Gut-directed hypnotherapy · York & online
You have had the tests. You have tried the diets. You still feel awful.
There is a calmer way to live with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and it starts with the conversation between your gut and your brain. I am Kathryn, a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist with specialist training in IBS. Working alongside your medical care, I use gut-directed hypnotherapy to help you feel calmer, less anxious about your symptoms, and more in control of your days. No restrictive diets. No willpower. No “have you tried just relaxing?”
Why nothing has worked yet
It is not all in your head. But your head has more to do with it than anyone has explained.
If your gut has been running the show for a while, you know the drill. The planning around “safe” foods. Knowing where every toilet is, just in case. The flare-up that arrives at the worst possible moment. Turning down the dinner, the trip, the day out, because you cannot be sure what your gut will do.
Your gut and your brain are in constant, two-way conversation. In IBS that channel gets stuck on high alert, so the gut overreacts and the alarm keeps firing even when nothing is wrong. That is what sits behind the cramping, the urgency, the bloating and the unpredictability. The alarm is real and it is physical. You did not cause it by worrying, and you will not switch it off by trying harder.
That conversation can change, and working with the gut-brain connection is what my work is built around, alongside the care you get from your GP.
Recognised in the guidelines
A recognised place in the UK clinical guidelines for IBS
Gut-directed hypnotherapy is named in the UK clinical guidelines for IBS, and hardly anyone has heard of it. I would like to change that.
This describes what the guidelines say, not a promise about your own results. Research on gut-directed hypnotherapy is encouraging but mixed, and no approach helps everyone. I will always be straight with you about what the evidence does and does not show, and this work sits alongside the care and diagnosis you get from your GP, never in place of it.
How it works
Three steps, and you can see all of them from the start
Step one
A free fifteen-minute call
We talk through what you are experiencing, what you have already tried, and whether this is the right path for you. A conversation, not an assessment full of forms, and I will tell you if it is not the right fit.
Step two
Eight sessions over twelve weeks
Gut-directed hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioural techniques and mindfulness, built around your pattern, whether that is urgency, pain, bloating or a mix. One to one in York or online, or in a small online group. Weekly for the first month, then fortnightly, with recordings made for you in between.
Step three
A toolkit you keep
The last session builds your own toolkit for harder weeks, so you know what to reach for and in what order. After that there is a live relaxation session every month, and your first month is included.
Wherever you are right now
You are in the right place, whichever of these sounds like you
Diagnosed a while ago, still struggling
If IBS has not settled after a year of trying, you are the person the guidelines had in mind for psychological therapy. You are the case this is for, not a difficult one.
Still looking for answers
If you are trying lots of things and not sure what is going on, the best first step is a diagnosis from your GP to rule anything else out. From there, you do not have to spend years restricting food before getting real help.
You work with people who have IBS
GP, gastroenterology colleague, dietitian, nutritionist or physiotherapist: if you support people with refractory IBS, there is a short evidence brief for referrers, and I am happy to work alongside the care you already give. Email me and I will send it over.
The other half of this
Confidence, because IBS teaches you to be careful everywhere
Which seat. Which exit. Whether to say yes at all. After enough years of that, the caution has a life of its own. It comes to the meeting, the dinner, the networking morning and the holiday with you, and it has a habit of hanging around long after it was useful.
That is the work I do under my other name, HypnoGirl: confidence in your body, in a room full of strangers, at work and out networking. The two sites are one practice and one person. Trusting your gut and walking into rooms turn out to be the same job from different ends, which is why the confidence work turns up inside the IBS programme too.
If the room is the bigger problem right now, start at HypnoGirl. If it is the gut, you are already in the right place.
Free relaxation
Twelve Minutes of Calm
Sign up to Gut Feelings, my free weekly email, and I will send you Twelve Minutes of Calm straight away: a general relaxation recording to listen to whenever you want a calmer moment. After that, one short email a week, the gut-brain science made simple and one thing to try. No spam, ever. Unsubscribe any time.