Psychological & Emotional Adjustments
When you were diagnosed with cancer, you might have devoted all your time to focusing on your treatment and getting healthy again. Now that you’ve completed treatment, your focus is back on the things that you did before. However, you may not be ready or able to take care of all of your responsibilities. This can make you feel stressed and overwhelmed.
Don’t feel you need to do everything that you did before. Take time for yourself as you try to get your daily routine back on track. Try exercising to build up your strength, talking with other survivors, and taking time for activities you enjoy.
Depression and anxiety
Lingering feelings of sadness, helplessness, nervousness, and even anger can interfere with your daily life. For many people emotions associated with cancer and cancer treatment will dissipate. But for others, these feelings can develop into depression. If you’re feeling depressed or anxious, tell your doctor who can refer you to a counselor for talk therapy and/or provide you with medication that can help.
Though you might be reluctant to discuss your feelings for fear this is a sign of weakness, know that depression and anxiety are common in cancer survivors. Recognition of symptoms and receipt of appropriate treatment are keys to successfully overcoming psychological and emotional conditions.
Self-consciousness
If surgery or other treatment changed your appearance, you might feel self-conscious about your body. Changes in skin color, weight gain or loss, or the loss of your hair might make you feel like staying at home rather than being around other people. You might withdraw from friends and family. And self-consciousness can strain your relationship with your partner if you don’t feel worthy of love or affection.
Learn to focus on ways cancer has made you a stronger person and realize that you’re more than the scars that cancer has left behind. When you’re more confident about your appearance, you will feel more comfortable around others.
Loneliness
You might feel as if others can’t understand what you’ve been through, which makes it hard to relate to other people often leading to feelings of loneliness. Friends and family might be unsure of how to help you, which can make you feel isolated from others.
Don’t deal with loneliness on your own. Consider joining a support group with others who are going through the same emotions you are and understand what it means to have survived cancer.
Guilt
If you knew other people with cancer who died of the disease, you might wonder why you lived. It’s common to feel guilty about living when other people died. It’s difficult to comprehend why some people with cancer live and others don’t. But maybe it’s best not to try to make sense of it. Instead, think about what you’re going to do to make your life meaningful and give your survival purpose. Because you have experience with cancer, you might like to help other people who’ve just been diagnosed with your same disease.
Fear of recurrence in cancer survivors
Fear of recurrence is very common in cancer survivors. You might worry that every ache and pain is a sign that your cancer has returned. Eventually these fears will fade, though they may never go away completely.
Some things that you can consider doing to deal with your fear of recurrence are:
- Ask your doctor about what you can do to reduce your chances of recurrence.
- Take care of your body.
- Focus your mind on keeping yourself healthy.
- Eat a healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.
- If you have the energy, get some exercise and get enough sleep.
- Try to keep busy. Get out of the house and find activities that will take your mind off your fears.
Remain open to talking about your fears. Express your concerns to your friends, family, other cancer survivors, your doctor, or a mental health counselor. If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of discussing your fears, try recording your thoughts in a journal.
Go to all of your follow-up appointments. You may fear the worst when it’s time for your next follow-up clinic visit. Don’t let that stop you from going. Use the time with your doctor to ask questions about any signs or symptoms that worry you. Ask about your risk of recurrence. When you have more information, you may find that you feel more in control.