In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Psychologist Ali Navidi, Founder of GI Psychology.
Ali is a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialized focus on gastro-psychology, delving into the intriguing interplay between the brain and the gut. Ali’s practice also extends to working with patients grappling with various chronic medical conditions. Ali has honed his skills in applying Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Clinical Hypnosis to help clients achieve their desired outcomes. Ali’s primary clientele comprises adults and adolescents.
GI Psychology is a team of highly experienced clinicians with demonstrated success in treating a number of gastrointestinal, gut-brain interactions as well as other medical and psychological conditions. Their clinicians have advanced training and experience in delivering the gold-standard of care.
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
VOICEOVER: (00:00:01): Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone with your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shefter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www.ShefterLaw.com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YouTube and LinkedIn and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcast, Stitcher and more. Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: (00:00:37): Hello, everybody, and welcome to the show. I am so excited to have somebody completely out of the ordinary as my guest today. I had never heard about him until I met him at a networking event. Dr. Navi is a licensed clinical psychologist and one of the founders of GI Psychology, a private practice that specializes in helping patients with GI disorders and chronic pain. Dr. Navi oversees the training and outreach at the practice, and he is also one of the founders and past presidents of the Northern Virginia Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
So, Dr. Navi, please tell us more about GI disorders through psychology. How does that work?
Ali Navidi: (00:01:24): And by the way, Frances, I’m so happy to be talking with you and I, I feel like it’s been too long since we talked. So this is great that we get a chance to talk more. So what is this, you know, GI Psychology stuff? If I backed up for a second I’ve been doing work in this area, DC metro area for about 12 years as a private practice, doing GI psychology work. And, basically it is this field that I guess a lot of people know about but they don’t know that they know about it. And so, one of the things, that most people know about is something called irritable bowel syndrome. And so that’s an example of what’s called a disorder of gut brain interaction. I love the name and basically these guys, The Rome Foundation, what they do is for doctors all over the world, they set the standards for these types of disorders and there’s like IBS is one of them, but there are 22 other disorders that they classify. And so what does that mean? Essentially? That means that there’s nothing structurally wrong with the person so that there’s not inflammation, there’s not ulcers, you know, when someone gets diagnosed with IBS., What’s happening is the disorder is between how the gut and the brain are interacting or talking with each other and that’s essentially what causes IBS which I think even that most people don’t even know.
Frances Shefter: (00:03:18): I was just gonna say, I always thought of it. It’s a medical condition and what do medical doctors do? They throw drugs at it and what do drugs do? Give you side effects and they might cover the symptoms but they don’t get at the source.
Ali Navidi: (00:03:32): With IBS and, and all these other, they’re called DGBI is so disorders of gut brain interaction, the medications don’t even really do all that much. So what often, so let’s go to like little kids, right? So what happens with the little kids? They’ll get IBS or they’ll get what’s called functional abdominal pain. That means they’re getting abdominal pain and nobody can find a reason for it. They might get nausea, often it’ll happen kind of in relation to stressful events. So maybe Sunday or Monday morning, Monday morning is a real common one. the stomach hurts, they feel nauseous, and then you take him to the doctor and the doctor doesn’t find anything. And so the diagnosis would be like functional abdominal pain or IBS or something like that. And that’s in this broad category that I mentioned of DGBI. So this is a lot of talking to say, like, sadly, most people don’t realize that there are amazing treatments for these problems that are not well known but are very well researched and that’s the key part to it. Meaning, let’s take IBS as an example, there’s now going on close to 40 years of research showing that behavioral health treatments, that means a therapist like myself who’s very specially trained those types of treatments for close to 40 years now have been shown to be effective, effective, effective, effective. And that really crazy high rates like, I mean, 85% effectiveness, meaning if patients do their, you know, 8 to 10 sessions, 85% of them are gonna reach their treatment goals, which is so huge.
Frances Shefter: (00:05:49): And you mentioned 8 to 10 sessions. So, it’s not like you have to commit to weekly sessions for the rest of your life. Just 8 to 10 sessions can make a significant difference. That’s truly impressive. And I know that a lot of times anxiety comes out in stomach issues, digestive issues. So even if you have an anxiety diagnosis, your treatments could help with it in the sense that it’s the digestive, right?
Ali Navidi: (00:06:21): There’s almost this is maybe a little too much, but it’s like, it’s almost nobody who comes in with the stomach issues who also doesn’t have an anxiety disorder too. Right? They’re highly comorbid. They go together a lot. Not now that you will run into people that don’t have anxiety issues but do have the stomach problems but they’re the minority. And so what I tell people is, look, even if you have a therapist and you’re working on the anxiety already come see us, we play well with others, meaning we can do this treatment while you’re in therapy and you know, do your 10 sessions and the positive response rate is really high. And then the side effect is that the patients will learn additional affect regulation, skills, affect regulation is just the ability to calm themselves down.
Frances Shefter: (00:07:21): Which I mean, to me, why wouldn’t you try it? You know, like what are the side effects, you know, 8 to 10 sessions? Like how often do we go to the doctor and they prescribe this drug? And it makes us even sicker or does this and what we go through financially, emotionally, physically. This sounds like an easy, almost no brainer of why people wouldn’t try it.
Ali Navidi: (00:07:43): And that’s essentially why I started the practice. So I’ve been doing this on my own but, you know, I was full, I was full, there were, you know, there weren’t any more hours in the day I could see patients. But there’s so many patients with these problems. And so what we did was we started about three years ago, we started the bigger practice. And so I’ve been training and then getting the word out because the other part of the problem is well, there aren’t enough trained people to do it. So we’re trying to fix that by training more people. And then the other side is like professionals don’t know about it. And then the patients and the parents themselves don’t even know that there’s help out there.
Frances Shefter: (00:08:28): Which is part of the reason for the show is to let the community know like, hey, we’re out here, there’s people that can help. You don’t have to do this alone, you. There’s other people. So I know like for me a lot of times, I can imagine for adults, for everyone, like with G I issues that you’re not wanting to go to work and especially for our children that they don’t want to go to school because obviously if they’re in pain or if they have to go to the bathroom or, whatever else, like what, what do you see or like how does that work?
Ali Navidi: (00:9:01): Yeah. So disorders like this frequently play into school refusal and you could understand why. So let’s say you have a kid who developed some GI issue. Right? And then they start missing some school and then they’re falling behind and I haven’t really talked about the model of how this all works, like how the problem actually works. But let’s just say that anxiety feeds into this system and it’s gonna create more symptoms. And so what happens after we miss a little bit of school is we’ve got a lot of work to catch up on and you go back and it’s more stressful. And then if you’ve already got a kid who’s a little anxious about school, anyway, what happens with anxiety when we avoid something when we try to come back to it? There’s even more anxiety and so there’s these, you know, terrible spirals that these kids get into where it gets harder and harder for them to get to school. There’s more and more barriers. So now they’re facing all this anxiety about going to school in addition to stomach problems or, you know, like diarrhea, constipation, nausea, sometimes vomiting. Could you imagine you’ve already got anxiety but now in addition, you’ve got fear of having to go to the bathroom or like, you know, like all kinds of stuff. it just feeds on itself in a really nasty way. So, some of the most difficult school refusal patients to work with are those that also have this physical component in addition to the mental health component
Frances Shefter: (00:10:58): That’s the first thing I said is I can imagine the anxiety if you have digestive disorders walking into school, you know, oh my God. Am I gonna make it to the bathroom on time? Is the teacher gonna let me go? Am I gonna get, you know, just like, and is the child even available for learning if they’re in that much pain? You know?
Ali Navidi: (00:11:20): No, go ahead, go ahead.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:21): No, I was just gonna say, and I know we’ve talked about it because there’s like lots of different methods that you can get in school of the, you know, we can get a health plan put in place, we can get a 504 plan put in place, we can get an IEP put in place if they need specialized instruction and other issues. But even with all those accommodations, I don’t see how it’s going to help that much. Well, I mean, it’ll help obviously, but then you’re still getting that spiral effect of missing the instruction.
Ali Navidi: (00:11:50): The IEP is so important, the 504 is so important. Getting a good plan is very important and you still have to do something to interrupt the spiral. Because if you don’t, what happens is over time, these things tend to build, there’s kind of this negative moment that can occur. You know, it’s like it gets easier and easier to miss school and harder and harder to come back. And I can give you a little example, of course, changing details to protect the innocent. There’s a young lady that I just started to see over the summer and when she came to see me, she hadn’t really been to school in two years. And the reason was, , a mixture of various physical things that were very responsive to stress. So GI, and, and that’s the other thing to know a lot of these patients, it’s not even just GI, sometimes it’s GI issues plus chronic headache, plus sometimes it’s brain fog or musculoskeletal pain that they can’t find any reason for. And so what they found is that, you know, certain types of people, certain types of kids are just more prone to these types of problems. So, could you imagine it’s not even just the GI stuff. It’s like chronic headaches and brain fog and trouble sleeping and whatever.
Frances Shefter: (00:13:37): I was gonna say, I would think that all of that connects because I know for me, at least if I don’t eat enough or if I don’t drink enough, I have the brain fog and the, you know, headaches and all of that stuff. So if you’re having digestive issues, chances are you’re not getting the nutrients that your body needs and it all, you know, which comes first. Who cares? They’re all there. Let’s fix it.
Ali Navidi: (00:13:58): And you could think of, you know, these GI disorders I’m talking about as kind of brain body, a smaller, a subset of brain body disorders where the brain and the body are interacting in such a way that it’s causing problems. And that’s one kind of category. But there are other categories of this can happen with pain, with chronic pain. There’s nothing wrong with the body. But the pain is 100% real being created by the interaction of the brain and the body. I told you, I just came back from a conference in Louisville, right? And the whole conference was just physical therapists, but it was physical therapists specializing in chronic pain. And so this is what we’re talking about the whole time, you know, is the various ways that the brain and the body can interact to create chronic pain, even when there’s no damage to the system, even when their muscles aren’t damaged, their tendons are fine. And that’s a whole other subject, right? So just to understand that this happens all the time and it happens a lot with kids too.
Frances Shefter: (00:15:22): And that was gonna be my next question like as adults or even, you know, some teenagers and stuff we can say like I’m nauseous, I’m sick. And I know being a parent of young children, the young kids say I have a stomachache, you know, is this the child really have a stomachache or they just don’t want to go to school for a reason. And all of that there are ways to flush that out as a parent to see, like when do they need to call you, what are they looking for?
Ali Navidi: (00:15:48): So, typically people will come to us, we’ll follow this kind of sequence. They’ll notice that their kid starts having, let’s say stomach aches, but it’s not happening enough that they, they just kind of, it’s in the back of their mind. They’re like, huh? And then something happens, maybe there’s a stressful event. Maybe there isn’t even a stressful event, but often there is a stressful event problems at school, you know, some kind of difficulty in the home, whatever. And now those stomach aches are ramping up, they’re much more frequent and maybe the kid is missing a little bit of school. And so they go, they start that process of going to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checks it out. I don’t see anything wrong. They give him another month or two, the stomach aches continue, then they go to the gastroenterologist, gastroenterologist checks them out. We’re not seeing anything wrong. This is good news. , it looks like maybe they’ve got functional abdominal pain or IBS. And at the point when the doctor can conclude that there’s nothing dangerous happening in the body because, what they have to do is eliminate the alarm. There’s certain diagnoses that can also have stomach aches , that are kind of scary and dangerous. And then doctor’s job is always to eliminate those possibilities. Once they’ve eliminated those possibilities, what people used to, what the doctors used to say is, well, I guess you’ll just have to live with it. You know, here, take this drug or, or this supplement and maybe mess around with your diet and none of it was particularly effective. And that’s the point now where they can come to us. And so, the good news is the practice is now were, able to see patients in over 40 states including DC, Virginia, you know, Maryland. It’s all telehealth and we’ve trained up a good crew of clinicians at this point.
Frances Shefter: (00:18:13): And does it work? I know a lot of people with therapy and stuff, like, say, like, how does it work with telehealth? Like, you don’t know what’s going on in the background? I mean, I’m assuming, since it’s all telehealth and you’re in 40 states it’s working. But how do you overcome that fear of somebody saying my kid’s not gonna go if it’s on camera.
Ali Navidi: (00:18:31): My kid’s not gonna go. And usually, you know,, as long as they’re not super young, like younger than six. Typically, the kids do just fine. In fact, some of the kids are a lot better on camera than maybe the adults would be. And I’ve had certain patients that really needed to be in person and it’s usually not kids. It’s, it’s, it’s usually the adults. So yeah, at the beginning of the pandemic, that was everybody’s question like, is this gonna work? And what we found is that it does, we just, you just need to kind of make sure that the kind of teach the kid what, what is successful therapy look like, find a non distraction place to do it. With certain kids will even come up with kind of a, a behavioral plan to help them like, ok, you get a point for doing, you know, participating in this way for this, you can earn up to three points in the therapy session and then they can exchange their points for rewards with their parents and for some kids that are really distractible. That is a great thing to do. But we’ve got answers to all the kind of common problems that you’ll see with kids. Like got an ADHD kid. Well, my kid never pays attention. There’s solutions to those things. Your kid is not the first A DH D kid that we’ve had to work with, you know.
Frances Shefter: (00:20:15): Right. And I, I know at least for me as a parent, I’m always the, you know, the hardest on my kid but the hardest to be like, oh, no way that my kid is really bad. You can’t handle it or, you know, that type of stuff.
Ali Navidi: (00:20:35): I love that you’re bringing up because, I’ve heard it so many times in, especially in the first session or even the cons, we have like a free consultation, you know, by phone at first. And you’ll hear that in the consult also. Well, I don’t know, you know, my kid is, you know, really tough, he really doesn’t want therapy, you know, like you or they’re skeptical. And, you know, that gets into maybe a little bit of like what the treatments are too like specifically. II’d say it’s, people are come into it a little skeptical is like the norm. Snd kids probably come into it either indifferent or slightly annoyed and that’s also the norm. And the norm is once they kind of learn about it and they start doing the treatment that for the most part they’re on board, it’s rare that we get a kid that we can’t engage in the treatment because they start to notice the benefits relatively quickly. So I would say within maybe the fourth session, they’re already starting to notice some benefits is, is probably normal.
Frances Shefter: (00:22:03): Are the sessions weekly or every day for 10 days in a row? How does that work. Is there a specific time frame that you have to work within?
Ali Navidi: (00:22:11): Yeah, we don’t like it to be too frequent. We like it to be weekly is probably the ideal and we can go to every other week. We want the patient to have time at least a week in between sessions to kind of put this into place. We give them homework to do at home to just reinforce what they’re learning. And so they need that time to kind of integrate it and really learn it.
Frances Shefter: (00:22:41): So if I’m hearing correctly, it’s more you all teaching the patients rather than the patients going into the deep dark secrets or the stuff, the stressors and all the other stuff, the way people think therapy is.
Ali Navidi: (00:22:58): Yeah. So what does it look like? So there’s two major forms of treatment that have, like I said at the beginning, tons and tons of research, right? CBT and clinical hypnosis. Everybody wants to hear more about the clinical hypnosis piece. But before I jump in there, I just want to say a small thing on CBT, which is that a lot of people know what CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. But the important thing to understand about this kind of problem is that we’re not just using a kind of bread and butter CBT uh like the, you know, your standard, you know, I was trained in CBT. You know, when I was first, you know, in my training, but it’s a specific protocols that most people aren’t trained in. And I say that because I’ve seen so many of these types of patients that have been sent to regular CBT therapists and they do good work with their anxiety or their depression. But what they aren’t able to really help is this brain gut problem that they have.
Frances Shefter: (00:24:9): That makes sense. And I know like with CBT, it’s, you know, it’s always hard, like we talk about all the time, like you need to find somebody that’s good and I hate using the word good because I like to say that fits because there’s lots of good therapists out there, but you just don’t mesh with them. And so don’t waste your time. And a good therapist, like I had a therapist, tell me a good therapist is going to check in with you. Is this still working for you? You know, there’s no offense if it’s not. Let’s find somebody else so that you can get the results.
Ali Navidi: (00:24:44): And the nice thing about working with kids and adolescents is after the session, they’re usually not shy about telling their parents if they think it’s working, if they like working with the therapist or not, you know. So, you know, obviously you want to give it a period of time to, like, settle in, , but, you know, beyond three or four sessions, if you’re still hearing that from your kid, you’re totally right. Like, it’s probably just not a right, it’s not the right fit. Which is why I think it’s nice now that we’ve got a lot of clinicians with a lot of different backgrounds, male and female with different kinds of training, , older, younger. Because, you know, you don’t connect with everybody, it just doesn’t happen.
Frances Shefter: (00:25:43): I don’t wanna assume, but like, when somebody calls and does a consultation, do you or whoever handles that part? Did they match the therapist with the kid or is it just whoever’s available?
Ali Navidi: (00:25:58): Ok. Good question. So, not long ago when we had a ridiculous wait list, which I hated being in that situation because, you know, we’re talking about like months for people to wait, but then we’ve been able to hire and train. So now we have very little weight list. So that’s so it’s really good and that also gives us the ability to kind of match a lot closer. Like, ok, they’ve got this issue and, and we know that Sam is really good with that or, you know, Deanna is good with this other thing, you know. When we had the really bad wait list, it was a lot harder to do that. Just because like, ok, you’ve waited two months already. Do you wanna wait another two months to get this, like the perfect match or maybe this would just be good enough to make it work, right? Like maybe we can make the match work and so we don’t have to do that right now, which is nice. We can kind of get the perfect match,
Frances Shefter: (00:27:08): I’m assuming it doesn’t, is the like is the program. So I know you said 8 to 10, like, what is the method? Like, what do you go into? , like to the extent that you can because I’m sure it’s individualized, but like, does it really matter if your person is trained in the other stuff or can anybody handle it?
Ali Navidi: (00:27:28): That’s true. So as an example, let’s say you’ve got a patient with trauma, right? If they have a trauma therapist already, somebody they’re working with, the person they’re working with for the GI stuff in our group doesn’t necessarily need to be an expert on working with trauma. They just need to be an expert on doing these treatments and then they’re gonna coordinate with the trauma therapist to make sure that we’re, you know, not getting in each other’s way. Does that makes sense?
Frances Shefter: (00:28:9): 100%. And that you’re working together? Because yes, because that’s that’s one of the big things is we’re a community and if we’re not all talking then we’re overriding what somebody else might be doing. And so the community, so you guys work together. I love that. And then of course, you know, what was gonna circle back to because I’m sure all the listeners are like hypnosis. How does that work? What is it? You know, what’s that? Does that work? You know, and so forth?
Ali Navidi: (00:28:33): I love being able to talk about hypnosis because it’s kind of a side mission of mine to work to dispel some of the myths that are out there because, I think it’s a terrible shame that you’ve got clinical hypnosis, which has ridiculous amounts of research associated to it. I mean, I’d encourage this would take people about 20 seconds. Go into a website called www.PUB Med.com Pub Med is available to everyone out there. You can all just like type in Pubmed into Google, go into pub Med and just type hypnosis and let’s say IBS or hypnosis and chronic pain, hypnosis, depression. In essence hypnosis has been there, this has been studied so much but what everyone knows about is not clinical hypnosis. What everyone knows about is entertainment hypnosis. And there is the problem. Right. Because what does entertainment hypnosis teach us? You know, like every year there’s a new movie coming out. It’s either like, scary or funny and goofy. But there’s no movies coming out that show, like an accurate view of, like, what hypnosis is, , that’s not what people are getting, people are getting mind control and magic and, you know, weird stuff, you know,
Frances Shefter: (00:30:12): Very different. And so for clinical hypnosis is that like, is there a certification? Is there a license for that?
Ali Navidi: (00:30:19): Yeah. So if I’m talking to the other therapists out there in the world right there, or even actually no parents and patients who are looking for someone to do hypnosis for them as part of their treatment, don’t just go to anybody, don’t go to just anybody who’s got, you know, some kind of random training in it. There’s a very, very good organization. It only trains clinicians to do clinical hypnosis because there’s a lot of places out there that will train an accountant, a lawyer, a construction worker, literally anybody who walks in the door can get trained in hypnosis and there’ll be an official hypnotherapist, right? And that’s what I say to people. I’m not a hypnotherapist. I’m a clinical psychologist, , who is trained to use clinical hypnosis in therapy,
Frances Shefter: (00:31:25): Which is a big difference. And it’s, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is that people always say, you know, advocate or an attorney advocate or attorney. And it, you know, it’s the same thing with an attorney, you know, they know the laws, you know, we’re certified and there’s repercussions if we screw up with an advocate, anybody can say they’re an advocate, a parent that’s done it once, a special ed teacher not saying they can’t do it, but you can’t afford to waste time with those that aren’t properly trained.
Ali Navidi: (00:31:57): Because you don’t know what is the standard that they’ve been held to in terms of their training?
Frances Shefter: (00:32:04): Exactly.
Ali Navidi: (00:32:05): So the organization before I, before I get lost in that the organization that people should be looking for, at least, , as a minimum for hypnosis training is the American Society for Clinical hypnosis. So that’s Ash. www.ASCH.net. And every one of our clinicians are, they go through kind of an initial beginner’s level training with Ash. And then I spend like 5 to 6 months with them, you know, training them on more advanced techniques, how to apply the cognitive behavioral therapy, how to understand the GI problems and also chronic pain. So we do a lot of work. We’re, we’re not just kind of bringing in therapists and just saying, go to it. We’re spending a lot of time training people up.
Frances Shefter: (00:32:57): So, with the ASCH, is it, do you have to have some sort of background to even get into the program or is it?
Ali Navidi: (00:33:04): Yeah. So you would need to either be a psychologist, social worker counselor or doctor. I think now they let physical therapists and they’re training physical therapists and I think I’m forgetting at least one group but these are all groups like nurses. I think they started training nurses now too.
Frances Shefter: (00:33:27): So people that already have degrees and are already in the field and this is just a part of what they do. Yeah, because that’s a big difference, you know, like what is your training and today in today’s society, you know, I have a business coach and everybody’s asking well, what coach do you use? How do you know what’s a good coach? Well, what do you want your coach to teach you? You know, what do you want your therapist to do? You want to make sure they have done it or have that background and that training. , you know, my coach has her own multimillion dollar law firm. Ok. You know, she’s got the background in the training, right? I wanna follow your footsteps and I’m assuming with, with doctors and with, you know, with the training and stuff you want to make sure they have the background so they know what they’re doing right?
Ali Navidi: (00:34:13): Yeah, I think I’d heard of some, there was some model to treat patients like this out there that, , I think they’re using health coaches. And so what is a health coach? Well, I don’t know, you know, like, I know they’re not somebody who has any clinical degree at all. I’m not even sure what kind of training goes into becoming a health coach. People are gonna put their health in their hands, right?
Frances Shefter: (00:34:50): And it worries me because then somebody will say, well, I tried hypnosis, it doesn’t work.
Ali Navidi: (00:35:00): Yeah, I’ve run, you know, like maybe they do, they’re these stage shows, they go around to colleges and school and sometimes high schools and sometimes people go see these shows just for fun and they’ll go and volunteer and they’ll, it’s very different experience. You know, and that gets to like, ok, well, if it’s not all this mind control stuff, like what is hypnosis actually? It’s actually really straightforward. It’s just deliberately teaching people how to go into a trance state and trance is a normal natural state of consciousness. We all are going in and out of trance. You know, I worked out this morning and I guarantee you at some point in that workout, I was entrance, I was in my head doing this exercise, the world around me disappeared, you know, I might not have even noticed the discomfort. Right?
Frances Shefter: (00:36:04): When I was a runner, I used to call it my Zen but it would hit the point that nothing else, like you just hit that Zen and it was just so amazing. I miss it.
Ali Navidi: (00:36:13): Whenever I talk with runners. They’re, they’re always like, talking about that, that state of mind. If you’re a parent and you have kids that are old enough, every parent has seen trance, all you have to do is just look at your kid when they’re on their phone. That’s it. You will see trance in action because everything else fades away. If you’re even close to them and you talk to them, they might not even consciously pick it up even though clearly they should be able to hear you, right? But the point of all this is that trance is happening all the time. It’s a natural state of consciousness for people. And so it’s actually not particularly hard to teach people how to do it on purpose because they’re already doing it accidentally. And then, and then in tran they’re able to learn and do things that you can’t necessarily learn and do in a, in your normal waking state of consciousness.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:19): Because we get in our own way.
Ali Navidi: (00:37:22): Yeah, we get in our own way and we have a much more powerful mind body connection when we’re in trance. That makes sense. Yeah. And the, yeah, there’s so many different benefits to being in trance, being in hypnosis. Which is why people study it so much. Like, literally, there’s so many, there’s so many publications out there of scientists studying hypnosis because it actually is a very powerful technique. It’s just not the entertainment stuff that people think.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:53): You’re not making them bark like a dog.
Ali Navidi: (00:37:56): You’re in control, you’re gonna be aware of everything that happens. You’re gonna remember what happened. I mean, there’s so many misconceptions about it and the, and, and we teach all our patients self hypnosis that’s, and, and self hypnosis and it’s done is an amazing skill. Whenever they need to calm themselves down. I use it myself all the time. , when I was about to give a talk, , at, in Louisville, in Kentucky. Right. I thought I was gonna talk to 25 people and it turned out to be 100 people in the big conference room. Right? And, you know, like it’s a small thing, but I was like, oh, you’re gonna need the mic. I was like, oh God. And guess what? I was, I started to feel anxious. You know, I found a little private place dropped in and once you learn it, you can do it really quick. Like you can literally drop in, in about five seconds, you know, take 30 seconds a minute, calming yourself down, come back out, you’re ready to roll.
Frances Shefter: (00:39:08): I was just gonna say it’s similar to Alexandra technique that physical therapist use, uh the ready list. It sounds like, you know, it’s very similar to that. It’s just taking those few minutes to get within yourself almost.
Ali Navidi: (00:39:22): Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:39:23): Yeah. That’s awesome. This has been so amazing. So, if people are afraid of the hypnosis, like, are all of your treatments, are they clinical hypnosis or is it CBT or does it depend on the what they want and what their needs are?
Ali Navidi: (00:39:39): So the way like in an ideal world where you know, someone has been educated about hypnosis, they’re, they’re fine with it. The treatment kind of looks like this. It’s like CBT clinical hypnosis are we then in maybe one session will be more focused on CBT, the other is on clinical hypnosis and, and it tends to be like you wanna use the CBT more if it’s someone who’s got a lot of hypervigilance and catastrophizing. Ok. Because what happens is when patients start developing these disorders, they lock in and they’re always scanning their stomach trying to notice like, how does it feel? Is it gonna get worse? Like what’s gonna happen if I’m not at home? Where is the bathroom gonna be? God, I don’t wanna have an accident like they’re always scanning and worrying and then they’re catastrophizing about what they notice. And so if we’re noticing someone who has a lot of that, then we’re gonna push harder on the CBT part . If they have a lot less of that and it’s just a lot of the discomfort, then we’re gonna push more on the clinical hypnosis part.
Frances Shefter: (00:40:56): That makes sense. So, it’s tailored to each individual person.
Ali Navidi: (00:40:59): Yeah. Oh. And one thing to throw in, , the interesting thing about this is you’d think, ok, this is a psychological treatment. All that’s gonna change is the psychological factors. Like, ok, I’ve, I’ve still got IBS, but at least I’m not anxious about it. I’m not worrying and all this other stuff and maybe the pain doesn’t bother me so much. Right. But actually the research shows the symptoms. So IBS might have diarrhea, it might have bloating, it might have, like, these different, very physical symptoms. Those change too. Yeah. And that’s the, that’s the, wow, for me too, it’s like, look, we’ve got a very high percentage of people who are gonna benefit tremendously from it. And a disorder that can last their whole life. If not, if not treated, let’s get them treated. They don’t have to live with these things. And that’s why we started the practice. It’s like, look, people don’t have to live with this stuff. 10 sessions more likely than that you’re gonna be good to go.
Frances Shefter: (00:42:06): Right. I mean, to me it’s like, that’s why wouldn’t you, you know, again. Why wouldn’t you? So what I’m hearing, I just want to wrap up a little bit and summarize a little for, , our listeners is that if your child or you are having digestive issues, anything I BS, all of that stuff go to the doctor, make sure it’s nothing of any of those other diseases that could be bad that we don’t need to name. And then if the doctor still, oh, it’s just this, here’s this drug, then they need to call your office.
Ali Navidi: (00:42:40): Yeah. What we call it is they’re medically cleared. They’re safe. We know it’s safe. We know it’s not something like, , Crohn’s disease or colitis, ulcerative colitis, something like that. It’s not an ulcer or something. You know, we rule out those things, they’re medically cleared, they’re ready to go. I realized I didn’t even say the website. I know you’ll probably link to it but it’s just www.GIpsychology.com. It’s really straightforward. And I’ve, I’ve mentioned a lot of research as I’ve been talking but maybe you don’t believe me on the website, we link to all like a bunch of the research. They can take their time, check it out, they can do the free phone console with a clinician to learn more and have them answer their questions. Because we’re not trying to sell anything. We’re not trying to rush anybody. We’re just trying to educate
Frances Shefter: (00:43:37): Yeah, you wanna educate and you wanna help people like me, you know, we’re there to help and to assist and to, you know, yeah, it’s not about, it’s about helping, helping the world making it a better place. And yeah, thank you so much. This has been so interesting. I was so excited to have you on the show. I was like, I can’t wait because I knew so little about it. So thank you so much for being on the show and all of this information to all of the listeners. Thank you.
Ali Navidi: (00:44:05): It was an absolute pleasure. You made it easy, you made it easy. And you do amazing work yourself. And I’ve, I’ve referred patients to you already because I went through a period, like I said, we were talking at the beginning. I didn’t even know services like yours existed and I’m thinking back over the years, I’ve had so many patients because I deal with patients with a lot of health issues, right? Could have used your help.
Frances Shefter: (00:44:37): I’ve referred to you some that are like lost with the doctors and like you need to call, think outside of the box, call this person they can help or team determine. So, yes, thank you. I love that we’re, you know, mutually passing it back and forth so so that everybody knows and can benefit from both of us.
Ali Navidi: (00:44:55): Because it takes a team. It takes a team 100%.
VOICEOVER: (00:45:02): You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host Frances Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Frances through www.Shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.
Gut-Brain Interactions with Ali Navidi (Stress-Free IEP® with Frances Shefter)
In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Psychologist Ali Navidi, Founder of GI Psychology.
Ali is a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialized focus on gastro-psychology, delving into the intriguing interplay between the brain and the gut. Ali’s practice also extends to working with patients grappling with various chronic medical conditions. Ali has honed his skills in applying Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Clinical Hypnosis to help clients achieve their desired outcomes. Ali’s primary clientele comprises adults and adolescents.
GI Psychology is a team of highly experienced clinicians with demonstrated success in treating a number of gastrointestinal, gut-brain interactions as well as other medical and psychological conditions. Their clinicians have advanced training and experience in delivering the gold-standard of care.
Tune into to the episode to hear about:
Learn more about Ali Navidi:
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Stress-Free IEP®:
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
Watch more episodes of Stress-Free IEP®:
Connect and learn more from your host, Frances Shefter:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
VOICEOVER: (00:00:01): Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone with your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shefter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www.ShefterLaw.com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YouTube and LinkedIn and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcast, Stitcher and more. Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: (00:00:37): Hello, everybody, and welcome to the show. I am so excited to have somebody completely out of the ordinary as my guest today. I had never heard about him until I met him at a networking event. Dr. Navi is a licensed clinical psychologist and one of the founders of GI Psychology, a private practice that specializes in helping patients with GI disorders and chronic pain. Dr. Navi oversees the training and outreach at the practice, and he is also one of the founders and past presidents of the Northern Virginia Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
So, Dr. Navi, please tell us more about GI disorders through psychology. How does that work?
Ali Navidi: (00:01:24): And by the way, Frances, I’m so happy to be talking with you and I, I feel like it’s been too long since we talked. So this is great that we get a chance to talk more. So what is this, you know, GI Psychology stuff? If I backed up for a second I’ve been doing work in this area, DC metro area for about 12 years as a private practice, doing GI psychology work. And, basically it is this field that I guess a lot of people know about but they don’t know that they know about it. And so, one of the things, that most people know about is something called irritable bowel syndrome. And so that’s an example of what’s called a disorder of gut brain interaction. I love the name and basically these guys, The Rome Foundation, what they do is for doctors all over the world, they set the standards for these types of disorders and there’s like IBS is one of them, but there are 22 other disorders that they classify. And so what does that mean? Essentially? That means that there’s nothing structurally wrong with the person so that there’s not inflammation, there’s not ulcers, you know, when someone gets diagnosed with IBS., What’s happening is the disorder is between how the gut and the brain are interacting or talking with each other and that’s essentially what causes IBS which I think even that most people don’t even know.
Frances Shefter: (00:03:18): I was just gonna say, I always thought of it. It’s a medical condition and what do medical doctors do? They throw drugs at it and what do drugs do? Give you side effects and they might cover the symptoms but they don’t get at the source.
Ali Navidi: (00:03:32): With IBS and, and all these other, they’re called DGBI is so disorders of gut brain interaction, the medications don’t even really do all that much. So what often, so let’s go to like little kids, right? So what happens with the little kids? They’ll get IBS or they’ll get what’s called functional abdominal pain. That means they’re getting abdominal pain and nobody can find a reason for it. They might get nausea, often it’ll happen kind of in relation to stressful events. So maybe Sunday or Monday morning, Monday morning is a real common one. the stomach hurts, they feel nauseous, and then you take him to the doctor and the doctor doesn’t find anything. And so the diagnosis would be like functional abdominal pain or IBS or something like that. And that’s in this broad category that I mentioned of DGBI. So this is a lot of talking to say, like, sadly, most people don’t realize that there are amazing treatments for these problems that are not well known but are very well researched and that’s the key part to it. Meaning, let’s take IBS as an example, there’s now going on close to 40 years of research showing that behavioral health treatments, that means a therapist like myself who’s very specially trained those types of treatments for close to 40 years now have been shown to be effective, effective, effective, effective. And that really crazy high rates like, I mean, 85% effectiveness, meaning if patients do their, you know, 8 to 10 sessions, 85% of them are gonna reach their treatment goals, which is so huge.
Frances Shefter: (00:05:49): And you mentioned 8 to 10 sessions. So, it’s not like you have to commit to weekly sessions for the rest of your life. Just 8 to 10 sessions can make a significant difference. That’s truly impressive. And I know that a lot of times anxiety comes out in stomach issues, digestive issues. So even if you have an anxiety diagnosis, your treatments could help with it in the sense that it’s the digestive, right?
Ali Navidi: (00:06:21): There’s almost this is maybe a little too much, but it’s like, it’s almost nobody who comes in with the stomach issues who also doesn’t have an anxiety disorder too. Right? They’re highly comorbid. They go together a lot. Not now that you will run into people that don’t have anxiety issues but do have the stomach problems but they’re the minority. And so what I tell people is, look, even if you have a therapist and you’re working on the anxiety already come see us, we play well with others, meaning we can do this treatment while you’re in therapy and you know, do your 10 sessions and the positive response rate is really high. And then the side effect is that the patients will learn additional affect regulation, skills, affect regulation is just the ability to calm themselves down.
Frances Shefter: (00:07:21): Which I mean, to me, why wouldn’t you try it? You know, like what are the side effects, you know, 8 to 10 sessions? Like how often do we go to the doctor and they prescribe this drug? And it makes us even sicker or does this and what we go through financially, emotionally, physically. This sounds like an easy, almost no brainer of why people wouldn’t try it.
Ali Navidi: (00:07:43): And that’s essentially why I started the practice. So I’ve been doing this on my own but, you know, I was full, I was full, there were, you know, there weren’t any more hours in the day I could see patients. But there’s so many patients with these problems. And so what we did was we started about three years ago, we started the bigger practice. And so I’ve been training and then getting the word out because the other part of the problem is well, there aren’t enough trained people to do it. So we’re trying to fix that by training more people. And then the other side is like professionals don’t know about it. And then the patients and the parents themselves don’t even know that there’s help out there.
Frances Shefter: (00:08:28): Which is part of the reason for the show is to let the community know like, hey, we’re out here, there’s people that can help. You don’t have to do this alone, you. There’s other people. So I know like for me a lot of times, I can imagine for adults, for everyone, like with G I issues that you’re not wanting to go to work and especially for our children that they don’t want to go to school because obviously if they’re in pain or if they have to go to the bathroom or, whatever else, like what, what do you see or like how does that work?
Ali Navidi: (00:9:01): Yeah. So disorders like this frequently play into school refusal and you could understand why. So let’s say you have a kid who developed some GI issue. Right? And then they start missing some school and then they’re falling behind and I haven’t really talked about the model of how this all works, like how the problem actually works. But let’s just say that anxiety feeds into this system and it’s gonna create more symptoms. And so what happens after we miss a little bit of school is we’ve got a lot of work to catch up on and you go back and it’s more stressful. And then if you’ve already got a kid who’s a little anxious about school, anyway, what happens with anxiety when we avoid something when we try to come back to it? There’s even more anxiety and so there’s these, you know, terrible spirals that these kids get into where it gets harder and harder for them to get to school. There’s more and more barriers. So now they’re facing all this anxiety about going to school in addition to stomach problems or, you know, like diarrhea, constipation, nausea, sometimes vomiting. Could you imagine you’ve already got anxiety but now in addition, you’ve got fear of having to go to the bathroom or like, you know, like all kinds of stuff. it just feeds on itself in a really nasty way. So, some of the most difficult school refusal patients to work with are those that also have this physical component in addition to the mental health component
Frances Shefter: (00:10:58): That’s the first thing I said is I can imagine the anxiety if you have digestive disorders walking into school, you know, oh my God. Am I gonna make it to the bathroom on time? Is the teacher gonna let me go? Am I gonna get, you know, just like, and is the child even available for learning if they’re in that much pain? You know?
Ali Navidi: (00:11:20): No, go ahead, go ahead.
Frances Shefter: (00:11:21): No, I was just gonna say, and I know we’ve talked about it because there’s like lots of different methods that you can get in school of the, you know, we can get a health plan put in place, we can get a 504 plan put in place, we can get an IEP put in place if they need specialized instruction and other issues. But even with all those accommodations, I don’t see how it’s going to help that much. Well, I mean, it’ll help obviously, but then you’re still getting that spiral effect of missing the instruction.
Ali Navidi: (00:11:50): The IEP is so important, the 504 is so important. Getting a good plan is very important and you still have to do something to interrupt the spiral. Because if you don’t, what happens is over time, these things tend to build, there’s kind of this negative moment that can occur. You know, it’s like it gets easier and easier to miss school and harder and harder to come back. And I can give you a little example, of course, changing details to protect the innocent. There’s a young lady that I just started to see over the summer and when she came to see me, she hadn’t really been to school in two years. And the reason was, , a mixture of various physical things that were very responsive to stress. So GI, and, and that’s the other thing to know a lot of these patients, it’s not even just GI, sometimes it’s GI issues plus chronic headache, plus sometimes it’s brain fog or musculoskeletal pain that they can’t find any reason for. And so what they found is that, you know, certain types of people, certain types of kids are just more prone to these types of problems. So, could you imagine it’s not even just the GI stuff. It’s like chronic headaches and brain fog and trouble sleeping and whatever.
Frances Shefter: (00:13:37): I was gonna say, I would think that all of that connects because I know for me, at least if I don’t eat enough or if I don’t drink enough, I have the brain fog and the, you know, headaches and all of that stuff. So if you’re having digestive issues, chances are you’re not getting the nutrients that your body needs and it all, you know, which comes first. Who cares? They’re all there. Let’s fix it.
Ali Navidi: (00:13:58): And you could think of, you know, these GI disorders I’m talking about as kind of brain body, a smaller, a subset of brain body disorders where the brain and the body are interacting in such a way that it’s causing problems. And that’s one kind of category. But there are other categories of this can happen with pain, with chronic pain. There’s nothing wrong with the body. But the pain is 100% real being created by the interaction of the brain and the body. I told you, I just came back from a conference in Louisville, right? And the whole conference was just physical therapists, but it was physical therapists specializing in chronic pain. And so this is what we’re talking about the whole time, you know, is the various ways that the brain and the body can interact to create chronic pain, even when there’s no damage to the system, even when their muscles aren’t damaged, their tendons are fine. And that’s a whole other subject, right? So just to understand that this happens all the time and it happens a lot with kids too.
Frances Shefter: (00:15:22): And that was gonna be my next question like as adults or even, you know, some teenagers and stuff we can say like I’m nauseous, I’m sick. And I know being a parent of young children, the young kids say I have a stomachache, you know, is this the child really have a stomachache or they just don’t want to go to school for a reason. And all of that there are ways to flush that out as a parent to see, like when do they need to call you, what are they looking for?
Ali Navidi: (00:15:48): So, typically people will come to us, we’ll follow this kind of sequence. They’ll notice that their kid starts having, let’s say stomach aches, but it’s not happening enough that they, they just kind of, it’s in the back of their mind. They’re like, huh? And then something happens, maybe there’s a stressful event. Maybe there isn’t even a stressful event, but often there is a stressful event problems at school, you know, some kind of difficulty in the home, whatever. And now those stomach aches are ramping up, they’re much more frequent and maybe the kid is missing a little bit of school. And so they go, they start that process of going to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checks it out. I don’t see anything wrong. They give him another month or two, the stomach aches continue, then they go to the gastroenterologist, gastroenterologist checks them out. We’re not seeing anything wrong. This is good news. , it looks like maybe they’ve got functional abdominal pain or IBS. And at the point when the doctor can conclude that there’s nothing dangerous happening in the body because, what they have to do is eliminate the alarm. There’s certain diagnoses that can also have stomach aches , that are kind of scary and dangerous. And then doctor’s job is always to eliminate those possibilities. Once they’ve eliminated those possibilities, what people used to, what the doctors used to say is, well, I guess you’ll just have to live with it. You know, here, take this drug or, or this supplement and maybe mess around with your diet and none of it was particularly effective. And that’s the point now where they can come to us. And so, the good news is the practice is now were, able to see patients in over 40 states including DC, Virginia, you know, Maryland. It’s all telehealth and we’ve trained up a good crew of clinicians at this point.
Frances Shefter: (00:18:13): And does it work? I know a lot of people with therapy and stuff, like, say, like, how does it work with telehealth? Like, you don’t know what’s going on in the background? I mean, I’m assuming, since it’s all telehealth and you’re in 40 states it’s working. But how do you overcome that fear of somebody saying my kid’s not gonna go if it’s on camera.
Ali Navidi: (00:18:31): My kid’s not gonna go. And usually, you know,, as long as they’re not super young, like younger than six. Typically, the kids do just fine. In fact, some of the kids are a lot better on camera than maybe the adults would be. And I’ve had certain patients that really needed to be in person and it’s usually not kids. It’s, it’s, it’s usually the adults. So yeah, at the beginning of the pandemic, that was everybody’s question like, is this gonna work? And what we found is that it does, we just, you just need to kind of make sure that the kind of teach the kid what, what is successful therapy look like, find a non distraction place to do it. With certain kids will even come up with kind of a, a behavioral plan to help them like, ok, you get a point for doing, you know, participating in this way for this, you can earn up to three points in the therapy session and then they can exchange their points for rewards with their parents and for some kids that are really distractible. That is a great thing to do. But we’ve got answers to all the kind of common problems that you’ll see with kids. Like got an ADHD kid. Well, my kid never pays attention. There’s solutions to those things. Your kid is not the first A DH D kid that we’ve had to work with, you know.
Frances Shefter: (00:20:15): Right. And I, I know at least for me as a parent, I’m always the, you know, the hardest on my kid but the hardest to be like, oh, no way that my kid is really bad. You can’t handle it or, you know, that type of stuff.
Ali Navidi: (00:20:35): I love that you’re bringing up because, I’ve heard it so many times in, especially in the first session or even the cons, we have like a free consultation, you know, by phone at first. And you’ll hear that in the consult also. Well, I don’t know, you know, my kid is, you know, really tough, he really doesn’t want therapy, you know, like you or they’re skeptical. And, you know, that gets into maybe a little bit of like what the treatments are too like specifically. II’d say it’s, people are come into it a little skeptical is like the norm. Snd kids probably come into it either indifferent or slightly annoyed and that’s also the norm. And the norm is once they kind of learn about it and they start doing the treatment that for the most part they’re on board, it’s rare that we get a kid that we can’t engage in the treatment because they start to notice the benefits relatively quickly. So I would say within maybe the fourth session, they’re already starting to notice some benefits is, is probably normal.
Frances Shefter: (00:22:03): Are the sessions weekly or every day for 10 days in a row? How does that work. Is there a specific time frame that you have to work within?
Ali Navidi: (00:22:11): Yeah, we don’t like it to be too frequent. We like it to be weekly is probably the ideal and we can go to every other week. We want the patient to have time at least a week in between sessions to kind of put this into place. We give them homework to do at home to just reinforce what they’re learning. And so they need that time to kind of integrate it and really learn it.
Frances Shefter: (00:22:41): So if I’m hearing correctly, it’s more you all teaching the patients rather than the patients going into the deep dark secrets or the stuff, the stressors and all the other stuff, the way people think therapy is.
Ali Navidi: (00:22:58): Yeah. So what does it look like? So there’s two major forms of treatment that have, like I said at the beginning, tons and tons of research, right? CBT and clinical hypnosis. Everybody wants to hear more about the clinical hypnosis piece. But before I jump in there, I just want to say a small thing on CBT, which is that a lot of people know what CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. But the important thing to understand about this kind of problem is that we’re not just using a kind of bread and butter CBT uh like the, you know, your standard, you know, I was trained in CBT. You know, when I was first, you know, in my training, but it’s a specific protocols that most people aren’t trained in. And I say that because I’ve seen so many of these types of patients that have been sent to regular CBT therapists and they do good work with their anxiety or their depression. But what they aren’t able to really help is this brain gut problem that they have.
Frances Shefter: (00:24:9): That makes sense. And I know like with CBT, it’s, you know, it’s always hard, like we talk about all the time, like you need to find somebody that’s good and I hate using the word good because I like to say that fits because there’s lots of good therapists out there, but you just don’t mesh with them. And so don’t waste your time. And a good therapist, like I had a therapist, tell me a good therapist is going to check in with you. Is this still working for you? You know, there’s no offense if it’s not. Let’s find somebody else so that you can get the results.
Ali Navidi: (00:24:44): And the nice thing about working with kids and adolescents is after the session, they’re usually not shy about telling their parents if they think it’s working, if they like working with the therapist or not, you know. So, you know, obviously you want to give it a period of time to, like, settle in, , but, you know, beyond three or four sessions, if you’re still hearing that from your kid, you’re totally right. Like, it’s probably just not a right, it’s not the right fit. Which is why I think it’s nice now that we’ve got a lot of clinicians with a lot of different backgrounds, male and female with different kinds of training, , older, younger. Because, you know, you don’t connect with everybody, it just doesn’t happen.
Frances Shefter: (00:25:43): I don’t wanna assume, but like, when somebody calls and does a consultation, do you or whoever handles that part? Did they match the therapist with the kid or is it just whoever’s available?
Ali Navidi: (00:25:58): Ok. Good question. So, not long ago when we had a ridiculous wait list, which I hated being in that situation because, you know, we’re talking about like months for people to wait, but then we’ve been able to hire and train. So now we have very little weight list. So that’s so it’s really good and that also gives us the ability to kind of match a lot closer. Like, ok, they’ve got this issue and, and we know that Sam is really good with that or, you know, Deanna is good with this other thing, you know. When we had the really bad wait list, it was a lot harder to do that. Just because like, ok, you’ve waited two months already. Do you wanna wait another two months to get this, like the perfect match or maybe this would just be good enough to make it work, right? Like maybe we can make the match work and so we don’t have to do that right now, which is nice. We can kind of get the perfect match,
Frances Shefter: (00:27:08): I’m assuming it doesn’t, is the like is the program. So I know you said 8 to 10, like, what is the method? Like, what do you go into? , like to the extent that you can because I’m sure it’s individualized, but like, does it really matter if your person is trained in the other stuff or can anybody handle it?
Ali Navidi: (00:27:28): That’s true. So as an example, let’s say you’ve got a patient with trauma, right? If they have a trauma therapist already, somebody they’re working with, the person they’re working with for the GI stuff in our group doesn’t necessarily need to be an expert on working with trauma. They just need to be an expert on doing these treatments and then they’re gonna coordinate with the trauma therapist to make sure that we’re, you know, not getting in each other’s way. Does that makes sense?
Frances Shefter: (00:28:9): 100%. And that you’re working together? Because yes, because that’s that’s one of the big things is we’re a community and if we’re not all talking then we’re overriding what somebody else might be doing. And so the community, so you guys work together. I love that. And then of course, you know, what was gonna circle back to because I’m sure all the listeners are like hypnosis. How does that work? What is it? You know, what’s that? Does that work? You know, and so forth?
Ali Navidi: (00:28:33): I love being able to talk about hypnosis because it’s kind of a side mission of mine to work to dispel some of the myths that are out there because, I think it’s a terrible shame that you’ve got clinical hypnosis, which has ridiculous amounts of research associated to it. I mean, I’d encourage this would take people about 20 seconds. Go into a website called www.PUB Med.com Pub Med is available to everyone out there. You can all just like type in Pubmed into Google, go into pub Med and just type hypnosis and let’s say IBS or hypnosis and chronic pain, hypnosis, depression. In essence hypnosis has been there, this has been studied so much but what everyone knows about is not clinical hypnosis. What everyone knows about is entertainment hypnosis. And there is the problem. Right. Because what does entertainment hypnosis teach us? You know, like every year there’s a new movie coming out. It’s either like, scary or funny and goofy. But there’s no movies coming out that show, like an accurate view of, like, what hypnosis is, , that’s not what people are getting, people are getting mind control and magic and, you know, weird stuff, you know,
Frances Shefter: (00:30:12): Very different. And so for clinical hypnosis is that like, is there a certification? Is there a license for that?
Ali Navidi: (00:30:19): Yeah. So if I’m talking to the other therapists out there in the world right there, or even actually no parents and patients who are looking for someone to do hypnosis for them as part of their treatment, don’t just go to anybody, don’t go to just anybody who’s got, you know, some kind of random training in it. There’s a very, very good organization. It only trains clinicians to do clinical hypnosis because there’s a lot of places out there that will train an accountant, a lawyer, a construction worker, literally anybody who walks in the door can get trained in hypnosis and there’ll be an official hypnotherapist, right? And that’s what I say to people. I’m not a hypnotherapist. I’m a clinical psychologist, , who is trained to use clinical hypnosis in therapy,
Frances Shefter: (00:31:25): Which is a big difference. And it’s, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is that people always say, you know, advocate or an attorney advocate or attorney. And it, you know, it’s the same thing with an attorney, you know, they know the laws, you know, we’re certified and there’s repercussions if we screw up with an advocate, anybody can say they’re an advocate, a parent that’s done it once, a special ed teacher not saying they can’t do it, but you can’t afford to waste time with those that aren’t properly trained.
Ali Navidi: (00:31:57): Because you don’t know what is the standard that they’ve been held to in terms of their training?
Frances Shefter: (00:32:04): Exactly.
Ali Navidi: (00:32:05): So the organization before I, before I get lost in that the organization that people should be looking for, at least, , as a minimum for hypnosis training is the American Society for Clinical hypnosis. So that’s Ash. www.ASCH.net. And every one of our clinicians are, they go through kind of an initial beginner’s level training with Ash. And then I spend like 5 to 6 months with them, you know, training them on more advanced techniques, how to apply the cognitive behavioral therapy, how to understand the GI problems and also chronic pain. So we do a lot of work. We’re, we’re not just kind of bringing in therapists and just saying, go to it. We’re spending a lot of time training people up.
Frances Shefter: (00:32:57): So, with the ASCH, is it, do you have to have some sort of background to even get into the program or is it?
Ali Navidi: (00:33:04): Yeah. So you would need to either be a psychologist, social worker counselor or doctor. I think now they let physical therapists and they’re training physical therapists and I think I’m forgetting at least one group but these are all groups like nurses. I think they started training nurses now too.
Frances Shefter: (00:33:27): So people that already have degrees and are already in the field and this is just a part of what they do. Yeah, because that’s a big difference, you know, like what is your training and today in today’s society, you know, I have a business coach and everybody’s asking well, what coach do you use? How do you know what’s a good coach? Well, what do you want your coach to teach you? You know, what do you want your therapist to do? You want to make sure they have done it or have that background and that training. , you know, my coach has her own multimillion dollar law firm. Ok. You know, she’s got the background in the training, right? I wanna follow your footsteps and I’m assuming with, with doctors and with, you know, with the training and stuff you want to make sure they have the background so they know what they’re doing right?
Ali Navidi: (00:34:13): Yeah, I think I’d heard of some, there was some model to treat patients like this out there that, , I think they’re using health coaches. And so what is a health coach? Well, I don’t know, you know, like, I know they’re not somebody who has any clinical degree at all. I’m not even sure what kind of training goes into becoming a health coach. People are gonna put their health in their hands, right?
Frances Shefter: (00:34:50): And it worries me because then somebody will say, well, I tried hypnosis, it doesn’t work.
Ali Navidi: (00:35:00): Yeah, I’ve run, you know, like maybe they do, they’re these stage shows, they go around to colleges and school and sometimes high schools and sometimes people go see these shows just for fun and they’ll go and volunteer and they’ll, it’s very different experience. You know, and that gets to like, ok, well, if it’s not all this mind control stuff, like what is hypnosis actually? It’s actually really straightforward. It’s just deliberately teaching people how to go into a trance state and trance is a normal natural state of consciousness. We all are going in and out of trance. You know, I worked out this morning and I guarantee you at some point in that workout, I was entrance, I was in my head doing this exercise, the world around me disappeared, you know, I might not have even noticed the discomfort. Right?
Frances Shefter: (00:36:04): When I was a runner, I used to call it my Zen but it would hit the point that nothing else, like you just hit that Zen and it was just so amazing. I miss it.
Ali Navidi: (00:36:13): Whenever I talk with runners. They’re, they’re always like, talking about that, that state of mind. If you’re a parent and you have kids that are old enough, every parent has seen trance, all you have to do is just look at your kid when they’re on their phone. That’s it. You will see trance in action because everything else fades away. If you’re even close to them and you talk to them, they might not even consciously pick it up even though clearly they should be able to hear you, right? But the point of all this is that trance is happening all the time. It’s a natural state of consciousness for people. And so it’s actually not particularly hard to teach people how to do it on purpose because they’re already doing it accidentally. And then, and then in tran they’re able to learn and do things that you can’t necessarily learn and do in a, in your normal waking state of consciousness.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:19): Because we get in our own way.
Ali Navidi: (00:37:22): Yeah, we get in our own way and we have a much more powerful mind body connection when we’re in trance. That makes sense. Yeah. And the, yeah, there’s so many different benefits to being in trance, being in hypnosis. Which is why people study it so much. Like, literally, there’s so many, there’s so many publications out there of scientists studying hypnosis because it actually is a very powerful technique. It’s just not the entertainment stuff that people think.
Frances Shefter: (00:37:53): You’re not making them bark like a dog.
Ali Navidi: (00:37:56): You’re in control, you’re gonna be aware of everything that happens. You’re gonna remember what happened. I mean, there’s so many misconceptions about it and the, and, and we teach all our patients self hypnosis that’s, and, and self hypnosis and it’s done is an amazing skill. Whenever they need to calm themselves down. I use it myself all the time. , when I was about to give a talk, , at, in Louisville, in Kentucky. Right. I thought I was gonna talk to 25 people and it turned out to be 100 people in the big conference room. Right? And, you know, like it’s a small thing, but I was like, oh, you’re gonna need the mic. I was like, oh God. And guess what? I was, I started to feel anxious. You know, I found a little private place dropped in and once you learn it, you can do it really quick. Like you can literally drop in, in about five seconds, you know, take 30 seconds a minute, calming yourself down, come back out, you’re ready to roll.
Frances Shefter: (00:39:08): I was just gonna say it’s similar to Alexandra technique that physical therapist use, uh the ready list. It sounds like, you know, it’s very similar to that. It’s just taking those few minutes to get within yourself almost.
Ali Navidi: (00:39:22): Exactly.
Frances Shefter: (00:39:23): Yeah. That’s awesome. This has been so amazing. So, if people are afraid of the hypnosis, like, are all of your treatments, are they clinical hypnosis or is it CBT or does it depend on the what they want and what their needs are?
Ali Navidi: (00:39:39): So the way like in an ideal world where you know, someone has been educated about hypnosis, they’re, they’re fine with it. The treatment kind of looks like this. It’s like CBT clinical hypnosis are we then in maybe one session will be more focused on CBT, the other is on clinical hypnosis and, and it tends to be like you wanna use the CBT more if it’s someone who’s got a lot of hypervigilance and catastrophizing. Ok. Because what happens is when patients start developing these disorders, they lock in and they’re always scanning their stomach trying to notice like, how does it feel? Is it gonna get worse? Like what’s gonna happen if I’m not at home? Where is the bathroom gonna be? God, I don’t wanna have an accident like they’re always scanning and worrying and then they’re catastrophizing about what they notice. And so if we’re noticing someone who has a lot of that, then we’re gonna push harder on the CBT part . If they have a lot less of that and it’s just a lot of the discomfort, then we’re gonna push more on the clinical hypnosis part.
Frances Shefter: (00:40:56): That makes sense. So, it’s tailored to each individual person.
Ali Navidi: (00:40:59): Yeah. Oh. And one thing to throw in, , the interesting thing about this is you’d think, ok, this is a psychological treatment. All that’s gonna change is the psychological factors. Like, ok, I’ve, I’ve still got IBS, but at least I’m not anxious about it. I’m not worrying and all this other stuff and maybe the pain doesn’t bother me so much. Right. But actually the research shows the symptoms. So IBS might have diarrhea, it might have bloating, it might have, like, these different, very physical symptoms. Those change too. Yeah. And that’s the, that’s the, wow, for me too, it’s like, look, we’ve got a very high percentage of people who are gonna benefit tremendously from it. And a disorder that can last their whole life. If not, if not treated, let’s get them treated. They don’t have to live with these things. And that’s why we started the practice. It’s like, look, people don’t have to live with this stuff. 10 sessions more likely than that you’re gonna be good to go.
Frances Shefter: (00:42:06): Right. I mean, to me it’s like, that’s why wouldn’t you, you know, again. Why wouldn’t you? So what I’m hearing, I just want to wrap up a little bit and summarize a little for, , our listeners is that if your child or you are having digestive issues, anything I BS, all of that stuff go to the doctor, make sure it’s nothing of any of those other diseases that could be bad that we don’t need to name. And then if the doctor still, oh, it’s just this, here’s this drug, then they need to call your office.
Ali Navidi: (00:42:40): Yeah. What we call it is they’re medically cleared. They’re safe. We know it’s safe. We know it’s not something like, , Crohn’s disease or colitis, ulcerative colitis, something like that. It’s not an ulcer or something. You know, we rule out those things, they’re medically cleared, they’re ready to go. I realized I didn’t even say the website. I know you’ll probably link to it but it’s just www.GIpsychology.com. It’s really straightforward. And I’ve, I’ve mentioned a lot of research as I’ve been talking but maybe you don’t believe me on the website, we link to all like a bunch of the research. They can take their time, check it out, they can do the free phone console with a clinician to learn more and have them answer their questions. Because we’re not trying to sell anything. We’re not trying to rush anybody. We’re just trying to educate
Frances Shefter: (00:43:37): Yeah, you wanna educate and you wanna help people like me, you know, we’re there to help and to assist and to, you know, yeah, it’s not about, it’s about helping, helping the world making it a better place. And yeah, thank you so much. This has been so interesting. I was so excited to have you on the show. I was like, I can’t wait because I knew so little about it. So thank you so much for being on the show and all of this information to all of the listeners. Thank you.
Ali Navidi: (00:44:05): It was an absolute pleasure. You made it easy, you made it easy. And you do amazing work yourself. And I’ve, I’ve referred patients to you already because I went through a period, like I said, we were talking at the beginning. I didn’t even know services like yours existed and I’m thinking back over the years, I’ve had so many patients because I deal with patients with a lot of health issues, right? Could have used your help.
Frances Shefter: (00:44:37): I’ve referred to you some that are like lost with the doctors and like you need to call, think outside of the box, call this person they can help or team determine. So, yes, thank you. I love that we’re, you know, mutually passing it back and forth so so that everybody knows and can benefit from both of us.
Ali Navidi: (00:44:55): Because it takes a team. It takes a team 100%.
Frances Shefter: (00:44:59): Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
VOICEOVER: (00:45:02): You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host Frances Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Frances through www.Shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.
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