AN AYR hypnotherapist has told how his experience as a soldier in tough warzones helped him write a book to help people beat anxiety.

Kevin Mullin, who runs Serenity NLP offering sessions which help directly tackle the mental health issue, launched his book ‘Anxiety, It’s Time To Go’ in January last year.

A year on, he has hailed the positive reviews of his book which he believes has helped many become anxiety free.The therapist never even realised the book was such a hit, after a hectic year for his business and talking at mental health groups.

Kevin told the Advertiser: “I wasn’t really monitoring book sales or anything. Then before I know it I’m getting notifications from my publisher saying you’ve sold out on Amazon, they’ve sold out their stock of me four times in the past few months.

Kevin a former soldier who spent 18 years in the army and six as a private contractor for the US department in Afghanistan, says part of his books success is that it’s straight talking.

He added: “We just cut away all the clag, all the psychobabble and the rubbish that confuses people, we told them what anxiety is, what they need to do and how they do it.

Anxiety is a current, this moment in time thing, it doesn’t matter where it came from it’s here that’s what we deal with that’s what we challenge, that’s what we take.

“You can waste four hours talking about the past but it’s not going to make any difference it’s not going to make things any better, why not go straight to the part that hurts and fix it and that’s what the books about essentially.”

For Kevin, supporting people with their mental health carries a personal motivation after he lost his brother to suicide. and he’s teamed up with Kris Boyd and his mental health foundation – set up after the football star’s brother took his own life.

Kevin is hoping to spread the message that anxiety can be tackled with the right approach.

He added: “When you do what I did for a living you see anxiety on a level that people couldn’t imagine, people crying, people getting scared, vomiting because they are scared about what’s coming next and I thought you can’t live your life like that.

“I can take anxiety away from someone in 45 minutes, flat done for good, not a trick, not smoke and mirrors, not thinking their actually made better.”