Living with a chronic illness
Living with something that will not resolve is a different task from recovering from something that will.
This page is a working draft. It has not yet been reviewed and approved by our clinical team, and it is not indexed by search engines until it is.
What this is about
There is the symptom load, and there is the rest of it: appointments that become a second job, being disbelieved, planning a life around unpredictable days, and the particular loneliness of an illness other people cannot see. Many people also carry a quiet grief for the version of their life they had assumed, which rarely gets named because it can sound ungrateful.
What work here looks like
Therapy will not treat the illness and will not pretend the difficulty is in your head. It is space to hold what it is actually like, and to work out what a good life looks like from here rather than from before.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis. If you are in immediate danger or worried you might act on thoughts of harming yourself, please contact Tele-MANAS (14416 or 1-800-89-14416, available 24×7 across India) or your local emergency services.
Where this often overlaps.
