Chronic Illness and Medical Trauma Therapist
How therapy can help you?
Does this sound like you?
You are Struggling with Pain:
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Conditions like fibromyalgia, lupus, endometriosis, and many others can cause debilitating pain. This not only means people miss out on social events but also sometimes struggle with everyday tasks. This brings huge feelings of loss and frustration for clients. Clients grieve the abilities they once had and struggle to accept the limitations they have now. Setting boundaries, processing grief, and accepting limitations are essential factors in managing the mental health aspects of pain. Learning self-advocacy among family, friends, and medical staff is also a crucial part of this journey.
You have Received a Diagnosis or No Diagnosis:
Receiving a diagnosis like cancer, Parkinson's, or MS is life-changing and brings significant mental health challenges such as grief, low mood, and fear. On the other hand, clients with conditions like endometriosis and chronic fatigue syndrome often go undiagnosed but still struggle with symptoms like pain or fatigue that prevent them from performing simple tasks. In both cases, clients can feel frustrated and lost. Therapy is here to help clients find purpose, learn coping mechanisms for present challenges, and face the challenges that are to come.
You are Mentally Struggling Despite Being in Recovery/Remission:
Many clients I meet are actually in remission from illness or have recovered. People who have been through cancer treatment and are in remission, or who had a cardiac arrest but have now recovered, can still have lingering mental health issues after their traumatic experiences. During the medical trauma, they focus on surviving, but when the dust settles and everything seems physically okay, anxiety, PTSD, and fear of recurrence can have a debilitating effect on their lives. Therapy focuses on clients reclaiming their lives and managing feelings like fear and anxiety.
You have a Negative Body Image After Illness or an Acute Medical Event:
Chronic illness or an acute medical event can change your body’s appearance. Whether you now have a stoma due to a condition like Crohn’s, had a mastectomy, have scars after an accident or surgery, or have facial droop and slurred speech after a brain injury, adjusting to the new you can be a long process. Accepting, liking, and showing compassion for the person in the mirror now is a significant part of therapy.
You are Struggling with Fatigue:
Fatigue, especially chronic fatigue syndrome, is often dismissed. However, like pain, the limitations that come with fatigue can be devastating—socially, in everyday tasks, or in a career. Fatigue impacts every part of life. Like pain, fatigue is associated with grief for the body and abilities you had before. Along with processing the grief, challenging a client’s self-criticism surrounding their abilities and setting boundaries with others despite possible judgment are focuses in therapy.
You are Processing Having a Disability Caused by Illness or a Medical Event:
Not all chronic illnesses are classified as disabilities, and not all medical events lead to a disability. However, there can be an overlap. Whether a chronic illness has led you to now use a mobility aid or have vision problems, or maybe an acute medical event like a spinal or brain injury has changed your body’s capabilities forever, living with your body’s new limitations can be mentally challenging. Like with pain and fatigue, accepting your new set of capabilities can be difficult. Therapy is not only about accepting the new you but also focusing on everything in life that is possible and forming a new sense of self.
You are Processing a Palliative or Terminal Diagnosis:
Unfortunately, many clients receive not just a life-changing diagnosis but a diagnosis that will either soon or eventually end their lives. There are two sides to this: a person processing that the end of their life is imminent, as with late-stage cancer or organ failure, or a person receiving a diagnosis that will cause a slow deterioration and eventually end their life, like muscular dystrophy or AIDS. The lack of control, grief, and loneliness that can come from such diagnoses are processed in a compassionate way in therapy.
You are struggling with Life on Active Treatment:
Whether you are receiving infusions, chemo, or dialysis now, being on some form of active treatment has probably changed your life forever. Maybe before, your biggest worry was work, college, or childcare. Now, treatment has become one of the biggest parts of life. Putting your life on hold for treatment can be extremely mentally challenging. Therapy supports clients through these challenges and helps nurture acceptance and focus on what a client still can do.
You are a Loved One of Someone Going Through Any of the Above:
If any of the above resonates with you not because you have gone through it yourself but because your loved one has, therapy is here for you too. Maybe you stood by and watched your loved one fight for life in the ER or ICU. Maybe you saw them go through treatment or rehabilitation, or struggle with debilitating symptoms like pain and fatigue and receive no answers. Therapy can help you process your own trauma and grief that has come with this journey and support your loved one.
