Sep 16, 2026 · 57 min · 10 segments
Living with chronic illness can affect far more than your physical health; it can change your identity, relationships, mental health, and sense of connection.In this episode of Surviving Out of Spite…
Jodi TaubGuestSamHostWell, hi, Jodi.
Thank you for hanging out with me today.
This is definitely a conversation that, oddly enough, I've been looking forward to having because I know it's a hard conversation, so it sounds weird to say I'm looking forward to it.
But I think what you do and what you have to share with us today is a very important topic.
So before we dive right into that, I'll give you a moment to introduce yourself to our audience.
And I concur that having hard conversations, sometimes we look forward to having that because most of us are living with the hard conversation in our head.
So to be able to have the conversation, the dialogue and the validation out loud can be very helpful.
I am a private practice psychotherapist and I specialize in chronic illness, rare disease and medical trauma for patients and caregivers and all the people who love us living with chronic health care conditions.
And this year, I wrote a book called More Than a Patient, Building Relationships and Creating a Meaningful Life When You Have a Chronic Illness.
And it was about using the psychoeducation tools in the context of real life relationships, because that's really what it's all about.
Yeah, I love that.
And now that we're right into the topic, I'm like, everyone can see why I was happy to have this conversation.
Because I've said this multiple times, but where a lot of the idea of this podcast and saying the hard things out loud is that if we can say it here, if we can start to talk about those vulnerabilities.
Like you said, the hard conversations that we tend to have with ourselves that maybe you're afraid to say that out loud or you're afraid to ask for help or maybe you're not sure where to ask for help because you're afraid to have that conversation out loud, right? So my hope is that for anybody listening and anybody that comes to any of our support groups or listens to any of our podcast episodes when we talk about these things that You're encouraged to say that thing out loud.
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Well, hi, Jodi.
Thank you for hanging out with me today.
This is definitely a conversation that, oddly enough, I've been looking forward to having because I know it's a hard conversation, so it sounds weird to say I'm looking forward to it.
But I think what you do and what you have to share with us today is a very important topic.
So before we dive right into that, I'll give you a moment to introduce yourself to our audience.
And I concur that having hard conversations, sometimes we look forward to having that because most of us are living with the hard conversation in our head.
So to be able to have the conversation, the dialogue and the validation out loud can be very helpful.
I am a private practice psychotherapist and I specialize in chronic illness, rare disease and medical trauma for patients and caregivers and all the people who love us living with chronic health care conditions.
And this year, I wrote a book called More Than a Patient, Building Relationships and Creating a Meaningful Life When You Have a Chronic Illness.
And it was about using the psychoeducation tools in the context of real life relationships, because that's really what it's all about.
Yeah, I love that.
And now that we're right into the topic, I'm like, everyone can see why I was happy to have this conversation.
Because I've said this multiple times, but where a lot of the idea of this podcast and saying the hard things out loud is that if we can say it here, if we can start to talk about those vulnerabilities.
Like you said, the hard conversations that we tend to have with ourselves that maybe you're afraid to say that out loud or you're afraid to ask for help or maybe you're not sure where to ask for help because you're afraid to have that conversation out loud, right? So my hope is that for anybody listening and anybody that comes to any of our support groups or listens to any of our podcast episodes when we talk about these things that You're encouraged to say that thing out loud.