Hypnosis for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Congratulations on your IBS diagnosis!
If you are one of the millions of Americans suffering with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), you might not be quite ready to celebrate.
I understand. Your struggle is real. I know firsthand, because I had digestive issues for most of my life.
For years, I was simply told I had to “learn to live with ‘it.’” Thanks, but no thanks.
You are tired of “it.”
You’re ready to live without the problems of gut dysfunction — from discomfort and bloating to the embarrassment of gurgling stomach noises. “It” has demanded that you restrict your diet, map every public restroom along your daily route, and even carry a spare pair of pants in the trunk of your car.
You CAN get over “it.”
With the help of our specialized hypnosis program, you can take back control of your body.
And the key is in the diagnosis itself. Despite your frustration, IBS is good news. Really!
As befitting a bowel problem, it’s a diagnosis of elimination. If doctors have ruled out other, more dangerous problems with similar symptoms, you may have this “functional disorder” rather than a disease.
This simply means that your body’s waste disposal system is not working properly. And gut-directed hypnosis is the safest, most effective, and long-lasting way to reset the digestive system.
The amazing effectiveness of hypnosis for gut issues is the main reason I became a hypnotherapist. I’ve helped myself and many clients reclaim their lives with a program that works — and has scientific studies to back it up (so to speak).
We offer a personal solution to your personal problem.
I’m proud to tell you that our program may work even better for you than ones in major studies, because those studies restrict all clients to the same series of sessions.
In contrast, our approach includes imagery and suggestions carefully crafted just for you.
Gut transformation from IBS to “I feel free” can occur in 90 days.
What will your life be like when you are free from the discomfort and anxiety of IBS?
With the help of a caring guide, you can master the mind-body techniques that will finally give you freedom to focus on what you want out of life.
This will allow you to make healthy choices easily and naturally, while learning to dial down the volume of signals from your body.
Your gut will be re-programmed, so it doesn’t need to over-react.
You can end emotional eating, drinking, or other self-harming behavior and manage stress so that you can stay comfortable in any situation.
Your “Gut Transformation” package includes a total of 8 sessions, plus extras.
In the initial 2-hour session, you experience first-hand the relaxation and promise of hypnosis.
The following seven 90-minute sessions will be completely customized to meet your needs. Usually we do the first few weekly and then adjust the time between sessions to give you the most support for as long as you need it.
You will even receive 4 hypnosis recordings for at-home listening, and weekly email or phone support if needed.
In addition, the IBS package includes a BONUS custom recording at the end. Your personal recording, based on our work together, will reinforce your progress with suggestions, images, and ideas inspired by your unique imagination.
How do I get this relief?
Step #1 – Call for your free consultation. Or schedule your 20-minute consultation here: https://vosswellness.as.me/consult
Step #2 – Complete the Medical Waiver Form (link below) and have your doctor sign it. We must be sure that you have been properly diagnosed before dealing with symptoms.
Hypnosis can be so powerful that even though true warning pain always reappears, we don’t want to risk eliminating pain if there is a chance it is a useful signal.
NOTE: Voss Wellness does not diagnose, treat, or otherwise provide medical services of any kind. I provide hypnosis and self-hypnosis training that can help you access your body’s own powerful healing resources.
When there is a diagnosis relating to the work we do together, your physician must agree that this is an appropriate form of self-care.
The form is HERE for your convenience. Please wait until after we’ve spoken to pass it along to your doctor.
Step #3 – Schedule your sessions. We use an online scheduler that allows you to pick the best times for your schedule, receive email reminders and even re-schedule if needed.
Hypnotherapy provides proven relief for IBS.
Study after study in the last few decades show that hypnotherapy helps to reduce or even eliminate many IBS symptoms.
The human body undertakes a remarkable series of behaviors, reactions, and chemical interactions in order to digest food and eliminate waste. That process is controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). For example, you don’t consciously think, “Okay, it’s dinner time; better make some saliva and release stomach acid for digestion.” Or “Now those peristaltic waves better move food down and out.”
No. You simply eat or even think about food, and the automatic process begins.
This is where the modern use of hypnosis for therapy comes in to play.
Mind/Body training helps control those automatic processes.
A hypnotist can help you tune out the outside world, usually with a very pleasant state of trance. That day-dreaming state accesses the subconscious mind, which is the home not only of imagination and memory, as well as the ANS (autonomic nervous system) where those automatic functions reside.
Turns out, those automatic functions respond to the world around you – and it’s the subconscious that passes along their instructions.
We all know examples where the inner mind has more influence than the conscious thoughts we try to focus on. Most of us can break into a sweat when we think about something that makes us nervous (like speaking in public or asking someone out on a date).
Hypnosis is a way of reaching right down into those controls – the same way you might have heard that yoga masters can do when they slow their heartbeats or lie comfortably on a bed of nails. But without needing years of practice.
Mind-body training helps IBS in several ways – by reducing stress, improving diet compliance, and even retraining the gut to function properly, the way trained meditators can influence their heartbeat or pain sensations.
Hypnosis for IBS reduces stress.
One of the best-known medical benefits of hypnosis is stress-reduction. Reducing stress is a great way to start improving quality of life for IBS patients. Although stress does not cause IBS, it is known to cause stomach upset in healthy people and can trigger IBS symptoms or aggravate them.
Stress and IBS combine in the most vicious of circles. Because, of course, having chronic gut pain and the fear of an out-of-control digestive system tends to increase stress, which then increases symptoms and so on.
In the modern world, we react to an angry boss much as we would to a roaring lion. Unfortunately, many face this kind of stress dozens of times a day. Your system is not designed for such chronic abuse. Anxiety literally bathes your nervous system in chemicals that signal danger and disrupt digestion.
Hypnotherapy uses the deep relaxation of mind and body to counteract the “fight or flight” response and restore balance.
Hypnosis for IBS transforms sensitivity.
It turns out that many people with IBS are highly sensitive to intestinal sensations. Some studies indicate they have more nerve endings than average.
For whatever reason, if someone with IBS feels something like a gas bubble moving through a flexure or bend in the intestinal tract, they may experience severe pain where someone else might just notice mild discomfort.
Simply reinterpreting the sensations using hypnotherapy can give tremendous relief.
A major element in our experience of pain is panic. It’s a bit like conquering a fear of flying. A nervous passenger reacts with terror to every little squeal and squeak the airplane makes, while a frequent flyer recognizes the sound of the wheels pulling up and remains calm. When your gut has become unreliable, you disconnect from normal patterns.
Hypnosis helps improve diet compliance.
But there are more ways we can help IBS. One of the best uses for hypnosis is in motivating you to stick with the doctor-recommended diet. Food, like stress, does not cause IBS but can aggravate it.
There is no single “IBS Diet.” Basically, your doctor may advise you to avoid foods that are known to cause bloating, gas, or colon pain.
You will almost certainly be able to add some of these foods back to your diet later. But at the start of treatment, you’ll want to follow the advice of the National Institutes of Health by avoiding fatty foods such as rich meat, fried foods, milk products, chocolate, alcohol, and caffeinated or carbonated drinks.
You also want to pay attention to foods that cause burping or gas, such as beans, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, and raw garlic.
You don’t have to live a whole life of limited menus, but at this point you may have narrowed your menu to a few “safe” choices. A controlled diet is helpful while you’re retraining your digestive system; but as you recover, you should be able to add back many of the foods you’ve been missing.
Hypnosis can help you reprogram yourself, so you can choose foods on your plan automatically.
Hypnosis for IBS retrains digestive processes.
Just as your gut is sensitive to pain, it may be sensitive to other sensations, such as fullness.
Imagine that your colon is like a waste-paper basket by your desk. When the basket gets full, it needs to be emptied. When IBS causes over-reaction, you find yourself emptying the basket after just one scrap is put into the basket, whereas under-reaction has you piling it high and forgetting to take out the trash for days.
Either way, you need to retrain your body to send and receive the proper signals, so that elimination occurs easily and promptly and only when needed.
Hypnotherapy for IBS uses metaphors, imagery, and even direct suggestion to let the gut know there’s a different way to function. Talking to your gut may sound odd, but how many of us have “listened” to gut feelings and found them useful?
The autonomic nervous system, which controls automatic functions like breathing, heartbeat, and digestion, is managed by the subconscious mind. It makes sense that hypnosis, which gives you access to your subconscious, is the fastest and easiest way to change physical patterns of behavior.
Hypnosis for IBS is the treatment of choice for physicians.
Researchers in Manchester, England, have developed a highly effective series of hypnotherapy sessions. The 12-session series reduces or eliminates symptoms of IBS in 70% of cases.
An article by Samantha Srillian from the Manchester Evening News of May 12, 2008, notes:
“Currently, hypnotherapists at the Manchester hospital treat more than 60 irritable bowel syndrome sufferers every week. Patients are coming from locations throughout the country to experience this cutting-edge course of 12 hypnotherapy treatments, which means the hospital now has an 18-month waiting list.”
Pamela Cruickshanks, who is one of Wythenshawe Hospital’s three clinical hypnotherapists, explains how the treatment works. She said: “We provide patients with 12 sessions of ‘gut-directed hypnotherapy,’ which teach patients to take control over their bowel. Due to the success of this treatment, patients are coming from all over the country to access our services, and hypnosis is now considered to be the treatment of choice for moderate to severe IBS.”
Well-documented research studies like these, as well as those conducted by Dr. Olafur Palsson of North Carolina, are critical in gaining acceptance for the use of hypnotherapy in IBS cases.
Hypnosis for IBS is the treatment of choice for therapists.
Most research shows great improvement in patients who used hypnotherapy.
Private therapists report even better results!
Melissa Roth of the Alabama Hypnotherapy Center developed a protocol I have adapted that is based on the best research studies in the world but are even more effective. As you can imagine, research studies use the same scripts and techniques on each participant, thus allowing for better analysis of the data.
In contrast to research studies, our series of therapeutic sessions are completely customized to your specific history and your needs. We also provide recordings for at-home listening that reinforce your sessions.
Clients who participate in these sessions and listen to their recordings typically reduce their IBS symptoms by 75-100% in 8- to 12-custom sessions.
Set up your free phone consultation.
Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist Stephanie Voss may also be reached at the Voss Wellness direct line: (866) 497-9675