Therapy for Chronic Pain & Chronic Illness
Online Therapy with Maddy Buxton, LPC in Atlanta, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio
Can therapy help with chronic pain and chronic illness?
Yes. Therapy can help people living with chronic pain or chronic illness manage stress, anxiety, depression, grief, burnout, isolation, negative self-talk, relationship challenges, process medical and betrayal trauma, and help with the overall emotional impact of long-term health conditions. Therapy won’t cure your physical symptoms, but it can improve coping skills, resilience, self-compassion, and overall quality of life.
What is therapy for chronic pain and chronic illness?
Therapy for chronic pain and chronic illness can help people learn to navigate the emotional, psychological, and relational challenges that often accompany long-term health conditions. Therapy can provide much needed support for stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, isolation, internalized ableism, identity changes, burnout, and coping with the uncertainty of ongoing symptoms.
How do chronic pain and chronic illness affect mental health?
Living with chronic pain can impact your mood, stress levels, relationships, sleep, self-esteem, and overall well-being. Many people experience anxiety, depression, frustration, grief, or isolation while managing ongoing symptoms.
Chronic illness often involves ongoing medical appointments, uncertainty, lifestyle changes, and shifts in identity. It can be a lot to manage and feel overwhelming. Therapy provides a supportive space to process these experiences, teach you how to advocate for yourself, and develop healthy coping strategies.
Both chronic pain and chronic illness- they often go hand in hand- can also bring with it a load of medical trauma, betrayal trauma, grief for what could have been, existential grief, isolation and social anxiety, and reveal distressing internalized ableism beliefs.
How can therapy support people living with chronic pain and illness?
Therapy may help with:
Medical trauma- This can be due to painful medical experiences, receiving poor care, not being believed, dealing with insurance companies slowing down treatments, betrayal trauma, and more.
Grief and loss- existential grief, grief for the life that was taken from you or could have been, and the loss that was experienced
Relationship challenges- Isolation is often an unfortunate byproduct of living with chronic pain or illness. It can change what you physically feel capable of doing or how frequently you can do it. Not being able to be as social as you once were, and the fact that illness and pain makes some people uncomfortable, can cause loved ones to distance themselves.
Low self-compassion or feelings of being a burden
Manage stress
Process identity changes
Build emotional resilience
My Approach to Therapy for Chronic Pain & Illness
As someone who has a chronic autoimmune disease and lives with chronic pain (ankylosing spondylitis and fibromyalgia if you’re curious), I have a deep understanding of the struggles that come with living with chronic pain. We have a unique way of living in the world and a different relationship with our bodies that some abled bodied people may not fully understand. I certainly don’t believe that ‘this is all in your head’, but that is where our brain is which sends us pain signals and causes all of our distressing thoughts and feelings. There is a combination of grief, anxiety, internalized ableism, guilt, loneliness, depression, betrayal trauma, medical trauma, fatigue, post exertion malaise- and so much more that can occur in a variety of ways. Just like a pain flare, they can even crop up unexpectedly when everything was fine the day before. If you have a chronic health condition, we can work through those hard feelings and the emotional pain together.
These sessions are 53 minutes long, and in them I like to use a blend of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Existential Therapy, Feminist Therapy, and Person Centered Therapy. I will use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy occasionally, but I personally find it to be a bit invalidating for chronic pain if used incorrectly or too much.
Frequently Asked Questions about Therapy for Chronic Pain and Chronic Illness
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Yes. Therapy can help you adjust to a new diagnosis, process emotions, learn to manage uncertainty, learn to communicate needs more effectively, and develop practical coping skills.
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It’s grief of the loss of something intangible. Grief isn’t only felt when a loved one dies. Grief can occur due to any loss. With chronic pain or illness, it often comes in the form of grieving the potential life that was lost, or could have been, if the pain or illness didn’t happen. That ‘what if…’ can be very heavy and triggered by different aspects of life.
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Ableism is one of the most overlooked ‘isms’ in our society. It’s the thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, and/or privileges that people think they should be able to do, take for granted they can do, or are resistant to having to do because of what they think their body should do on its own. It can be seen in a variety of ways, like not wanting to take medication that can help, be resistant to any accommodations that may be needed, judge themselves, or be judged by others, for having to ‘overthink’, and more.
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Yes! Therapy can help with the emotional aspects of chronic pain. Will it magically take all the pain away and cure you of all ailments and diseases? No. Can it take away some of the emotional heaviness like grief, disappointment, frustration, and sadness related to being in pain and illness all the time so it doesn’t hurt like it did before? Yes it can. We can process the the emotional pain, existential grief, and/or trauma that living with these conditions can cause.
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The daily challenges that come with chronic pain can contribute to feelings of sadness, hopelessness, frustration, and isolation. Given all the changes in your world and identity that you did not consent to, and the loss that accompanies it, it makes sense that you feel depressed. Therapy can help you address both the emotional and practical effects of living with chronic pain.
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No. Chronic pain is a real physical experience. Therapy does not suggest that pain is imaginary. Instead, therapy can help you address the emotional and psychological impacts of living with ongoing pain, and it can help you improve coping skills and your quality of life.
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Yes. Therapy can help you manage health-related anxiety, uncertainty, overwhelm, and the emotional weight of long-term medical conditions.
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It is common amongst those of us living with chronic illness or chronic pain to report feeling misunderstood or isolated. Therapy provides a safe, supportive, validating space to explore these experiences and build emotional support.
As someone living with chronic pain and illness, I am able to empathize with your lived experience. I know what I’ve been through is not the same as what you’ve been through, but I’m willing to bet I have a better understanding of your experience than someone without chronic pain or illness.
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Yes, While of course it is difficult to be the person that’s actually in pain or sick, seeing your loved one suffer these experiences and not being able to, or know how to help is also difficult. I also work with couples where one, both, or all parties experience chronic pain or have a chronic illness.
Let’s Work Together
If none of the consultation times available work for your schedule, that’s okay. Please fill out this form and we can find a time to meet that works for both of us.