Diagnosis to hypnosis: Blenheim GP’s career trance-formation

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Dr Rosland Gellatly is "semi retiring" from being a GP to embark on a new journey as a life coach and hypnotherapist.

Anthony Phelps/STUFF

Dr Rosland Gellatly is “semi retiring” from being a GP to embark on a new journey as a life coach and hypnotherapist.

After nearly four decades spent serving the Blenheim community as a GP, Dr Rosland (Ros) Gellatly is taking a step back from the surgery and embarking on a new journey after she realised the old path she was travelling on had left her burnt-out.

Gellatly said her new career would still see her help people with their problems, but in a very different way – using “skills not pills” in the form of hypnosis and life coaching.

The transition came about after attending a virtual conference late last year on mental health issues and burn-out among doctors, nurses and other medical staff.

After the conference, Gellatly said she realised it was time to make changes herself.

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“It was getting to the stage where I would go to work, come home, get myself something to eat, sit in front of the TV, go to sleep, go to work, and my life was getting narrower and narrower.

”It wasn’t completely black, but it was becoming more and more that way and I wouldn’t do some social things because I just didn’t have the energy any more.

“So I got to the point where I thought ‘I can’t keep going on like this, I have to do something about it’ which is what started me on this new journey,” she said.

Gellatly said curiosity during this time led her to undertake a life coaching course and by the end of it, she knew she’d found her next move.

Gellatly said she was feeling burnt out after nearly 40 years working as a GP in Blenheim.

Anthony Phelps/STUFF

Gellatly said she was feeling burnt out after nearly 40 years working as a GP in Blenheim.

“Having got into it, I actually thought ‘wow, this is actually what I want to do’, so I wanted to start to develop this other aspect of my life,” she said.

As well as becoming a qualified life coach, Gellatly also trained to become a certified hypnotherapist, something she’d dabbled in previously, but had to put on the back burner because of her work as a GP – until now.

Gellatly said that by using a combination of life coaching and hypnosis skills, she was able to treat patients with the same problems that she saw in her surgery, but in a completely different manner.

“What I’ve found with this new direction is it’s about skills not pills. There are so many things I saw as a GP that I can actually now help with in a completely different way; all the people with anxiety, people with chronic pain, people with phobias, people with trauma in their background.

Gellatly said she still pops into the doctors' surgery a couple of times a week to help out.

Gellatly said she still pops into the doctors’ surgery a couple of times a week to help out.

“It is fantastic for addictions; smoking is the obvious one, but you can use it with other addictions as well such as food, booze and drugs,” she said.

Gellatly said at the core of her work was the use of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a psychological approach to changing someone’s thoughts and behaviours to help achieve their desired outcomes.

“NLP is about how do we organise the way we think? Because, of course, the way we think and what we believe spills out into what we do and how we live.”

Gellatly said NLP and hypnosis were great ways to unpick the brain and change people’s behaviours.

Gellatly said NLP and hypnosis were great ways to unpick the brain and change people’s behaviours.

Gellatly said her new approach with hypnotherapy wasn’t about making people revisit traumatic episodes of the past as she didn’t want to re-traumatise them.

“People who are anxious or depressed, giving their brain a little time of just calm when everything else is just so hyper is a really great start because then you can start to actually unpack and unlock what’s going on underneath.

“It’s not counselling or therapy, it’s about utilising how the brain works and what we believe about ourselves drives our behaviour, and thoughts and our feelings.

“Once you realise that the cost to you personally is actually far outweighing what it is apparently giving you, then you can start to make that change,” she said.

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