What to Expect at your First Hypnotherapy Session for IBS
Your chosen hypnotherapist
will check with you, once you tell them that it is
regarding IBS and before you even make an appointment,
that you have a medical diagnosis from either your GP or
other suitable clinician.
This is important.
Once you arrive for your appointment and after an introductory chat your therapist will take a
detailed case history from you about your symptoms,
diarrhoea, constipation, switching between the two,
abdominal cramps, bloating, abdominal distension, pain,
wind, reflux, what your stools are like, mucus etc. This
can be done either totally verbally or by giving you a
questionnaire with scales of pain etc on it and a list
of your overall symptoms and how they affect you, so that you can later see how
far you have progressed.
The therapist will not be embarrassed by anything you
say and will treat you with the utmost respect they all
know about how debilitating IBS can be - many might well
have had it!
It is at this point the therapist will probably explain
in greater detail the way in which hypnotherapy works
for IBS, how many sessions they will expect you to
require for you to reach your achievable goals and the
cost that will involve as well as the self-hypnosis
homework you will need to do to gain the best possible
outcome (don't worry they will teach you self-hypnosis
or provide a tape for you to use).
After this the therapy itself will commence by either a
formal type of induction or an approach that is more
conversational in its style. Your attention will be
focussed more internally and you will drift in a
comfortable, safe sensation of altered awareness. The
hypnotherapist will take you as deeply into trance as
you decide to go and then start the work on your IBS
through a variety of approaches.
These techniques are 'gut orientated' and can have a
significant effect after a short period of time although
the speed and extent progress does obviously vary from
person to person and also relies on the client doing
their 'homework' once taught self-hypnosis.
The whole hypnotic experience will last around an hour
and feel very relaxed and comfortable with you hearing
every word the therapist says. With IBS, as you might
have read earlier, how deeply you enter trance is pretty
irrelevant to having a therapeutic gain.
Your therapist will bring you out of trance gently and
allowing you time to re-orientate yourself and have a
stretch.
There will be several sessions as your therapist tracks
your progress and teaches you self-hypnosis after
approximately three sessions you will be asked to
revisit the symptom list to measure your gains. Most
people are surprised by their improvement.
Self Hypnosis is a valuable tool you learn so that you
can become quite adept at maintaining your reduced
symptoms and cope with the stresses and anxieties that
set off attacks in the past.
