Stress and Cancer go hand in hand. You may not be the one that is ill, but your feelings and needs are just as important. Face cancer with your family, by dealing with your own stress.

When someone in your family has cancer, how you feel can seem to pale into insignificance. Everything becomes about the person who is ill. If you were a machine, then you would feel totally neutral about the situation. None of us is built that way, though. We feel deeply, especially when something bad happens to those we care about. I’m glad humans are this way. I wouldn’t like to live in a world where nobody had regard for anyone else and how they were feeling.
Being made of flesh and blood (plus an active mind and a vivid imagination) brings its challenges, though. That imagination is where our feelings of stress come from. From fear and worry about the future. When you are dealing with what is happening in the present moment, there is no room for stress. You simply get on and cope with whatever is put before you.

Cancer Impact

Perhaps this is the first time someone close to you has had cancer, as it was for me when my mother was ill. In this case you may know little of what to expect, and this will almost certainly produce fears of the unknown.
On the other hand, you might have been in a similar situation before, in which case all the emotions you felt then will probably be re-triggered. The challenges you faced in the past become hurdles you expect to have to get over again, even though all cancers and all people are different and so the hurdles will be different too.
Either way, most of the stress you feel is to do with what you fear will happen tomorrow or after many tomorrows. This doesn’t make the stress any less real for you right now. There are ways to deal with that stress. The first is simply to notice how much of it is to do with what’s happening right now, and how much of it relates to what may or may not happen in the future. Mark Twain famously said “I’ve had thousands of problems in my life – most of which never actually happened.”

You can start your thinking about your loved one’s cancer by letting go of as many of those future issues as you can. This will give you some emotional respite, which will allow you then to cope better with the road ahead. To get a handle on your emotions, answer the following:

• How are you feeling about your loved one’s illness?
• What do you know about the situation?
• What do you want to know?
• What are your biggest worries or fears?

This process will allow the reality to sink in a little. It takes time to adjust to a change as big as this, but you can adjust – probably better than you could possibly imagine now. I often hear people say such things as “I just don’t know how he/she coped with that situation.” In fact when you have no choice, you can cope with the most extreme realities. Whatever the cancer impact on your family, acknowledging and dealing with your own stress can go a long way to reduce that impact.

This is an extract taken from ‘Their Cancer – Your Journey’ by Anne Orchard. To purchase a copy of this book visit Their Cancer – Your Journey Book Information

More information on Managing the Stress Associated with Cancer
More information on Emotional Issues
More information useful at Diagnosis