Get on top of your IBS

It’s not known what causes IBS but once established it can be triggered or made worse by many aspects of normal life. It can turn life into a juggling act trying to second guess how the gut will behave and how to limit pain and distress.

The gut and brain are closely connected through the nervous, immune and the endocrine systems, with the vagus nerve a key physical link between the two. What happens in one organ can have significant knock-on consequences in the other, affecting both how the gut functions and our moods. IBS has been described as a common disorder of the gut-brain connection.

Gut-focused hypnotherapy is a type of behavioural therapy. It trains you to use your thoughts to alter how you experience and respond to your IBS symptoms. In the way that thinking anxious thoughts might mean you feel butterflies in your stomach, targeted thought can produce a physical and emotional response in other areas too, and here we apply it to help with IBS.

You will be learning to think and importantly, to react in a different way, and then applying that knowledge in the deep state of focused learning that can be reached so successfully in a hypnotic trance.  Hypnosis is a different, elastic state of mind in which we are more willing to adapt our behaviour. This can lead to new and rapid change.

When you go into a hypnotic trance you slip into a day-dream-like state in which you become focused on the thoughts in your head rather than on the world around you. It’s actually very normal and pleasant: you might drift into a light trance many times a day, lost in thought when washing–up or reading a book.

In a trance state, even though your focus is elsewhere, you are still aware of what’s around you and able to fully re-engage with the real world in an instant. When hypnotised you are more open to suggestions, to trying out new things but, contrary to what some people think, you cannot be asked to do anything against your will and there’s no involuntary loss of control. You remain in charge.

Gut-Directed hypnotherapy is a very gentle and relaxing technique. It’s something that people look forward to!

The early sessions cover the skills and insights needed for the technique to be effective, you progress to rehearsing those skills so you become skilled at embedding them fully.

Based on published medical research findings NICE (National Institute of Care and Clinical Excellence) recommends hypnotherapy as a treatment for people with continuing IBS who do not respond to pharmacological treatments after 12 months. The links to the medical research on gut-focused hypnotherapy are given below.

Medications are not needed for Gut-Directed Hypnotherapy, but equally if you are on medication it will not interfere with this treatment.

Having to cope with a chronic disease can mean that the limbic system, the part of your brain associated with keeping you safe, starts to play an overly prominent role in your thinking. It can promote negative ways of thinking and behaving that make matters worse and promote cycles of illness.

A new area of research has suggested that about 70% of IBS sufferers may have areas of bacterial overgrowth in the gut. These conditions are called IMO (intestinal methanogen overgrowth) and SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.) Gut-Directed Hypnotherapy can potentially help with the symptoms of both of these conditions where symptoms are similar to IBS.