My guest this week for Part 1 in our series on managing stress is clinical psychologist Dr. Melissa Hunt. We discussed her work on treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which is common, poorly understood, and rarely treated effectively. As Melissa described so well, unmanaged IBS can be incredibly distressing and debilitating. Fortunately there is effective treatment, including a protocol that Melissa developed based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). She does a great job describing the big principles that this approach is based on, and why it’s so helpful. As we explored, stress is intimately connected to IBS, and finding more effective ways to deal with stress—including the stress of IBS itself—is an integral part of evidence-based treatment.

Topics we discussed included:

• What IBS is and how it affects those who have it
• What causes IBS: a disorder between the gut and the brain
• Visceral hypersensitivity and hypervigilance
• The role of the microbome, our gut’s ecosystem
• Treatments that mainstream medicine tends to recommend for IBS, and why they don’t often work
• The core components of effective treatment
• Common psychological conditions that IBS can lead to, like depression and agoraphobia
• The physical effects of stress on the digestive system
• Learning to decatastrophize
• Deep, relaxing diaphragmatic breathing to turn off the fight/flight/freeze system
• The dark, distressing thoughts that are not uncommon with IBS
• The incidence of fecal incontinence in IBS
• Exploring what would actually happen if one lost control of their bowels
• The role of diet in IBS
• The stress of believing that food causes IBS symptoms
• The FODMAP diet
• My own journey through restrictive diets
• How quickly the right treatment can provide relief from IBS

Check out Melissa’s excellent books on IBS and inflammatory bowel disease (affiliate links):

• Reclaim Your Life from IBS: A Scientifically Proven CBT Plan for Relief without Restrictive Diets
• Coping with Crohn’s and Colitis: A Patient and Clinician’s Guide to CBT for IBD

You can also download the Zemedy app, which provides an evidence-based “personalized 6-week program designed to improve your symptoms and help you get your life back.”

Melissa G. Hunt, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and serves as the Associate Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Her primary research interests are in the domains of behavioral health, stress management, and well-being.

As a clinical scientist, her emphasis is on using basic psychological science to understand what contributes to distress and how to maximize joy and fulfillment, and then translating that science into treatments that are effective, acceptable, and accessible to patient populations.

In particular, Melissa focuses on identifying the underlying patient factors that lead to reduced quality of life, impairment and distress, particularly factors that exacerbate chronic health problems and make them harder to cope with, and then creating, testing and disseminating self-help treatments.

In addition to her work at Penn, she also has an active private practice in clinical psychology in which she utilizes cognitive-behavioral therapy, augmented by schema therapy, imaginal rescripting, mindfulness and yoga in the treatment of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, trauma, and chronic health disorders.

Find Melissa online at her website.