Therapy for Chronic Illness

Dr. Shaneze Gayle Smith, PhD

Autoimmune disease caused me to leave medical school in my fourth year.

I know the emotional toll health challenges have —and I’m here to help you navigate it.

What is Chronic Illness and Chronic Pain?

Chronic illness is any condition that needs to be managed over time (typically over a year) that may not have a cure and/or can affect daily living. These illnesses can vary widely in their nature and severity. Common examples include diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, IBD, migraines, heart disease, arthritis, and chronic pain conditions. 

Chronic pain affects roughly 1 out of every 5 adults in the United States, leading to difficulty maintaining hobbies, relationships, family obligations, school or work performance, and basic self-care tasks. Despite being fairly prevalent and burdensome, most individuals do not get proper support or treatment.

Is Chronic Illness Affecting Your Mental Health?

Living with chronic illness and pain brings unique challenges. Adults with chronic pain were approximately five times more likely to report anxiety or depression symptoms compared with those without chronic pain. And, among all U.S. adults living today with unremitted anxiety or depression, the majority (55.6%) are people who also have chronic pain. Whether you’re facing physical limitations, navigating the healthcare system, or dealing with the emotional weight of pain and uncertainty, you may feel frustrated, isolated, hopeless or overwhelmed.

Do you often ask yourself:

  • Why won’t my body cooperate the way I want it to?

  • Why don’t people understand what I’m going through?

  • Why is it so exhausting to advocate for myself in medical settings?

  • When does the pain stop?

  • Will I ever feel better?

  • Why does the life I want to live seem so out of reach?

How My Therapy for Chronic Illness Helps

Therapy for chronic illness and pain can truly be life changing. Therapy can help reduce the frequency and intensity of pain signaling, provide tools and strategies to help manage symptoms, and improve quality of life.  Therapy can also address the ways in which these symptoms impact other areas of your life—relationships, work, self-esteem, and parenting.

I specialize in working with people who face the daily struggles of long-term health conditions, including:

  • Difficulty adjusting to a new diagnosis 

  • Managing symptoms of chronic pain

  • Worries about the future and difficulty remaining present 

  • Feeling hopeless and/or depressed 

  • Health anxiety or avoidance of health maintaining behaviors

  • Implementing lifestyle changes (diet, exercise)

  • Kinesiophobia (fear/avoidance of movement and exercise)

  • Medication non-adherence

  • Difficulty with self advocacy particularly with accommodations needed for school and/or work 

  • Processing/healing medical trauma

  • Feeling unheard, unseen and/or invalidated by providers

  • Internalized ableism 

  • Body image challenges due to physical changes from illness or result of medications (ex: hair loss, weight fluctuations)

My own health journey took me from medical school into therapy, and it’s this blend of lived experience and professional expertise that allows me to offer a unique approach to chronic illness therapy.

“The Best Time to Start Therapy Is As Soon As You’re Thinking About It”

I bring medical knowledge to the table, so I understand the ins and outs of health conditions better than most therapists. I also incorporate lifestyle medicine into our sessions—exploring how things like diet, exercise, positive social connection, stress management and sleep affect your overall well-being. These factors have been shown to prevent and treat many chronic conditions and even reverse chronic disease. We’ll look at how your body and mind work together, and I’ll help you gain control over the things you can change.

Methods I Use In This Therapy

I use evidence-based therapeutic methods that are particularly helpful for people living with chronic illnesses. Each of these approaches is tailored to help you cope with the emotional impact of chronic illness while building a sense of empowerment and control over your health journey.

  • Helps break free from negative thought patterns. CBT also focuses on relaxation techniques which can be used to manage stress and decrease muscle tension

  • Mindfulness focused which is great for checking in with your body and reducing pain. DBT skills such as distress tolerance can help regulate nervous system and reduce pain sensitivity.

  • Focuses on aligning your actions with your values, even when your body limits you. With ACT techniques, we can develop individualized pacing strategies to manage energy levels, reduce symptom flares and live the life you want.

  • Focuses on evidence-based lifestyle interventions—including nutrition, physical activity, sleep, positive social connection, stress management, and reduction of substance use—as a primary modality to prevent, treat and often reverse chronic disease.

Therapy for Chronic Illness With Results

My clients often report: 

  • Increasing understanding of invisible illnesses and dynamic disabilities

  • Decrease in medical symptoms and few health complications

  • Decrease in feelings of depression and anxiety

  • Better stress management and healthier coping strategies

  • Healthier eating habits and more regular exercise

  • Increase in energy and clarity of the mind

  • Improvement in school/work productivity

  • Reduced pain perception

  • Greater feelings of empowerment/advocacy in medical system

  • Capacity to engage in the activities and relationships that are meaningful

By regulating your nervous system, we can reduce stress, lower cortisol levels, and even decrease pain sensitivity. Through therapy, you’ll not only learn how to manage your condition better but also gain tools to live more fully in spite of it.

About Dr. Shaneze Gayle Smith

Read More About Me

I am licensed to provide therapy in 41 states.

In my fourth year of medical school, I faced my own health crisis—an autoimmune disease that changed the course of my life. It was during this time that I found therapy, and it transformed how I managed both my body and mind. Realizing I could make an even greater impact through psychology (and more preventative work), I shifted my focus and earned my Master’s in Psychology then my doctorate with a focus on health psychology..

Today, I’m off all medications that I once relied on and focus on lifestyle medicine and mental health to manage my condition. I’m passionate about helping others discover how they, too, can regain control of their health and emotions.

Education, Training, & Experiences

  • PhD in Clinical Psychology, Seton Hall University (Health Psychology & Child/Adolescent Focus)

  • Psychology Residency, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center

  • MS in Forensic Psychology, Walden University

  • Medical School (3 years), Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School

  • BA in Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Rutgers University

I have worked at over a dozen different adult and pediatric hospitals supporting individuals with various medical conditions including: autoimmune diseases, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer, migraines, chronic pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia, and PCOS.

You no longer need to push past your daily limits, struggling to enjoy activities due to pain and fatigue. You no longer need to feel limited in what you can achieve. Your chronic illness is a part of you, but it does not need to define you. We’ll work together to help you lead the life you want.

Let’s Work Together

Navigating life with chronic illness is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone.

It’s time to stop feeling like a burden and start taking up the space you deserve. Whether you're feeling frustrated, unheard, or simply exhausted from your health battles, I’m here to help. We’ll work together to find solutions that empower you to live your life more fully.

FAQs About Therapy For
Chronic Illness and Pain

  • Yes! Because chronic pain affects a person’s mental health, a therapist can help identify and resolve some of those issues, reducing the severity of stress, anxiety, and depression so you can find more happiness despite their pains. 

    Also, there’s evidence that poor mental health can increase the feeling and experience of pain. When your mental health struggles, you become more likely to focus on pain, which makes you more sensitive to it. Similarly, some conditions, like depression, are also linked to pain censors in the brain. Living with depression may mean that a person is living with more combined daily pain, feeding the cycle.

  • It’s best to have both medical provider and therapist. Medicine often separates the body from the mind - medical doctors for the physical symptoms and mental health providers for thoughts and feelings. In reality though, physical and mental health are deeply connected and supporting your mental health can offer relief for a range of physical symptoms. Research has shown that chronic illness and especially chronic pain is impacted by both physical and psychological factors. Just think about the last time you were really anxious and it caused a stomach ache or headache or in moments you feel really stressed and end up getting sick. Your mind and body are one and need to be treated as such.

  • Absolutely not. We can structure the sessions to be time-limited and short-term. It can take 4–6 months to learn, implement and practice different techniques and change habits.

  • Working with a therapist who understands the nuances of chronic health conditions is critical to finding relief and improvement. Oftentimes, providers lack the adequate knowledge to understand chronic panic leading to feelings of self-doubt and invalidation which can worsen your symptoms and contribute to depression and anxiety.