Counseling | EMDR | Hypnotherapy | Coaching
Freedom Awaits
Welcome. My practice focuses on healing anxiety, trauma, and stubborn habits. I also help people improve relationships, find meaningful life and career direction, connect with their spirituality, and spark their creativity.
My work uses well-established therapeutic approaches that both embrace talk therapy and extend beyond it as needed. This multi-faceted approach can be especially helpful for long-standing and complex issues that leave people thinking, “This is just the way I am,” while also sensing that a more integrated version of themselves is possible.
Sessions are strengths-based, values-oriented, and deeply trauma-informed. I offer thoughtful conversation, practical guidance, EMDR, hypnotherapy, and nervous system-based approaches to help shift deeper patterns.
If this sounds like the kind of help you have been looking for, click the “Request Appointment” button below to schedule a no-cost consultation.
MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling | EMDR-Trained | Board-Certified Hypnotherapist
Common Reasons People Reach Out
Anxiety & Overthinking
Relieve chronic stress, fear, overthinking, and internal pressure. ...
Trauma & PTSD
Process painful experiences, reduce triggers, and build a greater sense of safety and stability. ...
Habits & Self-Defeating Patterns
Work through the deeper issues behind smoking, drinking, avoidance, and other unwanted behaviors. ...
Boundaries & Relationships
Develop healthier boundaries, stronger communication, and more secure connections. ...
Life and Career Direction
Clarify your next steps in work, relationships, and personal growth. ...
Creativity, Performance & Expression
Address blocks, fear, and self-doubt that interfere with authentic expression and creative flow. ...
Spirituality
Navigate deeper questions of meaning, spirituality, and faith. ...
A Proactive Approach
My style is genuine, enthusiastic, and actively engaged. I look for opportunities to help clients work through deeper blocks using attentive listening, thoughtful reflection, active guidance, and deeper processing when needed. I also take a strengths-based approach, helping clients recognize what they do well, what they enjoy, and what feels meaningful to them.
“John helped me with trauma... He is a very talented person who can see and reach people. He likes to see people on the other side of the mountain.”
- Hilma J.
Training & Background
Clinical Counseling & Trauma Work
MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. EMDR-trained, with a focus on complex and developmental trauma. In-person trauma training with leading voices including Bessel van der Kolk and Deb Dana. Board-certified hypnotherapist and one of a small number of board-certified 5-PATH hypnotherapists worldwide.
Communication, Relationships & Self-Understanding
Certified Conversational Intelligence® Coach and Certified Myers-Briggs Practitioner, with experience helping individuals, couples, and teams build trust, communication, psychological safety, and self-understanding.
Spirituality, Meaning & Integration
Direct experience in a wide range of contemplative, devotional, ceremonial, and inquiry-based practices. I have also spoken and presented at national near-death experience conferences. I help clients explore religious trauma, spiritual experiences, and authentic spiritual direction with respect and care.
Creativity, Performance & Life Direction
Former major-label recording artist and author of Map for Success, a career guide recognized by Al Gore’s National Performance Review. This background informs my work with creativity, performance pressure, identity, reinvention, and meaningful career direction.
What Clients Are Saying
These testimonials reflect clients’ experiences with my hypnosis and transformational work. My counseling practice also draws from EMDR, trauma-informed care, and evidence-based clinical training.
By the end of the session, I felt noticeably different. There was a sense of lightness and calm that I hadn't experienced in a long time. It's hard to describe, but it's like I finally accepted this helpless part of myself from the past. I never expected to feel this good after just one session. If you're considering hypnotherapy, I highly recommend giving John at Utter Hypnosis a try. It did something for me that I couldn't achieve on my own. I'm still kind of in awe of how much better I feel after this experience.
I definitely recommend 5 stars for John Utter of Utter Hypnosis. Joanne M.
He thought it would be in my best interest :
(our sessions were about how to further develop medical intuition, animal communication and bringing psychic abilities to ta place where they are clear and eliminating some health issues),
to include some coaching as well and provided great information.
His kindness and desire for his clients' to get the best out of life is evident in everything he does.
I thank you John. So do my clients and wild horses!
Because Success is not Enough
Earlier in life, I reached a goal of getting a major-label recording contract. From the outside, I was successful. Inside, I was struggling with severe anxiety, depression, and the painful realization that the life I had built did not fit me in the way I had hoped.
This realization prompted me to look within. I began working through trauma, re-examining my beliefs, studying healing and human development, and learning what creates real fulfillment.
That journey eventually led me to the counseling profession. It is part of why I care so much about helping people find relief, reconnect with themselves, and build lives that feel more honest, meaningful, and satisfying.
