Exclusive:
Sophie Proctor had crippling social anxiety for decades, relying on alcohol and medication to ‘cope’ – then just five hours with a hypnotherapist transformed her mental health
For years Sophie Proctor found socialising so stressful that she drank alcohol to give her Dutch courage and to become more confident and outgoing. Instead, she would experience blackouts and crippling morning-after “hangxiety” that made her mental health struggles become “completely debilitating”.
Even talking therapy failed to help her break this unhappy cycle. “I am naturally a very anxious person especially in social situations, like meeting new people, or even just around large groups of people so I used alcohol as a crutch to feel more confident,” says Sophie, 29, who works in marketing.
“I’d seen alcohol as just something that we all do. I thought if I had a glass of wine, I’d be more bubbly, more confident, and then I’d enjoy myself more. Actually, what it was doing was bringing up all of these dark, unresolved feelings and traumatic events, and causing me to perceive things which weren’t there. Or these memories would pop up out of nowhere, and I would get incredibly emotional, start crying, or just feel the situation wasn’t safe.”
This damaging relationship with alcohol has its roots in her time at the University of Liverpool where she felt that she needed booze to be liked and accepted. “In 2017, in my final year of university I went to the doctor and was prescribed anti-anxiety medication because my anxiety was so bad. It was a combination of exams and stress, and drinking more alcohol than I usually would.”
Life after university was no easier. Sophie moved back home with her mum but when lockdown hit her mental health hit new lows, pushing her to seek help. She started talking therapy in 2020 and continued for over a year and a half, completing over 300 hours with professionals.
“It got worse over Covid,” she says. “I wasn’t drinking lots, but from 2021, I was prescribed an antidepressant named Sertraline, where they recommend you don’t take alcohol. So when my anxiety was at its peak and I drank, I’d black out very quickly,” she says.
Seeing her get worse, Sophie’s partner Jerome recommended hypnotherapy and after hours of research she found Chris Meaden, a clinical hypnotherapist who runs the Meaden Clinic in Kent. He treats complex mental health conditions including PTSD, trauma, anxiety, panic attacks and addictions using a range of fast-working techniques, including a type of psychotherapy called neurolinguistic programming (NLP), the Havening Techniques, which relies on sensory input, and his own rapid ‘Meaden Method’.
Over the past 14 years, Chris has treated multi-millionaires, royalty, ex-premier league footballers, as well as celebrities, alongside others who are suffering with mental health conditions.
“Chris did a consultation with me over Zoom and I didn’t really know about NLP or hypnotherapy – I imagined a cartoon clock swinging! But it was entirely different,” she says.
“I decided to stop drinking on 22 May 2022 and I started my first session with Chris in June. He walked me through various techniques relating to traumatic events in my life. The way I describe it is like the traumatic memory or event is a door, and through Chris’s work, that door moves further away, so it’s not gone, but you can’t get to it. The feeling is dulled.
“Through the hypnotherapy and the NLP, I was addressing my past traumas and anxiety head on. I began to feel less of that horrible emotion, and it was getting easier. He gave me tools to use at home that really helped me to cope with my anxiety and move on. I really felt a sense of relief that I was taking control.
After five hours with Chris, Sophie was able to continue her sobriety and even come off the anti-anxiety medication she’d been taking for six years and the antidepressants she’d been on for a year.
“I’ve been sober for nearly three years and my overall anxiety overall has dropped so much,” she says. “I am in control of myself now. If I decided to just quit, go cold turkey, and go off on my own, I’d still have unresolved trauma and emotion so maybe a bad day at work would have sent me spiralling. It sounds almost like a coffee cup slogan, but you need to do your inner healing and that’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do without Chris’s help.”
Today, Sophie’s life is much calmer – when she sees friends she sticks to non-alcoholic drinks and she’s taken up healthy hobbies such as the gym. She cooks and bakes regularly rather than eating microwave meals. She has also launched her own Substack, where she explores what it’s like to be the ‘only one not drinking’.
She and Jerome now live together and she says, “The thing I’m most proud of is my relationship. I don’t think I would have been able to have such a happy relationship without Chris’s help and without making this life change.”
For more information visit on Chris Meaden, visit themeadenclinic.com; to read Sophie’s Substack visit onlyonenotdrinking.substack.com
