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Robin Ferrier - One Small Step

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Robin Ferrier - One Small Step

As a former airline pilot, now hypnotherapist, I blend aviation discipline with deep psychological insight. Let's unlock your potential and soar together

With many years of experience, I help you conquer fears and anxieties, guiding you to lasting change. My specialisms are:

The support and therapy of those who have been oppressed, bullied or abused. Fear of Flying. Phobias. However hypnotherapy and Rapid Transformational Therapy in particular has powerful properties. Let me guide you to a better way of living. Contact me now.

16/02/2026

As a Pilot and Hypnotherapist, I Can Tell You This:

Fear of Flying Isn’t About Planes.

If it were, information would cure it.

Statistics would cure it.
Logic would cure it.
Aviation documentaries would cure it.

They don’t.

Because what most people are actually dealing with isn’t a fear of aircraft…

It’s a compulsive relationship with control.

If you:

Only sit in a certain seat

Always fly with the same airline

Check turbulence forecasts repeatedly

Watch pilot videos before boarding

Carry a specific object

Repeat a phrase in your head during takeoff

You’re not being “extra prepared”.

You’re performing a ritual.

Rituals form when the nervous system believes:

“If I do this correctly, nothing bad will happen.”

From the cockpit, I can tell you something important:

None of those behaviours influence the safety of the flight.

From the therapy room, I can tell you something even more important:

Every time you rely on a ritual, your brain learns:

“I am not safe unless I control this.”

So fear doesn’t reduce.

It multiplies.

Because now you don’t just fear turbulence.

You fear missing a step.
You fear not checking enough.
You fear doing it wrong.

This is the same psychological loop that drives OCD.

Anxiety → Ritual → Temporary relief → Stronger dependency.

And over time, very capable people quietly build lives organised around fear.

Real freedom isn’t learning better rituals.

It’s teaching your nervous system that uncertainty does not equal danger.

That’s what hypnotherapy actually does.

If this post made you uncomfortable…

Good.

That discomfort is awareness.

And awareness is where change starts.

15/02/2026

Before a baby can speak…
Before they can think…
Before they know who they are…

They have one core need:

To feel loved.

For a baby, love means:

I am safe.
I will be cared for.
I matter.

Love isn’t a luxury in early life.

It’s survival.

When love feels steady, a baby’s nervous system learns:

The world is safe.
I am safe in it.

When love feels unpredictable or unavailable, the baby doesn’t blame the parent.

They adapt.

They begin to notice:

What gets attention?
What brings comfort?
What keeps people close?

From this, a simple strategy forms.

A way of being.
A way of seeking love.

Not chosen.
Not conscious.

But learned.

This early strategy becomes a template.

A blueprint.

And that blueprint often predicts how we behave as adults.

It can shape:

How we handle stress
How we seek reassurance
How we relate to authority
How we cope with illness
How we approach closeness
How we treat ourselves

Many people call this “personality.”

Often, it’s a childhood survival pattern still running.

And here’s the powerful part:

When you recognise your template, you stop fighting yourself.

You realise:

I adapted.
I wasn’t broken.

And once you see the pattern, you gain choice.

Choice to soften it.
Choice to update it.
Choice to create a new way of being.

Over the next posts, I’ll be sharing four common ways babies learn to seek love.

You may recognise yourself.
You may recognise your family.

And that awareness can change far more than you expect.

07/02/2026

So many people stay silent. Not because they have nothing to say, but because speaking feels unsafe. Afraid of judgment, ridicule, or misunderstanding, we hold our thoughts in. For anxious people, myself included, that fear can be crushing.

When I was younger, I had a very hard time at school. I absorbed a devastating belief: that I was small, worthless, that my voice didn’t matter. Speaking required enormous courage. And when I did, my words came out rushed, gabbled. People would say, “Hang on… what did you say?” and I’d have to repeat myself, slower, more exposed, more vulnerable. So I learned to avoid speaking altogether.

That kind of self-erasure is deeply diminishing. It’s demeaning. It crushes something essential inside you. And yet it’s incredibly common, especially among people who are kind, careful, or conflict-averse. Even when they do speak, they’re often not truly heard or understood. And after a while, that alone can feel like reason enough to stay silent.

But here’s the thing: your voice matters. Your truth matters. And learning to speak it, even when it feels terrifying, is possible. It’s something we can cultivate, gently, through practice, support, and understanding.

In a world full of curated lives, social masks, and polished personas, authenticity is rare, and precious. Speaking your truth isn’t about being loud or confrontational. It’s about being real. And when you learn to let your voice be heard safely, it changes everything, how others see you, how you see yourself, how fully you live.

You deserve to be heard. Not perfectly. Not forcefully. Not to please anyone. Simply authentically. And that is more than enough.

05/02/2026

“All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
and one man in his time plays many parts.”

Shakespeare was not being romantic.
He was being ruthless.

He was saying that much of what we call identity is performance.
That we step into roles long before we understand them.
That we learn our lines from whoever has power over us at the time.
And that most of us will play many parts before we ever ask who we actually are.

The danger is not that we perform.
The danger is that we mistake the role ... for the self.

People-pleasing is one of the most common roles on this stage.
And one of the weakest.
I know this personally to my cost.

It is the part learned by those who discovered early that approval was safer than honesty.
That saying yes kept the peace.
That compliance bought affection, attention, or proximity to love.

So the people-pleaser becomes highly skilled.
They read the room.
They anticipate desire.
They offer agreement before it is asked for.

This looks, from the outside, like kindness.

But Shakespeare’s line that follows tells the truth:

“And then the whining schoolboy…
And then the lover…
And then the soldier…”

Each role is temporary.
Each one is a costume.

When you live as a people-pleaser, you are not choosing your part,
you are auditioning endlessly for acceptance.

And the stage is unforgiving.

I have been told, more than once, that I was easy.
That certain people knew I would say yes.
Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to be liked.

That is the moment the illusion breaks.

Because the people-pleaser likes to believe he is being generous.
What he is actually communicating is this:
I do not trust my own value enough to risk your disapproval.

And the world reads that instantly.

Shakespeare writes of the actor who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage”
anxious, overexposed, desperate to be seen correctly
before he disappears.

That fretting is the people-pleaser’s life.
The constant self-monitoring.
The inability to stand still inside oneself.
The fear that a single NO will bring the curtain down.

This is not strength.
It is submission.

And submission does not earn respect.
It earns utility.

People do not admire those who abandon themselves quickly.
They use them.
They lean on them.
They expect them to comply.

The tragedy is that the performance often begins in innocence —
but ends in self-betrayal.

To step off the stage is to risk losing the audience.
To disappoint.
To be misunderstood.

But it is also to discover that your worth does not depend on applause.

When the role falls away, something steadier remains.
A self that does not need to perform.
A NO that carries weight.
A presence that is chosen, not tolerated.

Shakespeare was right.
We all play parts.

But the moment you stop people-pleasing
is the moment you stop being merely a player
and begin, at last, to be real.

02/02/2026

There comes a moment, often unnoticed, when a person stops believing that life will ask anything new of them. They are still here, still functioning, but inside something has gone very quiet.

If this is you, let me say this first: your exhaustion makes sense.
You did not arrive here because you are weak. You arrived here because you have carried too much for too long.

For many, the role of victim begins not as a choice, but as a refuge. When you believe you have no power, you are finally allowed to stop trying. It explains the paralysis. It softens the pain of hope.

But what once protected you can quietly become a prison.

When victimhood becomes an identity, it does more than describe what happened. It dictates what is possible next. It narrows the future until it resembles the past. And slowly, almost without noticing, you begin to live out the same feelings, the same limits, the same story, again and again.

This is not a moral failing.
It is what happens when pain goes unquestioned for too long.

Here is the truth that may hurt ... and may also set you free:
if you can recognise yourself in these words, then the story is not finished.

You do not need confidence or strength to change. You do not need to “fix” yourself. You only need the courage to question one thought you have treated as final:

What if this is not who I am, but what I learned to be?

Like a snake shedding its skin, growth is not elegant. The old identity does not fall away because it was wrong, but because it no longer fits. Staying inside it eventually costs too much.

If you feel tears as you read this ... anger, grief, relief, know this: they are not weakness. They are a signal. Something in you has not given up.

If you would like support in finding a different way forward, gently, honestly, at your own pace, I am here.
You do not have to do this alone.

31/01/2026

There are songs that comfort you.
And there are songs that tell you the truth and leave you to decide what to do with it.

Fix You belongs to the second kind.

It is not sung loudly at first because suffering does not respond to volume. It responds to recognition. The voice is careful, restrained, almost reverent, as if the singer understands that to rush another person’s pain is a kind of violence.

“When you try your best but you don’t succeed.”
That line does not speak to failure. It speaks to the quiet humiliation of effort without reward. Of doing everything you know how to do and still coming up empty.

The song predates the public collapse of Chris Martin’s marriage, which gives it a particular gravity. It does not sound like hindsight. It sounds like a man already standing inside an unbearable truth: that love does not grant omnipotence.

You cannot fix the people you love.
You can only decide whether you will stay honest ... with them, and with yourself.

When the song finally swells, it is not hope we hear.
It is resolve.

And that is why it endures. Because it refuses to lie about love. It tells us that love is not repair. It is presence, without guarantee of outcome.

Most of us were never taught that.
And many of us suffer because of it.

Sometimes healing does not begin when someone fixes you ...
but when someone is willing to sit with you long enough for the truth to be faced.

https://youtu.be/k4V3Mo61fJM?si=QN6aQ1mrYxeGusvM

30/01/2026

It’s dark, cold and raining here today, and for many people, this winter hasn’t just been a season.
It’s been a test.

A test of how long you can keep going without relief.
Of how much you can carry quietly.

There are people reading this who are exhausted from holding it together. Who wonder, late at night, “Is this just how life feels now?”

Then Here Comes the Sun plays ... and something catches.

Because that song isn’t light or fluffy.
It’s earned.

It was written after a long personal winter, and it carries a truth anxiety tries to erase:
nothing stays frozen forever.

Not your mood.
Not your nervous system.
Not the part of you that feels stuck.

The sun doesn’t negotiate with darkness.
It rises anyway, every single time.

And your mind is built the same way. With the right support, it can soften, recalibrate, and find its way back to hope, even after months of heaviness.

If today feels unbearable, let this land:
you are not broken.
You are not behind.
You are not failing.

Here comes the sun.
And one day you’ll realise this was the moment things began to turn, even though you couldn’t feel it yet.

https://youtu.be/KQetemT1sWc?si=qWEI6T3LmCFB6Eth

29/01/2026

When anxiety is present, conversation stops being a simple exchange of words and becomes something far more fragile. Meaning bends. Tone grows sharp edges it never meant to have. Silence swells with implication. And suddenly, people who love each other begin speaking different languages without realising it.

An anxious mind is not listening from the same place as a settled one. It listens from the doorway, half-turned toward escape, alert to danger that may never come. In that state, a question can sound like an accusation. A pause can feel like abandonment. Even reassurance, offered sincerely, lovingly ... may pass straight through, as though the words were never spoken at all.

This is not because the anxious person is difficult, dramatic, or unwilling. It is because fear narrows perception. The nervous system, once convinced it must protect at all costs, edits reality aggressively. It highlights threat and dims tenderness. It mistakes neutrality for hostility and care for control. And so conversations circle endlessly, not because anyone wants conflict, but because safety has not yet returned.

What often goes unseen is the quiet grief beneath this: the grief of being misunderstood, and of misunderstanding others in return. The grief of knowing you love deeply, yet struggling to hear love clearly when it is offered.

This is where therapeutic work can be quietly transformative. Not by teaching people to “communicate better” while their bodies remain on high alert, but by helping the nervous system lower its guard. When fear loosens its grip, listening changes. Words land where they were meant to land. Reassurance begins to register. Conversations stop feeling like negotiations for safety and start becoming what they were always meant to be, moments of contact.

Healing, then, is not about finding the right phrases or winning the right arguments. It begins when the body learns it is safe enough to listen again. Only then can language soften, meanings settle, and connection find its way home.

26/01/2026

Tiny bottles are out, freedom is in! Heathrow’s new scanners mean you can pack all your favorite liquids without limits. And a big shout out to Edinburgh Bristol Gatwick and Teesside airports who led the way long before, thus making travel just that little bit easier. Lets see who follows next. I hear London City are planning for new machines that will facilitate this change there.

If you could bring any luxury item on your next trip, what would it be? 👜💖

23/01/2026

Most people who fear flying underestimate the cost of their fear.
Not the ticket price ... the cognitive load.
Trying to control things that are outside of their control.

High achievers turn into accidental analysts at 35,000ft: monitoring weather systems, scanning crew behaviour, tracking turbulence, decoding engine pitch, memorising exits, running scenarios. It’s impressive… and completely futile.

None of these behaviours alters the engineering, the training, the redundancies, or the data that make modern aviation one of the safest activities on earth. They only drain bandwidth.

The amygdala assigns you a job you never asked for: “keep the plane in the sky.” It feels rational, until you realise how much executive function is being spent managing a risk that has already been engineered out.

Here’s the irony: the people who pride themselves on logic and scientific thinking often spend the most energy trying to out-think the amygdala… and call that control.

Meanwhile, the elegant solution has been available for decades:
not more data, but direct access to the part of your brain setting off the alarm.

That’s hypnotherapy, not theatrics, but precision nervous system training.
A leveraged intervention.

For people used to optimising portfolio performance, health, and time… it’s surprising how many still outsource their flying experience to adrenaline.

22/01/2026

The Apostle Paul once wrote that we see “through a glass, darkly.” We see but we do not always understand truly what it is that we see. Today that feels less like scripture and more like daily life. We are surrounded by screens, headlines, and AI-generated images that look real enough to hijack our emotions. We generally believe what we see, even when we have no idea if any of it is real.

The result is anxiety. Who do we trust? How do we know what’s true? How do I even know what is right to feel? And what happens when lying becomes normal, not just in politics, but in corporations, media, and even ordinary conversation? Truth starts to depend on which side of the fence you’re standing on.

So how do we avoid being dragged into fear?

Start with active awareness. Question what you see and hear, even from people you trust. Not because they’re bad, but because everyone filters reality to make it acceptable or understandable. Intentions don’t guarantee accuracy.

Next, drop the obsession with certainty. We aren’t meant to have perfect clarity. Trying to control the world through “information” only makes us more anxious.

And finally, pay attention to your own mind. The only thing you actually control is your thinking. Notice what you’re letting in, what you’re believing, and how it shapes your mood. You watch the news because you think to be informed is to be prepared. I would question that my friends.

If we can do that and coolly accept that what we see and hear may not be the full story, we might worry less about the chaos “out there” and focus more on what we can internalize, question, and let go of. Certainty is optional, despite your addiction. Awareness however is essential. Be vigilant and ask questions. You will sleep better when you do.

21/01/2026

Look at a glacier. It moves slowly, relentlessly, carving valleys, scraping stone, leaving scars on the world long after it has passed. And yet, those scars are not weakness. They are proof of force, of endurance, of transformation.

We, too, carry scars. Some are visible, some hidden deep within our hearts and minds. And too often, we look at them and feel shame, as if our struggles make us less than, as if our wounds are flaws.

But here is the truth: what is healed is beautiful. Every scar is a testament to survival, to courage, to the fact that we faced life and kept moving. Scar tissue is stronger than the flesh around it, and so it is with us. Our healed scars are stronger, wiser, more alive than anything untouched.

Your scars are not marks of failure. They are proof of life. They are the lines that trace your journey, the places where you were broken and became whole again. And that ... truly ... that is beautiful.

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Eastbourne Town Centre

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https://robinferrier.co.uk/

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