Calgary Chronic Illness Counselling

Living with a chronic illness often means dealing with constant pain or intrusive symptoms, which can really interfere with your life and frame of mind. Therapy or counselling is a great way to learn to cope with these challenges, and even lessen your physical and mental discomfort by using proven methods.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Narrative Therapy and Somatic Based Approaches are just a few of the therapy techniques that focus on helping you change how you relate to your illness or pain, and learn more helpful ways to cope so it doesn't dictate every aspect of your daily life.

This means learning techniques like relaxation exercises and mindfulness, which can help to lower the height of your distress and move towards functioning in a more productive way. Plus, therapy can get to the bottom of emotional challenges that can flare symptoms and help with any mental health concerns that come from experiencing chronic illness or pain. Therapy is also proven to help with pain management.

If you're living with a chronic illness, chances are you're dealing with constant pain and challenging physical symptoms. We know how challenging this can be, but therapy can actually help you with pain management by learning to confront and even lessen the intensity and intrusiveness of the pain by using methods that are proven to work.

Therapy helps to improve your emotional wellbeing and mental health by giving you a safe place to talk through all of your feelings of frustration, sadness, grief, or worry that often come with chronic illness. Techniques such as CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy) can help you challenge unhelpful thoughts and come up with better ways to cope with the experiences of chronic illness.

Additionally, chronic illness counselling can offer emotional support and connection so that you don't feel alone, because feeling misunderstood and experiencing isolation and loneliness are some of the greatest challenges that those living with chronic illness face.

Adding in activities like behavior activation, meditation, or mindfulness can improve your mental health, wellbeing, pain management and compliment your regular medical treatments. These kinds of approaches can help you learn to relax, get your body moving in ways that it’s able to, and just push for a more "whole person" approach to your health. A lot of times, they're helpful because they fill in the gaps that standard medical care might not address.

Yes!  Chronic Illness therapy can help you deal with how chronic illness impacts and interferes with your everyday life. It gives you strategies to handle all the practical and emotional hurdles that pop up with your illness. That includes figuring out good self-care routines, how to cope when you're stressed, improving communication with your family and doctors, and finding ways to still have a good quality of life filled with purpose and value.

Coverage for chronic illness therapy depends on your insurance plan. Many providers and policies do cover mental health therapy, including therapy to help you manage a chronic illness. But how much they cover, such as how many sessions or what your co-pay is, can vary. You'll need to check with your insurance provider to understand your benefits and what you need to do for coverage.