Don't Feed the Fear: Allergy Anxiety & Trauma
Welcome to "Don't Feed the Fear," where licensed psychologist Dr. Amanda Whitehouse offers expert guidance on managing the social and emotional challenges of food allergies, celiac, and related conditions. Tune in for compassionate advice, practical strategies, and inspiring stories to help you navigate anxiety and trauma with confidence and resilience.
For more info on resources from Dr. Whitehouse, go to www.thefoodallergypsychologist.com
Theme song: The Doghouse by Kyle Dine, www.kyledine.com
Used with permission from the artist
Full transcripts are available to support accessibility and inclusive listening: https://www.thefoodallergypsychologist.com/dont-feed-the-fear-blog
Don't Feed the Fear: Allergy Anxiety & Trauma
Comfort Kits, Hypnotherapy, and Healing for Children with Dr. Lisa Lombard
In this episode, psychologist Lisa Lombard, Ph.D. shares insights from her clinical experience and research background in food allergy. She also shares aspects of her work that led to the creation of Comfort Kits, tools designed to support children experiencing trauma. We talk about why safety and imagination matter so much for healing, and how small, intentional interventions can make a meaningful difference for kids and families.
We also explore Dr. Lombard’s extensive work with hypnotherapy, including her role as President of the National Pediatric Hypnosis Training Institute (NPHTI), where she trains clinicians to incorporate hypnosis into pediatric care. Dr. Lombard breaks down common misconceptions, explains what hypnotherapy actually looks like in practice, and shares why it can be especially helpful for children navigating chronic illness, procedures, and anxiety.
This episode is for parents, clinicians, and anyone interested in gentle, evidence-based ways to support regulation, resilience, and healing. It’s a reminder that care doesn’t have to be forceful to be effective, and that feeling safe is the necessary foundation for healing and growth.
Episode Links:
lisalombardphd.com
NPHTI.org
comfortkitsforchildren.org
Special thanks to Kyle Dine for permission to use his song The Doghouse for the podcast theme!
www.kyledine.com
Find Dr. Whitehouse:
-thefoodallergypsychologist.com
-Instagram: @thefoodallergypsychologist
-Facebook: Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, Food Allergy Anxiety Psychologist
-welcome@dramandawhitehouse.com
There's now a lot more research that's involving FMRIs and EEGs, EKGs. But what we're finding is that different systems of the brain kind of lower their activity rate while a person is in hypnosis, so the default mode network, which for example really is active when we're ruminating and worrying a lot about ourself, that one shifts a lot and changes. And so I think that can be a natural way to understand how when there's a lot of food allergy anxiety and worry. The hypnosis can kind of help that part, that system, the default mode network, not be so active, not be on high alert, which is a, a huge one.
Today's conversation is one that I was very excited to have and then I've been really excited to share with you. I'm joined by psychologist, Dr. Lisa Lombard, who has years of experience in clinical care with children and families living with food allergies and who is also highly regarded for her work in research with Dr. Ruchi Gupta and colleagues at Northwestern. In this episode, we talk about Dr. Lombard's clinical and research experience in food allergy and how that work led her to create comfort kits to support children experiencing trauma. We also explore Dr. Lombard's extensive work with hypnotherapy, including her leadership involvement with the National Pediatric Hypnosis Training Institute, where she helps to train other clinicians to use hypnosis ethically and effectively to support children and families. If the word hypnotherapy brings up skepticism or curiosity for you, this is a conversation you want to listen to. Dr. Lombard does a beautiful job demystifying what it actually looks like in clinical care, explaining to us the evidence, supporting this approach, and why it can be such a powerful tool, especially for kids who have been through a lot.
Speaker:Welcome to the Don't Feed the Fear podcast, where we dive into the complex world of food allergy anxiety. I'm your host, Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, food allergy anxiety psychologist and food allergy mom. Whether you're dealing with allergies yourself or supporting someone who is, join us for an empathetic and informative journey toward food allergy calm and confidence..
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Thank
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:you so much for being here. We have Dr. Lisa Lombard on the show to talk to us, a fellow food allergy psychologist, which is so exciting for me to get to have a conversation with you.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Absolutely. Thank you. so much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:So am I, this is one of those moments where I get to be really selfish on the podcast and have someone on just'cause I really wanna pick your brain and talk to you about what you're doing. So for those, um, who might be listening and aren't familiar with you and your work, can you just give us a little bit of background about how you got involved in psychology and then working with food allergy specifically?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Sure. Thank you. I am a clinical psychologist located in the Chicago area, and I have had a general private practice for many, many years. Um, after doing some other kinds of psychology. mental health and psychiatric hospitalizations. But I really then, uh, transitioned to having my private practice and working largely. Uh, with children's into adulthood and adults who are managing anxiety and pain and stress. And then about a good 12 to 15 years ago, I also was working as a school-based psychologist and seeing kids. Um, preschool through third grade largely, and it started to become apparent that many of the children I was working with also had food allergies. And so I started to do some research and investigate and contemplate. And indeed it is about two kids per classroom of 26 where there was someone with food allergies or a sibling of someone who has food allergies and also, that can elicit anxiety as you know. So I was starting to see this come together and my curiosity and intellectual, drive to understand how this could. Could they, the two things could coexist and are they related? So I really became much more interested in working with individuals with who are managing food allergies because it's another iteration of anxiety, a presentation of anxiety. Some, as you know, really distinct differences though, because there really is something to be fearful of and it's a constant presence, but you have to establish the right balance for each child and family. So I just took off from there. I started doing some work with a variety of allergists here in Chicago and it became really fascinating. Uh, and I also led for a few years I was on the faculty, uh, at Northwestern Medical School with Dr. Rucci Gupta's Group CFAAR, and was really looking at the psychosocial impact of food allergies and how to manage the accompanying anxiety and also looking at other populations. So people with asthma and eczema in particular, so atopic disease as a whole, and it's just continued on. Unfortunately, there's a need for it.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. So you are no longer with that group, but I would love it if you wanna share whether it was there or in your practice prior to that in the schools. Do you have any favorite moments that stood out? Any accomplishments that really are milestones for you that you want to share with us?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Ah, thank you. Well, I will say that working on an interdisciplinary team in an academic medical setting is a real pleasure and, growth experience. And so I am proud to have been able to be part of those teams where we really co-authored lots and lots of manuscripts that allergists and pediatricians are going to be reading about the anxiety that accompanies food allergy. So I think that was a meaningful impact. And it was not just within the United States, but I know that internationally we were really starting to work with psychologists in a global way because, um, the world is seeing that we have to figure out some answers and help people's lives be easier related to managing food allergies. So I was able to collaborate with psychologists in Italy and um, the UK. So it was really fun.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:That sounds like it would be very inspiring. I love going to conferences and hearing the, like you said, that multidisciplinary perspective and the things that are on the minds in the forefront of the professionals coming at it from different angles is so fascinating to me.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Another thing that I was hoping you would talk about that I think would be a really helpful tool for our audience to listen to. We've got mostly parents and families, a lot of patients. I want you to tell everybody about your comfort kits and how that came about.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Thank you. I love to talk about it. Comfort Kids for Children is, uh, really a passion project that I, uh, had the pleasure and honor of starting with a colleague, Dr. Bob Deutsch, uh, in 2022. And they're built on years and really decades of experience from some pediatricians who have been mentors and colleagues of mine, b oth in Minneapolis and, uh, around the globe. Comfort kits are just a simple collection of toys and some instructions with, uh, mind body practices to help children reregulate their emotions and to manage stress and anxiety. And they first came about, was first used, um, on an oncology service unit in the hospitals and Dr. Tim Culberts a nd another pediatrician, Dr. Karen Olness, really put them together and with and their NGO distributed them to children who were experiencing natural disasters. So they were being used in Asia initially. But since that time, um, it was kind of on an informal basis that these, these practices and the guidance for how to use, um, progressive muscle relaxation, how to use distraction on purpose in one's imagination in a way that they, that a child can, um, separate. Themselves from the current situation so that they can have a little bit of respite and perhaps relax and fall asleep. Different skill sets like that, which psychologists and pediatricians know about. They were informally used. And then in 2022 when the war in Ukraine started, I and other colleagues were asked, well,"How can you help these children who are now displaced by war and clearly are having traumatic experiences that will very likely have impact on their adult lives?" And, you know, we've been through this before as um, adults. We understand the history of it and the connection from. Childhood to adulthood. So, um, we kind of picked that up and retooled the comfort kits, modified them a bit to be more contemporary, and started offering trainings for healthcare providers who were interested in them. So it was initially for kids in Ukraine, and some who were then in Poland. But now over 1500 comfort kits have been donated to kids around the globe, including Turkey, Israel, and then in the United States, uh, Maui, where there were the fires, and, as a Chicago based psychologist, I cannot but look around and know that there's community violence very. Surrounding me and close to where I am. So we're really making a, an effort to, um, collaborate with Chicago based, um, services as well. And we may be collaborating with an asthma mobile van medical service. So the kits would be in the vans that go out to schools of under-resourced neighborhoods. And as part of the medical t reatment and services provided the kits and training how to use them because it really is an adult who kind of coaches the child how to use these practices, which makes them much more effective to have a trusting adult there and have that sense of connection and attachment as part of what is this psychological first aid and verbal first aid that we've created for kids today.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. And then you have resources on your website that then then you are coaching the adults and the children's lives of how to utilize them and teach the skills, right.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:That's right. So we have, um, curated free behavioral health resources in general related to these kinds of topics of natural and disasters and so on and, and violence in the community. But we also have videos of psychologists pulling out the different items. It's a stress ball. There's two animal finger puppets, there's a blank journal with crayons. There's a mood ring or bio dots, depending on which version to demonstrate the connection between using a relaxation training skill and seeing that body temperature changes, which is an indicator of relaxation. So we're really excited because it makes it very tangible for kids. So we have the videos. There's videos of that in Ukrainian. And we are talking with the psychologist to hopefully get them translated into Spanish or have a Spanish speaking psychologist be able to do that as well. So we've got some ideas out there. What's particularly exciting, I think, is that one of the ideas after the start of 2026 will be to tailor the kits to help kids with food allergies. It's a starting off point for really developing ways to communicate with families that children can manage the anxiety that comes with food allergies and sometimes unfortunately with food allergy medical experiences.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. There's so much to say about that. My mind was blown when I was learning about this and I found out about the mood rings are such a genius but simple. It's. Like biofeedback for children, right? And those who aren't listening, biofeedback sounds fancy, but it's just literally feedback about biologically what's happening in your body so you can train. That was one of the most brilliant things I've ever heard in terms of.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I love hearing you say that. As a psychologist and as a parent. Yes. You know, we, we went through different iterations and you write, people think biofeedback is, you know, is putting sensors on your head or wearing your, your fancy watch, et cetera, et cetera. No, this is very simple and very appealing. Right? Who, who, what kid doesn't wanna get a little ring to wear. So they're, I've been very careful to make the rings be animal focused. So they're little turtles usually that have the bi, the whatever the chemical is, um, or substrate that's in a mood ring, right? Yeah,
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Yeah, I love that idea. And so what will they look like when they're a little more tailored to kids with food allergies? Can you share what you'll be tinkering with to move it in that direction?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah. I think one of the things that's important is also the concept of a checklist for kids with food allergies. So checklist of have you done the things that you need to do before you get to school or go out to your friend's house or ride the bus or whatever it is, and physically checking it off. You know that they know where their, their epinephrine is, they have emergency contact information, or they have packed their own snack or lunch and, you know, what are those things? And then when it gets checked off, it's very much like an airline pilot or a surgeon, right? A checklist says, I've done these things, it's safe now. And that's a really significant message. So I think we'll be adding something around that message and process. And we know even that checking off, um, changes our brain, Right, We get a little pumped up endorphin rush because we've done something on our to-do list. So why not let kids and their caregivers have that too when they're managing food allergies?
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:right. right. And again, just translate it so simply for children to, to do it tangibly rather than a mental list that they're running through really changes the experience.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Well, I want people to know that even though obviously these are kits that you're curating, you're serving different populations, the information is available on your website, so they could easily look, see what's in the kits, follow the videos. How can I use these tools at home? Right.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:That is correct. You're absolutely Right. Part of this motivation is these shouldn't be kept secret, right? These are skills that should be pretty low hanging fruit. So let's get them out to parents or to busy s taff members and educators, school nurses, whoever it is who can really make use of this in the moment. So yes, the material is on the website. You can always contact me. And we'll probably as we roll this out for specified populations, kind of have a plan of you can buy one and donate one, that kind of thing. I haven't been keen on sending them out individually because I have a day job, and this is just a, a real labor of love. I call it a kitchen table kind of nonprofit. But, um, I think there's enough interest that people have said they, they would be interested in that. So it costs about$10 for one. So for a donation of$20, you can get one, and then you can know that you're helping another child get one too.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:That would be beautiful. I'm sure a lot of people would be extra motivated knowing that
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I hope so.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:and and busy parents who could collect all those items, but would much rather just click a button and have it arrive nice and neatly packaged.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:right, right. And they're very, they're very simple, very down to earth. I mean just not to go too far into the weeds of this process, but some people will say,"oh, shouldn't it be a fancier, more substantial backpack or tote and it should be printed? My point is, no, this is just a canvas. Tote bag with things inside of it. And the other item inside is a folded up cardboard box so the child can take that out, refold it, decorate it with stickers that we include, And then it becomes a treasure chest for them and they can keep these treasured items because that's really a significant message for kids who are displaced or have lost their home or some kind of a really traumatic experience. It demonstrates how important this is, for their wellbeing.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:And I love everything about it. I can feel whenever I look at it or hearing you talk about it now, how powerful you're trying to create that sense of felt safety for children. And I'm all about nervous system regulation. Clearly that is such a huge part of what you're doing too. And it, it really, um, I think as a powerful example of how it, it can just be simple, but we need to give kids things that help them feel safe. And this is a way of doing that.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:That's right. I appreciate you saying that. And as you're an expert and well aware of, safety is that first level issue related to trauma. So nothing good can happen until the child feels safe.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. so much of this is nervous system and biologically based in trauma informed The reason I'm most excited to talk to you is your work with hypnotherapy I would love for you to talk to us about how you got involved in that and then now how you're shaping that to use with the food allergy population specifically.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Oh, thank you. Yes, I have been working with hypnosis for decades. I did start out in college and graduate school with the great honor of working in Erika Fromm's lab at the University of Chicago. And so I really studied, that was part of her self-hypnosis research team and so knew lots about it and sort of very lightly had been integrating it into my general psychology work. But then I'd say within the last 15 years or so, it became more and more clear to me that it really informed the work I was doing and even if I wasn't calling it hypnosis, I was using hypnotic language and some suggestions and skills and really. Emphasizing that mind body connection. And so I kind of leaned into it. And now I'm very active in a lot of professional hypnosis training organizations and, and teach healthcare providers how to use hypnosis as well. with the patients and the families who come to me it's very often part of the work because as you've been mentioning the nervous system needs to take a bit of a rest sometimes. So kids and families with food allergies are really good at thinking about the worst case scenario and being hypervigilant about all the sensations going on in their bodies. And looking around and seeing the negative things that might be happening or someone not paying close enough attention to the food that was coming out towards their table, so on and so forth. And so that brain is really on high alert and that can lead to all sorts of implications for chronic illness and the immune system and fatigue and poor concentration and so on and so forth. So. If stressors like that can affect a person's functioning, then managing the stress can also improve their functioning and potentially even lessen the degree of things like inflammation or a flare up. So it, obviously, hypnosis does not take away a food allergy, but what it does is it, it softens the surrounding impact of the anxiety and the psychological processes that are going on concurrent with the food allergies. So we know that we're shifting people from a really sympathetic nervous system reaction to more of a parasympathetic. So instead of fight flight, we can work on relaxation and rest and digest, if you will. And it's just a great resetting of the nervous system.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:So beautifully said. I don't think that many people understand what it actually is, so I don't wanna skip too far ahead before asking you to explain. I think we have ideas from pop culture maybe, and assumptions that are probably way off. Like you said, there's probably someone out there claiming they can cure your food allergies with hypnosis. That's not what we're talking about. So please explain to people what this means in a therapeutic context.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Yes. Unfortunately, there still are myths and portrayals of hypnosis in the general media. Even in children's literature, if you look around, there are cartoons and books that show that somehow someone who uses hypnosis will exert mind control over the other person and clinical or medical hypnosis when it's done with someone who has proper training in working with children or a pediatric population is really about a very focused attention in an imaginative pursuit. It may or may not involve relaxation even. And that's really interesting because with adults we think of it as being a highly relaxed experience. And maybe there might be some imagery or some sort of pleasant retreat to a beach vacation or something. But, but children don't really wanna relax, so it's kind of unrealistic to expect that with a younger child, and it looks quite different. It's really imaginative involvement, being highly absorbed in something and usually the imaginative involvement is multisensory. So it's, it's what do they see and what do they feel and hear and maybe smell or taste when they're imagining being perhaps in their special place and it could be a place they've been to, or a place they wish they could go to, could be the most recent vacation that we start talking about. And oh, remember how confident and good you felt? And those are moments that can then use what we call natural hypnosis to jump off into building some skills for the future. It is not mind control. The person is not asleep. You're always awake. If there was an emergency in the building, you would respond. If your name was called out or someone said fire or whatever because your mind and your brain are not asleep. It's that it's highly focused. Attention has really narrowed. And a person becomes absorbed in the moment. And during that process, what we know is a person is then more open to suggestion. And so it's the suggestions that the clinician, the provider can offer and based on the resources that the child or individual has that leads to change outside of the session in the rest of the week or months that the person is working it toward this new behavioral goal. I always say an hour might feel really good if it's relaxation. You know, an adult wants that, but that's not what's gonna be helpful. It's gonna be helpful when they make changes outside of the therapeutic hour.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Right, and I love that you're emphasizing that. It makes us more receptive to ideas, trying new things, utilizing skills, all of the things that we wanna be doing, but we feel stuck taking the steps toward, am I saying it correctly?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yes, you are. And I think you're, you're helping me to even add to this conversation, neuroplasticity, right? So rather than being stuck, that was the, the cue For me, rather than being stuck on that pathway, being receptive and open to suggestions allows a person to build some new ideas, new patterns, and with neuroplasticity to start to engage differently. With the world around them or with relationships or with their own internal thoughts and experiences.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:For those like me who really wanna geek out on the science behind it. Obviously we're creating a change in the nervous system, right? And we're moving it, I assume from a fight or flight or maybe a freeze point back, into rest and digest. But can you explain to me what it is about the process that helps that to happen? You mentioned being highly focused, but say more about how it affects our body and the nervous system.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:There's some really good research on this. So there's now a lot more research that's involving FMRIs and EEGs, EKGs. But what we're finding is that different systems of the brain kind of lower their activity rate. while a person is in hypnosis, so the default mode network, which for example really is active when we're ruminating and worrying a lot about ourself, that one shifts a lot and changes. And so I think that can be a natural way to understand how when there's a lot of food allergy anxiety and worry. The hypnosis can kind of help that part, that system, the default mode network, not be so active, not be on high alert, which is a, a huge one. And then there's of course the amygdala, which is the seat of emotions. And so when there's a lot of negative feeling that limbic system is also not as highly active because imagination is, and imagery are very active at that point. Or even imagined movements. So some of the motor parts of the brain, the body is not actually moving, but just like in dreaming some of those motor parts of the brain are doing their work because the child or the individual is imagining as if. they're moving around.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Amazing. What does it look like then when you're tailoring this to someone, whether it's the child or the parents of a child with food allergies or maybe an adult with food allergies, how do you approach it in that case specifically?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Well, it's a really nice question because it also talks about co-regulation when you bring this up because an anxious child almost always has an anxious parent around, and that's understandable, right? So co-regulation means that I also work with the parents to help them learn some of these same kinds of practices that when the next uncertainty comes along, they can react to it in a little bit of a less anxious, a less reactive way. So working with parents and their children, it might be to help them together or separately practice belly breathing and which is diaphragmatic breathing, and knowing that once they can do that, simply by noticing the cycle of their air going in and out, and pairing that up with suggestions for comfort, and for the release of some tensions and worries, they can take that skill with them wherever they go, and it doesn't require anything fancy, just like we were talking about with comfort kits. People carry their breath with them wherever they are. So a couple of those breaths and thoughts, and that's really practicing what we call self-hypnosis on your own, doing it on your own. And so these skills are very transferrable for people to practice them throughout the course of their lives and, and help them with all sorts of challenges. But a session with a child or an adult will have some kind of traditional checking in and talking and reviewing the week, and then it may be a, a formal segue to like, let's now do that hypnosis thing. Or it might be very informal and it might be just that they've been talking about something and really describing it in such detail that it's a perfect opportunity for me to point out that they have shifted their body language or they look like they're much more calm and relaxed when they're talking about being on the team and doing X, Y, Z, and wouldn't it be nice to be able to feel that way even when they're in the cafeteria where they're really always very nervous in a high alert. And so then we can start with the more of the hypnotic suggestions at those feelings in those. Skills can transfer to the scarier situations or going into the physician's office. Lots of kids are now getting self-administered biologics at home and so I use a lot of the pain management strategies that hypnosis is so terrific for to help with that kind of procedural acute pain.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:You said a phrase that I want to pause on for a minute because I think this is gonna take us back to some of those myths when you said hypnotic suggestions, and I think that's where people think you are going to lay something in our brain that we're not aware is there and it's gonna make us do something right. Even if it's, can you explain a little bit then what the hypnotic suggestions would be that would be that would
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah, yeah,
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:benefit people?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:of course. They're really based on what the treatment goals are. So after taking a good history and establishing rapport with the child and the family, it's like, this is what you want to see different. Right. So it might be being able to go with the rest of the team to McDonald's or to a fast food place after that game somebody who's been using a lot of avoidant behavior and really though is old enough and, and careful enough to do it, but has been socially isolated because of their food allergies. So if that's the goal, then suggestions can be embedded in our conversation. Certainly we might call it mental rehearsal, right? So what are the steps? What might it feel like? You get on the bus, you know, your stomach might feel a little bit queasy and you worry, and you have those what if questions? You can take a couple breaths or you can imagine your special place again, or you can imagine your superhero powers that you know you have because you've done X, Y, Z, which was really challenging, and then you can do the next step, right? We always start with sort of where they'll be successful and add the next step, just like in working the ladder in CBT, but we integrate the hypnosis into that as well. and the suggestions are things that are important or the family has determined, or the referring physician or someone, or the school system. Right? Something that we know, you know, stands in the way of the child fully reaching their goals and doing the things that kids that age should be doing. That's the essence of what the goals are.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:That's so helpful. Thank you for describing. For those listening, I don't do this in my practice. Absolutely. I need to talk to you about getting trained because this is the next step for me. I know it. But this doesn't sound outwardly that different. What you are doing is a skill, but you're going in, you're talking to your therapist about what your goals are. They're teaching you skills, you're working together, right? Almost all the same things that we think we would be doing anyway, but with these skills to shift them into a different state and a different level of receptivity. Is that correct?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah. That's a wonderful description of it. Absolutely. Add to that what we've talked about, that someone is not asleep. You might not remember every detail of the conversation and that is sometimes really expected when you're focused on something so intensely. Sometimes portions of it are missed. So there's a debriefing part of the session after the hypnosis to say, what was that like for you? How was that? What went well? What maybe didn't go so well and you didn't like? We can estimate how deeply they were hypnotized by asking a little bit of a, did it seem like a long time or was it really fast in your, in your experience of it? Just to see how absorbed they were and their sense of time, which can sometimes be distorted. But again, it's not that there's gonna be big gaps. People worry, are you gonna make me quack like a duck? Right. To be frank, like those are the questions and...
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Like I saw I remember very vividly a high school an assembly that we had where a hypnotist came in and made all the kids do embarrassing things. That's the type of stuff people picture, right?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Exactly, and that is just, it's still, it just still breaks my heart that in high school and college orientations, I've heard lots of kids say that too. And those are stage hypnotists. Sometimes there are people, allies in the audience who are already set up and they're capitalizing on the group being very susceptible to mimicking one another and to group dynamics, and so it's really not at all, but clinical or medical hypnosis is all about.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:So for those who might be interested, I assume people in your area and state, do you work remotely as well?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I do. So I am PSYPACT authorized, which means that as a psychologist I can provide services. I think it might be 43 states in
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Not New York. We're not in PSYPACT yet, but we're working on it.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I, the big states like New York and California have have determined that, that it's not right for them,
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Yes.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yes,
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Are you taking clients? Do you have availability or a waiting list?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I, I'm taking clients, yes.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Okay. Would you tell people where they can find you if they would like to reach out?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:yes, yes, absolutely. So I have a website for my psychology practice, and that's www. Lisa Lombard. phd.com. That's the website or via email, which I, I look at daily. And that's Lisa Lombard phd@gmail.com. So
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Perfect.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:are both good ways. Mm-hmm.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Thank you. And I'll put them in the notes, um, for people who wanna find the link in the notes. And then you can't unfortunately help all of us, but is there a directory that they could look for someone who is certified and find a provider?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yes. So there is an organization called the National Pediatric Hypnosis Training Institute, and their initials form the word NPHTI and I'm faculty with this organization and president of the board of directors, and we have a provider referral directory, and that is international at this point, and it's only a few months old, but it's growing in terms of people putting their information in It. We've trained over a thousand people, but not a thousand people have sent in their information to be in the online directory. But if you contact the directory, your question could be shared out with that, those thousand people so that we could find a provider near to you as well, or in a state where telehealth isn't yet permitted.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Perfect. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for, you know, all that work to train new providers and bring this service to so many people. I should have asked earlier you mentioned the research showing the changes in the brain on the FMRI. Are there other pieces of research that might help skeptics? Are there studies that you wanna share or just general kind of talk about how this has actually been demonstrated scientifically to be effective?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Certainly the areas that there are really studies of efficacy are not with food allergy or atopic disease, but the research on sort of a very related area where I also see patients with GI issues, so disorders of the gut brain interaction, d GBIs, and there are some. Excellent, randomized controlled trials of using hypnosis or what's called gut directed imagery, or gut directed hypnotherapy, and people with IBS and Crohn's and some other GI and functional abdominal pain, unexplained stomach aches, tummy aches, cyclical vomiting like that all falls together, and the use of hypnosis to downregulate the gut and the heightened sensitivity and the messaging that's going on from the brain to the gut and the gut to the brain. It can be in person or delivered through audio recordings and the findings are holding up to five years. So I, I can't emphasize enough that in that domain, there's already the RCTs that are showing and it's becoming a gold standard of treatment actually for DGBI. So I would love to see people be interested in figuring out how to translate that for atopic diseases, food allergies, and
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely are. Well, I'm on board once I learn how to do this. Are you still involved in research? I'm not exactly sure if you've completely removed yourself from that.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah, I have. I'm not involved, but I think it's so important because just as your question suggests, if we don't have the hard science to show that something is effective it's quite tricky. But I think that, in addition to the research with randomized controlled trials, there's also clinical expertise. And so I think that clinical expertise that has really shown over the years that, it's a very effective tool for stress management, anxiety and pain.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:And so accessible. I mean, you mentioned it can be delivered, an audio recording is, makes it so much more widely accessible and affordable takes down some of those barriers to therapy that a lot of people find themselves up against.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Right, right. It is. We might say that the gold standard would be, obviously to be in person with someone, and you're gonna get the nonverbal communication a little bit more clearly and feel perhaps a sense of connection and rapport a little bit more deeply with someone in person. But since COVID and the switch to telehealth, the findings are suggesting that delivered remotely it has a high degree of efficacy.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:That's amazing to know and that makes sense. You know, I don't know about the works specifically with the hypnosis, but that's been shown with therapy in general. You and I logged on and we were saying like it's nice to meet in video and I'm so used to it. It does almost just feel the same. I have clients I've never met in person, and yet I. We remember that and we're kind of shocked. We're like,"oh yeah, we've never been in the same room together."
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I know I have that too. I've had the experience with kids, I've never met them in person. And then I saw them walking to school. I'm like, what do I do?
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Yeah.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Are we gonna look at each other and notice one another? And I don't know if she'll notice me and know, know who I am, but we like do the nod and it's very pleasant. And then on a Zoom session, we can discuss it. Mm-hmm.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:That's great. So I have really picked your brain because I'm so enthusiastic about this, but I wanna bring it back to the more general food allergy conversation and the mental health of our community. You've been doing this for so long and just have so many experiences. Are there observations or is there information that you just at large want as many people within our community to know based on everything that you've seen and experienced?
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Yeah, and that's a great question. Thank you. Because I think things are really changing and changing pretty rapidly amongst food allergy treatment and findings. So as I said, you know, when it became noticeable that there was an asso close association between food allergies and some kids with anxiety in a school setting, for example, for many years, the treatment was literally prescribing anxiety. I always say this, so if you're, if you're saying you should be avoiding these foods, what you're doing is prescribing anxiety and it shouldn't surprise us too much then that some subset of those kids become highly anxious and the anxiety becomes a problem. But now food avoidance is not the only treatment. And so I think that's marvelous. So I think that the desensitization protocols, so oral immunotherapy and slit and the patch and adding a biologic to the mixture, um, all of those things are reshaping what can be. Done for kids with food allergies and the families are, I hope, starting to, to see that too, so that there's more options, more hope, and it becomes, a little less intense or dramatic, right? It's a menu of things to choose from. And as families choose, they can add these. Psychological skills to it all, rather than saying, the only thing I can do is avoidance and then handle the anxiety that that generates.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. And I, I wanna throw in a plug for one of the things that I say to a lot of the families I work with. Great point. I think for some people that is the key to not being so highly anxious and hypervigilant, and I think a lot of those families then are shocked when they do the treatment and they have developed a little window of safety and it doesn't magically go away. So I'd just like people to also hear, even if you've done that, and it's not better, sometimes we have to still retrain, but now we can retrain knowing that we are much safer than we were before. Right,
Lisa Lombard, PhD:absolutely. And beautiful. right. I love the word retrain because that's a lot of what I
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:right.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:And you're coaching. Mm-hmm.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:And as you said it's learned. The anxiety is learned because of what's necessary. So we can learn something new, as you said, but it, it doesn't always happen automatically for people when they have done treatments.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Right. You're right. I think the follow up to that point is also that for example, so OIT, which is something that I advise a lot on it may be that the parents start to feel the benefits even before the children do, because the parents are becoming less anxious as the child is going through OIT and tolerating. Now, it's not always smooth. There may be bumps, there may be reactions of different levels. But what the research is showing too and clinically, is that parents can kind of lower their, their vigilance and their anxiety and feel like they've done their job as parents. They've gotten their child over this safety versus no safety threshold. And that's really monumental for some families.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Absolutely. That's such a great point. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I'm just so honored to meet you finally and have you share all of this with my audience.
Lisa Lombard, PhD:Well, thank you. I'm really thrilled to have been part of this conversation and your interest and the work that you're doing, and it sounds like there's a lot of synergy and parallels, and I, I'm excited to learn from you as well.,
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:Well, thank you. We'll have to have you back. I'm sure we can think of many more things to talk about. So if you're willing...
Lisa Lombard, PhD:I look forward to that. Absolutely.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:As we wrap up, I hope this conversation leaves you with a broader sense of what support can look like for children and families living with food allergies or any type of medical trauma. Dr. Lombard's work is such a powerful reminder that healing doesn't usually come from doing more or pushing through, but often from pausing and helping the nervous system feel safe enough to soften. Before you go, here are three action steps you might consider. First, take a look at the comfort kits that Dr. Lombard and her colleagues have created. Whether you are a parent, a clinician, or an educator, these tools offer a tangible way to support kids through moments of fear, medical procedures, or trauma. I'll link the website in the show notes that you can explore. It's comfort kits for children.org. Second. If hypnotherapy sparked your curiosity, consider learning more about it or searching for a trained hypnotherapist. The organization that Dr. Lombard spoke about that focuses on pediatric hypnotherapy the National Pediatric Hypnosis Training Institute, or NPHTI, NPHTI, and that will be in the show notes as well.
And if you're interested in working with Dr. Lombard directly, you can find her website at lisalombardphd.com, L-I-S-A-L-O-M-B-A-R-D phd.com, and that will be in the show notes as well.
Amanda Whitehouse, PhD:If you found this episode meaningful, please consider sharing it with someone who might benefit or leaving a review so more families and clinicians can find these conversations. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week. the content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions about your own medical experience or mental health needs, please consult a professional. I'm Dr. Amanda Whitehouse. Thanks for joining me. And until we chat again, remember don't feed the fear.
