Tend To Your Emotions During Cancer Treatment
Stock photo posed by model
Starting treatment can excite big emotions. You may feel anxious, overwhelmed, or entirely numb. There’s no right or wrong way to feel. Here's how to make space for your emotions.
During treatment, cancer-related losses often become more apparent. Experiencing grief is normal as you notice these losses, whether it’s the loss of your time, your hair, or feeling in control. Cancer treatment also can be demanding of your time, energy, physical health, and emotional reserve.
This does not mean you must ignore or hide the emotions you feel. Suppressing emotions doesn’t make them disappear. Despite the stresses of treatment, it’s important to make space for your emotional well-being. These strategies can help:
1. Set Appropriate Expectations
It’s hard to predict exactly how you will respond, physically and emotionally, to your treatment. Cancer treatment often disrupts daily activity. Setting realistic expectations can make the uncertainties and disruptions less burdensome.
Look for ways at home and work that can help you during treatment. For example, it may not be realistic to expect yourself to work full-time. But you might reasonably expect to work part-time. Or, maybe you can maintain a full-time workload if your employer offers flexible hours or remote work.
Here are a few ways to set appropriate expectations for yourself:
Communicate With Your Care Team
Have ongoing, honest communication with your providers. This allows you to be an active and empowered participant in your care. Speak with your medical team to clarify the expected length of your treatment, possible side effects, and recovery time.
Your physicians and clinical team can suggest ways to best plan and prepare for your treatment. Their guidance can help you envision how daily life may look and feel during treatment.
Use Available Resources
It’s likely that you’ll be at the treatment center, clinic, or hospital more frequently during treatment. There are people on your cancer care team — like social workers, patient navigators, and financial counselors — who can help you. Ask to meet with them when you go in for treatment.
- Social workers are available to offer emotional support to patients. This may entail teaching coping strategies to address loss and validating emotions associated with grief.
- Patient navigators can assist in helping manage treatment side effects and in providing referrals to attend to logistical needs that arise during the treatment process.
- Financial counselors support patients in properly understanding health insurance benefits, financial responsibility of patients, and available assistance programs.
You don’t know what you need or want at times. So take the help and support, because there’s good people and services available if you need them.
Be Kind to Yourself
You will inevitably hear about or meet someone who appears to be managing cancer treatment better than you. Others, meanwhile, may perceive you as managing treatment better than them. It’s normal to compare yourself and your situation to others. When it comes to a cancer experience, there are no comparisons.
You did not invite cancer into your life. Expecting your life to feel and look the same is unreasonable. Expecting yourself to do everything you were doing before treatment is unfair. Expecting yourself to be the same person you were before cancer is unhelpful.
Treat yourself with the same patience and care you'd give to a loved one in your situation.
Read Zackary's StoryI try to be gentler — with others, and with myself. That’s a gift cancer gave me, even if it came wrapped in pain.
2. Be Honest About Your Needs
It’s common for cancer patients to feel abandoned by loved ones during their cancer treatment. It’s equally common for loved ones to feel lost in these circumstances. Loved ones may feel intimidated or unequipped to extend the help needed during this unique time.
Starting cancer treatment presents an opportunity to address this disconnect. Being clear and transparent about your needs does not make you a burden. Instead, this honesty can help you and your loved ones navigate the challenges and uncertainties of treatment.
Try these tips:
Keep a Notebook Nearby
As you undergo treatment, it’s easy to forget things you may have wanted to say or ask. Consider keeping a treatment notebook or calendar with you to list needs as they arise. That way, you can tell your loved ones and care team members what type of help can best support you.
Needs can be practical, such as:
- Rides to medical appointments
- Pet assistance, such as walking the family dog
- Homemade meals to freeze and have ready for days when cooking isn’t doable
Needs can also be emotional or spiritual, such as:
- Companionship during infusion treatments
- Prayer requests
- Friendly calls or texts as reminders that you are loved
If you are feeling stuck, use these prompts to help you guide your journal entries.
Find a Confidant
Your family and friends may care a lot, but they might not have the tools to support all your feelings and needs during treatment. Find a safe person who can make space for you to share more intimate discussions about topics such as sexuality, body image, fear, and loss of hope. These are all valid concerns often prompted by cancer treatment and side effects.
Your confidant may be a friend, family member, roommate, spouse, or a professional. Whomever you choose, they should be able to actively listen with empathy.
If you lack a confidant in your life, consider looking beyond your circle of contacts. Peer matches or mentors, for example, can offer the social and emotional support gained through lived experience.
Talk to an Expert
Our Cancer Support Helpline offers free navigation for patients or their loved ones by phone and online.
3. Boost Your Sense of Community
Cancer treatment may increase feelings of isolation. For example, some treatments can weaken your immune system for a while, making it riskier to be in public places. Other side effects, such as fatigue or changes in bowel function, can make leaving your home difficult.
Fortunately, sources of community are available to help you avoid isolation during treatment. Here are a few ideas to consider:
Attend a Support Group
Support groups are frequently facilitated by oncology social workers at cancer treatment centers. Cancer centers understand the precautions needed to keep patients safe. So, these meeting spaces present fewer potential health risks. Virtual support groups are also an option, if you prefer to participate in a group setting without having to leave your home.
You may find that engaging in a support group before or after your scheduled treatment is both doable and fosters a sense of community.
Join Our Online Community
If you’re not ready to join a support group, can’t find a group near you, or simply want to expand your support system, we have you covered. Join our free digital support community, MyLifeLine.org, which hosts a a range of discussion forums for people impacted by cancer.
Our forums are available 24/7. Jump in anytime to share a question, idea, or concern, or offer your support to others navigating cancer. Discussions are moderated by licensed mental health professionals, providing a safe, member-led community where you can create genuine connections with others impacted by cancer.
Whether you are facing a new diagnosis, navigating treatment, or transitioning to life after treatment, you never know who may benefit from the words you share.
Share Your Story
Sharing your truth is a powerful way to reclaim the life you’re living now. Writing your story can be a cathartic experience. Think about setting aside a few minutes each day to write about moments, realizations, and emotions that feel especially significant.
The practice of writing your story as it unfolds — whether in your journal or for a published forum — allows you to process your emotional experience. Consider where and how you’d like to share your story. Online discussion boards, blogs, speaking engagements, support groups, personal websites, and patient-centered journals all offer spaces where others can learn from your experience. That's something only you can share.
Read Courtney's StoryYou can’t cope with your life unless you are resilient. You have to grieve — that is what makes us people. But to keep going is resilience in the face of something terrible going on.
Engage in Life Outside of Cancer
Active treatment can feel all-consuming, but your life shouldn’t be reduced to a diagnosis. Without judgement, take account of how you are spending time beyond your treatment.
Ask yourself if you are:
- Conversing with loved ones about topics other than treatment?
- Participating in hobbies you enjoyed before your diagnosis?
- Engaging with neighbors and acquaintances, while taking necessary precautions?
- Acknowledging life milestones, such as birthdays, weddings, holidays, and anniversaries?
- Using time to live in spite of cancer?
This insight presents a chance for you to engage and connect. Perhaps meeting a friend for lunch can reignite the connection you’ve been missing. Or maybe connecting with a mental health professional can help you reclaim the parts of your life that cancer can never take away.
With the support of your community, coping with grief and other big emotions is possible as you navigate treatment. Reach out to your loved ones, seek connection with others going through similar experiences, and be open to new friendships.
Never give up. There is always hope. Friends, family, or even someone you just met can give you the strength you thought you never had.
About the Author
Carolyn is a licensed clinical social worker in California with specialties in oncology, perinatal loss, and grief. She has provided psychotherapy, psychoeducation, support group facilitation, and patient navigation support to those impacted by cancer for most of her career, working in inpatient, outpatient, and private practice settings. She is passionate and committed to providing care that is patient-centered, compassionate, and evidence-based.
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