Why I work the Way I do
I spent more than twenty years as a film director before becoming a therapist. Looking back, the two careers have more in common than I first realised. As a director, I was always interested in what was happening beneath the dialogue. What people weren't saying. What motivated them. Why they behaved the way they did. That same curiosity is what led me into therapy.
I am sixty years-old and it is lived experience, thousands of client therapy sessions and therapy training that gives me the tools I need to help you.
I've always been fascinated by why we repeat patterns we know aren't good for us. Why we can understand something logically and still find ourselves reacting in exactly the same way. Why one person seems to move through a difficult experience relatively untouched while another carries it in their body for years.
For me, that's where therapy becomes interesting. The real work often isn't in what we consciously know. It's in the gap between what we know and what we automatically feel, believe and do.
Over the years I've trained in hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, EMDR, NLP, parts therapy, breathwork and somatic therapies. I don't see these as competing approaches. Each offers a different way of understanding why a problem exists and, more importantly, how to help change it.
I use hypnotherapy because so much of human behaviour happens automatically. We can desperately want to stop overthinking, worrying or reacting in a certain way, yet our unconscious mind continues to run the same familiar pattern.
EMDR can be incredibly effective when an experience from the past still feels emotionally present, even though it happened years ago. Parts therapy helps us understand those moments when one part of you wants to move forward while another keeps pulling you back towards what's familiar, even when it's no longer serving you.
I'm also deeply interested in the role of the nervous system. Anxiety, stress and trauma don't just live in our thoughts. They live in our breathing, our muscles, our posture, our digestion and the way our body constantly scans the world for danger. Sometimes we can't think our way out of anxiety because the body simply doesn't feel safe yet.
No two people experience the same problem in exactly the same way. Two clients may both arrive saying they have anxiety, low confidence or a phobia, yet the reason those symptoms developed can be completely different. One person's anxiety may be rooted in unresolved trauma. Another's may come from years of perfectionism, people-pleasing or a nervous system that has learned to stay on high alert. More often than not, several pieces are working together.
That's why I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to therapy.
I enjoy understanding the unique architecture of each person's problem and building therapy around them rather than trying to fit them into a particular model. Sometimes we'll work with the unconscious mind through hypnotherapy. Sometimes we'll process old experiences with EMDR. Sometimes we'll work with the body through breathwork and nervous system regulation. Most often, we'll use a combination of approaches that make sense for you.
For me, therapy is a collaborative process. It's about understanding what has shaped you, helping you make sense of your patterns with compassion rather than judgement, and creating lasting change that feels natural rather than forced.
One of the greatest privileges of my work is witnessing people discover they are capable of far more change than they ever imagined. I never stop being inspired by the courage people bring into the therapy room and by how willing they are to do the work when they finally feel understood.
Diana Joy
Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist, Balmain, Sydney
0414 486 707