Specialty CarE
Therapy for Chronic Illness & Medical Trauma
When your health changes, your whole life can change along with it.
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Living with chronic illness can affect far more than your physical health. Ongoing symptoms, medical uncertainty, changes in your abilities, and the demands of managing healthcare can affect your relationships, work, identity, and sense of what the future may hold.
Medical experiences can leave a lasting emotional impact. Repeated procedures, ongoing illness, hospitalizations, frightening diagnoses, dismissive or invalidating encounters with healthcare providers, or feeling that your symptoms were not believed or understood can be deeply distressing.
At Palim Health, we provide therapy for people navigating chronic illness, complex medical conditions, and medical trauma. Our approach recognizes that psychological wellbeing and physical health are deeply interconnected.
OVERVIEW
Care delivered with compassion and expertise
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Serious care for serious problems
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Providers collaborating to streamline care
Medical trauma is real
Medical care can be lifesaving and still be traumatic.
Medical trauma can develop after a frightening diagnosis, emergency, hospitalization, surgery, invasive procedure, prolonged treatment, or other difficult healthcare experience. It can also emerge gradually after repeated experiences of not being believed, having symptoms minimized, or feeling powerless.
You may notice:
Anxiety before medical appointments or procedures
Avoidance of healthcare even when you know you need it
Feeling panicked or overwhelmed in medical settings
Intrusive memories or distressing thoughts about previous medical experiences
Hypervigilance about physical sensations or symptoms
Difficulty trusting healthcare providers
Feeling disconnected from or afraid of your body
Strong emotional reactions to medical language, environments, or procedures
These responses can make sense in the context of what you have experienced. Therapy can provide a place to process those experiences without minimizing what happened.
Living with chronic illness is more than managing symptoms
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Chronic illness can require an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy. You may be constantly monitoring your body, planning around symptoms, managing appointments and medications, or deciding what you can and cannot do.
Skip the hassle of another office visit - engage in telehealth therapy from anywhere in California.
Finding a different relationship with your body
Living with chronic illness can fundamentally change how you experience your body. When your body has become a source of pain, uncertainty, or limitation, it can be difficult to feel at home in it.
Therapy can help you explore your relationship with your body with curiosity and compassion. This might involve working through grief, fear, anger, shame, or loss while developing ways of relating to yourself that are less defined by illness.
The goal is not necessarily to love your body every day or to “accept” everything that has happened. Sometimes the goal is simply to develop a more compassionate and sustainable relationship with the body you have.
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You do not have to be “positive” about your illness all the time. Therapy can make space for the full range of emotions that can accompany living with a changing body and an uncertain future.
Our treatment philosophy
Our services
Individual Therapy
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Therapy that does not ask you to pretend everything is okay
We do not believe that coping with chronic illness means forcing yourself to be endlessly resilient.
Sometimes coping means adapting. Sometimes it means grieving. Sometimes it means advocating for yourself, setting boundaries, asking for help, or acknowledging that something is genuinely hard.
Therapy can help you make room for both acceptance and change: accepting the realities you cannot control while identifying the parts of your life that you can shape.
Family & Couples/Relationship therapy
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Chronic illness can change relationships in unexpected ways. You may find yourself needing more support from others, struggling with changes in intimacy, or feeling that family and friends do not understand what you are experiencing.
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Chronic illness can affect the entire family, changing roles, responsibilities, communication, and expectations. Family therapy provides a space to better understand these changes, communicate openly about needs and limitations, and develop healthier ways of supporting one another while making room for everyone's experience.
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Chronic illness and medical trauma can affect intimacy, communication, independence, and the balance of responsibilities within a relationship. Couples and relationship therapy can help partners navigate these changes, understand each other's experiences, address conflict, and maintain connection through periods of uncertainty and change.
Supporting service
Psychological Assessment
When physical and psychological symptoms overlap, understanding the bigger picture can sometimes be complicated. Psychological assessment can provide additional clarity around mood, anxiety, trauma, attention, personality, and other areas of functioning, helping inform treatment and distinguish between different factors contributing to your experience.
Supporting service
Medication as Part of Comprehensive Care
Medication may be a helpful part of mental health treatment. Our psychiatrist can provide thoughtful evaluation and ongoing medication management while considering your symptoms, medical history, current treatments, and individual goals. When appropriate, care can be coordinated with your other healthcare providers.
Treatment philosophy
A collaborative and validating approach
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Our approach to therapy for chronic illness and medical trauma is grounded in compassion, curiosity, and respect for your lived experience.
We recognize that people with chronic and complex health conditions often become experts in their own bodies. Therapy should not replicate experiences of being dismissed or having your experiences questioned.
We will work collaboratively to understand what you are going through, identify what you need, and develop strategies that fit your actual circumstances and capacity.
Interested in learning more about therapy for chronic illness or medical trauma?
Contact us to learn more about our services and current availability.