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Understanding IBS & the Gut–Brain Connection
Clear, practical articles to help you understand IBS and other disorders of gut–brain interaction, the gut–brain connection, gut-directed hypnotherapy, anxiety and stress.
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RECENT POSTS
IBS and Anxiety: What You Do Next Can Reduce — or Reinforce — the Cycle
What you do after anxiety is triggered can either help you deal with the risk — or unintentionally keep the IBS–anxiety cycle going.
That’s the focus of Part 3 of my series on IBS and anxiety.
In Parts 1 and 2, I looked at how IBS symptoms can trigger thoughts about their consequences, and how engaging with those thoughts can develop into worrying and intensify anxiety.
This final article in the 3-part series asks a practical question:
What do you do next?
I explore four common responses:
Risk mitigation. Avoidance. Escape. Safety behaviours.
Is It Just Stress?
IBS is not “just stress”, but stress and anxiety can influence how gut symptoms are experienced. This article explores the gut–brain connection, why symptoms can become harder to ignore, and where gut-directed hypnotherapy may fit within a broader IBS treatment approach.
Why Your Gut Reacts to Things That Haven't Happened Yet (Part 1 of 3)
Have you ever felt your gut tighten the night before a meeting, before anything's actually gone wrong? Most people call that "anxiety" and leave it there — but that word is doing far too much work and hiding at least four different things. In Part 1 of a new 3-part series, I unpack what anxiety actually is, how it differs from acute stress, and why IBS symptoms and anxiety can end up locked in a self-reinforcing loop. If you've ever googled "anxiety" after a hard day and come away more confused than when you started, this one's for you.
The meeting isn’t the problem…
The meeting isn’t the problem. The possibility of your gut hijacking it is.
You can lead a 60-minute meeting.
But can you trust your gut for 60 minutes?
That’s a very different question.
For many professionals with IBS, the challenge isn’t capability.
Your Gut Didn't Get the Memo
Why does your gut react before your thinking brain has caught up? In this post, I unpack the biology behind anxiety-driven IBS symptoms — from the vagus nerve's gut-to-brain "reporting line," to why a stray worry thought can end in an urgent trip to the bathroom. I also look at why treating the gut and the mind as separate problems is often where IBS management goes wrong.
IBS and anxiety: the hidden loop that keeps your symptoms stuck
The cramping starts even when you’ve eaten nothing unusual, and suddenly every bathroom between home and work feels essential.
IBS and anxiety often form a gut‑brain loop where worry triggers symptoms—and symptoms trigger more anxiety and IBS.
This cycle is learned, not permanent, and can be retrained.
In this five‑minute read, you’ll learn one practical step to start interrupting IBS‑anxiety flare‑ups.
Your Gut Has Its Own Nervous System
IBS is real. Explore how the gut’s own nervous system and the gut-brain axis help explain IBS symptoms such as pain, bloating, urgency, diarrhoea and constipation. Discover how gut-directed hypnotherapy can help reset gut-brain communication, calm digestive threat responses and rebuild trust in the body again over time, safely.
Why does work anxiety always lead to bathroom panic — and how do I break it?
If work anxiety triggers IBS urgency, cramping, or bathroom panic, your nervous system may be predicting threat. Learn how the gut–brain axis, worry, safety behaviours, coaching, and gut-directed hypnotherapy can help retrain the response.
What Is Anxiety Really? And Why Does It Matter When You Have IBS?
Most people feel anxious from time to time.
· Before a job interview.
· While waiting for test results.
· When something important is uncertain.
That kind of anxiety is normal. It is your survival system doing its job, flagging a possible risk and nudging you to pay attention.
But when you live with IBS, anxiety can become much more specific.
The Hidden Loop Between Worry, Anxiety, and IBS
For IBS Awareness Month, I’ve written a new article on a pattern I see often, but which is rarely explained clearly:
The loop between digestive worries, IBS-specific anxiety, and anticipatory anxiety.
Many people with IBS are not only dealing with symptoms.
They are also dealing with:
fear of being caught out
fear of urgency, bloating, or pain at the wrong time
fear of the anxiety that symptoms can trigger
Flare-ups and the Survival Switch
If your IBS shows up when you need to be sharp, it can feel like your body is sabotaging you. This post unpacks what is really happening in the gut-brain axis when pressure turns into threat, and why digestion gets downgraded in survival mode.
IBS isn’t a Hardware Problem. It’s a Software Problem
If you’ve ever been told “Your tests are normal. It’s just IBS,” it can feel like someone is saying “There’s nothing wrong.” But IBS isn’t imaginary, and it isn’t minor. It’s a real condition where the digestive hardware looks fine, but the gut–brain “software” is running on glitchy code.
The 4As of IBS Relief
If you’re struggling with IBS, you’re probably not “managing” it. You’re organising your life around it.
IBS is a gut–brain disorder — so progress often comes from resetting gut–brain communication, not adding more rules.
In this post I share the 4As of IBS Relief I use with clients:
Which “A” are you stuck in right now?
Gut Directed Hypnotherapy for IBS: Why People Stop Scrolling and Why You Might Want to Pause
This article explains gut-directed hypnotherapy for IBS in clear, practical terms — without mystique or hype. It explores IBS as a disorder of gut–brain interaction, why insight alone often isn’t enough, and how nervous system learning helps explain lasting change. Written for people who want understanding, not vague reassurance.
Gut-directed hypnotherapy - an effective IBS treatement
With an overall response rate of about 80 percent among IBS patients, gut-directed hypnotherapy has been proven to be highly successful. Its results have been shown to be long lasting, and in many cases it has been shown to help when other treatments do not.
How chronic stress and IBS are related
A large body of research tells us that chronic stress poses a serious risk to our health. Long term exposure to cortisol wreaks havoc on our body and disrupts our digestive systems causing conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Chronic Pain
IBS and chronic pain often go hand in hand. Hypnotherapy has been used to relieve pain for hundreds of years. Hypnotherapy has been used to relieve IBS symptoms for over 35 years.
Stress and IBS
One of the main goals of the Freedom From IBS program is to reduce activation of the Stress (Threat) Response and increase activation of the Rest and Digest Response. Achieving this helps break the IBS related stress cycle and enables the digestive system to return to normal functioning again.
Less Stress Equals Less IBS Symptoms
One particular trigger that many IBS sufferers have in common is stress. Stress is not only a trigger, it can also make symptoms worse. This can create a vicious cycle in which stress triggers IBS symptoms and then the symptoms themselves cause stress and anxiety thus exacerbating the symptoms, and on and on … .
Why haven’t you heard about gut directed hypnotherapy until now?
Gut directed hypnotherapy isn’t new. It’s been researched and practiced for over 30 years! The use of hypnotherapy for IBS relief was initiated by Professor Peter Whorwell.
So why haven’t you heard about it. Largely because, and despite all this evidence, there has been a reluctance by the medical profession to embrace this form of treatment. Many health professions are sceptical and prejudiced against hypnotherapy.