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Emotional Autoimmunity

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Melbourne, VIC
Emotional Autoimmunity

Online Coach & Counsellor, living well with chronic illness and supporting you to do the same. You don't have to do this alone.

As a therapist, coach and clinical hypnotherapist, I know how life changing becoming chronically ill can be because I live with 4 chronic autoimmune diseases that have changed every aspect of my life. It feels like you have lost yourself and the future you thought you were going to have. It feels like you have to fight every step of the way to be believed, supported and get the help you need, at a time in your life when you don't have the health, energy or ability to advocate for yourself. It feels lonely, isolating and full of grief, guilt and stress and I am here to tell you that it doesn't have to be this way. My unique online therapy programs give real life results because they are skills based, help you overcome trauma, depression and anxiety, improve your relationships, know how to get the best from medical professionals and best of all, help you take back control of your life, health and happiness. I live what I teach and I would love to help you overcome the overwhelm and know that you are not alone anymore. Get your FREE 25 minute online Discovery Session with me now so meet me and see if I feel like the right fit to give you the skills, support and understanding that you need right now. Copy and paste the link below into your browser to book your Discovery Session with me. https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=12377349

18/12/2025

The Holidays can be hard and overwhelming with so many expectations, so many feelings of obligation, things to buy, family to see and all on limited energy and dealing with ongoing symptoms.

If you are alone or if there are conflicts with your family or you are going through your first Holiday season after loss, then it is even more so.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed out or just not good enough, then you are not alone.

The Holiday season can be one of the most painful and triggering for so many people, especially when your life or situation doesn't live up to the Hallmark movie expectations of how the holidays are supposed to be.

So at this challenging time of the year, here is what I wish for you:

I wish you low symptoms and consistent energy and comfortable nights.

I wish you comfort and reassurance for when you feel alone and unsupported.

I wish you strength and persistence to advocate for yourself and protect your precious health and energy from those who may not take your well being seriously.

I wish you sure and steady confidence in the fact that your illness is real, your pain is valid and that you deserve to be believed and helped.

I wish you joyful moments, safe travels, lots of self care and love and most of all, I wish you the best possible holiday season and new year that is available to you.

Never forget that you are important, you are loveable, that your life matters and that you are absolutely enough, exactly as you are right now.

Thank you for being part of my life and my community this year and I wish you every good thing imaginable.

I'm taking a few weeks off to rest, relax and spend time with my family over the holidays.

See you in 2026.

17/12/2025

One from the archives. Having good boundaries in our relationships at any time are essential, but during the holiday season, they take on a much bigger importance!

There are so many expectations, pressures and emotions that only happen during the Holidays and New Years Eve that are a sure fire way to ramp up your anxiety and guilt and send you crashing into a major flare that can leave you on the sidelines for days, weeks or even longer.

When it comes to chronic illness, there are two key foundations that I use to not only feel good about setting boundaries, but start keeping them guilt free.

In this last podcast of the year for 2023, I walk you through what those foundations are, give clear examples of why and how they work and tell you practical ways you can start thinking about what boundaries you can start setting in place to better protect your precious health and energy.

Link in the comments or search boundaries on my website.

15/12/2025

There has been so many times in the early days with chronic illness, when I thought that I wasn't doing enough and because I "look so well", it felt next to impossible to get people to take it seriously that life had permanently changed for me.

My energy, my motivation and my brain is not always reliable, dependable or predictable and while I definitely have improved, these things are still subject to constant change.

Do people get frustrated when I can't do something I said I would? Yeah, they do.

It's disappointing for me as well but that's the way it is.

More and more these days I am choosing to spend my precious time and energy on me and that means taking my boundaries up a whole new level and letting a lot more things slide than I would have done before.

It's not fair to expect someone with chronic illness to keep pushing through just to make you happy.

It's not fair to expect someone living with chronic illness to still be able to do everything that they could do before and it's certainly not fair to never actually acknowledge how much being chronically ill has taken from them.

As a person living with chronic illness, I don't want to be told that I can do anything I put my mind to because either I can't do it or I don't want to do it because doing the thing is going to cost me a far bigger price than most people would be willing to pay.

Pushing through increases my pain levels and creates more physical and cognitive disability.

Pushing through takes away my ability to work and function.

Pushing through means I don't get to spend any of my precious time and energy on things that I actually enjoy that are meaningful to me and make my life worth living.

People who have an issue with you now that you have chronic illness, are living in denial of the fact that things have changed and they would much rather see you suffer than experience being inconvenienced.

It's your job to protect your health and your time and your precious energy.

What ever you can do right now? It's more than enough.

You are enough exactly as you are. 💕

09/12/2025

It took me a long time to consider chronic illness as a disability and myself as disabled.

Even though one of my diagnoses is legally recognized as one.

Part of it was my internalized ableism, part of it was denial of the limitations I was experiencing.

The hardest part though, was wrapped up in the grief that I have never been able to get back to my pre chronic illness experience of ‘normal’ and coming to acceptance of where I am now.

According to Miriam-Webster, disability is: “a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person's ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions” which fits the bill for me.

Though people tend to think of disability as a fixed or constant thing, which makes it difficult for those of us who have a dynamic disability (where symptoms and abilities fluctuate in severity and impact) to have the disability recognized without being accused of faking it.

So, feelings about disability with chronic illness can be complex.

Do you classify your chronic illness as a disability or not?

05/12/2025

Here’s the thing.

The only one who can really understand how much chronic illness has changed your life, is someone else who has it and even then, their experience may be completely different.

Chronic illness can be almost impossible to understand or relate to for friends and family because after all, you generally “don't look sick.”

The problem is that you can get so caught up in needing people to understand how it feels, especially those closest to you and when they can’t, it can feel like such a betrayal.

So let go of the need for them to understand.

They can’t. Not truly.

Focus instead on what is most important: That they need to respect the new boundaries that you have to put in place, in order to protect your health and your energy.

Be as factual as you can, without needing to justify your choices.

Do not apologise for the illness because it is not your fault.

Instead, explain clearly what you can and cannot do.

If you get caught up in needing them to understand, it will end up damaging your relationships because you will feel hurt, unloved and judged.

Feeling judged will cause you to put more emotional distance between you, and leave you feeling even more alone.

You know how you feel.

You do not need to convince anyone else.

People who love you will be willing to respect the boundaries you set and any limitations you have when you can communicate them clearly and consistently.

You are worth it and you absolutely deserve it.

Share this with whoever needs to hear it.

03/12/2025

Here’s a great resource you can use as you start getting those ‘what do you want for Christmas’ questions or you are looking for something to gift yourself.

All ideas were suggested by our chronic illness community.

Blog post link is in the comments.

28/11/2025

That feeling when you finally, FINALLY manage to drop off ALL of the things you packed up to donate that have been sitting for over a year to the charity store!

Living with chronic illness makes it so much harder to get these types of big jobs done and now that it is, I’m soaking up the feelings of relief and achievement.

When ‘ordinary’ things are a challenge, it’s so essential to celebrate your wins, big or small. 💕

26/11/2025

So many of us learned toxic independence at an early age, feeling like the only person you could truly count on was yourself.

So many of us have lived our lives sacrificing for others and making their needs, feelings and desires more important than our own.

So many of us have given so much love, time, empathy and validation to people who gave so little back in return.

And when chronic illness comes along, you can’t do that anymore.

If you keep trying to be everyone's anchor, if you keep sacrificing yourself so you don’t let them down, you risk drowning yourself with constant flares, worsening health and more limitations and pain.

Chronic illness is life changing so If you feel like you are drowning then please, make sure you book your FREE online Discovery Session with me now.

It’s time to put yourself first and get the practical help and support you need and deserve from a coach/therapist who truly understands what living with chronic illness means.

Head to my website for all the information. 💕

25/11/2025

When I walked out of my ex doctors office after being told that I needed to "take my pill and get used to my new normal", I knew in that moment that I was on my own.

I had reached the limits of allopathic medicine and if I was ever going to get some of my health and ability back, it was up to me to find a way to do it and I don't think I have ever felt so alone in my life.

There are so many very real fears that come to life when you become chronically ill.

You realise how little actual safety nets exist and how easy it is to fall through the cracks into poverty, helplessness and dependency.

A simple online search of your illness or symptoms will give you thousands of hits on worsening physical symptoms.

Joining a chronic illness support group while offering some comfort with others who are feeling the same way, can also be terrifying as you witness others sinking deeper into hopelessness, increasing disability or death.

With the biggest fear of "what if it keeps getting worse?", it can be so easy to lose all hope of getting any of the old you back.

You can become too scared to have hope just in case it proves to be wrong. Just in case the things that helped others don't work at all for you.

You can get so drawn into all the pain and suffering and hopelessness that you think "why even bother?"

I choose to believe that having hope is being realistic and if you look out there selectively, you can find stories to give you hope that there are things you can do to help your body reverse some symptoms, create habits to get better management of the illness and find new emotional strategies to show that your life can still be good.

In a world where we are taught to be more comfortable with stress and to learn to protect ourselves from possible disappointment, so many are afraid to hope because they fear that nothing will make a difference.

Hope is the gateway to change.

Without that spark of hope that led me to find others who had helped themselves find a way to improve and coexist with their illness, I don't know where I would be.

Hold onto hope. 💕

24/11/2025

I sometimes find myself looking back on my life before chronic illness as if everything was perfect then and missing those days before when I was just me, living my life as best I could.

Chronic illness and all the scary changes it made to my body, my abilities and my brain made me hyper aware of every symptom, every limitation, everything it felt like I had lost.

Months spent monitoring every blip within my body, scanning for signs of getting better or worse.

Healing became a full time job on top of already needing to support myself and my family.

Sickness felt like it had ruined everything.

But the truth is, there was no “perfect” before chronic illness.

I had many days before when I felt miserable.

I always struggled with motivation and getting things done.

Weight and terrible body image were ever present issues.

There were many things I struggled with because everyone has their challenges.

There is no perfect life.

Chronic illness was there with me, it had been for years, I just wasn’t aware of it because I thought I was healthy and normal.

When I started taking the rose coloured glasses off that I was using to view my old life with, creating my new life felt so much easier.

I began to see that some things now are actually better than they were before, better than ever in fact because chronic illness doesn’t happen overnight.

It creeps up slowly and we adapt and adapt until the tipping point is reached and our bodies can no longer keep the illness at bay.

My life was not perfect at all before.

It's not going to be perfect now because life is made up of moments: good, bad, spectacular and miserable.

Striving for perfect health is an impossible goal.

Feeling as good as I can in this moment feels much more achievable and realistic.

I am still me, living my life as best I can and that is absolutely enough.

17/11/2025

Medical gaslighting is perhaps one of the biggest issues facing our chronic illness community and the damage it does emotionally and physically cannot be overstated.

In fact, it's one of the most common issues that I help my clients with in my online therapy/coaching programs.

It's an ongoing challenge that needs all the awareness it can get as the effects of medical gaslighting can be devastating and dangerous.

You know your body and you know when something isn’t normal for you and you deserve to be believed and supported.

Address

Melbourne, VIC

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://www.emotionalautoimmunity.com/

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