In this episode of Tell Me It Will Be OK, I talk with Dr. Ali Navidi about disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs)—common, impairing GI conditions affecting 13–20% of children and especially likely in kids with anxiety, trauma history, eating disorders, or autism. We discuss the complex, bidirectional “chicken-and-egg” relationship between anxiety and GI symptoms, emphasizing that symptoms are real and not “all in the head,” while warning against simplistic gut-health claims used to sell supplements. Dr. Navidi explains how hypervigilance, catastrophizing, gut-brain signaling, and visceral hypersensitivity reinforce symptoms, and outlines evidence-based treatment using gut-focused CBT and clinical hypnosis, which are supported by decades of research and included in GI guidelines. He describes psychoeducation, hypnosis “talent” tests, and how telehealth services at GIPsychology.com provide access nationwide.

Takeaways:

• The podcast episode delves into the intricate relationship between gastrointestinal symptoms in children and their resultant anxiety, illustrating the complexities involved in understanding this connection.
• I emphasize the notion that while dietary changes may influence anxiety levels, the idea that anxiety can be solely cured through diet or supplements is overly simplistic and misleading.
• The discussion introduces the concept of disorders of gut-brain interaction, which are surprisingly prevalent among children, particularly those with anxiety or trauma histories.
• Dr. Ali Navidi shares that effective treatment for these conditions often requires specialized approaches, including gut-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and clinical hypnosis, both supported by substantial research.
• We highlight the importance of educating parents about the nature of their child's symptoms, emphasizing that understanding is a crucial first step toward effective treatment.
• Lastly, the podcast underscores the role of imagination and focused attention in managing anxiety, suggesting that children can leverage these skills to alleviate their symptoms in a therapeutic context.

Links referenced in this episode:

• gipsychology.com

Mentioned in this episode:

TELL ME IT WILL BE OK: The Practice

I invite you to check out TELL ME IT WILL BE OK: The Practice, a guided reflective journaling podcast for parents raising anxious kids in a worried world. This is not a list of things you’re doing wrong. This is not a bunch of one size fits all parenting advice. This is a place to remember what you already know. (And to learn some new stuff along the way.) Each session is approximately 30 minutes. I help us get grounded; share resources, inspiration, and information; and then using thoughtful prompts we journal together to move you forward in your understanding. It also includes access to our own private community. You can sign up for a free sample practice at my site: OpenBookParenting.com

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Tell Me It Will Be okay, the podcast for parents of anxious kids and teens.

Today's episode, we're going to be talking to Dr. Ali Navidi.

I was a little trepidatious when he first reached out because he wanted to talk about kids with GI symptoms and anxiety and treating their GI symptoms.

And I get a lot of people who pitch me stuff about probiotics and this diet and that diet and the gut brain connection who clearly actually don't understand how all of that works, who want to come on the show to pitch a diet or a supplement.

And I always say no to those because as any of you know, if you're on social media, there's a whole lot of people who will tell you you can cure anxiety by taking this supplement or eating in this way.

And that is simply not true.

It's much more complicated than that.

Now, I'm not going to say that diet doesn't have anything to do with anxiety, because it can.

For some people it does.

But again, it's complicated.

Something that I have talked about with colleagues and with clients a lot, and I talk about it here in this interview with.

Which is sometimes people have gut problems like celiac disease or ibs, and this contributes to their anxiety and their anxiety actually contributes to their GI problems as well.

It gets very mixed up and complex and it can be very chicken or egg.

So I'm not saying totally ignore what you're putting in your child's body, what they're putting in their body.

However, to think that you can cure anxiety simply by eating a certain way or taking a certain supplement is incredibly simplistic.

I'm not saying it never happens.

I'm saying it's simplistic.

Anxiety does not have a one stop shop, easy fix because it's very much brain and body, both of those things.

What I like talking about with Ali is that he, he explains some of this and also explains that some of it is not knowable.

But then he shares his treatment and this part got me really excited because it makes so much sense.

I think you will find this incredibly informative.

If you want to reach out to him, you can go to gipsychology.com to learn more about what he offers.

He has clinicians that are licensed across the country.

Across.

Okay, let's get right into it.

Thank you so much for being here.

I was super excited when you reached out about coming because I think that so many people in my audience do not understand how gut health relates to anxiety.

Both, they sometimes aren't aware of it, they sometimes think it's a really simplistic connection.

And you're here to help us understand what's really happening for kids.

Stomach aches, GI stuff, anxiety.

Yeah.

There's so much to talk about, Don.

I'm very excited to be here.

Let's get started with just maybe some fundamentals, right?

So there's this concept of disorders of gut brain interaction.

And in the scientific community, it's well known, this idea, but I don't think many lay people really know what DGBIS are.

So disorders of gut brain interaction.

They are these GI disorders that are very, very surprisingly common.

And I'm looking over here because I just gave a talk to this very large group of pediatricians in New York.

And so I have a slide right on all the stats and stuff like that.

So basically, These disorders affect 13 to 20% of children.

Think about that.

That's 10 to 15 million children in the United States.

These are massive, massive problems.

And what makes it even more relevant is, is that kids with anxiety disorders or a history of trauma or a history or current eating disorders or on the autism spectrum.

So those four groups have even increased likelihood that they will have one of these disorders.

So if you've got an anxious kid, they're very likely to have one of these GI disorders.

So, so what are we talking about?

There's about 10 major diagnoses, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but there are these functional nausea and vomiting disorders.

So these kids are miserable, they're nauseous, they're vomiting.

There's kids with functional pain, so they've got chronic pain, or sometimes they don't have pain, and then it comes unexpectedly.

And then there's kids that have problems with defecation, so sometimes whooping their pants, sometimes they're constipated, things like that.

And then there's the classic that I think everyone's heard of, which is irritable bowel syndrome.

So ibs, and that's another of the disorders within this category of DGBIs.

So they're very common.

A lot of kids are going to have them.

And if you've got an anxious kid, they're going to have them, too.

But they're also really impairing and they really affect children, children's lives in a lot of negative ways.

So let me pause because sometimes I'll talk too much and see just if you have any questions or comments.

One of the things I'm thinking about is it seems like a chicken and egg thing sometimes So I think about a client I worked with years ago who was diagnosed later with celiac, also had anxiety.

One of the questions they had for me is, do you think my anxiety came out of the celiac or the celiac exacerbated the anxiety?

And I said, I don't know.

And I don't know if it matters.

Yeah, but what is your thought about the chicken egg of gut brain interaction?

I think it's.

I don't think you.

You said the wrong thing when you said I don't know.

I think it's very complicated, but I think it can go both ways.

So you might have an anxious kid that I'll give you an example of a patient of mine, nice little girl.

I think she was maybe 11, and she got food poisoning.

She didn't know it.

She ate, she went to bed, she woke up vomiting.

Think about that.

That's super scary for a kid to wake up feeling like that.

Start after that, she developed a disorder of gut brain interaction.

And I can kind of go through the model more, more in depth, but basically her brain became hyper vigilant about the sensations in her gut.

And then whenever she felt a little something in there, her brain freaked out and started catastrophizing.

Oh, my God, I'm going to vomit.

Because now she developed a phobia of vomiting.

And then that phobia, vomiting, drove all this anxiety through what we call the gut brain axis, which is the connection between the central nervous system and the nervous system that's in the gut.

So we have a little brain in there.

So all that anxiety is getting transferred into the gut, which is then causing real symptoms, real pain.

And she was already, before all this happened, she was already a bit of an anxious kid.

What came first, we don't know.

But once this system developed, it then caused all this secondary anxiety.

And that secondary anxiety just reinforced the problem.

Now she was successfully treated, and that is the good news, that these disorders, while common, are very treatable with very specific types of treatment.

And the key word is specific types of treatment.

And you do cbt, which everybody knows cbt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you also do something else.

Can you share about that?

Yeah, and I will.

Let me put a caveat on the cbt.

Okay.

Most people know about cbt.

It's well known.

And a lot of therapists are trained in it, but a lot of therapists are not trained in gut focused cbt.

And that's a problem.

If you take a regular vanilla CBT trained therapist and you give them a kid with functional abdominal pain or ibs, they're not going to really know what to do.

They're going to know how to treat the secondary anxiety, like feeling more confident and less anxious in general.

But they don't know how to disrupt the cycles and the systems of problems that these patients have.

And I bring that up because over the years, many patients have come to me and when I say, hey, I use cbt, they're like, oh, no, that doesn't work for me.

I had a therapist doing CBT and it didn't help my stomach.

But were they trained and how to specifically apply that cbt.

So that's an important caveat.

The other modality of treatment is clinical hypnosis.

And it's an amazing treatment with now, I think, over 40 years of research behind it.

But very sadly, what most people know about clinical hypnosis is entertainment hypnosis.

Yeah.

So they know the witchcraft and the mind control and all the stuff in the movies or in a stage show and all that is very different than clinical hypnosis.

And that clinicians have been using it for many years.

There's 40 years of research.

It started in England.

They did research on using clinical hypnosis with patients with these stomach problems.

They found it was tremendously successful and they've been studying it ever since.

And every study they do reinforces it works well.

In fact, the American College of Gastroenterology, so like the overarching organization that, that works with all the gastroenterologists, they've written clinical hypnosis and gut focused CBT into their guidelines for these disorders.

So it's a.

This is established scientifically based treatment.

And together you do.

You're doing these together.

Yeah.

And they're both individually, they're both studied and then together they're synergistic in the sense that they make each other better.

So I'm going to pull back here for a minute.

We talked a little bit before we got started that the gut brain connection has been, I'll say it's been messed with and squished up and simplified often to sell supplements and essential oils.

And we are not talking about that.

We are talking about this scientific evidence that shows that there is a gut brain connection.

It's more complex than these other things will share.

But then you've also got hypnosis on it, which also culturally is misunderstood.

Right.

So I want parents to be really clear here that you are talking about something that there is a lot of evidence behind.

Yeah.

So let's, let's slow down and can you explain when People say the stomach is a second brain.

Yeah.

What do they mean?

Yeah.

And this is the problem with things that become popular in order once they become popular.

People want to simplify, people want simple answers.

Right.

Who wouldn't?

You've got a problem, you want a simple answer.

You don't want to hear that you've got this incredibly complex system that involves your neurons, it involves your HPA axis, it involves hormones, it involves immunological signaling that this is incredibly complex.

Scientists still don't understand even a part of the complexity involved here.

Right.

But we want to simplify it.

We want to say, oh, the microbiome.

Cool.

Okay.

And then let's even simplify it further and say this one magic little pill is going to fix your microbiome.

We're not there yet.

I would love it if we were there.

Right.

Because it is, it's incredibly powerful and it's important, but we're still figuring it out.

The science is new and it's so complex.

Right.

So when we talk about going back to the.

I just want to preface all that with that complexity.

Right?

Go back to the idea of a little brain.

We, we literally have a network of neurons in our stomach that is equal to equivalent to our spinal cord.

Wow.

Probably more neurons than that.

I can't remember exactly, but I want to say maybe between 200 million and something.

It's a complex and there's a lot.

And there's a lot of complicated things happening in our gut immunologically in terms of moving the food through, in terms of digestion.

Like there's a lot happening down there and there is a little brain it.

And it needs to be because.

And what they found is even when they sever the connection, which is the vagus nerve, they have a vagotomy for various reasons.

Sometimes they have to do it.

The stomach operates independently.

Wow.

Wow.

It doesn't need the big brain to do its job.

Now things are going to go off track because that connection is so important.

But the fact that it can operate independently is pretty startling.

Right?

So all this is like background and we're still trying to figure it out.

So beware of anyone offering you a simple answer, right?

This pill or this oil is going to do X or Y, Z.

Now what do we know?

We know that the gut up work is still in its infancy, it's still learning.

But we know that the brain down work has been around for a while.

And that's what I'm talking about here.

Right.

So we know, we have initial indications that what's happening in the gut, what's happening in the microbiome affects our mental health.

But it's very complex and we're not quite sure why all the ins and outs and we don't really have a good handle yet on how to intervene there.

Okay, right.

But we know it affects it, but we also know that the brain down affects the gut.

In fact, the brain down affects the body in amazing ways, but specifically the brain down.

And we have tons of research, again over 40 years.

Go in, go into PubMed.

PubMed is the national database for all these medical studies.

Type in hypnosis, ibs, you'll get thousands of hits because there's been so many studies done, so many articles written on this.

And that's an example.

I have a couple of colleagues, we have a consultation group and one of them is EMDR trained, does a lot of complex trauma work.

The other is hypnosis, trauma trained.

And when they get talking in the case consultation, so much of what they're talking about, it's different language for the same kind of thing.

And so I again, I think people hear hypnosis and go, oh, you're gonna make me squawk like a chicken.

Actually, the way she describes it is it's like a formal guided meditation to help unhook connections that have been misaligned.

Is that, Yeah, I can give you my little spiel, but what you just described I wouldn't disagree with.

And even more interesting, I think also is I've known many people trained in both who are trainers in hypnosis and trainers in emdr.

I haven't had one disagree with the idea that EMDR is a subset of clinical hypnosis.

That is interesting.

And of course, a lot of EMDR is exposure work.

Yeah.

And then of course exposure work is just behavioral, cognitive, behavioral treatment that when integrated into hypnosis, becomes more effective.

Right.

So I think of EMDR is a really well written hypnosis protocol.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

That specifies a lot of contingencies.

It says if this, then do this and has a lot of well written techniques in it.

And that's been studied specifically.

So I, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce his name right.

Joseph LeDoux.

L E D O U X.

He's done a lot of research about brain connection and anxiety.

And he was saying that part of it is that somebody who is more prone to anxiety is more sensitive to the feelings that we all might have.

So when I'm talking to parents about it, I say there's two of us and we're both waiting to go on a roller coaster and we're getting excited and our stomach's flipping a little bit.

And one person experiences that stomach flipping is, I'm really excited.

That's how it feels to me.

And somebody else feels it is, I'm going to throw up.

I feel terrible.

This is scaring me.

So when you're doing this work is that part of it is that you're helping people experience it in a more productive way?

I think you've hit on something super important and it something that's almost core to what we're doing in a lot of mind, body work, and specifically in the GI work, is this concept of safety.

Think about the two people you just described.

The difference is they felt the flip and one of them was like, I'm excited.

They interpreted that feeling as excitement.

The other one felt the flip and interpreted like, oh, there's something wrong, there's something bad.

And then that set in motion a self reinforcing feedback loop where that anxiety then got transferred into the gut and made those feelings worse.

It made everything amplified and that amplification then fed on itself to the point where they were like, I think I'm going to throw up.

So that patient that you were talking about who woke up in the middle of the night nauseous and throwing up, which super scary.

Yeah.

And anytime her stomach started to get.

A little nervous, a little something.

Okay.

So she became extra aware of that and extra avoidant of it, which perpetuated it.

Yeah, she was hyper vigilant, always scanning.

So there's 1, 2, 3, 4 key elements in understanding the model.

So we have two of them already, we've got three, we've got the hypervigilance, we've got the catastrophizing when they feel something, we've got the gut brain axis which allows these things to get transferred back and forth.

And then the last element is something called visceral hypersensitivity.

And visceral hypersensitivity is something that's common to all these disorders of gut brain interaction.

And basically what it is that patient, let's say that I was talking about, when she feels something, that feeling isn't just relayed directly and she feels it, it gets relayed to her brain and then her brain amplifies and distorts it.

So instead of maybe feeling a little gas in the morning, she wakes up, she's got a little gas.

It feels like pain or it feels like nausea, or it feels.

And it's amplified and it's distorted.

So think about how that feeds even more into that anxiety, because it's not.

All in her head.

That's not what you're saying.

Right.

What I'm saying is that without a head and without a gut, there is no problem.

But the way that the two are talking to each other is creating a problem.

So these are not problems of inflammation or ulcers or cancer.

These are about how the two interact, the brain and the gut.

So a good metaphor is, let's say you're listening to some music on your phone, and as a joke, somebody just goes and cranks the volume up really high.

And it's startling and it's painful.

And even though the music is still good, you experience it as unpleasant and upsetting.

That's what's happening here.

Their gut is good, their brain is good.

But the way that the two are talking to each other isn't working because all that hypervigilance and catastrophizing makes the gut upset.

And then all the gut sensations are being amplified and distorted by the brain.

So there it's like this old married couple that are, like, always pissing each other off.

Right.

So this, let's say this patient, their parent, brings them to you.

How do you start working with them?

Yeah.

And the last thing I'd say related to your comment is the symptoms are 100% real.

This is pain.

That's as real as any pain.

This is nausea.

That's as real as any nausea.

These are like, the vomiting is real, the diarrhea, the cough, all of it is real.

And so I want to make that.

Very clear that that is good, because I know these are also kids.

School avoidance becomes an issue because they're always in the nurse's office with the stomachache.

They're not faking it.

That's not.

No, no, they're not faking it.

And the brain is involved, but we're not in charge of everything the brain does.

Yeah.

And.

And.

And so parents are stuck in this place where, you know, it.

They're trying to figure out how to handle it.

Now, the first thing I always tell them to do is go and make sure there's nothing medically going on, right?

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then we find out there's not.

And then they come to you.

Yes, they come to us.

And the first intervention we do is good education.

So we would go through in detail what we talked about with the parents and have them understand the nature of the problem.

The model that I was just.

And we have pictures and we're showing them.

And once the parents understand, then we explain it to the child in child friendly way.

And just that education is an intervention and it will start the process of healing.

The next step then is to explain, okay, what are the tools we're going to use?

How is CBT going to help?

How is clinical hypnosis going to help?

What is clinical hypnosis?

What is it not?

And so explaining all that, then the next step is probably one of the funnest for me is we give the kids some tests on what kind of talent they have for clinical hypnosis.

Oh, and that's always really fun.

What does that mean, a talent for clinical hypnosis?

Yeah.

So just like anything in the population, talent for hypnosis is on like a bell curve.

Right.

So you've got these few people, people that are just prodigies.

They're amazing.

Like, I've got this video I'll sometimes show people of someone getting surgery with no anesthesia.

Whoa.

Their eyes are open.

They're talking to the surgeon.

They're cutting open their stomach.

They're repairing a hernia while they're having a con.

And they're in self hypnosis.

Wow.

Completely in control.

Right.

So those are like the prodigies.

The good news is we don't need you to be a prodigy because we're not going to need to cut open your stomach to do this.

Right.

We've got anesthesia for that.

We're good.

But the other side of the bell curve are the small group of people.

It's just like talking to a stone wall.

They can't figure it out.

They can't get it.

So we've got these two groups, but the majority, the big hump in the middle, they're good enough.

They're good enough to work with in order to help with their problem.

So we're just making sure that they're.

We don't need them to be awesome.

We just need them to not be terrible.

And we're good.

Yeah.

So, sorry, go ahead.

What does that test look like?

Yeah, there's a bunch of different tests where one of them is, I think, very similar to a game kids have been playing with each other for years.

Have you ever.

Do you ever remember playing with your friends?

The finger magnets game?

No.

No.

Oh, my gosh.

You want to try it?

Yeah, sure.

Awesome.

Okay, so put your hands together like this.

See how my hands.

Yeah, perfect.

And then put your fingers apart like that.

And then look at the gap between your fingers as if it's the only thing in the world right now.

Right.

And keep on staring at that gap and then begin to imagine that there's something pulling those fingers together.

And just notice what the fingers do.

And all you're doing is just imagining that there's something pulling those fingers closer and closer.

Good, good.

And then just keep imagining.

Yeah.

My palate.

Could you cut out my gut?

Yeah.

So now here, take your hands apart.

Let your fingers go back to normal.

So normally when we do the test, we'd let the fingers come all the way closed and touch.

Yeah.

But did you notice those little movements starting?

Yeah.

So what that was.

And we often use these tests also to do psychoed, too.

Right.

So what you are noticing is the power of your imagination to create changes in the body.

Right.

Because you were making your fingers move, but at the same time you weren't making them move.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you were noticing these little twitches, and that is something called ideomotor movement, and that's a signal of unconscious movement.

So your unconscious mind was creating this little movement in your fingers.

Right.

And so what we're doing is we're learning that we have an unconscious mind and a conscious mind, and we're learning how to use our unconscious mind to do helpful things for us.

Yeah, I like that.

It's.

You have a helper.

And certainly there are some kids who by themselves will come up with anxiety interventions that I teach other kids, and they themselves will be like, I lock it away in a box so that I can sleep.

Yeah.

So those kids might be.

They might be closer to the.

Cut your gut open.

Yeah, yeah.

And kids in general are just better at hypnosis because they're mentally.

They're more flexible and they've got good imaginations.

And using your imagination and focused attention, those are the two things you need to do hypnosis.

Well, so to simplify it, because obviously it's not.

It's going to be very personalized and individual.

If I can make my fingers come together, I can also probably start managing some gut symptoms.

Yeah, exactly.

There's another one of the tests.

We won't do it here because it takes a little bit longer, but where they'll make one of their hands warm and the other one stays the same temperature, and then they can literally touch it and feel the difference.

And they created that change with their brain, with their imagination.

One of the things I really love about this is, of course, kids who have anxiety and are feeling crippled by it feel terrible about themselves.

They Feel weak, they feel like they're troublemakers.

They know people are frustrated with them.

And this is very empowering.

Absolutely.

So, yes.

So they're.

Even though you haven't even started doing the particular work, you are changing the way they think about themselves.

And that's really the trick.

When we start doing the tests, we're already intervening, we're already making changes.

We're building self efficacy and confidence.

Right.

And here's the thing.

Hypnosis pairs amazingly with treating anxiety.

And here's why.

I think you already know.

But I'll tell everyone listening too.

If you think about anxiety as imagination misapplied.

Right.

What are we doing with hypnosis?

We're teaching people how to use their imagination in an empowering, powerful way.

You're directly addressing the problem of anxiety.

I love this.

I love this because, you know, I tell people, if your kid has an anxious brain, we can expect anxiety to be something they dance with their whole lives.

And they have to learn how to cope with the reality that, as Joseph Ledoux says, they're a little more sensitive, they're just a little more prone to go.

Which I want a surgeon who's got some anxiety.

Right.

But you're helping them learn how to manage this forever.

Yeah.

Because if you think about imagination is a core process in getting anxious.

If someone has no imagination, they can't get anxious because in order to get anxious, you have to imagine something.

Right.

But if you can teach people how to better manage their imagination, you're helping them to better manage their anxiety.

It's even.

It's when they talk about athletes and mindset and they're imagining themselves being successful.

Is that almost a form of self hypnosis?

Yeah.

So hypnosis has long been used in athletics.

The interesting thing to me is that it often gets called something else.

So there's a guy, Dr. Unisthal, I think he was in Sweden, he was the one who came up with the whole concept of mental training for athletes.

His specialty was clinical hypnosis, but at a certain point he was like, this whole label of hypnosis is too much of a pain in the butt because people have so many misconceptions about it.

I'm just going to call it mental training instead.

And so he took it and he's using all these hypnotic techniques and he's calling it mental training.

And it's popular all over Sweden.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

It's about focus and imagination.

And then the last part of understanding hypnosis is understanding that all humans have a natural state of consciousness called trance.

And we naturally go in and out of trance.

Anyone who has kids, I've got two, understands that their kids go into trance.

They get lost in their world.

Right.

Everything else fades away while they're playing.

And you might call them a couple times and they might not even hear you.

But that's because they're in a trance.

Right.

Or they go into trance.

If you've given your kid a phone, hopefully not too early, even if they're just holding the phone, they're probably in trance.

Right.

Trance is happening all the time.

It's very normal and natural.

What we're doing with hypnosis is we're teaching people how to use it on purpose, how to go into trance on purpose and to use it deliberately.

And if you combine trance with deliberate use of imagination and focused attention, that's almost everything you need to know about hypnosis.

And of course we're talking about kids because that's the focus of my podcast.

But you work with all ages.

All ages, yeah.

But I spent most of my time working with kids and I still do.

Usually it's eight and up, but I think hypnosis has some good research at 6 and up to be helpful.

Yeah, I mean, that, that makes sense because you, like you said, you do have to project yourself into a future.

You have to have dread to have anxiety.

And that is a developmental.

It's not that younger kids can't be anxious, but it's developmentally appropriate at a certain.

Yeah, I think the anxiety when they're younger tends to be more conditioned than cognitive, you know.

Yeah, but even then I'm thinking, so I'm trained in space.

My work is generally with parents.

Yeah.

But I would say if you're struggling with your three or four year old's anxiety, you might benefit from.

Oh, looking into hypnosis, maybe because it's about tolerating your discomfort with your child's discomfort.

Yes, absolutely.

Because as anxiety is a transmissible disease.

Transmittable disease.

Sorry, that.

Because let's say you've got a kid that's born a little more sensitive.

They pick up on the vibes that are around them.

But then you've got like a dad that's super anxious.

You don't think that kid is going to pick up on those, on the, on that energy on those, all the body language, all the little cues.

Of course they are.

Yeah.

I'm just, I'm so intrigued by that.

How did you get into this?

Yeah, so I was Fascinated by hypnosis as a tool, which then prompted me to switch from about to do a PhD in biochemistry to psychology.

And so I started with a love of hypnosis and then built everything else around that.

So I've been using it integrated into my practice from the beginning.

And so I was just a generalist.

And I didn't actually know what an amazing tool it was for GI problems, but I discovered it.

I had a patient who had ibs, and I started researching, okay, I'm seeing here that hypnosis can be a good tool.

Let's try it out.

And it just worked amazingly.

And then the next patient that had ibs, and the next, and then the next had some other gut problem, and then the next had some other chronic pain issue.

And so that slowly became my expertise is specifically working with these people with pain with chronic health issues.

And then being able to work with children was also another differentiator because there aren't enough people trained to work with kids.

And so I was getting good results with little kids.

So then all the pediatric gastroenterologists in the area started knowing about me.

Right.

And it just builds and it builds.

So what made you so fascinated with hypnosis?

I think it's the ability to shift and change things that traditionally don't feel like are within our conscious control.

Right.

So if my hand are a certain temperature, I just find it just amazing that people have the capacity to learn pretty quickly how to just change the temperature of, of one of their hands but not the other.

Right.

Or to take a 7 or 8 out of 10 level of pain and within 10 minutes, bringing it down to almost nothing.

Right.

This to me, was amazing.

Like, why are, why isn't everyone taught this?

Right.

So as I'm reading about what's possible and what people have done in the past, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

I want to learn to do this.

I want to learn to teach people this.

And so that kind of passion, I think, propelled me.

Yeah, I'm feeling a little bit lost in the weeds as I'm thinking about it, because one of the challenges of working with kids is you are asking them to be motivated to change.

And they believe, rightfully, often, that their anxiety is protecting them.

And I say rightfully because their anxiety allows them to avoid the thing making them anxious.

But of course, it's much more meta than that.

I tell parents, you get really hung up on what and why they're anxious.

Why are you afraid?

And the truth is, they're afraid because they're afraid they're anxious because they're anxious.

Yeah.

And when you're helping them manage the symptoms, the pain, you're not asking them to give up their anxiety.

It's.

But you've interrupted it enough that then they probably are more likely to go, I guess I'll go towards that dog now that it doesn't make me want to throw up.

Don, I love your comments.

So important what you just said because as a therapist, part of what I love about doing this work is something you just, just described because a lot of times I'm hanging out with the other therapist and they're like really GI problems.

That's, that's weird.

But actually I don't think they realize that these mind body problems, whether it's IBS or chronic headaches or whatever, they're an amazing entry into the system of working with this patient.

Because, you know, if I go to a patient that has social anxiety and start to work with them, that's not an easy job.

There's going to be layers of resistance around doing exposure about even challenging the fundamental assumptions of what they think other people think of them.

And like, it's a long road to work with a social anxious kid.

It's definitely treatable.

But if I got a socially anxious kid that has stomach pain, nobody wants stomach pain.

But that anxiety about social situations, they want it because they feel it keeps them safe.

So asking them to let go of it is tough, but it's not hard to get people to want to let go of stomach pain.

And so by doing that though, what are you doing?

You're building trust and you're building therapeutic momentum.

So now you've treated their stomach pain, they feel better.

But you've also taught them affect regulation skills without even knowing that was what you were doing.

Because hypnosis and self hypnosis are tremendous affect regulation skills.

And is it effective too then with panic disorder?

Yes.

See, here's my problem is now I just want everybody to come see you.

The good news is I spent the last five years taking everything I know and then more so building an internal training program for our team.

So we've got think 17 therapists now and they all have to go through our unit, our internal university.

They're already good therapists.

Right.

And then we hire them and then we train them for another nine months.

Wow.

On how to use hypnosis, how to apply CBT to these mind body problems, how do you use, how do you work with chronic pain, how do you work with.

Not like there's so much that they need to learn so they don't have to just see me anymore.

And that's the reason we started this originally, is I was full and I was in the D.C. metro area.

And this is an area with tons of therapists.

You throw a rock and you hit a therapist around here.

But there was literally nobody on an outpatient basis who could see kids with GI problems.

Right.

And who were trained to use the tools that had an empirical basis to them.

There's nobody but me sitting around.

And of course, then I was full.

So then what do I do with these kids?

Right.

So now you've got you.

We talked earlier.

You're in all 50 states.

Yeah, so we're in all 50 because our mission.

So the practice is called just GI psychology, and it's gipsychology.com and the mission is to make these treatments available because it just seems so crazy to me that we have these treatments that are so effective that we have tons of research for and that there are so few people trained to do them.

So the mission is we want to train more people.

We want to educate medical professionals out there so they can know that these treatments are now available for their patients, and then we want to make it available easily.

So we're Telehealth in all 50 states,.

And you can do hypnosis via telehealth.

Yep.

I had to figure that out right when Covid hit.

Yeah, Right.

Because I was all in person.

That's all I'd ever done.

And then suddenly it's, oh, we're doing a video call now.

Let's figure this out.

And so you try it and it works.

And then they later on do research showing that it works in general to do.

And.

And you said, so kids as young as eight, do you go any younger than that or are they better in person?

Kids as young as 6.

At 6.

Okay.

But the caveat is we've got a group of clinicians that are specially trained for the really young ones.

We, almost all of our clinicians, we make make sure that they can see patients like 12 and up.

But the younger ones, they.

They take specialized training.

So we make.

So that's like a smaller group of clinicians within the group.

If I'm a parent, then I can reach out to you directly through the website.

What if I'm a clinician interested in learning more about either referral or training or working with you?

Yeah, just email me directly.

So it's just.

Let's see, the easiest email to remember would just be a Navidi A for Allie, and then Naviti, my [email protected].

Yeah.

And I'll put all this stuff in the show notes too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I love talking with different clinicians.

I could talk about this stuff all day.

I could listen to you talk about it all day.

Like, I, I mentioned this a little bit, but when I first got your pitch, like I said, I get a lot of pitches about GI health and I usually dismiss it right away because it's somebody who's selling a formula or saying that all anxiety is related to gut and ignoring the brain entirely.

And so when I first thought, I went, oh, no.

But then I read it and went to your website and went, oh, I can't wait to talk to this guy.

Because I feel like I've wanted to talk about this topic, but I couldn't find somebody reputable with the science behind them that I felt like was actually going to be helpful for parents to hear.

Because as parents with kids who are really struggling are very vulnerable to quick fixes.

Of course, I'm a parent too.

And when my kids are suffering, I'm desperate to make them feel better.

And if the first round of things that you try doesn't work, you go to your doctor and every.

All the tests come out normal.

And then you're like, okay, now what?

What now?

And that.

So then you start diving into the Internet.

And we all know what happens when you dive into the Internet, right?

Yeah.

So there's someone on TikTok going, you need to eliminate.

I'm making this up, obviously.

I would never.

You need to eliminate apples.

And then you're.

Cure your kid and you go, maybe.

Maybe it's just that easy.

Yeah, yeah.

Or maybe you just only eat apples.

I don't know.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what I appreciate about what you're saying is it is.

I won't say that it's easy, but it is.

Anxiety is very responsive to treatment.

It really, really is.

If you have a kid with somatic symptoms and most kids have stomachaches or headaches.

Yeah.

Then, yeah.

Intervening with the somatic symptoms.

Absolutely makes sense.

And this seems like for parents also who are a little cautious about medication.

Oh, yeah.

Actually, so there's an organization called, I don't remember what it stands for, but it's nasvagan.

That's how you say the little acronym, but it's basically the Pediatric National Gastroenterological Association.

So NASVAGAN is the one for the United States.

SVGAN is the one internationally.

No medication, no supplement, no biofeedback, no anything.

No diet.

Number one is gut focused CBT and clinical hypnosis.

Boom.

Crazy.

Yeah.

And if you got someone in your office who you realize there's something more in the picture, then it sounds like you have a referral network, too.

Yeah.

To help parents connect with what might be next.

Yeah.

And so there can be complications.

Right.

So maybe they actually have d. SO inflammatory bowel disease.

So that's ulcerative colitis or Crohn's.

This is why we need a good medical checkup.

Or if symptoms suddenly change.

Let's say you're dealing with someone with just tummy aches, but the nature of them changes, or there's blood in their stool, or there's something else that shifts.

You need to get that checked out.

There's also something called sibo, Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Right.

And I think sometimes people over focus on that.

Right.

But it's a real thing, and it is also treatable and diagnosable, so that's something that should be ruled out.

And your standard gastroenterologist or even sometimes your primary care can test for that as well.

Yeah.

Because we do need to take care of both.

But as you said with our imaginary patient, she really did have food poisoning, but it flipped a switch in her brain, and we need to flip that back.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And then, as you know, then you've got the door open.

You've just treated this stomach pain.

You've taught them how to make it go away, and they're like, oh, I guess you could help me with this, Because I get nervous before school.

I'm worried about what my teachers are getting.

Oh, okay.

We can talk about that, too.

Do you remember that technique we taught you about how you use hypnosis to do that?

Actually, we can use that too.

Right?