Christine Joanna Hart

Whatever
Happened
to Me?

Do you ever long for yourself?

Not simply for being younger, or for an old relationship, house or life. For you.

Sunday Times Bestselling Author · Investigative Psychotherapist
Whatever Happened to Me? book cover
The Missing Self

The clever you.The confident you.The creative you.The sexual you.The ambitious you.The person who once expected something from life.

Perhaps you remember that person clearly?

Or perhaps you have always had the strange feeling that there is more of you somewhere, but you have never quite been able to reach them.

We tend to imagine that each of us is one solid, continuous I.

One mind. One personality. One set of feelings.

That is how we often picture ourselves.

One face. One voice. One person who should feel the same way in every situation.

But look more closely.

The same person can contain a confident self, a frightened self, a protective self, a playful self and a deeply private self.

They are not five different people.

They are five ways the same human being may organise experience.

ONE SOLID “I” ONE PERSON · MANY PARTS different states, still the same human being

Not multiple personalities. One person with an inner system.

But ordinary human psychology is much more interesting than that.

We are not as psychologically singular as we imagine.

This does not mean that having different sides to yourself is a disorder.

It is normal to contain different psychological states, roles and parts.

C. G. Jung wrote about complexes: clusters of memory, emotion and expectation that can become activated almost as though a particular inner character has stepped forward.

Later psychological approaches used different language, but recognised something similar.

We recognise it in everyday speech without thinking twice.

Part of me wants to leave.

Part of me is frightened.

I am confident at work, but in relationships I become somebody else.

I know what I should do. I simply cannot seem to do it.

Those contradictions do not necessarily mean that something is wrong with you.

They may mean that different parts of you learned different ways of surviving.

NOT A TENNIS BALL smooth · singular · indivisible MORE LIKE AN ORANGE

One whole self, but made of segments. Each belongs to the same person. Each may carry a different memory, fear, job, desire or strength.

THE COMPETENT ONE
THE PLEASER
THE WATCHER
THE FIGHTER
THE PLAYFUL ONE

An orange is one fruit.

But it is made of segments.

In the same way, you are one person, but different parts of you can carry different experiences.

One part may be highly competent.

Another may have learned to please.

Another watches constantly for danger.

Another fights.

Another keeps the whole life running, whatever the cost.

Under trauma, abandonment, shame, grief, coercion or prolonged stress, these divisions can become stronger.

Why?

Because survival requires adaptation.

A quality that was once natural may become unsafe. Anger may have to disappear. Confidence may have to go quiet. Sexuality, creativity, trust, ambition, playfulness or the ability to say no may be pushed out of ordinary reach.

But what happens to the parts of us that could not safely remain?

A woman overlooking an illuminated city
One person. More than one self-state.

Which version of you had to disappear?

Not another personality. Not another person. Different parts of one life, carrying different memories, capacities, fears and possibilities.

A lantern burning in darkness
THE CREATIVE SELF?
THE INTELLECTUAL?
THE TRUSTING SELF?
THE AMBITIOUS SELF?
THE SEXUAL SELF?

The child who expected to be loved?

The person who could say no?

The person who knew what they wanted?

The person who once believed the world contained possibilities for them?

Regain your Queen.

Regain your King.

Regain the part of you that can govern your own life and bring it towards its fullest expression.

Personal one-to-one consultation with Christine Joanna Hart
1

A rare, focused hour of Christine’s investigative therapeutic work, devoted entirely to the question you bring.

One extraordinary session.

You do not have to commit to therapy.

Come with the thing you cannot understand.

The relationship you cannot leave behind.

The life that no longer feels like yours.

The pattern that keeps returning.

The success you cannot quite inhabit.

The fear that makes no rational sense.

Or simply the feeling that something has gone missing.

Give me one session to investigate it with you.

The purpose is not to promise a diagnosis, a cure, or a miraculous answer in an hour. It is to look properly at what is happening, identify what may sit beneath it, and give you a clearer map of where the work might begin.

Book a consultation

WE SURVIVE.

BUT SOMETIMES WE SURVIVE
WITHOUT EVERY PART OF US ON BOARD.

Exile→Retrieval→Integration→Sovereignty

Christine Joanna Hart spent much of her professional life looking for hidden evidence and the story underneath the visible story.

Now she began applying the same instinct to the psyche.

Not as a metaphorical flourish.

As an investigation.

01
Who had gone missing?
02
Why did they disappear?
03
What happened immediately beforehand?
04
Who stepped forward in their place?
05
What had that part been protecting ever since?

And could the missing self be found?

The investigation is not simply into what hurt. It is also into what disappeared from ordinary reach, and whether it can be recognised, approached and brought back into the present.

This became the foundation of Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy.

The work combines integrative psychotherapy and parts work with Jungian ideas about complexes, Gestalt influences associated with Fritz Perls, embodied and symbolic exploration and, where appropriate, shamanic journeying.

It is not about destroying the parts that helped us survive.

Those parts often performed extraordinary jobs.

The protector may look like anxiety, anger, perfectionism, compliance, vigilance or relentless competence. Its methods may cause problems now, but its original job was often protection.

They may have kept us employable, agreeable, watchful, funny, invisible, formidable or simply alive.

The work is to understand why they appeared, what they protected, and what may have been pushed out of ordinary reach when they took over.

Because sometimes the problem is not that we lack intelligence, courage, creativity or power.

“The problem is not absence of power. It is power without ownership.”
What might have been exiled?
THE INTELLIGENT CHILD
THE AMBITIOUS ADOLESCENT
THE ARTIST
THE SELF WHO CAN SAY NO

Retrieval therefore means more than finding a wounded child.

What was exiled may be precisely the part we now need: intelligence, authority, sensuality, imagination, ambition, anger, playfulness, confidence, creativity or the capacity to receive love.

Retrieval must eventually become sovereignty.

Not permanent obedience to an old wound. Not permanent dependence on a therapist. The recovered self comes back into the life and begins to live there.

Regain your Queen.Regain your King.Regain the part of you that can govern your own life and bring it towards its fullest expression.
Whatever Happened to Me? The Missing Self
Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy

Whatever Happened to Me?

The Missing Self

Turquoise and gold contemplative face

CHRISTINE JOANNA HART

Sunday Times Bestselling Author · published by Hodder & Stoughton

More than twenty-five years inside Fleet Street journalism and professional investigation, with work published in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail.

MBACP Registered Practitioner

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This is not a therapy built from a book.

The book grew from the therapy, and the therapy grew from more than thirty years of searching.

Before training as an integrative psychotherapist, Christine had already spent decades trying to understand why a person could possess intelligence, courage and capability, yet find some of those qualities strangely unavailable in the very places they were most needed.

That search took her through psychotherapy and trauma work, including primal therapy in Los Angeles, through psychodynamic and Jungian ideas, Gestalt work influenced by Fritz Perls, and through spiritual and shamanic exploration in places including India and Peru.

Her shamanic practice developed out of experiences that began after a near-death experience (NDE) in early adulthood.

She later trained professionally in integrative psychotherapy and became an MBACP registered practitioner.

What does Retrieval mean?

In shamanic traditions, Retrieval describes the return of something essential that has become separated, hidden or inaccessible after shock, loss or trauma.

In psychotherapy, we might use different language: a dissociated state, an exiled part, a complex, an abandoned capacity, a self-state that became unsafe to inhabit.

Exiled Self Therapy allows both maps to remain available.

You do not need to take Ayahuasca.

You do not need to adopt somebody else's spiritual belief system.

You do not even have to decide whether an inner image is “psychological” or “spiritual” before working with it.

The question is simpler: does this experience help us find what was lost, understand why it disappeared, and bring it safely back into relationship with the present self?

Drawing on integrative psychotherapy, Jungian ideas, parts work, Gestalt influences, investigation, embodied and symbolic work and, where appropriate, shamanic journeying, the work asks:

Do you long for yourself?
Could part of you actually be missing?

Perhaps the person who disappeared was not destroyed.

Perhaps they have simply been waiting somewhere safe until you came back?

Explore the work
About Christine Joanna Hart

I have spent my life looking for missing things.

When I look back now, the different parts of my life make far more sense to me than they did while I was living them.

I have been a private investigator, an investigative journalist, an author, a psychotherapist and a lifelong explorer of mystical and shamanic experience. On paper those can look like completely different lives.

I no longer think they are.

I was always looking for what had gone missing.

I began investigating professionally when I was young, learning the craft around experienced ex-CID and former intelligence professionals. That eventually led me into a career of more than twenty-five years inside Fleet Street journalism and professional investigation, with work published in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail. I became a Sunday Times bestselling author, published by Hodder & Stoughton, and my work brought television and radio appearances including GMTV and BBC World Service.

Investigation taught me something that never left me: the visible story and the real story are not necessarily the same thing.

You look for the fracture. The thing that doesn’t fit. The missing evidence. The person nobody is talking about. You learn not to accept an explanation simply because it has been repeated often enough.

But underneath my professional investigations, another investigation had been taking place for most of my life.

Christine Joanna Hart

My own story began with profound disruption. I experienced separation, adoption, abuse and a return to care. I learned very early that a human being can survive experiences that nevertheless leave something behind.

And I did survive.

I was intelligent, resourceful and extraordinarily capable in some areas of my life. I could investigate difficult stories, enter dangerous situations, write books and build a career.

Yet there were other areas in which I seemed unable to use on my own behalf the very qualities I knew I possessed.

How could I have power and yet somehow not own it?

A woman stepping into the public world
THE OUTER WORLD
Gold, glamour and the sensual life
APPETITE · GLAMOUR · THE SENSUAL SELF
A woman calling out from a mountain summit
THE WILL TO LIVE
The InvestigatorTrained by ex-MI6 and ex-CID officers, Christine spent more than thirty years looking beneath the visible story for private intelligence agencies—including one known within the industry as MI6’s commercial arm.
The WriterSunday Times bestselling author published by Hodder & Stoughton and translated into Punjabi; more than twenty-five years inside Fleet Street journalism and professional investigation.
The Therapist & Shamanic PractitionerMBACP registered integrative practitioner turning investigation inward, and a gifted, highly experienced shamanic practitioner.

For more than thirty years I hunted for an answer to questions that ordinary explanations had not settled. I travelled globally: experiencing and studying Primal Scream Therapy in Los Angeles, California; meeting and interviewing sadhus—ash-smeared Hindu holy men—in India; learning from practitioners of the Tibetan Bön tradition; and travelling to Peru, where I experienced ayahuasca and kambo. I eventually brought that long search into four years of professional integrative training, gaining my diploma and becoming a registered member of the BACP—the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

A lone figure walking towards a mountain monastery
Lantern burning in darknessNDE · AGE NINETEENA near-death experience changed the direction of Christine Joanna Hart’s life. Ordinary consciousness was no longer an adequate explanation. The NDE became the beginning of more than thirty years investigating what survives, what disappears and what may return.
Woman overlooking an illuminated cityLOS ANGELESChristine Joanna Hart studied and underwent Primal Scream Therapy in Los Angeles, California. The work was bodily and somatic: an encounter with early experience held below polished adult narrative. It taught her that insight alone does not always reach the place where trauma began.
Turquoise and gold contemplative faceINDIAIn India she met and interviewed sadhus—Hindu ascetics whose ash-covered bodies express their renunciation of ordinary worldly identity. Their spiritual discipline widened her investigation beyond the Western clinical map: the symbolic and sacred became material to explore, not symptoms to dismiss.
Bird in flight over mountainsPERUIn Peru she entered shamanic traditions directly, experiencing ayahuasca and kambo and exploring journeying and Retrieval: the possibility that shock or loss can leave something essential outside ordinary reach, and that it can be approached and brought home.
Christine Joanna HartPROFESSIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPYFour years of intensive integrative training led to a professional diploma and registered membership of the BACP—the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. It gave the long investigation a clinical container: ethics, psychological theory, disciplined listening and safe therapeutic practice.

But psychology was never the whole of my search.

At nineteen, I had a near-death experience—an NDE.

It was not a decorative spiritual anecdote. It altered the central question of my life. Consciousness no longer seemed reducible to the ordinary map, and the experiences that followed refused to be tidied away as imagination simply because conventional language could not contain them.

After the NDE, capacities emerged that I had not possessed—or had not consciously recognised—before: heightened intuition, an ability to perceive what sat beneath a person’s spoken story, and a healing sensitivity that later became central to my work. I cannot prove whether the experience created those abilities or uncovered them. But they were real in their effects, and they gave the search its purpose.

For more than thirty years I investigated that threshold through mysticism, shamanic journeying, symbolism, altered states and psychotherapy. The NDE was the opening. The work that followed was the long attempt to understand what had opened.

I became increasingly unwilling to decide in advance what an experience must be.

Something can be psychologically meaningful without proving or disproving its spiritual reality. A client can encounter an inner figure as a part of the psyche, an archetype, a spiritual presence, or simply something they do not yet have words for.

The investigation can remain open.

Eventually my two worlds met.

The investigator who had spent years looking outside herself began investigating inside.

Instead of asking only Why am I like this?, I began asking much more specific questions.

Who is missing? When did they disappear? What happened to them? Who stepped forward in their place? What did that new part have to do to keep me alive? And what would happen if I went back?

This became the beginning of Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy.

One of the most important discoveries for me was that retrieval is not necessarily about recovering weakness.

Sometimes what has been exiled is our strength.

The intelligent child. The ambitious adolescent. The adult who knows what they want. The artist. The sensual self. The person who can take up space. The person who expects to be paid properly. The person who can leave when they are mistreated.

I came to understand that the problem is not always absence of power. Sometimes it is power without ownership.

My work today brings those strands together: psychotherapy, investigation, parts work, symbolism and, where appropriate, shamanic journeying and retrieval.

I do not believe the practitioner should become the great interpreter of somebody else’s inner world. Wherever possible, I want the person to participate in the investigation themselves. To see. To question. To disagree. To recognise what belongs to them.

Because ultimately this work is not about creating dependence on a therapist, teacher or spiritual practitioner.

It is about the opposite.

Retrieval must eventually become sovereignty.

My book, Whatever Happened to Me? The Missing Self, grew from this work, as did the International Institute for Sovereign Consciousness, which I founded as a wider home for the exploration of psychotherapy, consciousness, shamanic practice, mysticism and a question that increasingly sits underneath everything I do:

Who is sovereign here?

Which part of you gets to live the life now?

I spent much of my life entering locked rooms professionally.

Eventually I found the strangest locked rooms of all.

The ones inside us.

And that is where my work begins.

A seated figure glowing in gold and orange light on a lotus flower, with water lilies in the pool below

The Hart Practice · Richmond & Kew

Therapy that honours both psyche and soul.

My practice holds a deep respect for intellect and intuition alike. It draws on depth psychology and the transformative edge of contemporary healing, favouring Jungian insight, primal release and trauma-informed methods that reach beneath the surface of the mind.

Sessions take place in person in Richmond, by Zoom or telephone and, for those drawn to nature, as Walking Therapy in Kew Gardens or Richmond Park. The atmosphere is calm and private: a sanctuary for those navigating change.

Book a SessionExplore the services
Writing · Broadcasting · Investigation

A public life spent asking difficult questions.

Alongside her therapeutic work, Christine is the host of The Christine Joanna Hart Podcast. Selected programmes have attracted six-figure audiences.

Her broadcasting sits alongside a career spanning investigative journalism, private investigation, books, television and radio.

The Christine Joanna Hart ExperienceWATCH ON YOUTUBETHE EXILED SELF · CHRISTINE JOANNA HART

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

PUBLISHED BY HODDER & STOUGHTON

THE SUNDAY TIMES · DAILY MAIL

HOST · THE CHRISTINE JOANNA HART PODCAST

SELECTED PROGRAMMES · SIX-FIGURE AUDIENCES

BBC WORLD SERVICE · GMTV (ITV) · AMAZON PRIME

MBACP REGISTERED PRACTITIONER

One-hour investigative therapy consultation

Bring me the problem.
We investigate it together.

You do not need to know what kind of therapy you need.

You do not need to arrive with a diagnosis, a theory, or the correct psychological vocabulary.

You do not need to persuade me that your experience is unusual. You only need to tell me what happened.

You may know exactly what happened.

Or you may only know that something in your life has become stuck, repetitive, painful or strangely unlike you.

The first consultation begins there.

We look beneath the presenting story for the pattern, the fracture, the missing part, or the survival strategy that is still governing the present.

A focused one-hour piece of work

Do not commit to therapy.
Commit to one extraordinary session.

The consultation is not an audition for months of therapy.

It is an opportunity to investigate what is happening now, understand what may sit beneath it, and decide what kind of work, if any, would actually be useful next.

One consultation. One investigation.

Christine works integratively, drawing from psychotherapy, parts work, Jungian and Gestalt ideas, symbolic and embodied exploration and, where appropriate, shamanic practice.

But you do not choose a technique from a menu.

You bring the thing that is happening.

We begin there.

The method serves the investigation.
Not the other way around.

What is happening to you?

What lies beneath it?

What part of you is trying to run the whole life?

What part of you might be ready to come home?

Book a consultation
55
five-star reviews on Yelp
Client Reviews
★★★★★

What clients say after working with Christine.

“
Life-changing experience. I didn’t know what to expect, as it was my first experience with Christine, and it was absolutely amazing. I felt in such a safe space with this therapist. The experience itself was life-changing. I found pieces of myself I never even knew I’d lost along my life’s journey. My first session with her was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Christine is amazing. So much so, I’m coming back to her again. Christine, keep doing the amazing work, helping lots of good people.
Daniel G-833 · ★★★★★
“
Christine is very kind, friendly, attentive and professional. A rare and very pleasant person. She works in an amazing way, entering your unconscious and simultaneously speaking in the physical, accompanying you in search of the answers you seek. I had never experienced anything like it. I don’t fully understand what she was able to do, but I understand what a deep-level session with her took place. Thank you, Christine, for making your gift available to people suffering. I am now far more serene, confident and understanding. I feel in a better place.
Sergio B. · ★★★★★
“
Thank you, Christine. I saw the world through a monocle before. You showed me a far wider lens.
MT-11 · ★★★★★
“
Chrissy is well connected, and she was very enlightening and helpful. Seeing her today will make a difference to the rest of my life, and therefore she is invaluable. Thank you.
Ian M. · ★★★★★
“
I wasn’t sure what to expect from my session with Christine, but it was incredible. I’ll definitely be coming back to have more sessions with her, and would recommend her to anyone. Thank you, Christine.
Nicole M. · ★★★★★
“
Chrissy is worth more than a hundred stars. Christine is highly gifted. She is able to work and connect on different levels. She is beyond excellent. She is an absolute professional. Our session ran long overtime, and she didn’t charge again. She’s just a kind, authentic individual. She is worth more than a hundred stars.
Judy R. · ★★★★★
“
I came to her feeling desperate with a skin condition that the doctors couldn’t work out, let alone fix. She immediately made me feel relaxed. I believe that I was led to her because of my original problem. If you get the chance to see Christine, I urge you to go. I’ve started to change my life because of her in ways I was not at all expecting, and for the good. She’s given me the chance to raise my head above the parapet and think more than my day-to-day life. My skin is clearing up. Thanks, Christine.
Louise C. · ★★★★★
“
I contacted Christine out of the blue, having found her on Google. She’s highly professional, extremely gifted. I’ve already had two sessions with her, and I’ll be having more. It’s very rare to come across someone as genuine and as talented as Christine. She has helped me immensely, and I feel amazing. Thank you, Christine.
Lara C. · ★★★★★
“
I have no words, to be honest. Thank you so much, Christine, for everything. I’ve listened to her advice, and that was the best choice in my life. I’m now following her instructions, and I’m doing very well. Thank you so much, Christine.
Amelia D. · ★★★★★
“
I can’t tell you how valuable your time and much-earned abilities are to me. Thank you.
Linda M. · ★★★★★
“
Thank you for truly helping me understand myself and unanswered things in my life up until now. It’s bigger than simply helping me feel less alone, and I’m so thankful I found you and you spent that time with me. Thank you for all the realizations. This is a key moment in my life, and it’s all thanks to you. You are truly amazing. I only wish I’d come to you sooner. For anyone thinking of having a session with Christine, I can only say that it will be life-changing.
Lawrence W. · ★★★★★
“
I had walking therapy with Christine in the amazing setting of Kew Gardens. A very intense experience. I feel so much lighter, and as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
Christina K. · ★★★★★
“

Your abilities and insight are truly a gift and second to none.

What you offer your clients is truly remarkable and, as you know, working with you over the past seven or eight months has changed my life.

I have also recommended you to a few close friends, all of whom have been changed on hugely positive levels which have enabled them to truly live in the present with no trauma.

You bring to the table ‘Past Life’, ‘Trauma Healing’ and lost ‘Soul Retrieval’, plus ‘Present Life Purpose’. I cannot recommend you highly enough and I can only suggest that everyone have a session with her so that you may experience Chrissie for yourself.

Everyone will benefit greatly from sessions with Chrissie and what she offers.

As an example, a good friend of mine who has spent his entire adult life in the discipline of meditation, martial arts, raw food diet, good mental mindset and living a life true to his calling has remained stuck. None of these things helped him and, after one session with Chrissie, he’s like a different person.

May many souls benefit from your knowledge and wisdom.

L.C., London

Selected client reviews reproduced from Christine Joanna Hart’s five-star Yelp reviews. Names are shown as supplied in the original reviews.

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