About Lesley

I am Lesley. I am a counsellor, coach, hypnotherapist and Self-Esteem Specialist.

I help women understand the patterns keeping them stuck and make meaningful changes in the way

they see themselves, think, feel and show up.

Online across the UK | In person in Manchester

Who I work with

I work with women who want something to change, but keep finding themselves pulled back into the exact same patterns.

Sometimes that shows up around food, weight, or body image.
Sometimes it is confidence, self-worth, self-belief, or identity.
Sometimes you simply know that you are not showing up as the woman you want to be.

The thread running through all of it is the relationship you have with yourself.

How my approach developed

My way of working did not come from a single qualification or textbook. It developed over years of client work, therapeutic training, and my own personal experience of change.

I started in traditional counselling, spending years giving women space to talk, process emotions, and understand their past.

While that space is valuable, I started asking hard questions:

Does change really have to take years?
Do you always need to spend months picking through the past before you can move forward?

Sometimes understanding where something comes from helps. But most of the time, the most useful thing you can do is recognise the pattern running now and work out how to break it.

Why my own experience matters

I know what it feels like to be trapped in a pattern you desperately want to break.

For years, I had a difficult relationship with alcohol. I knew I wanted to change, and I knew what I was doing, but simply knowing was not enough.

The turning point came when I began to understand the pattern differently and changed the way I saw myself within it. I stopped seeing myself as someone who was constantly trying to resist a drink.

Today, alcohol is not something I have to manage, monitor or fight against. The noise is gone, and that feels like true freedom.

I share this because it informs how I work, not because your experience has to be the same as mine. It taught me that sometimes the behaviour is only part of the problem. The deeper work may involve understanding the pattern, the way you see yourself within it and what you believe about yourself as you try to change.

My aim is not to help you spend the rest of your life on guard around food, alcohol, cravings or any other behaviour. The aim is to help you understand what is happening and develop a different relationship with the pattern, so you can make choices without feeling as though you are constantly fighting yourself.

Three tools. Used where they actually help.

I bring together counselling, coaching, and hypnotherapy. Not because you need all three, but because different tools are useful at different stages.

We use what works for you. The method is not the point. You are.

I am naturally curious about what keeps people stuck:

Why do you keep doing something you consciously do not want to do?
Why does the same loop keep repeating even when you have tried to change it?
What are you believing about yourself in that moment, and how is that belief affecting what you do next?
What might change if you stopped fighting yourself and started working with your mind?

What you can expect from working together

I am warm, but I am direct.

I will listen to you, but I will not sit back politely while you go round the exact same problem week after week.

I will not judge the ways you have learned to cope.
I will not give you useless lectures about willpower.
I will not pretend change happens without you doing the work.

My job is to help you see the patterns keeping you stuck, understand what they are connected to, challenge the things holding you back and give you practical tools to make the changes you actually want to make.

A little more about me

I am based in Manchester and work with women online across the UK, as well as in person.

I am a qualified counsellor, coach and hypnotherapist, and I specialise in helping women rebuild self-esteem, self-worth and self-trust. Ultimately, a list of qualifications is not what determines whether we work well together.

The relationship is what matters. You need to feel understood, you need to know I can see what you might be missing and you need to trust that I will be completely honest with you.