Workbook
The Chronic Illness Identity Workbook
Your Body Changed the Deal. Your Identity Needs to Renegotiate.
You have a chronic illness. You are not a chronic illness. The difference is worth documenting.
For the person living with a chronic illness who wants to reclaim their identity from the diagnosis without denying what it has taken.
The Name It First Experience
Chronic illness takes differently from different people, in different areas, on different days. What it reliably takes, for many people, is the sense of having an identity that does not begin with the diagnosis. You are the person with lupus. The chronic pain person. The sick one. This workbook is for the person underneath those labels. You will document who you were before the diagnosis and what parts of that person are still available to you. You will write what the illness has taken — functionally, relationally, professionally. You will build an identity account that includes the illness without being defined by it. The output is not a management plan. It is The Chronic Illness Identity Agreement.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What parts of who you were before the diagnosis are still available to you — and which ones are not?
- What has the illness actually taken — not in the medical terms, but in what your life looks and feels like now?
- What has the diagnosis not changed about you — the parts of your identity that belong to you and not to the illness?
Research basis
Grounded in chronic illness identity research (Charmaz, 1983, on identity loss in chronic illness) / Post-Traumatic Growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun) on adaptation and growth within ongoing adversity / and Narrative Therapy (White & Epston) on re-authoring identity within a changed body.
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$22.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
Not available
Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
Not available
Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
Not available
Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$12.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
Not available
Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Buy it for yourself.
Choose your format above.