Week 1 Recap 

Welcome back to the Epsychonline Managing Irritable Bowel Syndrome Course. Last week we introduced you to the course structure and gave you an overview of what you can expect. We then started with the course content and covered the following topics related to irritable bowel syndrome: 

• What is irritable bowel syndrome?
• Symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome
• Statistics related to irritable bowel syndrome 
• Causes of irritable bowel syndrome
• The gut and gut-brain connection
• The vicious cycle of irritable bowel syndrome
• Myths about irritable bowel syndrome
• Conditions to rule out

Next, we prompted you to think about irritable bowel syndrome in your own life. We discussed how the factors that maintain irritable bowel syndrome can become targets for intervention and how, by changing them, you can start to break free from the vicious cycle of irritable bowel syndrome. We then introduced CBT as a therapeutic framework for helping you better manage your symptoms. The following topics were covered:

• What is CBT?
• How can CBT help with irritable bowel syndrome?
• Making a commitment to change

If you need to refresh your memory on these topics, please refer back to Week 1.