Why Naming Your Illness Can Help You Cope and Heal
When your body changes, it feels like you split into two different versions of yourself: the person you used to be, and the one trying to figure out what just happened.
Most of us weren’t properly prepared for that kind of health shift. We’re handed a diagnosis, or even just a list of symptoms with no explanation, and told to “manage it.”
But here’s what no one tells you: coping with chronic illness begins in your mind before it begins in your body. You start wondering what’s happening inside you, and what this means for who you’re becoming. Everything feels so uncertain.
When I first got sick with what turned out to be ME/CFS, I kept seeking a diagnosis so I could just move on and “get back to normal.” Business as usual. But every plan I made fell apart, and even my veterinary career seemed to slip away as a consequence. My life was hijacked by something I couldn’t even name.
Eventually, I gave that something a name: Vivi.
She’s the version of me who shows up when my energy has drained to zero. Giving her a name didn’t change my condition, but it helped me understand it. I could say to my loved ones, “Vivi’s here in the room with us,” and they’d know what that meant: my energy is low, and my mask is coming off.
Personifying my illness gave me a path to communicate how I was feeling. It gave me a new perspective on my struggles. And if you’re currently coping with a diagnosis, naming your illness might offer you similar benefits. For many people wondering how to cope with a diagnosis, naming becomes a simple first step.
Coping with Chronic Illness and the Identity Shift It Creates
Anyone who’s managing chronic illness knows it’s never just about symptoms. Coping with chronic illness affects the story you’ve been telling yourself about who you are. Your roles shift. Your energy shifts. The pace of your life shifts. And suddenly you’re trying to recognize the person you’re becoming while still grieving the person you were.
In the early stages of coping with a diagnosis, it can feel like you’re watching your own life from the outside. Everyone else moves at full speed while you’re recalibrating around limits you didn’t ask for.
You start missing routines, hobbies, and parts of yourself you never expected to lose. That’s the part no one prepares you for—the subtle identity disruption that begins long before you can put words to it.
Psychologists call this narrative identity, and chronic illness often forces a new kind of illness identity to take shape. It’s one reason chronic illness and self-concept often become intertwined.
When Your Story No Longer Fits
For me, this journey began with an ME/CFS diagnosis back in 2009.
I was practicing veterinary medicine in Texas, working with horses every day. When I first got sick, all I wanted was a diagnosis so I could “fix it” and go back to who I used to be. But every plan fell apart. My stamina failed. Eventually, even my career slipped away, disrupting the narrative identity I’d built for myself.
I didn’t feel like a veterinarian anymore, but I didn’t feel like a “patient,” either. I was caught in a strange in-between—that place where identity loss in chronic illness usually starts. That “in-between” feeling is one of the most common signs of the loss of identity that chronic illness can trigger.
If you’ve lived this, you know exactly what it feels like: the waiting rooms, the tests, the half-answers. Grieving who you were while trying to understand who you’re going to become.
That’s where rebuilding identity after illness truly begins. Not when you finally get a diagnosis, but when you realize you need a new story to live inside. One that includes the limits, the losses, and the life you still have.
For me, naming my illness became part of that new story. It didn’t cure anything. But it helped me see myself as someone with ME/CFS instead of someone consumed by it.
Naming can become part of rebuilding identity after illness, especially when you’re trying to understand who you are now.
What Is Illness Personification?
Illness personification is simply giving your condition a name or personality. Many people do it without thinking, saying things like, “My pain is being dramatic,” or “She showed up again this morning.”
Researchers who study the psychology of chronic illness have found that this instinct isn’t random. When you’re living with a long-term condition, your mind naturally tries to make sense of it. Personification becomes one way to organize something unpredictable when you’re coping with chronic illness.
But it can work for or against you.
When personification turns unhelpful, people often cast the illness as a villain: the monster, the intruder, the thing ruining your life. That’s a real and valid reaction, especially early on. But if that’s the only story in your mind, it can increase fear and make you feel unsafe in your own body.
When personification becomes helpful, it creates space. The illness becomes something you can observe, understand, and respond to. Not always a friend, but a character whose patterns you can learn.
This kind of personification can:
Give you a little distance from your symptoms.
Help you see patterns more clearly.
Make it easier to explain how you’re feeling to others.
Reduce the self-blame that often creeps in.
It’s not about romanticizing the illness. It’s about turning something overwhelming into something you can work with instead of fear.
Here’s how that looked in my own life.
From Enemy to Companion: How Naming Helped Me
When I first started calling my ME/CFS Vivi, it wasn’t meant to transform my life. It was just the only way I could describe what happened when I was experiencing post-exertional malaise.
Sometimes it was something as simple as looking at a friend’s vacation photos. Too much screen movement, too fast, and suddenly, my brain fog would hit hard. I’d snap or raise my voice without meaning to, and then I’d feel ashamed.
Naming changed that.
“Vivi’s in the room” became a clear signal: I’ve hit my limit. No need for long explanations or defensiveness. My loved ones understood immediately.
But the biggest shift wasn’t with other people; it was internal. Once Vivi had a name, I could track her patterns. I could talk to her, check in with myself, and make decisions before I crashed. Instead of seeing the illness as an unpredictable enemy, I saw the early signs sooner, paced myself sooner, and rested sooner.
Naming didn’t make my illness easier, but it made me kinder to myself, and far more honest about what I could and couldn’t handle. It was the beginning of making peace with chronic illness instead of fighting it at every turn.
5 Questions to Begin Your Own Reflection
Before you name your illness, or even decide if you want to, get curious.
Ask yourself:
When does my illness feel closest to me? When does it feel far away?
What does it sound like when it speaks? Harsh? Demanding? Tired?
What does it want me to do that I resist?
What does it protect me from?
If I did name it, what tone or feeling would that name carry?
Remember, the goal isn’t to label symptoms—it’s to explore your relationship with them.
Coping with chronic illness requires managing chronic illness on both the medical and emotional levels.
Takeaway: Your Illness Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy
You don’t have to see your illness as a battle to be fought or an enemy to be defeated. You can see it as something to understand.
When you name it, you take a small step toward ownership of your own body again. You create a space where empathy and agency can coexist. Naming won’t solve every challenge of coping with chronic illness, but it can help you feel more grounded inside it.
You might still grieve the old version of yourself. Most people do. But you’ll also start to recognize the strength of the person learning to live differently, to tell their story.
Because you are not your illness. You’re the one who gets to name it, and keep living.
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FAQ: Coping with Chronic Illness & Illness Personification
What is illness personification theory?
It’s a psychological idea that giving your illness a name or identity can help you separate it from who you are. This can improve emotional regulation and self-understanding while coping with chronic illness. It also supports your mental health in chronic illness, especially when your symptoms affect daily functioning.
Does naming your illness really help?
Many patients say it helps them cope with chronic illness by creating a clearer dialogue with themselves and others. It offers structure in the emotional stress of a long-term condition.
Who can benefit from it?
Anyone struggling to adjust after a diagnosis, especially those with invisible conditions, can explore this practice as a way to begin rebuilding identity after illness and finding meaning in illness.
