Chronic pain, disease, and anxiety - Lots of resources

Jan 5

Of course all of these things go together. It’s very hard to be living in a body that’s causing you suffering. I work with so many clients who have chronic pain and chronic disease and I’ve seen a lot of therapist-to-therapist support questions circulating on my local listservs about how to better help these folks.

In my practice, chronic disease often comes with anxiety or OCD and that intersection presents challenges in that I never want to overstep my scope, as a mental health practitioner. But a lot of what’s triggering anxiety is actually physical pain or symptoms that I can’t chalk up to “anxiety alone.”

I promise my Oregon Therapist Peeps that I’d post the resources I have in a publicly accessible place and I’ll add resources that aren’t mind, if folks send them my way.

Here is the list of things that come to mind for me when I’m working with clients who have chronic diseases:

Wanting to validate client experiences of pain and discomfort while also helping them to find space in that pain to build a meaningful life and not put things on hold for "when I'm better" that may never come,
Encouraging clients to seek appropriate medical care while also being mindful of when another healthcare practitioner may actually be preying on my client and leveraging their desperation for answers for personal gain,
Staying on the right side of the law and ethics by making sure I'm not stepping out of my scope,
Consulting with medical providers (some have been mean to me as a measly therapist),
Dealing with medical advice that might be the right thing for a pointed medical condition but not the right thing for their mental health,
Treating OCD processes that may be taking hold of the chronic illness and coming up with a treatment plan that validates the medical component and challenges health-perfectionism that may occur at any stage of treatment.