This Privacy Policy document contains types of information that is collected and recorded by Michael Psychotherapy, accessible at michaelpsychotherapy.co.uk, and how we use it.
If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us by email at info@michaelpsychotherapy.co.uk.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
We are a Data Controller of your information.
The UK Information Comissioner’s Office has their website here: http://ico.org.uk
Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this Privacy Policy depends on the Personal Information we collect and the specific context in which we collect the information:
- Our needs to perform a contract with you
- You have given us permission to do so
- Processing your personal information is in our legitimate interests
- We need to comply with the law
Lawful Basis
In my case, ‘legitimate interests’ is the primary reason for processing your data. This generally includes the following:
- Direct contact details e.g. telephone, email, for organising sessions and being able to inform you about cancellations etc.
- Email for zoom calls.
- Your physical address if I visit you for sessions.
- Your emergency contact details.
- A lot of hypnosis / trance work is about eliciting emotional states, or about avoiding “hot potato” or “triggering” subjects. This includes things like “not mentioning children if the client is unhappily childless”, “getting the gender of their spouse correct”, “knowing how to talk about the advice their parents gave them”, etc.
- It is also extremely useful to know about a clients phobias even if I’m not doing phobia work with them.
- Sleep habits are also extremely relevant to my work with clients.
- Smoking, alchohol and caffeine consumption information is also extremely useful for my work with clients even if I’m not working on those issues with that client, because they effect stress which effects everything else we do.
The DUAA (2025) has now added ‘recognised legitimate interests’ lawful basis. When you use personal information for certain ‘recognised legitimate interests’ it removes the need for you to balance the impact on an individual against the benefits of that use e.g. when protecting public safety. For example, the change now allows you to give personal information to organisations such as the police without you having to make a judgement about the necessity. The organisation making the request is responsible for this decision.
Personal data that we process shall not be kept for longer than is necessary. We will retain and use your information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our policies.
If you are a resident of the UK or European Economic Area (EEA), you have certain data protection rights. If you wish to be informed what Personal Information we hold about you and if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us by email.
Your Rights
In certain circumstances, you have the following data protection rights :
- The right to access, update or to delete the information we have on you.
- The right of rectification.
- The right to object.
- The right of restriction.
- The right to data portability
- The right to withdraw consent
Further Information:
Data Protection Complaints
You should contact me via my email or via the website contact form if you have any complaints about how I have used your data.
The DUAA (2025) clarifies that I only need to make ‘reasonable and proportionate’ searches when someone asks for access to their personal information. I am not required to check every single document/email, etc. if the information is unlikely to contain relevant data or is disproportionately difficult.
Contact Form
When you contact us via our website Contact form, we will collect your name and email address. By using the Contact Form you consent to us using this information for correspondence purposes, notably to discuss your interest in Hypnotherapy treatment and to book an appointment. To have your email deleted from our records, please contact us by email.
Blog Subscription Service
When you sign up to our Blog Subscription service, we will collect your email address. By using the Blog Suscription service you consent to us using this information in order to send you by email our Blog Posts as and when they are published. To unsubscribe and have your email deleted from this service, either click “Unsubscribe” at the bottom of a Blog Post email, or contact us by email.
Testimonials
Subject to your prior consent, we may publish information you provide about treatment you received from us as a Testimonial on our website. Such information may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use (or misuse) of such information by others. To have your testimonial deleted from our website please contact us by email.
Cookies
Like any other website, our website uses ‘cookies’. These cookies are used to store information including visitors’ preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users’ experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors’ browser type and/or other information.
You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. More information on how to do this can be found by visiting the following links :
- https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en (Chrome);
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences (Firefox);
- http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/security/cookies/ (Opera);
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies (Internet Explorer);
- https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21411 (Safari); and
- https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy (Edge).
Note that if you block cookies, some features of our website may not be available to you.
Links to other sites
Our website may contain links to other sites (Facebook, Twitter, PayPal etc). Our Privacy Policy does not apply to other websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these other sites for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.
Log Files
Our website follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.
Children’s Information
We do not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 18. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.
Online Privacy Policy Only
This privacy policy applies only to our online activities and is valid for visitors to our website with regards to the information shared and/or collected online. This policy is not applicable to any information collected offline or via channels other than this website.
Consent
By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy. We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, and we invite you to check this page periodically to ensure you are happy with any changes to it.