Does any of the following statements resonate with you? 

• Life with a chronic health condition has been overwhelming.
• Chronic pain gets in the way of your quality of life.
• You have been told by your doctor that you need to change your diet, exercise more, or reduce your stress. 
• You’ve been having a hard time adjusting to your cancer diagnosis.
• You are recovering from an injury.
• You’re fairly healthy and want to continue doing everything you can to stay this way!

Any of those issues or goals can be addressed by a health psychologist. 

Health psychology is a totally awesome (can you tell I love my job?!) area of psychology that focuses on factors that influence physical health and wellness. 

1. Living better with a medical diagnosis 

 Managing a medical condition can feel like a full-time job. It disrupts your routine, your relationships, your sense of identity. It also often distracts you from doing other things that matter to you. Adjusting to life with chronic illness requires time, energy, and a lot of support from loved ones and your medical team. 

A clinical health psychologist has received specialized training to help you manage the emotional and physical stressors of your medical diagnosis (e.g., diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, endometriosis, HIV/AIDS, etc).

Together, we can address difficult emotions (anxiety, sadness, guilt, anger, etc) that ebb and flow over the course of your illness. A clinical health psychologist can also help you cope with physical side effects of you treatments or teach you ways to relax your body. We know for instance that practicing relaxation skills can help alleviate nausea during chemotherapy! 

As your symptoms change over time and you go through the ups and downs of your disease, seeking therapy can give you the support and the tools to make life a bit less overwhelming.

2 . Making healthy lifestyle changes 

There are many things we cannot change or control that may contribute to illness. Genes, family history, gender, ethnicity. 

However, a significant number of risk factors responsible for chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease) are modifiable. Yes, they are many things we can do to support our health and prevent illness!

By now most of those factors that promote health should not be surprising to you. Eating healthy foods, staying away from tobacco, being physically active. Yet, implementing all these recommendations consistently in your life can prove to be a challenge. 

Raise your hand if you are struggling to stay physically active or eat regular, healthy meals! Change is hard! Sticking with new routines takes time, commitment, and support. 

Stress and lack of time often come to mind as key factors that prevent us from achieving our goals. But Many others, more subtle factors can also derail you from staying on track (depression, high anxiety, health beliefs, inadequate goal setting, unhelpful expectations, lack of coping skills, poor social support, to name a few). 

There are many ways to get to a goal and the response to your unique needs or difficulties is not a “one-size-fit-all” approach. Working with a clinical health psychologist can give you the tools to identify and address the obstacles that get in the way of your health goals.



3 . Caring for the caregivers

Being diagnosed with a disease or suffering an injury impacts the whole family. No one would argue against this. It shifts priorities, leads to difficult emotions and tough questions, puts stress on relationships and requires new routines to be implemented. Loved ones often participate to the care and day-to-day life of those impacted by illness or a disability. Being a caregiver is often a role that one choses, but it can also be dictated by circumstances. 

The caregivers and family members face many stressors throughout the illness trajectory, sometimes leading to symptoms of depression, anxiety, guilt, or loneliness. Seeking therapy can help by providing the support needed to cope with the demands of caregiving and ensure that loved ones tend to their own health needs, which can often be put on the back burner in times of stress.

4 . It takes a team! Collaborating with other providers

Health is comprised of many components that interact closely together. Your psychological health influences your physical health, and vice versa. It therefore makes sense to look at all these moving parts together, as much as possible! 

Clinical health psychologists are trained to work alongside other healthcare professionals and provide care that makes sense to the patient. Collaboration and communication are therefore very important to give you the best care possible. In my work with clients, I tend to open the lines of communication and consult with other providers on the client’s team as much as possible (and with my clients’ consent of course)! Better understanding your medical regimen for instance can help me learn about any side effects on your mood. Similarly, letting your medical team know that you are working on stress management can help by enrolling their help on treatment day, as they remind you to take deep breath or use imagery to manage pain or stress.

An added bonus of ongoing consultation with other medical providers and our specialized training is that we learn to speak (some) medical jargon! Being able to understand your labs or being familiar with health and illness vocabulary allows me to understand your experience better as you sit across me in the therapy room, discussing recent medical updates or treatment side effects.

Take away message

Invest in your health by addressing your physical and emotional needs throughout the journey that is life, when you are well and when you are coping with an illness or disability. And when extra help is needed to cope with a disease or overcome obstacles towards your health goals, a clinical health psychologist can provide support and tools to help you get unstuck!