How Therapy Helps Ease

Living with a serious illness means that every day you cope with a variety of difficult physical and emotional experiences, beginning with having to live with the burdens of an illness at all.

These tend to manifest in particular ways in specific illnesses, interacting with our unique lives and circumstances along the way. They are not only physical symptoms and the demands of medical treatments. They are also the overlapping losses, fears, uncertainties, and disruptions.

At times, these can become even more difficult to bear. This can happen through the burdens of trauma and depression, coping strategies that no longer serve us, or simply not having the support we need to face something overwhelming.

When this happens, it is even harder to participate in daily life. Our sense of ourselves as capable of coping with what we live with, and with what lies ahead, can be undermined. We may struggle to process our experiences, let alone carry an inner sense of our capacities for adaptation and growth.

Additional layers of pain can be created, often in ways that can trigger, maintain, or worsen physical symptoms and stress.

Connecting with a therapist who specializes in the terrain and trajectories of living with serious illnesses is an important resource in easing these additional layers of pain, and preventing them from creating further harm.

© Nicole Sucre, PsyD

Just as importantly, in easing distress we broaden our abilities to recognize and engage with the positive and meaningful experiences that define the quality of our lives.