AN AYR author is helping thousands across the country, including celebrities, overcome their anxiety with his powerful self-help book.

Local man Kevin Mullin founded Serenity NLP after a tragedy-stricken life moved him to the world of therapy. He lost his brother to suicide before having to deal with the death of his mum shortly after.

The 43-year-old was crippled with anxiety but was determined to find a new dynamic way to beat it. Having served in the army for 18 years, Kevin said he had simply seen too many bad things leading to the eventual decline of his mental health. And it was then he set up his business based in Wellington Square in Ayr before later launching his book to help people further afield.

Kevin’s methods for beating anxiety involve quick treatment through Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which he says removes anxiety rather than learning to cope with it.

He told the Ayr Advertiser:”One thing I learned about anxiety when I was suffering was that it was relentless, it wouldn’t give up. It never got tired, and I decided that is a good quality. People never see any good in anxiety, but there is good because it’s a normal human emotion that we do all need to experience from time to time. So if I use the qualities of anxiety against it, because it’s an emotion and I’m a person, I’ll always come out on top. So that’s the outlook we go with people.

“The majority of people have that heavy churning feeling in their stomach and that controls your mood as soon as you open your eyes because it’s the first thing you feel. You start overthinking, start thinking everyone’s talking about you and you become paranoid. One of the biggest things is you withdraw from the world. You become a recluse and you say yes to things that will hurt you, so you people-please and you don’t want to upset anybody. You become a barn mouse. I don’t want you to be a barn mouse. I want you to leave my office feeling like a lion, and anxiety turns you into a mouse.

“The book’s there to help people who overthink, who do get flashbacks, people who do get that churning, heart palpitations in their chest. It’s there to completely remove that. I have doctors referring people to me on the sly because they can’t do it properly. I’ve had clients coming in telling me their doctors can’t officially refer them but told them my name and that they should go.”

Kevin’s success has brought celebrities to his door such as Kerry Katona and Gail Porter. But Kevin wants the world to embrace this type of therapy.

He added: “My vision for this is to be the new way of therapy, the fast acting, fast hitting, instant change model that we’re using as opposed to the old 18-20 week talk based therapies because people in this day and age want things now, they want it fast and they want it to last, so we want this to just keep getting bigger.”