Hypnotherapy or commonly known as Hypnosis has become more popular as it brings improvement to many conditions like phobias, fears, anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, stress, post trauma anxiety, grief and loss. Now, one of the conditions that were added to its success is curing irritable bowel syndrome with hypnotherapy. But before we delve deeper into how it worked, let us know what the condition is about.
What is Irritable Bowel Syndrome?
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS or spastic colon is described by Wikipedia as a persistent abdominal pain, uneasiness, bloating or the changes of bowel habits. There has been no known organic cause by this symptom-based analysis. Irritable Bowel Syndrome will be given as a diagnosis on the basis of its symptoms, which is if these factors are absent: age of onset greater than 50 years, weight loss, gross hematochezia, systemic signs of infection or colitis and family history of inflammatory bowel.
What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is defined by Wikipedia as a form of psychotherapy that is developed to make unconscious changes to the patient in new reactions, feelings, outlook, behaviors and way of thinking. It uses guided rest, powerful meditation and focused concentration to attain a higher state of attentiveness which sometimes leads to spell. When a person is at this state, everything around is momentarily blocked or disregarded. While a person is on hypnotherapy, all the attention is focused on the specific task that a trained therapist has given the person.
How does Hypnotherapy work?
As hypnotherapy makes the person explore painful experiences, feelings, thoughts and memories which are hidden from their conscious mind, a trained therapist need to direct or guide the patient very well in order for that person to succeed his goal. One of the goals could be curing irritable bowel syndrome with hypnotherapy.
A trained therapist can use 2 ways of hypnosis:
- Suggestion Therapy – In this therapy, the patient will be given suggestions which the patient can either respond positively or negatively. The therapist can then assess which responses can better improve the person’s behavior. This is the best way for patients to change specific behaviors, feelings and experiences into a more positive way like curing irritable bowel syndrome with hypnotherapy. The patient can concentrate on ways to better resolve the irregular or the painful experience of IBS.
- Analysis – This kind of approach is looking for the cause of the symptom or the pain that the patient is experiencing. This could be some traumatic experiences or symptoms that the patient has been hiding or denying. As soon as the symptoms are finally laid out, the problem can be addressed with the help of hypnotherapy.
Ideally, curing irritable bowel syndrome with hypnotherapy is the best advice for any person that is suffering from this condition because there are no structural damages done to the body. There are neither major operations nor stress during the whole treatment process. The whole procedure would only let the person have more control on their gut function which would lead to a change on the way the brain adjusts on the patient’s gut movement.