cirs & chronic illness psychotherapy
Psychotherapy for adults living with chronic illness and medical complexity
Living with chronic illness or medically complex symptoms can affect far more than physical health. Many people find that their emotional world, sense of identity, relationships, and capacity to feel grounded in themselves shift in ways that are difficult to explain and are often misunderstood.
Some clients come to this work with a clear medical diagnosis. Others are navigating ongoing symptoms that do not fit neatly into a single category. You may feel anxious, disconnected, grief-stricken, overwhelmed, or unsure how to make sense of your experience, especially if previous support focused narrowly on either mental or physical health.
I offer psychotherapy for adults whose emotional lives have been shaped by chronic illness or medically layered conditions, including tick-borne and environmentally acquired illnesses such as Lyme disease and CIRS.
This work remains firmly rooted in psychotherapy, with attention to how the nervous system, health stressors, and lived experience interact. Therapy here is paced, collaborative, and oriented toward helping you regain stability, clarity, and trust in your own perceptions while living with ongoing complexity.
Psychotherapy that adapts to changing capacity
When chronic illness or medical complexity is part of someone’s life, psychotherapy often needs to move at a different pace. Symptoms can fluctuate, cognitive and emotional capacity can change, and psychological distress is often shaped by physical stressors, inflammation, uncertainty, and prolonged loss of stability. Traditional therapy models do not always account for these layers.
My work is informed by focused clinical experience and ongoing training in working with individuals affected by chronic, neuroimmune, and environmentally acquired illness. This includes understanding how conditions such as tick-borne illness or CIRS can influence nervous system regulation, emotional processing, identity, and trust in one’s own perceptions. Therapy is adapted to meet you where you are, rather than pushing for insight or change when the body is under strain.
This work remains psychotherapy. I do not diagnose or treat medical conditions, and therapy here does not replace medical care. Instead, it offers a psychologically grounded space to make sense of the emotional and relational impact of living with chronic illness and medical complexity, while respecting the realities of the body and the limits of capacity.
What therapy often focuses on
Living with chronic illness or medically layered conditions can quietly reshape how you relate to yourself, your body, and the world around you. Therapy in this space often centers around making sense of experiences that are difficult to articulate or hold alone, especially when symptoms are unpredictable or poorly understood by others.
Our work together is informed by focused clinical training and ongoing education related to chronic, neuroimmune, and environmentally acquired illness, along with deep familiarity with the lived experience of navigating prolonged health disruption. This includes understanding how medical frameworks, environmental testing, and lab results often become part of a client’s daily reality, shaping emotional responses, decision-making, and trust in one’s own perceptions. Therapy attends not only to emotional distress, but also to the confusion, fear, and self-doubt that can emerge when health information is complex, evolving, or difficult to integrate.
Common areas of focus may include changes in identity or self-trust, grief related to loss of capacity or stability, fear or hypervigilance around symptoms, and the strain that illness can place on relationships, work, and daily functioning. Therapy creates room to process these experiences without needing to minimize them or push toward resolution before it feels possible. The work supports reflection, emotional regulation, and meaning-making while respecting the realities of the body and the shifting nature of capacity over time.
session details
Format
Sessions are conducted via secure telehealth. This format allows flexibility and accessibility while maintaining privacy and continuity of care, which can be especially important when physical capacity, symptoms, or energy levels fluctuate.
Location & Licensure
I provide telehealth psychotherapy to adults who are physically located in the following states at the time of sessions:
Florida, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia
Sessions
Standard psychotherapy sessions are 50 minutes in length and are typically scheduled weekly or biweekly, depending on individual needs, goals, and capacity at a given time.
Extended sessions of up to 90 minutes are available when clinically appropriate and can be discussed during the initial consultation.
The pace and structure of sessions are adjusted collaboratively and may change over time in response to shifting needs.
Payment
CIRS & Chronic Illness Psychotherapy is offered on a self-pay basis only and is not billed through insurance or eligible for insurance reimbursement. This allows for greater flexibility in pacing and focus when working with chronic and medically layered illness.
Rates and payment details can be reviewed during the initial consultation.
Important Note
This service is psychotherapy and does not replace medical care. I do not diagnose or treat medical conditions, order or interpret laboratory tests, or provide medical recommendations. Therapy focuses on the emotional, relational, and psychological impact of living with chronic illness and medically layered conditions, alongside ongoing medical care.
If you are experiencing a mental health emergency or are in crisis, please contact 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or seek immediate local emergency services by calling 911.