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Group Support |
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Harboring fears and anxiety about cancer can be absolutely paralytic. The opportunity to share thoughts and concerns and express even the most frightening feelings, such as I'm terrified I'm going to die., offers enormous comfort, allows you to realize you are reacting normally to an abnormal situation, and helps you regain your emotional balance while significantly reducing your stress. (Spiegel, 1993).
Sharing experiences with other people who have cancer is a potent experience. Many people find that being a member of a cancer support group offers multiple benefits. The very thing that has made you feel separated from the rest of the world is your ticket to admission into the group. Thoughts and feelings that previously seemed bizarre are normalized. It is a rule rather than the exception to feel terrified, enraged, grief-stricken, immobilized, and wondering if you are going to die. You can experience tremendous relief to finding out that you are not alone and that others sharing your dilemma accept you and understand.
Just as the group helps you integrate a new sense of self, it simultaneously helps you define and revise what is important to you. The issue of how to make the best use of time becomes paramount in the face of an uncertain future. This usually involves seizing the moment and taking full advantage of the present instead of becoming exclusively focused on the future. You may begin rearranging your priorities as you develop new interests, or expand on or drop old ones. Cultivating experiences that are enriching and pleasurable should become a key goal; eliminating those that no longer interest you is another.
For example, a woman with progressive metastatic breast cancer decided to undergo a bone-marrow transplant as a last ditch treatment. Not knowing what the outcome of this procedure would be, she determined that there were certain things she wanted to accomplish in the event she died. She and her partner to a long-delayed vacation to Hawaii where they agreed to make a more formal commitment to their relationship prior to her hospitalization.
Another woman, a prolific poet with brain cancer, was encouraged by her partner to take up painting. She did and, to her delight, found herself immersed with an almost child-like fascination in a new world of shapes and colors. (some of her paintings were exhibited at the hospital where she was treated) Rather than giving in to her cancer, she viewed it as an opportunity for creative growth and unanticipated pleasure.
Some people with cancer continually reorder their priorities. A lovely woman of forty-one with advanced ovarian cancer chose to forgo a level of pain medication that essentially, would have left her pain-free bunt unconscious. She wanted to stay alert, aware, and connected to the people she loved. For her, the importance of this far outweighed being physically comfortable.
Clearly, openness and expressiveness - emotionally and in other areas - is critical to your overall recovery and goes a long way toward helping you manage the inevitable stresses of the disease. Using family and friends as a resource is a crucial part of this process. Early involvement of your family in both decision making and treatment helps you integrate your experiences with cancer into the rest of your life. Family and friends can encourage you to talk about what is happening to you to talk about how you feel and about what is happening to you. A simple statement from someone close, such as, I'm scared too, but we'll fight this together is both encouraging and comforting. The relief in knowing that you can give voice to what is frightening and painful can remind you that you're not fighting this battle alone.
As barriers to communication are overcome you can benefit from and help your natural support system while feeling sustained through the cancer experience. In sharing all emotions, both the positive and the negative, you don't hide or deny any aspect of your experience. I also offers those who care about you a way of better understanding your experience, as well as the means to feel closer to one another and to you.
Some people diagnosed with cancer find that they need the privacy of individual counseling or therapy to work through some of their feelings about their cancer. A therapy session with a specially trained and caring professional at the time of diagnosis or recurrence, with the potential for continued visits, provides a safe place for you to discuss your feelings about and experience with the cancer. This can help lessen fear and offers a setting for the diagnosis and treatment of more serious forms of anxiety and depression. Serious sleep and appetite disturbance or persistent suicidal thoughts call for professional evaluation. Although the thought of living with cancer will never be free of anxiety, you may need help in recognizing that while cancer is not an undeniable part of your life, it is not the only part.
Your renewed ability to see yourself as an active participant in your life will help you maintain your emotional perspective, which will help keep the stresses of living with cancer from constantly intruding into your life.
Reprinted by permission from Coping magazine
Of Interest:
Coping in the Stressed-Out World of Cancer
Stress and Survival
False Positives
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