When the news comes in your house that your spouse, sibling, parent or anyone you love the most in your life has cancer it brings you also to an emotional trauma.
No one ever likes to hear the 6-letter word cancer. Upon hearing those words is like tearing anyone’s heart apart and even you too who do not have cancer feel many different feelings the same with someone who has one.
As like what I mentioned to my recent article, the moment that you feel an emotion; whether being happy or sad and angry (especially when hearing someone has cancer), you must pay attention to the feelings you are experiencing.
Whether you saw it or didn’t, the feeling is always the same: you are devasted with the news and you must keep being mindful.
Being mindful during these circumstances are a very important part of the cancer journey of your loved one. It will help yourself to support him/her with cancer better. You have to be ready emotionally when supporting someone with cancer and never ignore your feelings to focus on the needs of your loved one.
Never block your feelings and always remember not to forget yourself despite you see the person with cancer suffers every second of the day.
Your pain is normal. Feel it. You may ask yourself why things like this need to happen. Before you will be ready to accept the bad news, embrace the pang feeling of this terrible message, let it consume your entire soul, recognize it don’t deny, and welcome it with open arms before you can move on and start living a life with full of battles with cancer.
No one is not vulnerable from bad news such as hearing someone is having cancer.
So, whenever you know someone who’s having a traumatic experience in life such as cancer, that affects you, too. And immediately, you must know how to process the information, deal with it and move on while facing cancer together with someone who is diagnosed.
We all respond to tension and trauma differently, but do you know that there are steps that can be done to address the challenge ahead? We want to deal with it, adopt coping mechanisms, and make the situation less traumatic:
- Accept the negative emotion.
If you are able to accept negative emotions without trying to change them are better equipped to deal with stress. - Repeat exposure to the news.
Repeat exposure to a negative event could neutralize its effects on your thoughts and moods. - Reframe your thoughts.
If you look away from the negative emotions and think about the context of the situation, your mind will be taken away from the unwanted emotions that are linked with that memory. - Learn to overcome adversity.
Acquiring resilience and overcoming adversity can be learned, and it involves working on your thoughts and behaviors, as well as actions. In doing so, being optimistic about having hope for the cure, ability to solve problems who inevitable or be aware of your emotions is some of the piece of pieces of advice in learning to overcome or getting over from emotional trauma cancer brings. - Be kind to yourself.
Look after yourself, do what you think is helpful to yourself. Sleep early, eat healthily and prioritize yourself once in a while.
By doing this, you are also making the cancer journey of someone with cancer less complicated.
Now you think you are ready facing cancer together with your loved one, you and the rest of the family are all challenged to find helpful ways of dealing with the disruptions and dangers caused by cancer and with the side effects of its medical treatments.
*The steps in dealing emotional pain in this post has been reworded and adapted from Medical News Today.
🌐 I’m the author of “The Cancer Voice Asia”, and I want to share my experience with cancer to help you through yours. We create a special network of people living with similar experiences that allows us to empower ourselves and helps us to fight against the disease.
👩🔬I was diagnosed with Leiomyosarcome in 2016, when I was 29 years old. My healing journey becomes your healing journey, and I want to use this platform to inspire people all over the world.
