Occupational therapy for chronic disease management can help you navigate life with a chronic illness. Let's take a look at how.
Life is a series of small tasks.
But living with a chronic illness can make these tasks more difficult.
It often means making countless small calculations every day.
Can you shower and still have the energy to cook?
Will answering that email cost you tomorrow's plans?
Most people don't realize how much of life is made up of these ordinary tasks.
Or how much they can shift when your body doesn't cooperate.
An occupational therapist in London Ontario can help.
As a disabled person, you may find the sound of that stressful.
After all, you've had plenty of experience with people telling you to "be strong" or "just push through".
That isn't helpful.
Instead, your occupational therapist will focus on reshaping your routines so they work with the body you have right now.
This can include finding ways to conserve your energy or adapt the tasks you need to accomplish.
For many people, it also means making room for the practices that ground them.
In this article on The Witch's Therapist's mental health blog, we'll look at occupational therapy for chronic disease management.
We'll explore how it differs from other supports, and what to expect if you're considering it.
Your experience of your own body is valid, and it's the starting point for everything that follows.
Let's take a look.
What Is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy focuses on your engagement in activities that are personally meaningful to you and align with your values.
When it comes to chronic illness, we often aren't able to do the activities we once could.
This includes things like:
• Showering
• Brushing your teeth
• Changing clothes
• Leaving home
• Socializing
• Working
• Parenting
• And others
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management can help.
We help people with chronic illness learn their new limits.
That way, you can find ways to engage in the activities that matter to you, even if that looks different now.
This might include things like:
• Adapting your environment
• Finding community or government support or funding
• Adapting the way you engage in activities
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management teaches us that doing what we love matters.
That's true even if society has convinced us to expect our bodies to do it in ways they simply can't anymore.
You deserve to be able to do what matters to you.
Your occupational therapist will collaborate with you to make your meaningful activities more accessible.
What Are Considered Chronic Illnesses?
Chronic illnesses are long-term health conditions.
They last a year or longer.
They also require ongoing medical attention.
For our purposes today, they also limit daily activities.
Some are rooted in the physical body, like lupus, Crohn's disease, fibromyalgia, POTS, or ME/CFS.
Others are associated with mental health , like depression, autism, ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, or CPTSD.
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management can help.
Occupational Therapy for Chronic Disease Management: What Makes it Different?
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management considers your symptoms and conditions.
But it also considers the systems and policies that shape your experiences with these conditions.
This includes the physical environments that make navigating the world around you feel impossible.
It also includes the sociocultural attitudes and beliefs that can push and pull you in different directions.
It accounts for how all of these aspects impact your ability to do the things you need to do, love to do, or dream to do.
Chronic illness can reshape your energy, your roles, your relationships, and your sense of who you are.
Our resident occupational therapist Santyna Brar shares her own story in our article on how chronic diseases affect daily life.
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management considers how your environment, resources, or activities can be adapted to work for your new normal.
How Occupational Therapy Supports Chronic Illness
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management supports people living with chronic illness.
It does so by helping you learn how to work with your body, instead of against it.
That way, you're able to do more of what you love, despite living with chronic fatigue, pain, or inflammation.
Here's how.
1. Energy Conservation and Pacing
Your occupational therapist can support with tracking symptoms, triggers, and other factors that impact the severity, frequency, and length of chronic illness flares.
They can help you discover what an activity, event or day might cost you.
That way, you can budget your energy in a way that better suits your needs.
Once you know what is most likely to trigger your symptoms, you can begin figuring out how to pace yourself.
That way, you can do more of what you love without "pushing yourself" too far and paying for it later.
Pacing is a self-management strategy that helps reduce symptom exacerbation.
It involves balancing activity and rest in daily life.
It can help reduce the frequency or severity of crashes.
People with chronic illness need to learn to pace:
• Physical activity
• Cognitive activity
• Emotional exertion
• Social interaction
This isn't just about movement and exercise.
Phone calls, paperwork, thinking, conversations, and decision-making can also use a lot of energy.
Some pacing strategies you may go over with your OT include:
• Planning ahead
• Prioritizing what matters most
• Breaking tasks into smaller parts
• Scheduling rest intentionally and honouring it as a meaningful activity
• Letting go of or rescheduling non-essential tasks when required
• Gradually increasing activity if tolerated over time
2. Rebuilding Routines That Work for Your Body Now
When dealing with chronic illness, old routines may not serve you or be possible anymore.
Occupational therapy for chronic disease management can help you design new routines that are more flexible, realistic, and structured around your actual capacity.
Your OT can help you track activities that give you energy, joy, or a sense of well-being.
• Coordinating with your healthcare professionals
• Setting limits with others and yourself
• Collaboratively changing your environment
• Delegating tasks to reduce your burden where possible
• Learning to clearly express your needs and wishes
All of this can help you maintain more predictable, livable routines.
3. Adapting Meaningful Activities and the Environment
Adapting activities might mean finding the right assistive devices to help you do your daily activities.
This may include adding a shower chair to your routine to help with washing your hair and hygiene.
It could also mean bringing a cane on a more walk-heavy day, or using a stair lift so you can get around your home more autonomously.
You may also adapt the way you do activities, like:
• Breaking laundry into smaller "chunks" than you could previously do
• Weekly virtual social calls when in-person isn't possible
• Working reduced hours or having modified work duties accommodations
• Using airport wheelchair and disability services when flying somewhere for vacation
• Choosing in-person social activities that require less physical exertion
• Taking a 10-minute "sitting" break for every 15 minutes you spend standing
4. Processing the Emotional and Spiritual Dimensions of Chronic Illness
Some OTs are trained in London Ontario psychotherapy and can work with you to process the emotional side of your chronic illness.
Living with chronic illness can also bring up questions about meaning, purpose, hope, and how to keep going.
Spiritual practices, rituals and routines are just as important as other self-care activities, and deserve to be honoured.
We explore this more deeply in our article on processing the emotional and spiritual dimensions of chronic illness.
5. Intersectionality and Chronic Illness
Ableism doesn't operate on its own.
It overlaps with colonialism, capitalism, transphobia, sexism, racism, and so much more.
People with more than one marginalized identity can experience greater harm.
Your occupational therapist will consider how these systems shape your access to care and to the activities that matter to you.
6. Disability Advocacy and Navigating Systems
There are many systemic barriers preventing people with chronic illness from receiving the support and care they need.
OTs can support requests for accommodations and disability funding by completing functional assessments and relevant letters and forms.
They can also support return-to-work planning and applications for the Disability Tax Credit (DTC).
Learn more in our guide to disability advocacy and navigating systems like the Disability Tax Credit.
The Open Hearth: A Chronic Illness Support Circle
The Open Hearth is a twice-monthly support group.
It’s geared toward those living with chronic illnesses.
It’s a space where you can share your grief, triumphs, hopes, dreams, fears, and so much more.
You can register for our twice-monthly chronic illness support group here.
Book Your Appointment with The Witch’s Therapist Today
You're allowed to be exactly who you are.
You deserve to be met exactly where you are.
At The Witch’s Therapist, we’re here to help.
Book your FREE 15-minute intro session with The Witch’s Therapist today.
The Witch's Therapist
609 William St. #101
London, Ontario
Canada
N6B 3G1
1 (519) 783-1630
► London Ontario Holistic Psychotherapy
The Witch's Therapist is located in London, Ontario and offers holistic psychotherapy therapy throughout London and surrounding areas.
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