Therapy for Women with Chronic Illness and Chronic Pain in New York

Impact of Chronic Illness on Mental Health

Chronic pain is pain that persists longer than a typical healing period, which the NIH estimates from 3-6 months. Similarly, chronic illness refers to a health condition that is long-lasting, typically for at least a year according to the CDC. These statistics illustrate the need for mental health support in the midst of long-term physical pain. The mind and body both need support and a team of medical professionals to help them find stability and begin to thrive again.

Integrative, Third Wave Approach to Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Chronic Illness

Cognitive behavior therapy, or CBT, is an evidence-based therapy that helps us recognize unhelpful thought patterns and replace them with more helpful thoughts. CBT illustrates the link between thoughts, actions, and emotions. Practicing reframing your thoughts, can create behavioral change and decrease your experience of unhelpful emotions. At New York Women’s CBT, we value an integrative approach pairing both flexible thought patterns and somatic, mindfulness tools drawn form Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Women’s Health

As a specialized therapists, this is our approach at our New York based therapy practice when navigating anxiety and depression in tandem with complex chronic health issues. It is important to validate the feelings and emotions you are having while also acknowledging that the unhelpful thought patterns, or stuck points, are sometimes rooted in real medical trauma and prior experiences you may have endured.

Traditional CBT uses the language of irrational thoughts vs rational thoughts. While this may apply to some thought patterns, it is usually not the approach best suited to validating medical trauma, chronic pain, and chronic illness.

Mindfulness Techniques for Complex Chronic Health Issues

Mindfulness techniques are helpful to learn how to calm the nervous system. When you are managing chronic pain and chronic illness daily, your nervous system becomes overstimulated and disregulated. The pain and symptoms you are experiencing are not in your head-they are real. Incorporating mindfulness techniques is just one tool out of many to help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Mindfulness techniques that are helpful to learn in therapy include grounding exercises, deep breathing exercises, guided meditations, and visualizations. These tools can help activate your parasympathetic nervous system or the rest and repair the state of the body. Learn ways to break the cycle of fight, flight, and freeze the response of the sympathetic nervous system.

Distress Tolerance Techniques to Manage Pain Flares and Intense Feelings

Distress tolerance techniques can help provide healthy distractions when navigating big emotions or intense pain. These may look like acceptance strategies, sensory activities to help self-soothe, and mindfulness exercises to help improve the moment. Distress tolerance helps us recognize that painful feelings and emotions are temporary and we can withstand them.

Acceptance of the Moment when Living with Women’s Health Issues

These exercises may include healthy distractions in the form of activities, like doing a puzzle, reading a book, or watching a favorite movie. Self-soothing activities to incorporate your senses may look like taking a scenic hike, listening to nature outside your window or music, tasting a favorite food, smelling a scented candle, or petting your pup. Utilizing mindfulness to improve your moment includes visualizations, finding meaning in a gratitude practice, prayer or relaxation, taking a break, and encouraging yourself.

Tools to Increase Acceptance of Chronic Pain and Chronic Illness

Therapeutic exercises rooted in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, can help increase feelings of acceptance when managing chronic pain and chronic illness. Acceptance does not mean that you are okay with your diagnosis or you that like having to manage this new life and pain. It simply means you are accepting this new reality and you are committed to making changes if needed to live in alignment with your values.

ACT tools help make it a more concrete experience by exploring your values and how you feel fulfillment in major areas of life. Acceptance recognizes the pain that you are experiencing, and the grief that you have endured and acknowledges that you can withstand this reality. Our hope in therapeutic work is to help you thrive in the midst of pain and find fulfillment in everyday life.

Women’s Health Issues We Work with in Therapy for Chronic Illness in New York:

• Endometriosis

• Adenomyosis

• Chronic Pelvic Pain

• Dysautonomia/POTS

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME

• Fibromyalgia

• Ehlers Danlos/Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder

• Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

• Breast Cancer

• Cervical Cancer

• Ovarian Cancer

• Uterine Cancer

• Infertility

• Pregnancy Loss

• Crohn’s Disease/IBS

• Autoimmune Diseases

  • Rheumatoid Arthritis

  • Lupus

  • Celiac

  • Multiple Sclerosis

  • Ankylosing Spondylitis

  • Hashimotos

• Interstitial Cystitis & Bladder Pain

• Vulvodynia

• Vestibulodynia