Certified Hypnotherapist

09/02/2026

Your brain would rather be right than happy. Is that actually true?

You've probably heard some version of this before: Your brain doesn't want you to be happy. It wants to be right. It's a great line, and I've probably even used it myself, but like a lot of pop-neuroscience, it's too simple.

Your brain isn't actually choosing between being right and being happy. Its just an organ, it doesn't actually think, but it learns. That means that it's good at is using what it already knows to make sense of what's happening now. We develop expectations from previous experiences, and those expectations can influence what we notice, what we pay attention to and how we interpret situations. That's where I think this saying gets really interesting.

Imagine someone who learned early in life that people eventually leave. They enter a healthy relationship, but their brain already has a pretty convincing idea of how relationships work. They may notice an unanswered text more than the hundred times their partner showed up. A slightly distracted tone suddenly feels significant. Reassurance feels good temporarily, but the smallest hint of distance feels like confirmation: "See? I knew this would happen". And they spiral.

Or think about someone who's learned the belief I'm not good enough. Ten people compliment their work and one person criticizes it. Which comment do you think they're still thinking about in bed that night? It's not because their subconscious is determined to make them miserable. The criticism simply fits an expectation their brain has learned.

We often describe this as the subconscious trying to "prove itself right," but I think there's a kinder and more accurate way to understand it. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world using what they've learned before. Familiar patterns are easier to recognize, and information that fits our existing expectations can feel particularly convincing.

This is also why changing a long-held belief isn't always as simple as repeating a new affirmation. If someone deeply believes they're unlovable, telling themselves "I am lovable" fifty times in the mirror doesn't automatically erase decades of experiences they've interpreted through the opposite belief. New words are competing with an established pattern of learning, and that pattern has usually been rehearsed thousands of times.

That's where subconscious work becomes much more interesting to me. Rather than simply trying to replace a "negative thought" with a positive one, we can become curious about the expectation underneath it. Where did it come from? What keeps reinforcing it? What does the person notice because they expect it to be true, and what experiences might they be overlooking because those experiences don't fit the old story?

Most importantly, we can start asking what the brain would need to experience differently before another possibility began to feel believable. That's a very different process from simply telling someone what they should think or how they should feel through suggestion in hypnosis.

So, would your brain really rather be right than happy? I don't think that's quite it. I think your brain is incredibly good at using yesterday's learning to interpret what's happening today, even when yesterday's lessons are no longer particularly relevant or useful.

Modern hypnotherapy should factor that part of healing is helping the brain discover that the old prediction isn't the only possible ending.

About Robin Popowich

Robin Popowich, B*h, RCh, is a Board Certified Registered Clinical Hypnotherapist, educator, author and founder of the Academy of Clinical Hypnotherapy. With more than 14 years in full-time clinical practice, Robin has a particular interest in neuroscience, subconscious learning, attachment and the patterns that shape human behaviour. Her approach to modern hypnotherapy moves beyond scripts and simple suggestion, encouraging practitioners to understand not just what a client wants to change, but what the brain may have learned that made the pattern meaningful in the first place.

09/02/2026

Are We Educating People About Mental Health, or Teaching Them to Diagnose Themselves?

Mental health education has never been more accessible. Open almost any social media platform and within a few minutes you can learn about attachment styles, trauma responses, ADHD, narcissism, nervous-system regulation, boundaries and emotional abuse. That accessibility has done some genuinely good things. People have found language for experiences they couldn't previously explain, recognized unhealthy patterns, discovered that help exists and, in some cases, realized that what they were experiencing wasn't something they simply had to endure.

But I think we've reached the point where we need to ask an uncomfortable question: Are we still educating people about mental health, or are we teaching people to diagnose themselves and everyone around them?

When Concepts Become Identities:

Attachment theory is a good example. Understanding attachment can be incredibly useful, but online we've increasingly reduced a complex framework into identities: "I'm anxious." "He's avoidant." "She's a fearful avoidant." Suddenly, an attachment pattern isn't something influenced by relationships, history, circumstances and behaviour, it becomes who that person is, a part of their identity.

The same thing has happened with ADHD, trauma and nervous-system language. Someone isn't distracted, overwhelmed or struggling with executive functioning; they have ADHD. Someone isn't experiencing prolonged stress or responding to a difficult situation; their nervous system is dysregulated. Someone doesn't have painful memories or learned protective behaviours; they're "traumatized."

Any of those interpretations could be correct. The problem is that they could also be wrong.

Good mental health education should increase curiosity about ourselves. I'm concerned that social-media mental health content sometimes does the opposite by giving us an answer before we've really explored the question.

Everyone's Ex Is Apparently a Narcissist:

Few psychological terms have undergone quite the transformation that "narcissist" has online. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a clinical diagnosis, yet narcissist has increasingly become shorthand for selfish, manipulative, emotionally unavailable, unfaithful, arrogant, controlling or simply someone who hurt us.

Those behaviours can be deeply damaging without requiring a diagnosis to make them legitimate.

"Toxic" has undergone a similar transformation. It can be useful language for describing harmful dynamics, but people themselves increasingly become categorized as toxic. Once we apply that label, curiosity often disappears. We stop asking what happened, what patterns are occurring, what responsibility belongs to whom, whether change is possible or whether two people simply bring out unhealthy behaviours in one another.

A label can help us understand something, but it can also give us permission to stop trying to understand it.

Therapy Language Has Entered Everyday Conflict:

We now hear psychological language in ordinary disagreements in ways we rarely did before. Someone sets a boundary. Someone violates a boundary. Someone is gaslighting. Someone is projecting. Someone is triggered. Someone needs to protect their peace. Someone is emotionally unsafe.

Again, these are real and useful concepts. The concern isn't the vocabulary itself; it's what happens when therapeutic language becomes a weapon or an excuse rather than a tool for understanding.

A boundary, for example, describes what I will or won't participate in. It isn't automatically a rule governing what another person is permitted to do. Disagreement isn't necessarily gaslighting. Feeling uncomfortable doesn't automatically mean we're unsafe, and being triggered doesn't necessarily mean another person has done something wrong.

Sometimes discomfort is actually part of healthy relationships. We misunderstand one another, disappoint one another, apologize, negotiate, compromise, tolerate frustration and occasionally hear things about ourselves we'd rather not hear.

If every difficult interaction is interpreted through the language of pathology, trauma and emotional safety, we may accidentally teach people to avoid some of the very experiences through which emotional maturity develops.

The Nervous System Has Become a Character in the Story:

I'm fascinated and excited by the increasing public interest in the nervous system. Understanding stress responses, arousal, regulation and the connection between body and emotion can be enormously helpful, particularly in trauma-informed work.

But even nervous-system education can become oversimplified. We increasingly hear people describe themselves as "dysregulated" as though it is a fixed condition rather than a state that naturally changes throughout the day.

Human nervous systems are supposed to respond to our environment. We become activated when something matters. Our heart rate changes. We experience anxiety before important events. We become angry, excited, frightened and overwhelmed. Then, ideally, we recover.

The goal of emotional health isn't to remain perfectly regulated at all times. A completely unreactive nervous system isn't the definition of wellness. Learning that we can experience activation, tolerate it and return to baseline may be just as important as learning techniques to calm ourselves.

Recognition Isn't Therapy or Diagnosis:

One of the challenges with mental health content is that almost everyone can recognize themselves in it.

Difficulty concentrating? ADHD. Afraid someone will leave? Anxious attachment. Need time alone after conflict? Avoidant attachment. Replay upsetting experiences? Trauma. Feel exhausted after a stressful week? Nervous-system dysregulation.

The problem is that human experiences overlap. A behaviour can have many explanations. Poor concentration can come from stress, sleep deprivation, grief, anxiety, depression, environmental overload or simply having too much going on. Fear of abandonment can have many origins. Wanting space after an argument doesn't automatically reveal someone's attachment style.

A 30-second video can't know the context of someone's life, and a checklist can't replace thoughtful assessment.

Mental Health Education Should Create Better Questions:

I don't want us to stop talking about mental health online, that's the last thing I would suggest. Quite the opposite. I think accessible education is incredibly important, and social media has opened conversations that previous generations often suffered through in silence.

But perhaps responsible education should leave people with better questions rather than increasingly confident diagnoses.

Instead of "My partner is avoidant," perhaps we ask, "What happens between us when intimacy or conflict increases?"

Instead of "My mother is a narcissist," we might ask, "What behaviours are hurting me, and what do I need to do to protect myself?"

Instead of "My nervous system is dysregulated," perhaps it's, "What am I responding to, and what helps me return to a place where I can think clearly again?"

Those questions don't make catchy identities, but they create room for curiosity, context and change.

Author Bio

Robin Popowich, B*h, RCh, is a Board Certified and Registered Clinical Hypnotherapist, educator, author, speaker, and founder of the Academy of Clinical Hypnotherapy. With more than 14 years in full-time clinical practice, Robin's work is grounded in trauma and attachment-informed care, neuroscience, and a deep curiosity about human behaviour. As both a practitioner and educator, she encourages people to use psychological language as a starting point for understanding rather than a shortcut to diagnosis. Her writing often explores the uncomfortable space between popular mental health culture and the far more nuanced reality of working with actual human beings.

09/02/2026

Have we started pathologizing being human?

I love that we're talking about mental health more openly than we did twenty years ago. I love that people know words like trauma, attachment, boundaries and emotional regulation. There is enormous value in finally having language for experiences people once suffered through silently.

But I also wonder if we've gone a little too far in the other direction.

Somewhere along the way, normal human discomfort started getting therapeutic labels. Someone disagrees with us and they're "toxic." Someone behaves selfishly and they're a "narcissist." A difficult conversation becomes "trauma." Feeling uncomfortable becomes being "triggered." Ending a relationship becomes "protecting my peace."

Sometimes those descriptions are absolutely appropriate. Sometimes they're not.

Human beings are complicated. We disappoint each other. We become jealous. We get angry. We misunderstand someone's intentions. We say things badly. We occasionally behave selfishly. We grieve relationships that weren't good for us, miss people we know we shouldn't go back to, and sometimes have reactions that aren't particularly rational.

That's not necessarily pathology. Sometimes that's just being human.

I think good therapeutic work should help us understand our emotions without teaching us to be afraid of them. The goal can't always be to remove every uncomfortable feeling as quickly as possible. Sometimes anxiety is telling us something. Sometimes sadness needs to be felt. Sometimes guilt is appropriate. Sometimes discomfort is what growth feels like.

This is something I think is particularly important for hypnotherapists.

If every uncomfortable emotion becomes something we need to "clear," "release" or "heal," we risk sending clients the message that emotional health means feeling good all the time. It doesn't.

Sometimes our job isn't to make an emotion disappear. It's to become curious about why it's there, what purpose it may be serving, whether it still belongs in the client's life and what the person wants to do with it.

And sometimes the most therapeutic realization is surprisingly simple:

There isn't something wrong with you because this hurts.

You're having a very human response to a very human experience.

We need mental health awareness. But maybe we also need a little more tolerance for the beautifully messy experience of being human.

About Robin Popowich

Robin Popowich, B*h, RCh, is a Board Certified Registered Clinical Hypnotherapist, educator, author and founder of the Academy of Clinical Hypnotherapy. With more than 14 years in full-time clinical practice, her work is grounded in trauma and attachment-informed care, neuroscience, and a deep curiosity about why people think, feel and behave the way they do. As both a practitioner and educator, Robin encourages a thoughtful approach to mental health that makes room for complexity, questions popular therapeutic narratives, and recognizes that not every difficult emotion or uncomfortable human experience needs to become a diagnosis or something that needs to be “fixed.”

09/02/2026

We don't always have to chase wonderment and mirth. The world can be a hard, icky place. People can be awful, s**t can and will go sideways, and it's nice to have people in your life who acknowledge how hard it is, how sad you feel without telling you it could be worse.

May we all strive to be those people.

09/02/2026

What if your subconscious isn't stuck in the past and is actually predicting your future?

We tend to talk about the subconscious like it's a giant filing cabinet filled with old memories, beliefs and experiences. Regression to cause has been the foundation of hypnotherapy since Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer popularized the concept of hypnotic regression therapy in their 1895 book "Studies on Hysteria". 1895!!!!!

But I think there's another way of looking at it that I find far more interesting. Your brain is constantly using what it has already learned to make predictions about what might happen next.

Think about what that means in real life. If you've experienced rejection before, you might become incredibly good at noticing the tiniest sign that someone is pulling away. If conflict used to feel unsafe, a change in someone's tone might create a reaction in your body before you've even consciously decided something is wrong. If you've spent years believing you're going to fail, you may walk into a new opportunity already watching for evidence that you can't do it. Note: none of this is conscious, it's all subconscious.

We sometimes call these things self-sabotage, but I'm starting to dislike that term. Your brain isn't sitting there plotting ways to ruin your life. It's usually doing what brains are supposed to do : learning from experience and using that information to try to anticipate what comes next. To keep you alive. Not happy, not professionally successful, alive.

That's one of the things I find so fascinating about hypnotherapy and subconscious work. Instead of always asking, What's wrong with me? or even Why am I like this?, we can ask a much more interesting question: What has my brain learned to expect?

And then we can get curious instead of judgmental. The person who constantly expects abandonment isn't necessarily "too needy or "too cold". Someone who shuts down during conflict isn't necessarily emotionally unavailable. The person who procrastinates every time a big opportunity comes their way isn't necessarily lazy. There may be something underneath that behaviour that makes perfect sense when we understand what the brain has learned from previous experiences.

And this is where hypnotherapy gets really interesting. Good hypnotherapy isn't simply telling someone to "be confident," "stop worrying" or "think positively." It's an opportunity to explore the patterns, associations, expectations and internal experiences that may be keeping something going, and then begin creating different experiences for the brain to learn from.

I don't think we need to treat the subconscious like an enemy that needs to be conquered. In many ways, it's been an excellent student of your life. It has noticed patterns, made associations and tried to use what happened yesterday to help you navigate tomorrow.

The trouble is, sometimes it's working with old, outdated and irrelevant information.

Maybe that's a modern way to think about hypnotherapy and healing, we aren't struggling with the subconscious or trying to overpower it. We're helping it discover that what it learned back then doesn't necessarily have to predict what happens next. ANYMORE.

About Robin Popowich
Robin Popowich, B*h, RCh, is a Board Certified Registered Clinical Hypnotherapist, educator, author and founder of the Academy of Clinical Hypnotherapy. With more than 14 years in full-time practice and thousands of hours spent working directly with clients, Robin is fascinated by the intersection of neuroscience, subconscious learning and human behaviour. Her approach to hypnotherapy is trauma and attachment informed, curious rather than prescriptive, and grounded in the belief that many of the patterns we struggle with make much more sense when we understand what the brain has learned along the way.

12/10/2025

06/10/2021

01/02/2021

A recent article (October 2020) on 'Scientific American' discusses current research on hypnosis and suggestibility,
A new challenge has arisen to a series of renowned psychological studies that purported to provide a window into how the brain processes internal representations of our physical “self.”
You can read more about it here,

Suggestibility may explain why people “feel” vicarious pain or sensation in a fake hand

06/15/2020

The next Accredited Clinical Hypnotherapy program starts in September 2020! Graduation to take place July 2021.

This an all inclusive mastery program taught by an extensively trained and experienced instructor. Skills taught include mastery in Clinical Hypnotherapy protocols and techniques and the expertise required to build a successful private practice.

03/30/2020

Covid Coping Tip #2

If you're feeling stressed or frustrated or even impatient with the kids, stop everything! Play your favorite song from a time in your life when you were happy and carefree. Pick a song you used to love to dance to.

Play it loud and dance!

Physical activity encourages the brain to produce endorphins. Endorphins are polypeptides made by the pituitary gland and central nervous system. Endorphins primarily help us deal with stress and reduce feelings of pain.

Producing Endorphins also encourages the production of Dopamine. Dopamine makes us feel happy and motivated.

Listening to a favorite song from a time in our lives when we felt happy enables us to tap into that emotional state.