Chronic Illness Therapy in Toronto & Ontario
When your health affects more than your health.
Living with chronic illness or pain can shape your energy, relationships, work or school, identity, plans, and the way you move through everyday life.
You might be adjusting to a diagnosis, grieving changes in what your body can do, dealing with uncertainty, or feeling exhausted by how much thought and planning your health requires.
Maybe you’re also tired of having to explain why something that looks manageable from the outside can take so much out of you.
Therapy can offer space for the emotional and relational parts of living with chronic illness too, without expecting you to minimize what you’re experiencing or simply “push through.”
Maybe You’re Tired of Having to Explain.
Living with chronic illness can involve a lot of explaining.
Explaining why your energy changed. Why you had to cancel. Why something that was possible yesterday isn’t possible today. Why you need rest, accommodations, flexibility, or more time. And sometimes, you may be trying to make sense of those changes yourself.
You might be:
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adjusting to a new diagnosis or changes in your health
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living with symptoms or pain that fluctuate from day to day
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grieving parts of life that have changed
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feeling guilty when you need to rest, cancel plans, or ask for help
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navigating medical appointments, uncertainty, or the mental load of managing your health
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feeling isolated or misunderstood by people who haven’t had similar experiences
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noticing changes in relationships, work, school, or your sense of independence
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trying to understand who you are when your body doesn’t always let you live the way you expected
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balancing chronic illness alongside neurodivergence, anxiety, stress, or burnout
You don’t have to convince me that what you’re experiencing is difficult before we can talk about how it’s affecting you.
What We Might Explore Together
There isn’t one emotional experience of chronic illness or pain. Your relationship with your body, health, and identity may also change over time. Our work might make space for:
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Grief and loss - Changes in capacity, routines, relationships, plans, independence, or the life you imagined for yourself.
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Identity and self-understanding - Making sense of who you are alongside illness, disability, neurodivergence, gender, sexuality, and other parts of your identity.
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Uncertainty and anxiety - Living with unknowns around symptoms, appointments, health changes, or what your capacity will look like from one day to another.
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Burnout and overwhelm - The mental and emotional load of managing your health alongside everything else life asks of you.
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Relationships and communication - Talking about your needs, asking for support, navigating misunderstanding, setting boundaries, and dealing with changes in relationships.
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Rest, capacity, and expectations - Exploring the pressure to keep up, be productive, or push through when your body may be asking for something different.
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Self-advocacy and needs - Getting clearer about what you need and exploring how you want to communicate those needs in different parts of your life.
We’ll focus on what matters to you rather than assuming what living with chronic illness is supposed to feel like.
Therapy for the Parts Medical Appointments Don’t Always Have Space For
Medical care often has a necessary focus: symptoms, tests, medications, procedures, numbers, and next steps. But living with chronic illness can bring up questions that don’t fit neatly into an appointment.
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What happens to my identity when my capacity changes?
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How do I make plans when I don’t know how I’ll feel?
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How do I explain this to the people in my life?
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How do I make room for grief without giving up on the things that still matter to me?
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What does rest look like when part of me still believes I should be doing more?
Therapy can give us space to explore those parts of the experience. The goal isn’t to convince you to think positively about something that is genuinely difficult. We can make room for frustration, uncertainty, grief, humour, anger, hope, exhaustion, and whatever else happens to be there.
When Chronic Illness and Neurodivergence Overlap
Your brain and body don’t exist separately.
Living with chronic illness can already require a lot of planning, adapting, remembering, monitoring, and responding to changes in your body.
When you’re also neurodivergent, those demands may interact with things like sensory needs, executive functioning, routines, communication, energy, or burnout. You may also be trying to figure out which needs belong to which part of your experience, only to discover that the answer isn’t always that simple.
We don’t have to separate every part of you before we can work together. Therapy can make room for the ways your health, neurodivergence, identity, relationships, environment, and everyday life intersect.
Living With Type 1 Diabetes, Endometriosis & Chronic Pain
Some chronic health experiences come with their own routines, uncertainties, frustrations, and invisible workload.
Living with Type 1 diabetes, endometriosis, or chronic pain can affect much more than what happens physically. Your health may influence how you plan your day, relate to your body, participate in relationships, make decisions, rest, work, travel, socialize, or imagine the future.
There may also be times when you feel frustrated by how much attention your health requires, or wish you didn’t have to think about it quite so much.
As someone who also lives with Type 1 Diabetes for 25 years, endometriosis and other chronic conditions, I bring personal understanding of how health can become intertwined with everyday life while recognizing that your experience is your own. In therapy, we can make space for the emotional, relational, and identity-related parts of what you’re navigating.
Therapy That Can Adapt to Your Capacity
Your Capacity Can Change. Therapy Can Be Flexible Too.
Some days you might arrive with a lot you want to talk about. Other days, you may be tired, overwhelmed, in pain, or have very little energy left for finding the “right” words. You don’t need to perform wellness or productivity in therapy.
Depending on what feels accessible, our sessions might involve conversation, expressive arts, mindfulness, body awareness, or practical skills drawn from DBT-informed approaches. We can also pay attention to pacing and what feels manageable that day. The way we work together can shift as your needs and capacity shift.
Working With Savannah
I’m Savannah Dasilva, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) and expressive arts therapist based in Toronto.
I work with children, teens, and adults navigating chronic illness and pain alongside experiences like anxiety, stress, burnout, grief, relationships, identity, and neurodivergence.
As a queer, AuDHD therapist who also lives with chronic illness, I understand personally that our brains, bodies, identities, relationships, and environments can affect one another in complicated ways.
At the same time, I won’t assume that my experience is the same as yours. My approach is warm, collaborative, creative, and flexible. I draw from expressive arts therapy, DBT-informed skills, mindfulness, body-based practices, and conversation, adapting our work around the person in front of me.
You can bring the complicated parts here too.
Frequently Asked Questions
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You Don’t Have to Wait Until Things Feel “Bad Enough.”
Living with chronic illness or pain can take up a lot of space, even when other people can’t see it.
You’re welcome to reach out whether you’re adjusting to something new, have been navigating your health for years, or simply want somewhere to talk about how it’s affecting the rest of your life.
We can start with a free consultation to talk about what you’re looking for and whether my approach feels like a good fit.
