Whether you are just beginning treatment, have completed treatment, or treatment is ongoing, each stage poses a myriad of complex challenges and emotions that can be extremely personal to each individual – everything changes. A major medical diagnosis is a gut-punch that often leaves people breathless for a long time. After all, your mortality has been challenged. Your body is different, and you may even feel like it has betrayed you. Relationships may seem strained or awkward. You might be experiencing issues with family, intimacy, career and what used to come easy may now seem overwhelming. It is completely normal to experience anxiety, irritability, and depression.
Anxiety is defined by Merriam-Webster as an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.
For you, it could look like: frequent tearfulness, panic attacks, inability to plan for the future, excessive research, isolation, irritability, sabotaging relationships, the list goes on.
If these feelings do not get better over time, become all consuming, or interfere with daily life, they might be a sign of Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS). According to the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query, Cancer-Related PTS is a lot like PTSD (only not quite as severe) and can occur at any time during and after treatment.
What to do? You don’t have to figure this out on your own.
Schedule a free telephone consultation now.
I will walk with you and validate what you feel in a safe environment, without judgement of how you “should” be feeling. Together we will prioritize your needs and goals. We will find your inner strength to process what has happened, accept who you are now, and move towards acceptance, happiness and joy. We cannot go back in time, but together we will explore the thought patterns behind your emotions and restructure them to serve you more productively. The cards you have been dealt suck! We can’t change that, but together we will rediscover the joy in your life.
