For the Chronically Ill Community
The chronic illness journey is complex. You don’t have to navigate it alone.
So you’re already in therapy, but you’re looking for additional chronic illness support?
Welcome to the Waiting Room
is a community membership for people living with chronic illness — a space for conversation, reflection, and shared understanding with others who truly get it. Open to anyone, anywhere. Not therapy. No clinical relationship, but very real connection and insight. This is for people who want to feel less alone in it all.
You've learned more about your condition than most doctors in your chart. You've fought for diagnoses, translated your own test results, and advocated for yourself in rooms where you weren't believed.
Most support out there tells you to think positively, push through, or try harder.
This isn't that.
Welcome to the Waiting Room is a place to put some of that weight down — where you don't have to explain yourself to be understood, and you gain evidence-based, non-gaslighting tools for:
advocacy scripts for work and relationships
acceptance and somatic practices for understanding your body instead of fighting it
and workshops on fear, masking, identity, and how chronic illness shapes the way you move through the world.
What’s Inside?
Workshops
Live workshops with other mental health and licensed medical professionals to answer your most important questions about living with and managing a chronic illness.
Live Support Groups
Deep dive into client-centered, evidence-informed chronic illness care through therapy trainings.
Worksheets
Expand your expertise while earning credits.
Somatic Awareness
Reflect, strategize, and problem-solve with peers and mentors.
Summits
Patient summits focused on living life well with chronic illness with trusted experts in the allied health fields.
No more googling "how to make doctors believe you" at 2AM. No more apologizing for your needs. No more isolation.
How Do You Know "Welcome to the Waiting Room" Is Right For You?
✓ You're tired of explaining your invisible illness to people who say "but you don't look sick" while you struggle with fatigue, pain, and brain fog
✓ You don’t know how to explain your symptoms - both to doctors who need precision and to yourself as you try to track patterns, leaving you wondering if it's "all in your head" despite very real physical experiences
✓ Medical appointments leave you feeling unheard or dismissed, and you struggle to advocate for yourself when brain fog hits during important conversations
✓ You've stopped reaching out to friends and family because you worry about being seen as a burden or "always complaining"
✓ Your emotions feel overwhelming - from rage when another treatment fails to guilt when you have to cancel plans again
✓ You've tried meditation apps and general wellness programs that don't address the unique challenges of navigating life with chronic illness
✓ You feel stuck in "the waiting room" - waiting for a diagnosis, waiting for a treatment to work, waiting to feel like yourself again, or waiting for others to understand
✓ You find yourself saying "I'm fine" when you're not because it's easier than explaining or risking rejection
✓ You want practical tools - not just validation or vague advice to "reduce stress" without showing you how
Kind Words
LATEST FROM THE PODCAST
The Chronic Illness Therapist Podcast
It’s not in your head, you are not a burden, and we’ll prove that to you one episode at a time.
If you've ever wondered why losing your old life to chronic illness feels so much like grief, this episode puts language to it. I sit down with Kelsey Ruffing, MA, MS, LCPC, a therapist specializing in sport and health psychology, to talk about the surprising overlap between career-ending sports injuries and chronic illness diagnoses. We get into why "defeat" deserves to be felt instead of reframed, how brainspotting helps people reconnect with a sense of purpose, and why being dismissed by a doctor does the same damage as being ignored by a coach who's supposed to have your back.