Psychotherapy for Chronic Pain, Chronic Illness, & Mind-Body Conditions
When the Body Becomes a Daily Concern: Living with chronic pain or chronic medical illness affects far more than the body alone. Over time, these conditions can reshape identity, relationships, mood, energy, and a person’s sense of safety in the world. Depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, grief, and trauma-related symptoms are common companions to long-term physical conditions.
Psychotherapy offers a space to address these experiences—helping you cope with the emotional impact of illness or pain and reduce the psychological burden that often accompanies ongoing symptoms.
When Physical Symptoms and Emotional Strain Interact
The mind and body are deeply interconnected. Emotional distress can intensify physical symptoms, just as physical symptoms can increase emotional suffering. Depression often includes fatigue, pain, and sleep disruption; anxiety and panic frequently involve very real bodily sensations such as gastrointestinal distress, muscle tension, dizziness, or shortness of breath.
This does not mean symptoms are imagined or “all in your head.” The pain and physical experiences people have are real. At times, however, psychological stress, trauma, or prolonged emotional strain can strongly influence how symptoms are experienced and sustained within the body.
Living With Symptoms That Don’t Turn Off
Chronic pain and illness rarely stay contained to one part of life. They often affect work, relationships, self-image, and a person’s sense of independence or control. Many people find themselves grieving abilities they once had or feeling frustrated, angry, or ashamed about limits they didn’t choose.
Therapy offers a place to speak openly about these losses and emotional responses—without minimizing the medical reality of your condition.
How Therapy Can Support You
Psychotherapy can be helpful in several ways, including:
Reducing depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms
Easing emotional stress that can worsen physical symptoms
Improving sleep, coping, and emotional regulation
Supporting adjustment to illness, uncertainty, and change
Helping some individuals experience meaningful improvement in pain or physical symptoms over time
For others, therapy primarily improves quality of life and emotional well-being, even when medical symptoms persist.
A Thoughtful, Psychodynamic Approach
My work is grounded in a psychodynamic approach, which means we pay attention to emotional patterns, relationships, and life experiences that may influence how symptoms are lived and understood. Therapy is not about convincing you that symptoms are psychological or ignoring medical explanations. Instead, we work collaboratively to explore the full context of your experience—at a pace that feels safe and respectful.
This approach is often helpful for people who sense that stress, trauma, or longstanding emotional patterns may be interacting with their physical symptoms, even if the connection isn’t immediately clear.
When Symptoms Don’t Fit Neatly Into One Category
Some conditions involve complex, overlapping physical symptoms that are medically recognized and often difficult to live with. People with these conditions are frequently asked to carry a profound amount of uncertainty—about causes, treatments, and prognosis—while still navigating the demands of daily life.
Conditions such as fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), migraine disorders, chronic pelvic pain, and other chronic pain or fatigue-related conditions often affect multiple body systems and fluctuate over time.
Psychotherapy does not attempt to reduce these experiences to psychology. Rather, it offers a space to address the emotional strain, stress, and identity changes that can accompany long-term symptoms. We focus on supporting the nervous system, which is often under sustained strain in the context of chronic illness. For some people, creating greater internal safety and working through the cumulative “wear and tear” of ongoing symptoms may also be associated with a reduction in symptom intensity over time, or with an improved ability to live with and tolerate symptoms when they persist.
What This Work Is Not
This therapy is not about dismissing symptoms, replacing medical care, or forcing emotional explanations. It does not assume that pain or illness is imagined, exaggerated, or intentional.
Instead, it offers a space to explore how physical and emotional experiences may influence one another—only as much as feels helpful to you.
Working Alongside Medical Care
Psychotherapy works best when it complements appropriate medical treatment. Many people I work with are also seeing physicians or specialists. With your consent, coordination of care can be part of treatment when useful.
Considering Therapy
If you are living with chronic pain, chronic illness, or mind–body symptoms and are wondering whether psychotherapy could help, a consultation can be a first step. The goal is not to fit you into a theory, but to understand your experience and determine whether this approach feels like a good match.