Doré Schubert knows well the emotional toll of living with chronic pain. Diagnosed with Marfan syndrome at age two, she did not begin experiencing chronic pain until nearly 30. When it arrived, so did waves of grief, anger, and anxiety about the future.
But over time, Doré developed tools to cope with that emotional weight—and now she helps others do the same.
“Sometimes I still fall into these slumps for a few days or even a week. And I tell myself it’s valid that I’m feeling this way,” she says. “I let myself be miserable for a few days, but I trust that I’m going to come out of it.”
A Canadian Certified Counsellor who runs a private practice supporting people with chronic illness, intellectual disability, and major life transitions, Doré is especially passionate about helping clients adjust to new diagnoses and long-term pain.
Chronic pain is far more common than many realize. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 50 million U.S. adults live with chronic pain lasting longer than three months. And for many people with connective tissue conditions such as Marfan syndrome, chronic pain is a daily reality that often comes with emotional strain, anxiety, and stress.
1. Reframing the story you tell yourself
One of the most powerful tools Doré uses is narrative therapy, which focuses on the “stories” people carry about themselves and their lives.
“This is one of my favorites,” she says. “People live their lives based on the stories they tell themselves. With chronic illness or disability, that story often becomes very negative—you start to believe you’re failing or falling behind.”
Narrative therapy helps people separate themselves from their condition, a process called externalizing.
“It’s about realizing you are not the problem—the condition is the problem,” Doré explains. “Sometimes I’ll ask clients to name it, like ‘the spiky thing’ or ‘the big dark thing,’ so they can see it as separate from who they are.”
This shift can create emotional distance from pain and open space for self-compassion.
Writing exercises are often part of this process. Doré may ask clients to write to themselves as if they were writing to a friend.
“People are often shocked by how compassionate they are when they speak to someone else—but not to themselves,” she says. Learning to redirect that compassion inward can be a powerful first step toward healing.
2. Living by your values, even when pain is present
Another approach Doré frequently uses is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which focuses on accepting difficult thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them.
In many ways, ACT challenges traditional ideas that pain must be eliminated before life can be fully lived.
“It’s heavily focused on figuring out what your values are,” Doré says. “We use a values card system to identify what matters most—things like family, compassion, or connection.”
For someone living with Marfan syndrome, that might mean recognizing that being an engaged parent is a core value, even on difficult pain days.
“So even if they have pain, we look at ways they can still show up for what matters to them,” she says.
ACT also emphasizes acceptance—not in the sense of liking pain, but allowing it to exist without constant struggle.
“When we’re able to sit with what we’re feeling without judgment, we’re better able to understand and regulate it,” Doré explains.
At its core, ACT helps people stop putting life on hold until pain improves. Instead, it encourages them to move toward what matters most, even while discomfort remains part of the picture.
“What I often see is people waiting for pain to go away before they start living again,” Doré says. “Therapy helps interrupt that pattern.”
3. Challenging harmful thought patterns with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
For people who benefit from practical, skills-based strategies, Doré also values Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), an approach that focuses on identifying, examining, and reframing unhelpful thought patterns.
“CBT has been proven to be helpful for people with chronic pain,” she says.
CBT works from the understanding that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are deeply interconnected—and that changing harmful or distorted thought patterns can help improve emotional well-being.
“It’s more cognitive first,” Doré explains. “You’re looking at your thoughts and wondering what they really mean. Are your thoughts really true? Because our thoughts lie sometimes.”
For someone living with chronic pain, CBT can help challenge spiraling fears, catastrophic thinking, or deeply ingrained beliefs about failure, limitation, or hopelessness.
Doré appreciates CBT because it offers concrete tools people can use in daily life, but she also emphasizes that effective coping begins with understanding what is happening emotionally beneath the surface.
“We really want to get down to the bottom of what’s happening before we start implementing skills,” she says. “You’re not going to be able to use these skills effectively if you don’t understand what’s happening.”
For many people, CBT can become an important part of a broader therapeutic toolkit—providing practical ways to challenge difficult thoughts while building healthier coping strategies for life with chronic pain.
Olivia Abel has been a strategic communications and editorial professional for more than 25 years. A passionate storyteller, she’s worked as a reporter at Vanity Fair and People magazines, written freelance business stories for The New York Times and spent a decade as Editor-in-Chief of Hudson Valley magazine. Olivia shares the stories of those affected by genetic aortic and vascular conditions in her current work as director of Integrated Marketing Communications at the Marfan Foundation.