online therapy in san jose, and across california.

Therapy for medical diagnosis.

Do you find yourself wishing you could go back in time?

All of a sudden, life looks completely different. Things used to feel stressful enough before, what with work, family, bills, and life in general. But now, you find yourself looking back and thinking how much easier things were, wishing you appreciated what you had when you had it. 

You heard what the doctors said, but it still doesn’t feel real.

It feels like tomorrow when you wake up things will go back to the way they were before. Maybe you are trying desperately to make sense of how you got here, wondering if you would still be in this situation if that exercise routine would have stuck or if you would have just scheduled a doctor’s appointment a few months back. 

You can’t seem to understand why the little things your partner or children do gets on your nerves so much all of a sudden, or why you have the overwhelming urge to scream at the seatbelt alarm. Or maybe you find yourself feeling so devastated that it takes all of your energy to just get into the shower in the morning.

You are definitely not alone in feeling this way.

After receiving a life changing medical diagnosis or suddenly facing an acute change in health, it is natural to be in shock, to second guess any and everything you’ve ever done, and to feel intense waves of a whole lot of feelings. It is natural to grieve for your health, for how you expected to be spending this year, or for the uncertainty you now face about your future.

It goes without saying that this diagnosis changes almost everything. Maybe now you are facing the difficult decision to continue working, cut down on your hours, or take a leave from your job. You are witnessing how your loved ones are also trying to come to terms with what you are facing. They keep asking how you are doing, and it’s really hard to see their worry and answer honestly. People outside your immediate circle may have heard about what’s going on and are showing up to help where they can, which is both kind and also hard to accept. Or maybe you are feeling increasingly isolated, because this news just feels too overwhelming to share, and so you are trying to go about your day acting like everything is fine. 

And all of this is really weighing on you.

How It works

We’ll develop effective strategies to handle what’s happening now and figure out how to move through this.

  • 1. Talk through - We’ll start out by clarifying your main concerns and what areas you want to focus on. If you aren’t sure, we’ll figure it out together. We’ll talk through your medical history and get a good understanding of what you’re facing day-to-day. We’ll explore how all of this is impacting you.

  • 2. Make sense of - Sharing your narrative can be a helpful way to reflect on your experiences and feel heard. It can also allow space to name experiences of grief/loss, symptoms of depression and anxiety, role changes, as well as some less obvious ripple effects of your diagnosis. We’ll also talk about your values and priorities.

  • 3. Learn tools - We’ll cover relevant tools to work towards your specific goals. This may look like understanding how stress is impacting your physiology and how to practice different evidence-based relaxation exercises. Or it may look like practicing strategies to manage worried thoughts and uncertainty. Sometimes it may also involve increasing specific activities known to improve mood.

  • 4. Take action - You’ll practice the concrete tools and strategies in-between sessions and then we’ll evaluate how they work for you. We’ll problem-solve challenges and course-correct when needed. We may identify changes that you want to make to focus more on some of your values, and brainstorm ways to put them into action.

Subspecialities

  • Transplant

  • LVAD

  • Cancer

  • Cardiac conditions, including cardiomyopathy, advanced heart failure, myocardial infarction/heart attack

  • Extended hospitalizations and ICU stays

Counseling for medical diagnosis can help you…

  • Use effective tools when faced with worry and uncertainty

  • Improve ability to manage stress, anxiety, and depression

  • Process through complex emotions and losses

  • Prioritize your needs and communicate them effectively with others

  • Reduce feelings of isolation 

  • Increase your sense of empowerment and ability to handle what lies ahead

  • Reconnect with what matters most to you, and make your life reflect those values

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

Frequently asked questions about counseling for medical illness

FAQs

  • Therapy for medical conditions can help with dealing with some of the most difficult parts of a condition. Often, when we are feeling incredibly anxious or overwhelmed, it is hard to sleep, hard to think clearly, and sometimes hard to do what we need to do for our condition (E.g., go to appointments, get lab work, etc). In therapy, you can learn tools to manage some of these natural reactions to a new diagnosis or challenging treatment. Therapy can also help manage some of the experiences of sadness, loss, and hopelessness that can also be common. When a medical illness requires a difficult lifestyle change that you are struggling to implement in order to improve your health, therapy can also help. Lastly, managing medical conditions can feel isolating. Therapy can offer a space to talk freely and receive support.

  • I can work with any and all types, including but not limited to breast cancer, ovarian cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and liver cancer.

  • Yes. In addition to working with clients facing illness, I also work with caregivers of individuals facing illness. I recognize how much your life can change in the immediate aftermath of a diagnosis, in the exhausting treatment phase, or afterwards. Being a caregiver for someone facing a serious illness can bring up a lot of emotions, including experiences of grief around what you expected life to look like. Finding ways to prioritize your own mental and physical health is incredibly important (and often incredibly difficult too), and therapy can be a great way to do that.

  • Yes, definitely - this is a sub-specialty that I have. I have knowledge of what is involved in consideration for transplant, some of the challenges of those awaiting transplant, and common experiences while recovering from surgery. I have experience working in heart transplant, kidney transplant, liver transplant, and bone marrow transplant. I also have experience working with adults being considered for Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) or living with an LVAD.

  • As a society, the experience of grief is most often understood in the context of a death-related loss. When we take a more inclusionary view of grief, we recognize health-related living losses, or nonfinite losses, which require ongoing adjustment and adaptation, and often go unrecognized. Recognizing these experiences, naming them, and working through them can help make sense of a world that may be hard to make sense of.