Chronic Pain and Illness
Living with chronic pain or illness can be exhausting, especially when your life has to revolve around what your body may or may not be able to do each day. You are not a burden. You are not alone.
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Living with chronic pain or illness can shape your life in ways that are difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it themselves.
You may find yourself living each day somewhat on standby—waiting to see how your body will feel, how much energy you’ll have, and what you’ll be able to manage. Plans may need to change at the last minute, and you may have to cancel or reschedule things you genuinely wanted to do.
There can be a constant process of adjusting your plans, your energy, and your expectations. You may carefully weigh what you can do today, knowing that pushing too far could affect how you feel tomorrow.
You might also experience frustration with your body, anxiety about the uncertainty, or guilt when you need to rest or ask for help. If your illness isn't visible, you may wonder whether others truly understand how much you are carrying.
And there may be grief for the life, abilities, routines, or sense of certainty that have changed along the way.
Often, there is a longing for more than simply getting through the day—a way to relate to yourself and your body with greater compassion, make space for the parts of you that are frustrated, afraid, exhausted, or grieving, and find steadiness in the midst of uncertainty.
What makes my approach different?
Many of the people I work with who live with chronic pain or illness share that they haven’t always felt understood—whether by family and friends, healthcare providers, or even past therapists. It can be difficult to explain an experience that others can’t see, especially when you’re constantly having to adjust your life around your symptoms.
Living with chronic pain or illness can also mean developing different ways of coping and adapting. There may be parts of you that push through, try to stay positive, carefully manage your energy, or work hard to keep life feeling as “normal” as possible. There may be other parts that feel frustrated, afraid, exhausted, angry, or overwhelmed by what your body is asking of you.
And sometimes, there are parts that carry the hurt of feeling dismissed, misunderstood, or not believed. You may have learned to question your own experience, minimize what you’re going through, or feel like you need to prove that your pain is real.
With Internal Family Systems, we gently make space for all of these experiences. Rather than trying to get rid of difficult feelings or force yourself to think differently about your illness, we can become curious about the parts that have learned to manage, protect, push through, or react to pain. Together, we can begin to understand what these parts need and develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself and your body.
