Denise Billen-Mejia 0:07
Welcome to Two hypnotherapists talking with me, Denise Billen-Mejia in Delaware, USA.
Martin Furber 0:13
And me Martin Furber in Preston UK.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:16
This weekly podcast is for anyone and everyone who would like to know more about fascinating subject of hypnosis and the benefits that it offers.
Martin Furber 0:24
I'm a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:27
I'm a retired medical doctor turned consulting hypnotist.
Martin Furber 0:31
We are two hypnotherapists talking.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:34
So let's get on with the episode.
Martin Furber 0:36
Okay, so let's get on with the show. Yeah, absolutely.
Martin Furber 0:39
Are you ready?
Speaker 1 0:41
Are you over the inertia from all the Christmas and other holiday celebrations? Are you back in full full back?
Martin Furber 0:49
Yeah, I sort of came back with a bit of a vengeance I'myeah, I'm rocking and rolling.
Denise Billen-Mejia 0:56
Glad to hear it.
Martin Furber 0:58
I did I thought we could talk about today. Something we've only ever mentioned in passing. But we actually both help a lot of people with it. But we've never talked about it. IBS.
Denise Billen-Mejia 1:11
Yeah. But the most frequent reference to it is when we complain that the NHS and various other medical groups say the first line should be hypnosis for IBS, and yet none of them will pay for it.
Martin Furber 1:25
That's right. Yeah, it's on the NICE website over here. One of the first choices for IBS should be hypnotherapy.
Denise Billen-Mejia 1:34
Very unlikely that people aren't familiar with the acronym, but it is irritable bowel syndrome. And it can be debilitating, really debilitating. People can be in so much pain, they really can't function. So yeah, it is worth treating.
Martin Furber 1:49
Before I trained to be a therapist, I thought IBS was just when people needed to go all the time, it can be like a constipation as well, can't it?
Speaker 1 1:59
Actually it is usually, either or, I mean, you get you have bouts of strong constipation. And then that was an almost diarrhoea with the so much mucus buildup. But that's not going the medical route. We know that there isn't it is. Yes, it's a syndrome that some people have. And it can be quite debilitating, but it's not. It's not cancer, it's not those kinds of things. It is hugely, hugely influenced by stress, which of course is the bread and butter for all hypnotherapists who are working in stress. So a large part of what we would do with
Martin Furber 2:39
Yeah, you've said it on many occasions haven't you, that any medical condition can be exacerbated by stress.
Denise Billen-Mejia 2:46
Yeah. But this thing could be absolutely fine and dandy and then have some major stressor, and then all of a sudden, it raises its head again. So it is not to be confused with things like Crohn's, which are organic illnesses, which also, of course will be worsened by stress, and it's a different disease. So I haven't seen very many people for it. I think perhaps because gastroenterologists may already have people that they refer to because it is so well known in the literature. But I have had a few and I've had several people ask about it, whether it would be useful for relatives or whatever. How about yourself? Have you seen many?
Martin Furber 3:26
Yeah, it's one of the things I do actually put on my website that I can help with with IBS. Because when I was being taught to be a therapist, I was quite sort of fascinated by all the all the research behind it on IBS and on hypnotherapy, for IBS, I was sort of really surprised by all these different trials that have been done by the results from Yeah, but when you think about it, it's like, I put this in layman's terms, obviously, when we think about something that can induce various physical reactions within our body, can't we? If you think of something scary, you might start shaking, for example. And of course, when we think of something terrible, we may suddenly get this urge to rush to the loo. Yeah, it can happen. And I suppose that's, again, because I talk a lot about the primitive brain, some people refer to it as the emotional brain. But going back to the days when we were running around naked as it were, you know, if we needed to get away from some kind of threat, maybe we would just sort of evacuate our bowels before we run away.
Speaker 1 4:39
Possibly. Hopefully not a problem now but yeah, it's been around for millennia. As long as people have I got to say probably irritable guts. It does tend to get worse in adolescence, I think. You don't actually see too many, I don't think. I'd have to check the statistics. But it tends tends to be I think, perhaps because we feel more stressed than any other time. Do you follow a particular protocol?
Martin Furber 5:08
It's all about the reduction of stress, everything I do, it's about that, you know, that relaxation, that deep therapeutic relaxation, again, getting the client focused on more positive things. Because when we occupy our mind with positive things, keeping our brains active with things to do, we tend to worry less, don't we? So again, that you know, that kind of thing, it's actually pretty straightforward, found, helping people with IBS.
Speaker 1 5:35
I was at the Royal Society in London, they had a speaker on IBS recently, well, within the last two years, at least, that's for me, I'm old. But he works at Duke University, which is a pretty well respected institution. And he has a protocol, it's a 12 week protocol. Okay, I think so. It's very uniform, probably rather like the system you use when you have you ask your clients to score themselves after each session?
Martin Furber 6:10
Oh, with the CORP.
Speaker 1 6:11
I think that's probably why they're so strict about using this, so they can gather information. We said this to this person who said the same thing to this person, how it varies. But I, there's a huge number of people who suffer from it who would benefit if they knew that hypnosis would help. It doesn't really get a positive response. If you tell somebody, it's your nerves dear. You just need to relax. It's not the way to approach it. Unfortunately, most people have heard that. So they tend to avoid it. I'm not well today, and stay hidden away.
Martin Furber 6:52
Yeah. It's strange when we think about it, if we're going into an acute stressful situation, like a job interview or a driving test. Yeah, we get this urge to go to the loo don't we, or maybe to go and take a wee?
Speaker 1 7:08
Well, the thing is, if you've got an interview coming up, usually think about it for quite a while. So it gives you lots of time to get stressed out. Driving tests, yeah, probably the same thing. It's a long time since I took my driving test.
Martin Furber 7:22
Yeah, Denise, came out as a closet driver last year, after a few years, I finally found out she can actually drive.
Denise Billen-Mejia 7:30
I used to be able to drive, I can't now. But it's all of those, all of those kinds of anxiety provoking things can be made worse. But this is something we have actual concrete proof that it's a stress response. So the last two weeks ago, we were talking about stress signature, and this would be very definitely somebody stress they control. They started having problems again, in that area. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the time your stress creeps up on you, you don't even it's so present in your life, you forget that you're stressed.
Martin Furber 8:09
Well, I say that I say that to everybody that it creeps up on us without us realising it. Because obviously, I talk about that metaphorical stress bucket all the time when I say it gets filled up. And it can be a gradual process. Maybe that we've had a bad year, for example, just one thing after another with no let-up.
Speaker 1 8:28
It's the frog in a pool of water that's gradually getting hotter. You don't you don't realise it until it overflows. And somebody who has a disorder like this will possibly get information ahead of time, but it doesn't really matter why you're stressed. We should we should reduce it.
Martin Furber 8:46
Well, getting back to IBS though, I mean, it's not just a case of needing the loois it?
Speaker 1 8:51
No, no, it's serious abdominal pain. Yeah, very, very stressful. Yeah. And that in itself. The pain in itself. It's a stressor, too. So it's just this vicious cycle.
Martin Furber 9:03
As with a lot of things that are stress related, it was become a vicious circle. Okay, so you've helped a few people and with IBS. Have they been long-term?
Speaker 1 9:14
Yes, I mean, sometimes they'll come back and say, you know, Can I have another audio please? Yes. To help. The stress is coming from a different angle. So they're most people are stressed by certain kinds of things. Some new thing comes along and they respond slightly differently. But, yeah, one of my first, I remember the first woman who I had seen was very local. She was one of the first people and asked me if it would be useful for that, but she has multiple gastrointestinal issues. She sees a variety of specialists. Actually, I should ask her to refer me to them. I only had to get permission from one. But it is very...
Martin Furber 9:57
You know, I think the thing with this is, it's like with so many other things. At the end of the day hypnotherapy is, I say it's a talking therapy, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So then people will think to themselves, how the hell can you get rid of IBS just by talking?
Speaker 1 10:15
Yeah, well, you can do that by relaxing and we're relaxing because we're talking.
Martin Furber 10:20
No, but it's a drug free option it's a completely natural process. But it still never ceases to amaze me just how useful hypnotherapy can be, how helpful it can be. how beneficial it can be, for so many various things. And yet, in its simplest form, it's a talking therapy. Yep, slightly more sophisticated than that.
Speaker 1 10:49
Well, yeah, but it's really, it's allowing you to quiet the little voices in your head that are going on you causing all sorts of things.
Martin Furber 11:00
Just going off on a tangent as I always do, for a change, just something you have just sprung to mind. I saw an interesting meme today. And it said, 'What names is that voice in your head calling you?'
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:16
Oh, yes. probably quite a lot it's stupid.
Martin Furber 11:22
That affects us, though doesn't it?
Denise Billen-Mejia 11:24
Of course.
Martin Furber 11:25
Yeah.
Speaker 1 11:25
And in fact, those very same things could be because somebody will may have been penalised by a parent. If they have those kinds of symptoms or find it very difficult work in a job situation because they're constantly having to go to the loo. Those that we internalise so much of, not necessarily spoken words, you just see somebody flash, a look flash across somebody's face. All the words you've heard for all of your life hit you. it's a trigger. So yeah, it's very difficult. Yeah. But it does definitely work. And I think that maybe we should do is put something in the, in the shownotes. Another link to
Martin Furber 12:10
Some of the references, some of the references. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, okay, so somebody's got IBS. I mean, it's going to, obviously, again, I've not got of your medical background. But if somebody's had IBS for quite some time, I would imagine all sorts of vital mineral levels and things could be up the wall couldn't they?
Denise Billen-Mejia 12:36
It doesn't usually because it's very intermittent. I don't remember, I didn't do adult medicine. I did adult but only emergency medicine. When I trained I was paediatrician. I don't remember their numbers being funny, obviously, if it was Crohn's disease, it's a little bit different. But I don't I think a lot of it is people are scared to eat or drink certain things, because like it's gonna make it worse. And so you might therefore get into something Oh, I can't eat oranges. Yeah, you could you can talk yourself into having problems with with some kinds of foods, but it's a very complex interaction. And I think that it will, we'd be treading on medical things if we talk about it too much.
Martin Furber 13:30
You've just said something there about you can talk yourself into letting yourself think that certain foods will affect you. And basically, you are hypnotising yourself into in a negative way? Yeah, yeah. There you go. There's another way to explain hypnotherapy to people though isn't it, because we talk them in to a different mindset. And that, in essence, is what it is.
Denise Billen-Mejia 13:53
We're gonna give you the pre approved words, you pre approved them yourself when we were talking to you. You can use these words. It's because I think a lot of it is people mistake Crohn's and IBS and diverticulitis, and other abdominal pain, difficulty with going to bathroom or whatever. And that is very much food. You've got to be very careful about what you're eating if you have diverticulitis, so IBS doesn't usually go towards anything really terrible, but in itself is very, very disabling. What I find so strange, is think how much money the National Health Service would spend on meds, our frequent visits to the emergency room or the doctors if you're in that much pain, by just allowing your patients to have a few sessions with hypnosis. It's nuts!
Martin Furber 14:51
Although, one Area Health Authority and it escapes my mind which, was advertising recently for registered hypnotherapists Oh, so it looks like they're taking some on. I don't know whether it was for hypnobirthing or IBS.
Denise Billen-Mejia 15:08
Or, for a particular study, they're funding.
Martin Furber 15:13
No, these were full time jobs.
Denise Billen-Mejia 15:15
Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, nice.
Martin Furber 15:16
Yeah, they were they were recruiting for full time Hypnotherapists. And I thought, Well, finally, finally, maybe things are changing. I mean.
Denise Billen-Mejia 15:28
I don't think you'd want to work for, would you want to work for the NHS now you've already, you're already out and in practice.
Martin Furber 15:35
I'm way too busy. Now, this is before you started practising medicine CBT. That's been around since the 70s. So I'm just wondering, was that the same kind of scepticism about that when it first launched?
Speaker 1 15:52
I wouldn't be surprised if they were sceptical. Most people are sceptical that you have to you should be seeing a licenced psychologist or psychiatrist you're already in that environment to go over. And so a psychologist may well see you outside the threshold of the NHS, but it's available. Although fairly limited sessions. I don't think they pay for very many sessions.
Martin Furber 16:17
Over here?
Denise Billen-Mejia 16:18
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Martin Furber 16:19
CBT is available on the NHS.
Denise Billen-Mejia 16:22
Yeah. But how many sessions do you get?
Martin Furber 16:23
I think it's only about six.
Denise Billen-Mejia 16:25
That's what I said! They limit you. Yeah, you can come back again.
Martin Furber 16:30
But yeah, they're registered BACP registered CBT therapists over here within the NHS. But yeah, it's about six sessions, from what I can gather. So you've probably been halfway exposed to whatever it is you need to be exposed to, and then they stop the therapy.
Speaker 1 16:48
Now, we know that hypnosis is very rapid for those people who perform well under hypnosis, and most do six, most of my clients don't need more than six sessions. If it's a discrete issue, and some of them we've got, let's fix this, oh and let's fix that too. And someone else they want separate sessions for that. But somebody who wants to lose weight, or has IBS, or you know, those they you, you can have a fixed number of visits over a period of time, for most of those things.
Martin Furber 17:22
My average for most things is about six sessions. Yeah, weight loss aissix sessions. Because with weight loss, they don't need to stay with me until they've reached their desired weight. You're just well on the way and everything's fine.
Denise Billen-Mejia 17:40
And I think with things like IBS, a lot of it is since we know a lot of it is stress and relaxation. We have audio tapes, once you know once you understand how to allow yourself to relax in a session, you can do it to yourself.
Martin Furber 17:57
Absolutely. Yeah. But I'm just thinking again with IBS. Okay. So the de-stressing is a big part of it, how the hypnotherapy works. In terms of perhaps the bloating and the abdominal pain and the urge to go to the loo, and what have you, but also of course when your stress levels are lower, your sort of gut flora is in better state, isn't it? Because stress can affect that.
Denise Billen-Mejia 18:29
Yeah, you're also more likely to eat things that will help it do that. So you're eating more sensibly. I don't know that, haven't read it, I'd have to look at the protocol again. But I don't know if there's much instruction amongst the academic centres, much instruction if they see a dietitian or not as well. It prboably would be a good idea, probably they're gonna have to work with the backlog of bad bacteria gets.
Martin Furber 19:00
Let's face it, who can't improve their eating habits. Who doesn't have room there?
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:08
Yeah, absolutely.
Martin Furber 19:12
I mean, when it comes to eating, we do we indulge, we see it as a luxury. We get a bit of comfort from it.
Denise Billen-Mejia 19:19
Yeah, but I think a lot of people think that, you know, I need that sticky toffee dessert. I've had a bad day. It's not just and there's no, yeah, it's fine to have an indulgence now and again. So there was a really good series on PBS with our Alan Walter. He was talking about that. The foods that we have for our festivals and our feasts. We cram all of them on the table. It's like everything. It's on the table. Nobody ever takes something away. This year, we're going to have this kind of pie instead of that kind of pies. Let's have this pie too.
Martin Furber 19:55
There's something about food though that we use it all so much. Maybe one upmanship is a bit of a stronger term, but you go to somebody's house or they come to yours, and there's a big spread. But also, you know, you welcome people with food or a drink, right?
Denise Billen-Mejia 20:18
Which is why it's so difficult for people who have digestive issues for whatever reason, IBS being one of them, to feel like they can socialise, which is stressful in itself. You got to think up another reason you can't go to something. It's all those kinds of stressors.
Martin Furber 20:32
When I say anything that stress related is self perpetuating, isn't it? So I'm looking here, you're talking about putting some references in the show notes. I'm just looking at some simple statistics here. There was a research study done in 2013 75% of IBS patients receiving hypnotherapy experienced significant symptom improvement, and a 60% reduction in gut related anxiety.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:04
It's interesting, they say that that went, instead of the anxiety went away. Yeah. Did it turn into some other kind of anxiety?
Martin Furber 21:12
But I'm just thinking when you know, when drug trials are done, for example, what we regard as as as as a successful rate.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:19
Oh, well, they're looking for negatives, if it works for the thing we're dealing with, obviously, it's drug trials.
Martin Furber 21:26
I mean percentage wise, though.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:27
Yeah, but you don't get to human trials for a really long time. Quite, this is a little less, certainly, they have to have restrictions. And certainly you have to make sure you don't have anything else going on, that might be confusing it.
Martin Furber 21:42
All right now, I'm just looking at the British society of gastroenterology. Their guidelines recommend adding hypnotherapy as a treatment option for IBS patients who haven't responded well to other intervention.
Denise Billen-Mejia 21:57
Right? Yes, it's now since they wrote that, they're saying start here.
Martin Furber 22:02
Try that as a first option. Yeah, yeah. But see, here's me, I'll get on the soapbox now about our NHS, because hypnotherapy may be a more expensive option compared to some drugs or whatever.
Denise Billen-Mejia 22:16
In the short term,
Martin Furber 22:18
Yeah, but I'm saying with our NHS over here, my experience of it is, so this is anecdotal, not a quote. They try the cheapest thing first. If that doesn't work, then they go to the next more expensive thing. They don't start with the good stuff. They'll start with the cheapest option.
Denise Billen-Mejia 22:33
Well, yeah, it depends on what it is you're looking at. I mean, if we think you're having a heart attack, we'll put you in the heart attack section of the hospital first. Yeah. And when we realise you haven't got it, we'll take you out, not the other way.
Martin Furber 22:44
I knew you'd jump to their defence.
Denise Billen-Mejia 22:50
These doctors are trained to look at what catastrophic thing can happen, but you go through that log really fast? To decide how and nothing is foolproof. So can always be somebody who's going to be an outlier now having something else that's catastrophic happening. And this is just a red herring that we're looking at now.
Martin Furber 23:13
Yeah. So we're talking about somebody coming in with abdominal pain, then you'd soon suss out if it was their appendix, wouldn't you?
Denise Billen-Mejia 23:18
Right. Mm, thinking it was already missing. Yeah, that's, that's it. But most IBS is usually something that's come on, more or less gradually, and it's diagnosis rollout. And then once they've, you know, you've decided they haven't got appendicitis, they haven't got this or that and they're dealing with us over several weeks or months, then you aren't going to have to go and reinvent the wheel. But you do have to be careful because if they have still got an appendix, they could still get appendicitis. But if the pain that they're having is exactly the same as it was yesterday, and that, obviously, new symptoms still have to be reevaluated.
Martin Furber 23:58
Can the appendix play-up at any age Denise?
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:01
Yeah. Yeah.
Martin Furber 24:02
I always think of it as children with appendicitis.
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:05
Yeah, it's usually, you know, seven-up kind of thing.
Martin Furber 24:10
It's No, I just remember one year in secondary school, there was about six different people in my one class that all have their appendix out in the same year.
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:17
I, the youngest, I've seen is just shy of two. But again, you know, don't expect people to be eighty something having appendicitis, but it can happen.
Martin Furber 24:28
It can happen. Yeah. All right. I had no idea. I was thinking of it as...
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:33
You thought you were free?. Hmm.
Martin Furber 24:38
So I mean, if you think about it, and somebody's got IBS, okay, there's the obvious inconvenience of it, etc. But But if hypnotherapy if they were to have hypnotherapy and it helped them apart from the obvious thing that it would help with it's everything else that was in it as well. I mean, it would give them their freedom back.
Denise Billen-Mejia 24:59
Right. Bladder urgency. You don't want to get on a train for three hours. You don't want to do this. You don't want to do that. You know, it could come on anytime. So it is very restricting.
Martin Furber 25:12
Yeah, it is. I mean, it could literally give somebody their life back couldn't it? If that's not too big a statement to make. That is the thing, though, isn't it with IBS. it is really debilitating. Yeah. All right. Well, we're almost at the end of the episode Denise, and we waffled on as usual.
Denise Billen-Mejia 25:31
Isn't that a relief to all of you really listening here!
Martin Furber 25:33
It would be good though to talk about IBS, because it is one of those things that hypnotherapy really helps with, so if that's something that, again, is one of those things that people get reluctant to talk about. You know, I don't know how it is in America. But over here, you know, we go to our doctor, we don't like to talk about our bowel movements or other kinds of things in delicate areas.
Denise Billen-Mejia 25:59
And yet, they're all over the advertising here.
Martin Furber 26:03
Really?
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:04
Yeah. But yes, people would not people will not volunteer that information, usually, which is fine. But you should volunteer it to your doctor.
Martin Furber 26:13
And once your doctor has checked you out and told you it's IBS come and see us.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:16
Preferably with your doctors blessing already, instead of us having to backtrack and get it.
Martin Furber 26:22
All right, so we will we'll put that information in the show notes as well on that research, which makes it really interesting reading. We'll catch everybody on the next one.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:32
Yes, hopefully, we will have a guest by then.
Denise Billen-Mejia 26:43
We hope you have enjoyed listening. Please remember, this podcast is designed to give you an insight into therapeutic hypnosis, and is for educational purposes only. So remember, consult with your own healthcare professional if you think something you've heard may apply to you or a loved one.
Martin Furber 26:59
If you found this episode useful, you can apply for free continuing professional development or CME credits. Using the link provided in the show notes. Feel free to contact either of us through the links in the show notes. Join us again next week.
