t make it in person.
Ballina
8/48 Tamar Street, Ballina NSW 2478
Far North Coast NSWGoonellabah (Lismore)
Goonellabah Medical Centre, Lismore NSW 2480
Northern Rivers NSWOnline via Telehealth
Secure online sessions available Australia-wide. Works just as well as face-to-face for most issues.
Australia-wide
30 years of working with people. 17 years changing minds.
I didn’t come to this work through a brochure. I came through 30 years of being in rooms with people who were struggling. Young people at risk, families in crisis, kids in care. Helping people was how I was raised and it’s never really stopped being what I do.
I first experienced NLP when I was working in a rural town with a group of teenage boys who were about to be excluded from the only high school in the area. A colleague did an NLP technique on me in ten minutes that resolved something I’d been carrying my whole life. I thought: if this works that fast, why on earth are we spending years in counselling? That question led me here.
I’m now studying neuroscience at university so I can keep understanding the brain behind the work I do every day. Honestly, I find it all fascinating. The subconscious mind is extraordinary once you start understanding it.
Real people, real results
“I went to Helen for hypnotherapy for smoking cessation over 2 years ago and have never looked back! It only took the single appointment and I haven’t smoked since – I was a smoker for 20 years. She is highly skilled and a lovely, warm person. Highly recommend! She has saved me thousands of dollars and probably my life.”
“This woman changed my life. I needed help with a personal problem and she guided me to a better way and showed me how to treat this problem. She is a wonderful counsellor, a professional that I feel so comfortable opening up to. Whenever I feel I need further guidance, I now turn to Helen for help. Thank you so much Helen!”
“I first went to see Helen to give up smoking. I was a hard-core smoker and tried everything to give up, and Helen was my last chance. I walked out of there and never touched or needed/wanted a cigarette again. I didn’t even believe in hypnotherapy. I’ve recommended her to many people over the years.”
Read all my Google reviews or see more client stories. Results vary from person to person.
Start with a free 15-minute chat
Not sure if this is right for you? That’s what the free consult is for. We’ll talk about what’s going on, what you want instead, and whether working together makes sense. No pressure. No sales pitch. Just a conversation with someone who actually knows a lot about this stuff.
What a session with me is actually like
A lot of people expect to lie back, close their eyes and listen to a relaxing script. That kind of hypnosis does work. It’s just slow. On one issue it usually takes six to ten sessions to get a good result.
That’s not mostly what I do.
Most of our work happens in conversation. While we talk, I’m working out how your brain does the problem, step by step. Your subconscious mind is always making predictions based on old information and acting as if they’re still true. My job is to find the faulty prediction and update it.
Sometimes I’ll use hypnosis techniques that don’t involve a formal trance at all. You’ll be awake, talking, maybe even laughing. People are sometimes surprised by that, even when I’ve told them. It’s still hypnotherapy. It’s just the faster kind.
Because I’m looking for what’s underneath, most people need two to four sessions. And often more than one thing changes.
A man came to see me recently about his sleep. He was waking at 3am most mornings and lying awake for hours. As we talked, it turned out he also worried a lot, went over and over things in his head, and was always twenty minutes early to everything. Once I worked out how he did all of those things, there was one pattern underneath them. We changed that, and his sleep improved along with the worry and the rushing.
We’re not covering up symptoms. We’re updating the programme that runs them.
Things people want to know
Ready to actually change something?
Start with a free 15-minute chat. We’ll figure out together whether working with me is the right move for you.
Call 0403 740 054Free 15-min consult: in-person in Ballina or Goonellabah, via Telehealth, or by phone