Complex Chronic Illness Support Group
Drop in on Mondays. Come every week, or only when you can.
If you're living with ME, fibromyalgia, long COVID, POTS or dysautonomia, MCAS, hypermobility, or chronic pain, you've probably been told two opposite things: that it's "just anxiety," or that if you only calmed your nervous system enough, you'd be well.
This group starts from both/and. Some symptoms come from biology: blood volume, mast cells, inflammation, blood flow. Some come from how the nervous system is processing signals. Both are real. You don't have to pick a camp to be taken seriously here.
How it works
Mondays, 9:00–9:40 am Pacific (10:00 Alberta, 11:00 Manitoba, 1:30 pm Newfoundland)
Online · up to 10 people · first session October 19
$80 per session. You only pay for the weeks you book. If a session doesn't reach 3 people, it's cancelled and you aren't charged.
Cameras, sharing and reading are always optional. You can lie down, turn your camera off, or leave early.
What we talk about
A six-week rotation, so you can join any week:
Both/and: making sense of symptoms without blaming yourself
Pacing and post-exertional malaise
Tracking triggers
Nervous system load
Appointments and your care team
Grief, identity and flares
Before each session there's a short, plain-language reading on that week's topic, written for low-energy days. Most of our time is facilitated discussion with people who know what you're living with.
Who facilitates
I'm Elysia Bronson, a Registered Clinical Counsellor who works only with chronic illness, chronic pain and trauma, and I live with complex chronic illness myself. I sit on the board of the Canadian Pain Society.
This is educational peer support facilitated by a Registered Clinical Counsellor. It isn't counselling, psychotherapy, or medical advice, and it will never ask you to push through symptoms or prove you're getting better.