Jane Silver

I hope you enjoy listenng to my interview with Jane Silver [23:04 duration]. There is more information about Jane at the bottom of this page including her contact details.

best wishes

Tania.

Transcript of interview :

Tania: 

My guest today is Jane Silver. I’m going to welcome her to the call. We’ve just had a lovely little pre discussion about what Jane is currently in. So welcome, Jane.

Jane: 

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Tania: 

So, Jane, I’d love you to share with people a little bit about you and your background because I know you’re incredibly passionate around what you do. You have tremendous energy as well. Tell us a little bit about you.

Jane: 

Okay. I’m an integrated hypnopsychotherapist, life and business coach. I also practice quite a lot with energy therapy. So, EFT and mindfulness based in a repatterning as well as doing some types of chakra healing and the use of colour to connect different parts of people’s chakras/meridians together. Because often, when people have a blockage, it forms between their heads and their bodies.

I’ve been in private practice for 15 years starting out in HR, originally, but discovered that my passion was not with bureaucracy and paperwork but more with working with people and their troubles. I initially started with stress and anxiety in the workplace. Moving out more recently into trauma-based therapy when I was privileged to work as part of a charity called Heads-Up, who were working in the aftermath of the [01:51 Monster Evening News arena attack for a market], Grunfeld tower. And bringing people out of trauma back into full functionality within quite a short space of time.

Tania: 

Thank you. I know you’ve had to really summarize that because you’re involved with so many innovative kinds of things. You really got a vision in there, which I think is fabulous, by the way.

Jane: 

Trying to change the face of mental health single handedly is not very easy, but I’m doing my best.

Tania: 

I do think. I actually honestly do think if anyone’s going to do it, you’ve got a good chance.

Jane: 

Thank you for your help.

Tania: 

Thank you for agreeing to join me here. Now, I know you do a lot of work also with the mindfulness space in repatterning. What would you say the benefits are of a technique like that? What benefits do you find from that approach?

Jane: 

Okay. Mindfulness based in a repatterning actually basically works under the radar. If people don’t want to actually talk, which many people who have trauma or things they don’t really want to discuss or talk about, or maybe a shame of talking about it. So, shame is a big issue with lots of different people who have suffered with trauma, whether that be abuse or — in fact any form of trauma. MBIR or mindfulness based in repatterning is a fantastic way of getting under the radar without actually even having to say anything because it works with feelings. It works with sensations, with thoughts, with imaging, with colours. When you work like that, we bypass the cognitive sides of the mind so we’re not actually engaging with resistance, which is what lots of therapists are trained in, which is why it always fails.

Tania: 

That’s such a really good way to explain it. Do you think about it exactly the same way, isn’t it? It’s like conscious mind that can block, block, block, block. And I see it as that you almost have to bypass that to get into the part of your mind where you can deal with the underlying programs basically, isn’t it?

Jane: 

Yeah, exactly. And so MBIR works with those underlying programs, the subconscious, if you like, with the parts or often referred to maybe in psychological terms as the inner child or parts of people’s characters.

Actually, what that does is it works behind that. So, we’re getting right into that subconscious part of the brain. It’s a fantastic way to work with unbelievable results. Sometimes it even reduces these clients to tears within seconds, and you can see the blockage disappearing almost immediately. It’s a privilege to watch and to help support people through that.

Tania: 

Yeah. I mean, I always think it can be this beautiful feeling. Sometimes it can be there for the therapist as well.

Jane: 

Absolutely. I was working with one client. It was really interesting. I was doing MBIR with her. I could see above her head because it was on a zoom call. I could see the colours of the rainbow almost surrounding her as we lifted all of these things off her. I said to her, “Do you mind me taking a photograph of what I can see?” She said, “Not at all.” So, I took a photograph. I didn’t say anything else to her. I took a photograph and we finished the session. And at the end of the session, she said to me, “That was incredible. All I could see was the colours of the NHS rainbow.” I haven’t told her that the photograph that I’d seen or taken with the whole rainbow effect above her heads. And when I then sent her the photograph, she was completely dumbstruck. I don’t think she could speak. She went through me a diagram, which forms one of the projects that I’m involved in quite heavily now, which I’m hoping will pay off at some point.

Tania: 

I’m not going to go into it because you’re still in the process of doing that, but that project is fabulous. If that takes off, it will be brilliant. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, thank you for sharing that. Do you have any other stories that you are allowed to share with us about maybe the successes you’ve had with mindfulness based in repatterning?

Jane: 

I have a lot of success with trauma. Trauma is a big passion of mine because I don’t think that people shouldn’t unnecessarily suffer just because they’ve witnessed or seen something or experienced something traumatic. It shouldn’t mean that they have to survive for the rest of their lives rather than thrive.

Sadly, I witnessed a close friend of mine who passed away because she took her own life. I witness the experience she had in a mental health hospital. Part of me thinks she’s the one that’s driving me forward through all of this to try and get an understanding that physical and mental health is hugely intrinsically linked and it shouldn’t be separated.

And so, I’ve seen a few different traumatic cases dealing with a few different people along the lines of people suffering trauma during birth, people suffering trauma through abuse, through domestic violence, through sexual abuse, etc. The list is endless. But using MBIR actually helps them to, I think, to put it all into perspective and to understand it that it’s a feeling, and a thought, and an image, and a sensation that almost puts an imprint into their brain but also into their physical body.

Jane: 

So, if people are suffering chest pain or stomach pains or often here in the neck, back, shoulder pains, fibromyalgia. There are many physical ailments that are a result of the trauma that happened to them maybe as far back as when they were young kids and really quite small.

Tania: 

Well, the thing with trauma is — I know a lot of people say time heals but generally it doesn’t. We get better at pushing it down basically.

Jane: 

What happens is that your brain puts into place to say, “Okay. Let’s just push it away. Let’s push it further and further and further and further and further away. And then, we won’t have to think about it.” As trauma brings itself out, you can see physically how amazing that makes people that go from being really hurt, like sad, to almost joyous in such a very short space of time when they experience the correct therapy.

I think lots of these talking therapists have their place, maybe in some instances, but in many cases, talking therapists take the person back into trauma. I’ll never forget working with somebody who had an eating disorder who was really severely traumatized by this inflicted behaviour that she placed upon herself and was living in a very small box. She couldn’t go out. She couldn’t enjoy life. She couldn’t enjoy being a teenager because everything was literally focused around what she could eat, when she could eat, what time she could eat, how she could eat. Doing MBIR with her almost took her out of that box in that time frame.

The therapy that she was getting from the NHS was CBTA, which is the eating disorder cognitive behavioural therapy, which was actually making her think about her eating patterns, which was, of course, taking her more into that trauma. Since then, I’ve had a number of young adults who are suffering with eating disorders sent to me by the people that should be able to help her – the Mental Health Organization’s, psychiatry. But other than medicate them and give them CBTA, when maybe that’s not necessarily the right therapy to give to those particular people. So, it’s about understanding the people and be spoking that path back, that mental health package to those individuals.

Tania: 

What kind of progress have you made with that kind of issue, that chain with these?

Jane: 

Completely fully functioning.

Tania: 

Fully functioning, yeah? All right. Did they find it gentle? Because I know this technique does not require going to the trauma, doesn’t it?

Jane: 

Yeah. And so obviously, I use a combination of different types of therapies for the individual that I was talking about, but MBIR was what helped her to open up with her feelings and her sensations and allowed her to put it back into perspective and to align it with what her values were and what value she’d picked up from external people and media and social media and everything else. It puts everything back into perspective for her.

And MBIR was obviously very gentle so she didn’t really even know what was happening. She was just going with the process and felt a whole lot lighter. I think a lot of people use that expression. “I feel like weight’s been lifted.” Those are the expressions that people use. “My chest doesn’t feel as compressed as it did.” Or “I’m not carrying that weight on my shoulders.” Those are the types of expressions that people use, which I think gives them a sense of freedom.

Tania: 

I mean they are very common expressions that people use when they’re going through transformation, isn’t it? Actually, my thoughts are you can’t really have a physical weight lifted, but you can have a frequency change. Everything is energy. Therefore, it would feel lighter to a person, wouldn’t it?

Jane: 

Yeah. I hear that a lot. On a daily basis I would hear, “I feel fantastic. I feel like a big weight’s been lifted off my shoulder.”

Tania: 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very common thing. You always know you’re getting results when you hear that, don’t you really, that something’s shifting for a person? Because we talk quite literal really, don’t we?

Jane: 

Yeah, and our brain is actually quite literal. It is very literal. When we talk about excess baggage, emotional baggage, weight. “I feel like a weight being lifted.” Often, we find that individuals actually lose physical weight because they’ve been holding on to that weight of emotional trauma. And when the emotional trauma goes, so does the excess baggage. They don’t feel the need to comfort eat maybe or emotionally eat?

Tania: 

No, it’s interesting, just the thought that popped to mind. It could be totally wrong. However, you’re dealing with food issues there, aren’t you? And a lot of the people with those kinds of issues, they might feel bigger and heavier than they really are. I mean it’s very highly likely. It’s the emotional weight, isn’t it?

Jane: 

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s 100%. Well, I mean there is a huge connection between what’s going on mentally and what’s happening physically. We can we can try and brush over it with colours and whatever else you want to brush over it with. But actually, I think that the doctors now are actually realizing that a patient comes to them who’s suffered really bad trauma and their hands are tied. Their hands are so badly tied. They can refer them to a signposting service. Often, they have to wait 12-18 months and sometimes longer to actually get to see anybody, get to see a psychologist, or a mental health therapist. All they can do is maybe medicate them which isn’t solving any problems. And then in turn, 12 months or two years down the line, they’re going to turn up with physical symptoms because 80%, I think the statistics are something like 80% of mental health connected to physical symptoms is quite high.

Tania: 

Right. Well, I’m looking at that as well. I’m thinking it must be very difficult all around because of doctor’s referring.  A lot of people go into the medical profession because they want to help people and therefore that must be hard on them as well, I think, if they feel they can’t get the help.

Jane: 

And it’s really sad. It’s really sad that it’s come to that. Like now I think they’re struggling really badly because there’s nowhere really for people who have had COVID or who were suffering with fear. Fear is a really big problem right now.

Tania: 

Oh, absolutely. I mean if I go out, I’m surprised at how quiet it is really. I think that a lot of people have not gone out or not going out. I mean there are some people who are but there’s a lot that are not as well. It’s nowhere near as busy as it used to be in this country, which therefore, I can only think that a lot of them are staying back and not going on because they still may be holding back on things threatening to them.

Jane: 

Yeah, fear. I think fear is a big problem. Fear also depletes the immune system hugely. I don’t think people realize that the fear itself is damaging their immunity. It’s blocking their immunity.

Tania: 

Yeah. It’s very important to come out of fear really, because as you said, your immunity is going to be operating at this point in time. Thank you for that. Do you find that the mindfulness space in a repatterning is a very kind of gentle approach for people who like the kind of approach?

Jane: 

I think it depends on the individual. It very much depends on how their brain functions, if you like. To get some people to do it, they think, “Oh, I’m not sure about this.” And you can see that they’re not fully engaged with the process, which makes it a little bit more difficult. So, you have to be a bit clever and invite them in the system a little bit.

I have become a bit inventive and creative with the types of things that I use so that I get fast results because I’m going behind the radar, but people don’t really understand what I’m doing. I’ve tried to explain to them that there’s no need to really understand it, just to go with it and see what happens and their ultimate goal is to feel better. So, if their ultimate goal is to have inner peace, then they weren’t really half their current problem if they were having inner peace. So, if we go round the houses and explain that to them, then it helps tremendously to get to even the most difficult of cases.

Tania: 

Yeah, yeah. I do think we have to be creative quite often as well. I was not going to go with that. I was going to say maybe, yeah. I mean obviously you’ve been very creative with a lot of people and got some lovely results there. I’ll probably pull this session to a close but I would say to anyone who wants to find out about Jane and Jane’s work, I’m going to ask her to send over some information. I’ve got it on my website and I’ll put it here so you can find Jane and her work.

Jane: 

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Tania: 

Yeah, I think she’s done some tremendous stuff out there. She’s very passionate. I think let’s see where all this goes out. I think it’s gone in a great direction. You’re earlier on about the lady that you think really is your underlying motivation that spurge you on to have this big motivation in this you know.

Jane: 

I was very passionate about mental health to start off with, especially with young children. Having experienced teacher when I was very young telling me what I was thinking stupid and would amount to nothing in a class of 14-year olds, very impressionable age group. And at the time I just saw, “Well, I must be thinking stupid.”

Tania: 

Did you buy that for a while there, Jane?

Jane: 

I took it on board until I started to do EFT.

Tania: 

Wow.

Jane: 

Then, I threw that out of the window because that was rubbish.

Tania: 

Yeah. Really good that you got rid of that one. They are not words that would ever come to my mind about you.

Jane: 

Yeah, when you’re 14 and very impressionable, and literally, I held on to that belief for a very, very, very, very long time. Even through being promoted at work and being highly successful in HR, highly successful running my own business to start off with, I held on to that belief for very many years.

Tania: 

The thing is it’s like beliefs. They act as filters across what information you’re able to take in, don’t we really? We filter out a lot of stuff. Interesting that you got rid of it with EFT as well. You’re thriving and moving forward. I will say thank you for joining me on this call. If anyone wants to find out about your work and what you’re doing that would be brilliant.

Jane: 

I can pass on my website details. Hopefully we’ll have some more exciting news very soon.

Tania: 

I think so. I hope so. I very much hope so. That would be brilliant. So, thank you very much.

Jane: 

Thank you again.