Chronic Illness & Pain
Skills and Support Therapy Group
You're managing so much more than symptoms. This group is for the grief, the isolation, and the invisible weight that comes with living in a body that changed the rules on you. A 7-week virtual group offering connection, coping skills, and a path toward meaning for people living with chronic medical illness.
Mondays, 6:30 - 7:30 PM ET
May 4 - June 15, 2026
Held virtually $100/session
You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
Living with a chronic illness changes everything — your body, your relationships, your sense of who you are. The grief, frustration, and isolation can feel just as overwhelming as the physical symptoms. And too often, the people around you don't fully understand what you're going through.
This group is a space where you will be understood. Over seven weeks, you'll join a small group of people who get it — and together, you'll build real skills for coping with the emotional weight of chronic illness while rediscovering what gives your life meaning.
This group may be right for you if:
You're living with a chronic medical condition and feel emotionally isolated
You've experienced grief over the loss of your health, independence, or the life you expected
You struggle with unhelpful thought patterns like catastrophizing, self-blame, or all-or-nothing thinking
You want practical tools for communication, self-advocacy, and setting boundaries with others
You're looking for connection with people who understand your experience firsthand
You want to find meaning and purpose alongside your illness, not in spite of it
What This Group Gives You
Skills and Support for Living with Chronic Illness
This isn't a drop-in group where you listen to other people vent for an hour. It's a structured, therapist-led program designed to give you real skills for the real challenges of chronic illness — alongside a small group of people who don't need you to explain why today is hard.
Over seven weeks, you'll:
Understand the emotional and psychological impacts of chronic illness — the grief, the identity shifts, the secondary crises nobody warns you about
Identify and challenge the thought patterns that make everything harder — catastrophizing, self-blame, all-or-nothing thinking — without pretending your pain isn't real
Clarify what actually matters to you now, not who you were before your diagnosis
Build communication and self-advocacy skills for the conversations that feel impossible — with doctors, family, partners, and friends
Learn to set boundaries and build a support system that works for the life you have, not the one you used to
Understand medical trauma, the stress-illness cycle, and how to build resilience in your nervous system
Reconnect with meaning and purpose — even when life looks completely different than you planned
Each session includes psychoeducation, guided group discussion, a practical skill-building exercise, and a mindfulness practice.
7-Week Chronic Illness Group Therapy Program: Your Roadmap
Week 1: Welcome & Impacts of Chronic Illness
Introductions and group guidelines. We explore the full scope of how chronic illness affects your life — emotionally, relationally, existentially — so you can finally name what you've been carrying.
Week 2: Values Clarification
Illness has a way of reshuffling what matters. This session helps you get clear on your values now — not the ones you inherited or the ones you held before your diagnosis — and use them as a compass.
Week 3: Unhelpful Thoughts & Cognitive Skills
Your brain is trying to protect you, but sometimes it overshoots. We'll work with common cognitive distortions in chronic illness and practise defusion techniques to create distance from thoughts without denying your reality.
Fill out the form below to learn more or register for the group.
Week 4: Communication & Self-Advocacy
Chronic illness changes every relationship. This session builds your assertive communication skills — for the doctor who isn't listening, the friend who doesn't get it, and the family member who means well but misses the mark.
Week 5: Social Support & Boundaries
Connection is protective, but not all support is helpful. You'll learn to identify what you actually need, set limits without guilt, and build a support system that energizes rather than drains you.
Week 6: Medical Trauma & Resilience
Many people with chronic illness carry medical trauma they've never had the space to process. We explore the trauma-stress-illness cycle and concrete strategies for resilience and nervous system regulation.
Week 7: Meaning-Centred Living
Life can still be deeply meaningful — even when it looks nothing like you planned. Drawing from meaning-centred psychotherapy, we explore where meaning lives for you now and how to build toward it intentionally.
Living With Chronic Illness: You're not making this up. And you're not alone.
You used to be the person who could handle everything. Now some days you can barely handle getting dressed — and the worst part isn't even the pain or the fatigue. It's that nobody around you seems to understand what this is actually like.
Maybe you've heard "but you don't look sick" so many times you've stopped talking about it. Maybe you've pulled away from friends because cancelling plans again felt worse than not making them at all. Maybe you lie awake wondering if this is just your life now — and then feel guilty for grieving something nobody else can see.
You're not being dramatic. You're dealing with something that changes everything — your body, your identity, your relationships, your sense of what your life was supposed to look like. And you deserve support that actually understands that.
This group is that support.
Need to talk about it first?
We’re here for you. Schedule a consultation.
Meet Your Facilitator
Dee is a Registered Social Worker and trauma therapist at The Relationship Agency. She specializes in EMDR therapy, somatic approaches, and the intersection of chronic illness, trauma, and emotional well-being. Dee is drawn to the resilience of the human nervous system — how it adapts to protect us, and how, with the right support, it can heal. She brings warmth, depth, and genuine care to every session.
Dee practises from The Relationship Agency's Ajax office and facilitates this group virtually across Ontario.
Dee participates in ongoing consultation and learning about trauma therapy—because the field is constantly evolving, and she's committed to bringing the latest understanding of the brain, nervous system, and memory reconsolidation to her work.
What Dee loves most: "I get to build long-term therapeutic relationships where I witness genuine transformation. I'm fascinated by human resilience—the remarkable ways our brains and nervous systems adapt to protect us, and how, with the right support, they can heal."
Dee practices from our Ajax location at 62 Harwood Ave South, with free on-site parking and a comfortable, private space designed for healing.