When Life Throws You a Curveball: How Health Psychology Can Help

Getting a serious diagnosis. Watching someone you love struggle with an illness. Sitting in yet another waiting room, wondering what comes next, and how long this will take, and is this my life now? These moments can change everything, and they’re exactly when you need support the most.

At Laksman Doell Psychology, we get it. We know that facing illness isn’t just about medical appointments and treatment plans. It’s about the sleepless nights of wondering, “What if?” It’s about feeling like a stranger in your own body. It’s about not knowing how to be there for loved ones. It’s about the relationships that shift when everything feels uncertain.

That’s where health psychology comes in. Our minds and bodies are constantly talking to each other. When you’re dealing with a health crisis, that conversation can get pretty intense very quickly. Maybe you’re feeling anxious about treatment outcomes, struggling with how your illness is affecting your family, or trying to figure out who you are beyond your diagnosis. Health psychology recognizes this reality. While your family doctor and treatment team take care of your physical symptoms and a counselor might help with general life stress, health psychologists specialize in the unique emotional territory that comes with medical challenges.

In most of Ontario, you’d have to be in a specialized hospital program to access this kind of care, and often it is short-term. But we believe that you shouldn’t have to wait to get the support you need. Our clients come to us dealing with all kinds of situations that don’t have easy answers:

Living with the unknown: Whether it’s cancer, an autoimmune condition, diabetes, or another serious illness, the uncertainty can feel overwhelming. We help people find ways to live fully even when the future feels unclear, and as the disease changes or progresses over time.

Supporting healthy behaviours: When diagnosed with an illness, your healthcare team may suggest changes to your health behaviours in order to both help manage the disease and to improve your health overall. A health psychologist can help you to achieve lasting change, and can assist you in understanding and addressing any barriers that you are encountering as you try to make modifications to your lifestyle or adjust to a new treatment schedule.

Navigating relationships with healthcare providers: Your relationship with your healthcare team becomes very important when navigating an illness. A health psychologist can help you to understand and to communicate more effectively with your care team about your needs.

Life after treatment: Finishing treatment should feel like a celebration, right? But sometimes it brings new fears about recurrence, changes in your body, or feeling like everyone expects you to “get back to normal” when normal doesn’t exist anymore.

When your immune system needs extra protection: Being immunocompromised in today’s world brings its own set of challenges around isolation, anxiety, and making difficult decisions about risk, connection, and living your life in the world.

Intimacy and connection: The stress of illness and treatment, changes in partner roles, along with changes in how the body feels and functions, can have an impact on emotional and physical intimacy. These conversations matter, and they deserve a safe space.

Body concerns: Undergoing treatments or starting medications can come with new changes to our body, weight, and feelings of self-worth. These changes can be hard, and yet there are proven psychological supports to help you adapt.

Caring for the caregiver: If you’re supporting someone through illness, you might be running on empty while everyone asks about the patient. Your well-being matters too.

Grief that doesn’t follow the rules: Sometimes loss comes slowly, sometimes suddenly. Sometimes you’re grieving while your loved one is still alive. Grief is messy, and that’s okay.

How We Actually Help

We’re not here to tell you to “stay positive” or “think good thoughts” (Though if that works for you, great!). Instead, we create a space where you can be honest about how hard this is while simultaneously discovering your strength. We use approaches that have been proven to help people navigate medical challenges, things like acceptance and commitment therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions. But mostly, we listen. We believe you when you say this is difficult. And we help you figure out what resilience looks like for you.

Resilience doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It means learning to hold both the difficulty and the meaning, the fear and the love, the uncertainty and the hope, all at the same time.

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

Whether you’re the one facing illness, caring for someone who is, or trying to make sense of loss, you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. Our team understands the particular kind of exhaustion that comes with medical challenges. We know how isolating it can feel when your world suddenly revolves around symptoms and appointments, while everyone else’s life moves forward. We’re here for the conversations that you can’t have with just anyone, the ones about mortality and meaning, about changed dreams and unexpected strength, and about finding joy in the middle of difficulty.

You don’t need to be in a health crisis to reach out to a health psychologist. Health psychologists can have a role at any stage of the illness experience. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Maybe this is what I need,” trust that instinct. You deserve the support that truly understands what you’re going through.

Ready to talk? Our health psychology team is here to listen and to walk alongside you through whatever you’re facing. Because everyone deserves compassionate, expert care especially during life’s most challenging chapters.

At Laksman Doell Psychology, our team of Registered Clinical, Health and Rehabilitation psychologists, Dr. Kimberley Cullen, Dr. Shira Yufe, Dr. Samantha Fuss, Dr. Danielle Petricone-Westwood, Dr. Ruth Vanstone, and Dr. Zoë Laksman, are dedicated to supporting clients through both medical and emotional challenges. We work with individuals and families coping with cancer, chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, grief, caregiver stress, chronic pain, lifestyle changes, and sexual health concerns that accompany health conditions and their treatments. Together, we provide compassionate, evidence-based care that helps people to build resilience, to find healing, and to strengthen connection.