Online Chronic Illness Psychologist
Shruti Surya Ph.D. 15 years of experience helping people with chronic illness.
When your body changes, your life does too. You don’t have to face it alone.
Getting a health diagnosis, whether new or something you’ve been living with for years, can upend your life. The future you imagined feels uncertain. There’s grief for the life you had, frustration about the one you’re in, and a hundred questions no one seems to answer.
It’s not just the illness, it’s the emotional toll of constantly adjusting, coping, and pushing through.
Loss of Control & Grief
There’s nothing fair about this. You didn’t ask for your body to change. And yet, here you are trying to manage a medical condition while still being everything to everyone else.
Doctor’s visits, treatments, lifestyle shifts, and exhaustion become your new normal. You try to stay strong for your family. You keep showing up, even when it feels like you’re falling apart inside. And sometimes, grief sneaks up memories you thought you let go of, or the weight of being misunderstood.
If this sounds like your experience, I want you to know: you’re not alone. Therapy can help you carry the emotional weight that comes with chronic illness and reconnect with a life that feels meaningful again.
I have a great article that goes into living with chronic illness if you want to check it out.
Conditions I Work With
I work with adults living with a wide range of chronic and long-term health conditions, including:
- Autoimmune conditions – lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s
- Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS
- Long COVID and post-viral illness
- Gastrointestinal conditions – IBS, IBD, Crohn’s
- Multiple sclerosis
- POTS and dysautonomia
- Endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain
- Cancer and survivorship
You don’t need a confirmed diagnosis to start. Many of the people I work with are still in the middle of testing, still being told their labs look fine, still waiting for someone to take them seriously.
My approach will help you:
- Understand your emotions and responses in a way that feels safe and empowering
- Reconnect with your body without judgment – especially when it feels like it’s betrayed you
- Navigate medical systems with confidence and clearer boundaries
- Identify what matters most to you and build practical changes around that
- Heal relationships that have been strained by your illness
- Process the trauma of tests, treatments, or feeling dismissed by the medical world
I primarily use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Both have strong research support for chronic illness, and both are practical rather than open-ended. CBT works on the thoughts and patterns that make hard days harder. ACT is about building a life that still means something while the illness is present – not waiting for it to be gone first.
What Living With It Actually Costs
The medical system treats your illness. Almost no one treats what it does to the rest of your life.
The exhaustion of managing appointments, insurance, and medication schedules on top of a job and a family. The relationships that thin out because you cancel too often. Explaining yourself over and over to people who don’t get it. The specific loneliness of looking fine.
That’s the part therapy is for. Not to talk you out of being sick, to help you carry it without losing yourself in the process.
About Dr. Surya
I’m Shruti Surya Ph.D., a licensed psychologist with 15 years of experience working with chronic illness and chronic pain. Texas license #38571.
I’ve spent most of my career at the intersection of physical health and mental health, and I’ve seen how often people with chronic conditions get handed a referral for “the stress” when what they need is someone who understands what they’re actually managing. I won’t ask you to prove your symptoms are real. We start from the assumption that they are.
I see adults individually, by telehealth only.
Insurance, Rates, and Where I Practice
I’m in-network in Texas with Aetna, BCBS and Carelon Behavioral Health. BSAW Health Plan, United, and Medicare are in progress.
Cash rates are $165 for a 60-minute session and $225 for 90 minutes. If you’re using out-of-network benefits, I provide superbills you can submit for reimbursement.
Through PSYPACT, I’m authorized to practice in 43 states – those sessions are cash-pay.
Learn more about insurance and rates on my insurance page.
There IS a better way.
You deserve to feel grounded in your body and connected to your life – not just functional.
As your therapist, I’ll support you with empathy, honesty, and the tools you need to feel more like yourself again. If you’re ready to live your life with more clarity and strength, not just survive it, I’d love to connect.
FAQ Common Questions about Chronic Illness Therapy
It won’t cure the illness. It can change how much of your life the illness gets to run – how you sleep, how you handle flares, how you talk to your doctors, what you’re still able to enjoy.
No. Being undiagnosed is often the harder position, and it’s a common reason people reach out.
It depends on what you’re working on. Some people come for a focused stretch around a new diagnosis or a specific problem. Others stay longer. We’ll talk about it in the consultation.
For most concerns, the research says yes. It also removes the drive, the waiting room, and the fatigue cost of getting there – which matters more than usual when energy is the scarce resource.