Anxiety & Burnout Therapist & Hypnotherapist - with 19+ Years of Experience
Last updated: 21 May 2026
I'm Emma — an Anxiety & Burnout Freedom Therapist and Hypnotherapist based in Nottingham, working online with high-achieving women across the UK. With over 19 years of clinical experience, I am the creator of The Freedom Formula™ — a root-cause methodology combining clinical hypnotherapy, nervous system regulation, and subconscious reprogramming to resolve anxiety and burnout at the source.
I work with women who are exhausted from holding everything together, women who look calm and capable on the outside, while privately running on empty. Women whose nervous systems are stuck in survival mode, even when their lives look successful on paper.
My work isn't about managing anxiety better. It's about resolving what's actually driving it; in the subconscious mind, in the nervous system, in the patterns that have been running in the background for years. That's what The Freedom Formula™ is built to do.
If you've tried understanding your anxiety, talking about it, reading about it and you're still waking up with that tight feeling in your chest, still lying awake at 3 am, still running on a treadmill that feels set too high and too fast, then you're in exactly the right place.
What makes Emma Draycott different
Before I tell you about my work, I need to tell you something important.
Everything I do is grounded in 19+ years of professional, clinical training and experience. But it's also grounded in something else: the fact that I've been the woman sitting where you might be sitting right now.
The woman who kept going when every part of her was asking her to stop. The woman who looked completely together on the outside, while quietly falling apart on the inside. The woman who couldn't give herself permission to rest, even when her body was begging her to.
I don't work with anxiety and burnout from a distance. I truly know what it feels like from the inside.
My Story
Long before I had my own practice, I had already spent years working in frontline mental health services — as a therapist, and then as a manager of services that were nationally recognised for innovation and excellence. I understood anxiety clinically. I understood burnout professionally. I supported others through their hardest moments every single day.
And then a car accident changed everything. A head injury, PTSD, chronic migraines, and brain fog that followed were significant. My body was in genuine crisis. And what did I do?
I pushed for a promotion. I kept working. I told myself I was fine. I used every ounce of energy to perform - to show up, to lead, to seem like my usual self. And then I'd collapse in a dark room, unable to hold a conversation, unable to cook, unable to watch television, unable to function at all.
Other than my husband, the people around me had no idea.
My GP looked at me and told me I needed to be signed off work. I begged her not to. The guilt, the responsibility, the shame of stopping — it felt unbearable. Even then, even with a brain injury, even with a body that was genuinely breaking down, I couldn't give myself permission to rest.
That's when I truly understood something I hadn't felt before, despite years of clinical training: this wasn't a willpower problem. This wasn't a weakness. My nervous system had been in survival mode for so long that it had forgotten how to feel safe. And no amount of understanding that intellectually was going to change it.
The breaking point came from something completely ordinary. A problem with a delivery. I broke down completely. And somewhere in that moment — overwhelmed, exhausted, barely recognising myself — something shifted.
Something had to change.
Read what this made possible for my clients
Read more
What followed was the most important work of my life and the foundation of everything I now do with clients.
Not just more talking or challenging thoughts. Not more reliving the past and more and more analysis.
Something deeper. Hypnotherapy. Nervous system regulation. Subconscious reprogramming. Going to where the patterns actually live — not just naming them, but changing them there and having coping strategies that actually work and fit a dynamic life.
The difference was profound. Not just feeling calmer. But the physical sensation of my nervous system finally beginning to feel safe. Waking up without that immediate wave of dread. Being able to make decisions without spiralling for days afterwards. Being present with the people I loved, not just in the room with them, but actually there.
I realised something that has shaped every session I've held since: most approaches to anxiety and burnout work on the conscious mind — the 5% we can think and talk our way through. But the patterns driving high-functioning anxiety and burnout live in the other 95%. The subconscious. The nervous system. The body.
That realisation became The Freedom Formula™ — a methodology built from 19+ years of clinical expertise, my own healing, and hundreds of client transformations since. A process that works because it goes where the problem actually lives.
Qualifications & Training
My work draws on an integrative range of therapeutic training across nearly two decades:
Social Work BA (Hons)
Post Graduate Certificate in Practice Education
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (APT)
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (APT)
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Hypnotherapy
Single Session Therapy
Breathwork Coach
Coaching and Mentoring
Trauma-Informed Practice Accredited
Accredited Mental Health First Aid Trainer
Professional registration: Registered Social Worker
— Social Work England
Social Work England registration upholds the highest standards of professional ethics, accountability and ongoing practice in the UK.
You can find out more at www.socialworkengland.org.uk
Before Private Practice
Before I moved into private practice, I spent years at the frontline of mental health services, both as a practitioner and as a manager leading teams that were nationally recognised for innovation and excellence in mental health support.
I've been nominated multiple times for knowledge and excellence in clinical practice. I've supported people through their most acute moments of crisis. I've held spaces that required both great clinical skill and profound human compassion.
This background matters, not as a credential to display, but because it means that when a client arrives in one of my sessions, I've seen the full spectrum of how anxiety and burnout show up. And I understand exactly where The Freedom Formula™ fits into that picture.
I'm not new to this. And the women I work with can feel that from the very first conversation.
Everything that I have learnt — clinically, professionally, and through my own lived experience of anxiety, burnout, and healing is distilled into The Freedom Formula™. It is the methodology that makes my approach to anxiety therapy and hypnotherapy distinct from anything else available online or in the UK.
A little more about me
Outside of the work, the things that genuinely restore me tend to be the simplest ones.
Long walks with Joey, my dog. The quiet of being in nature. Music, dancing and musicals — that brings me to tears of joy and contentment.
Discovering new places, especially those with a remarkable spa. My favourite so far: a salt pool inside a cave in Seville, where you float weightlessly. Absolutely magical.
And more than anything, a real connection. The kind of conversation where time disappears. The kind of presence that reminds you why any of this matters.
I believe that the capacity to rest, to play, to be truly present in the ordinary moments of your life, that's not a luxury. It's the evidence that the work is actually working.
It's what I want for every woman I sit with.
★★★★★ 5.0 — 5* Rated on Google by clients across the UK - here is what a few of them said:
'"Emma has changed my life in such a positive way — something I never thought was possible with therapy."
'
"I now approach challenges with confidence and feel a genuine sense of inner peace that was missing before."
in my story, in the patterns I've described, in the way I talk about this work. I'd gently invite you to trust that recognition.
That sense of she gets it is usually the beginning of something.
The first step is a free, no-pressure conversation where we'll talk about what you're experiencing, what you want to feel instead, and whether working together feels like the right fit.
There's nothing to lose and everything that's been quietly costing you to gain.
If something on this page felt familiar...
Frequently asked questions
Important: This site provides therapeutic and coaching content for general information. It is not a substitute for medical advice or emergency mental health support. If you are in crisis, please call 999, the Samaritans on 116 123, or text SHOUT to 85258.