Cancer Survivor Support and Coping with Chronic Illness in San Rafael, CA and online in the San Francisco Bay Area
Cancer Survivor Support and Coping with Chronic Illness in San Rafael and online in the San Francisco Bay Area
You are feeling anxious or depressed as you anticipate having another medical procedure. Facing the unknowns is frightening. You don’t feel like yourself anymore. You don’t look like yourself anymore.
Even if you’ve gotten through the most difficult aspects of having cancer or a chronic illness, there always seems to be more and more scans/tests, treatment, or another health option to consider to manage your symptoms. Illness has defined you.
The side effects from medications, physical pain, or loss of function is taking a toll on your body, leaving you feeling broken. You used to be excited about life, full of vitality, creativity, and adventure. But now you find yourself anxious all the time, doubting yourself and your abilities. It’s hard to focus at work or other meaningful activities, and you feel more irritable with people you love.
There are very real fears you carry - death, grief, losing functionality- as you find it hard to do the things you used to do to cope. You are too tired and don’t have the stamina to get going.
You want to integrate and grow from your experiences so you can feel alive again and create a meaningful life. You’ve been managing on your own, but you can’t rely anymore on friends and family to get you through to the other side of what you are going through.
Integrative Therapy San Rafael or Online in the San Francisco Bay Area
I’m Michelle, a licensed California therapist who supports those with cancer, either in treatment or post treatment, and those with a chronic illness, to cope, manage anxiety and depression, and integrate this profound experience. Your body, mind, emotions, and spirit have been through a lot and through therapy I am here to help you not only cope but to feel whole no matter what life throws your way.
If you are preparing for surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, we will use guided imagery for relaxation, support, or to enhance the effectiveness of the treatments you are receiving, or suggestion hypnotherapy to support positive healing.
To discharge what is held in your body, I will support you in bringing awareness to your body sensations, regulating those sensations, or moving them out of your body so you feel relaxed, less tense, and more whole. I can support you in learning to befriend and appreciate your body and accept the changes.
Supportive Strategies for Cancer Survivor Support and Coping with Chronic Illness
For your mind, you may need support in managing the thoughts that contribute to anxiety or depressed feelings through cognitive behavioral therapy. Or through supportive inquiry in making sense of your experience.
For your emotions, I provide a caring and compassionate space where you can express your emotions, be heard and validated as you grieve your losses. Or you may be wanting to work with new found strengths, learn how to adapt your life, or explore how to better get your needs met and set new boundaries with others.
For the spirit, we may explore what gives you comfort, connects you to something greater than yourself, to how you see yourself and the world, or to what gives you meaning and purpose.
I can help you assess and heal changes that may have occurred in your close relationships, your career, or how you spend your time while either in cancer treatment, post treatment, or as you manage a chronic illness.
If you facing the end of your life, I can support you to focus on what has heart and meaning, provide you with guided imagery or guided meditation, explore existential issues, and support a transition to hospice care.
Empowering Cancer Survivors and Coping with Chronic Illness
What makes me unique is that healing occurs not just through the mind or talking about an experience, but through embodiment of that experience, through mindfulness and compassion practices, through guided imagery or hypnotherapy, through a simple art process, or through supporting your connection with nature. I support you in feeling empowered as you face your illness.
If you need support during cancer treatment or are ready to integrate and heal from your cancer experience or chronic illness, then contact me for a FREE 15 minute phone consultation here . We will develop a compassionate plan that best meets your needs for healing.
My other specialties include coping with grief and loss, trauma-informed care/trauma focused therapy, and women’s health and wellness.
FAQs for Cancer Survivor Support and Chronic Illness
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Guided Imagery is a “directed daydreaming.” It is offered in a collaborative and interactive way vs following a prescribed script. It is designed to evoke all the senses-seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch. It stimulates the right side of the brain which governs non-verbal perception-images, sensations, emotions, dream. It starts with inducing a relaxing, receptive state. Guided imagery may be used to provide a safe place for support, to reduce anxiety, to cope with a medical treatment, to guide you to some unknown parts of yourself, to help you feel more confident, or to provide guidance about a particular problem. It may produce a sense of spaciousness and a wider perspective.
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IHypnotherapy/Depth Hypnosis, as taught by Isa Gucciardi, PhD at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, combines elements of Buddhism, shamanism, energy medicine, transpersonal psychology, and hypnotherapy." It is a guided, inner exploration to to access support, change unhealthy patterns, or to transform painful experiences.tem description
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ISensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) developed by Pat Ogden, PhD is a “body-oriented, mindfully-based talking therapy that is used in the treatment of trauma, attachment, and developmental issues.” If you are experiencing anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional overwhelm, irritability, depression, numbness, low energy, worthlessness, shame, insomnia, or body pain, this type of therapy can be very helpful. I first help you to identify a number of body-mind tools to help you feel resourced , calmer, and emotionally more stable. Then, when you are ready, we safely explore trauma-related material through tracking and working with the sensations in your body. We will slowly explore core beliefs from childhood, and the survival and adaptive strategies you used to cope.
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Often when we are experiencing anxiety or depression, we engage in thought patterns and behaviors that perpetuate the cycle of anxiety and depression. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-focused treatment that examines thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to these states, identifies tools to help with coping, and supports reframing of our thoughts to a more positive, realistic, and strength-based appraisal. I often first help you to develop body awareness and somatic tools to use with the CBT.