Counseling for chronic illness & medical trauma in St. Louis

Find comfort & relief.

Health conditions touch every part of life.

They change everything. 

You probably haven’t even had time or energy to notice all of the ways illness has impacted you.  Maybe if you did think about it - it would be too much to bear.  

It’s hard to make sense of how deeply sad, lonely, and overwhelming it is to live with chronic illness.  There are periods where you have no answers or treatments aren’t working.  You aren’t sure you’ll ever feel better or be yourself again.  You wish time would freeze so you could skip ahead to the part where you understand what’s happening and how to make it better.  Living in uncertainty is one of the most cruel and painful parts of living with an illness.  

Or maybe for you, the diagnosis came on suddenly and your life changed forever in an instant. We don’t talk about how medical procedures or tests are traumatic in their own right.  Even if a condition is “managed” or in remission,  it stays with you.  You want to “get back” to a life that doesn’t exist anymore.  The grief and loss of that picture of who you were or who you could have been is profound.  

I can help you let go of the pain so you can grab hold of a life worth living.

Healing for the whole person.

Health conditions impact more than just our body.  Usually the body gets all the attention.  We rarely focus on how our illness may be affecting our mind, emotions, spirit, and soul.  Those parts need healing care too.   

Mind

Thinking that it’s my fault; I’m a failure; I should handle this a certain way.  Nobody gets it.  I’m alone. This will never end.  Things don’t work out for me and they never will.  Even when things are good I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Emotions

Leaving you feeling sad, lonely, hopeless, angry.  STUCK.

Spirit

A belief that God, the Universe, a larger force or higher power,  just doesn’t care.  Doesn’t want me to be happy.  Has forgotten me.  I don’t matter.  Or worse, actually wants me to suffer. 

Soul

Illness is seriously soul-crushing.   Illness impacts your relationship with yourself and who you know yourself to be.  It has a way of causing people to feel like they are a failure and unworthy.  Feel betrayed by your body that isn’t working properly or coordinating with the rest of your “self.”  Causes a fracture inside that is very hard to understand or repair on your own.

Illness touches every part of your life, so you need an approach to healing that can do the same.

EMDR IS A POWERFUL THERAPY THAT CAN RESULT IN HEALING YOUR WHOLE SELF.

Counseling for chronic illness can help you:

  • Share the pain you hold inside

  • Grieve the ways that your life has changed due to illness

  • Release your pain so you can move forward and truly heal

  • See how strong you really are

  • Learn to love life again

It’s possible to love your life again.

Frequently Asked Questions about Counseling for chronic illness & medical Trauma

 

  • The CDC calls chronic diseases conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both. Six in ten adults in the US live with a chronic condition and four in ten live with more than one. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, gastrointestinal and autoimmune conditions.

  • There is a significant emotional impact of living with a long term health condition. Therapy can support you to cope with how it changes your life. EMDR provides a pathway to find peace from the painful, frightening, or frustrating parts of living with a condition. You can feel relief and clarity when you approach health related matters. Therapy can also support you with stressors in life that cause unexpected flare ups. It can give you confidence about how to handle flare ups when they come your way.

  • Medical trauma is defined as a set of psychological and physiological responses to pain, injury, serious illness, medical procedures and frightening treatment experiences. For more information see the fact sheet.

    • A sudden, life-threatening illness or injury and the related treatment

    • Shock and feeling out of control when receiving a scary diagnosis

    • Life changing complications or problems during or after a medical procedure

    • Unexpected medical intervention such as needing an emergency intervention

    • Things about the hospital like constant noise, frequent medical checks, and staff disrupting sleep

    • Seeing frightening images or having frightening thoughts while in the hospital

  • Medical emergencies and even planned medical procedures can be very scary and overwhelming. They leave us with bad memories, intense emotions, and negative body sensations. EMDR helps the brain to “process” the remnants of what the medical trauma has left behind so that we can move forward.

    Many people are triggered again when they set foot in a doctor’s office or hospital. Everything can come rushing back or they feel frozen and locked up. Most of us will need to be able to go back into a medical setting and do not want to feel the difficult emotions over and over again. EMDR can help to reduce the stress so you can live your life in the future and not be controlled by the past.

    I also work with adults who had a childhood illness such as cancer or a medical emergency in their childhood that still affects them today. You may think you will always need to live with the pain of that memory, but you can find peace and healing. EMDR can help.