6 Ways to Calm Yourself When Cancer Scares You

A lingering cough that won’t go away finally made Roxanne call her oncologist.

Leaning on the kitchen counter with the plates and forks from breakfast piled beside the sink, she hears the nurse say: “With your history, we need to have you come in and check it out.”  Her heart rate quickens and her mind goes blank. Then it dips into the worst possibilities. The shock and fear she felt when first diagnosed three years ago returns full force.

It’s not much fun to talk about the terror of cancer. Many survivors experience fear and terror over and over again, beginning with when they are first diagnosed.

For the past 7 years, I’ve taught a weekly yoga class for cancer survivors. Checking in before we start, people share what motivated them to come. Often it is hope of relief, the sense of wellbeing when we finish, learning to meditate, connecting with their tribe. It’s also “letting go of fearful thoughts,” a scan in the afternoon,” stress, or a “cancerversary” date approaching.

Over the next 2 days, Roxanne’s breath is shallow, hard to catch and control.  Her mind won’t be still and she loses focus.  She tries to go shopping with her mother and teenage daughter for a dress to wear to a wedding but feels impatient and grumpy.  She avoids talking about her fear and anxiety because she thinks it will alarm them. After all, she doesn’t know anything yet.

Protecting others from pain and worry, Roxanne shoulders it alone. Inside she obsesses: Will her life and goals be hijacked by new medical interventions? Will she lose the energy she’s finally recovered? How will her daughter, Lily, react when she finds out?

She knows it might be nothing.  And worse case scenario, a recurrence is not a death sentence.  But she no longer has the illusion that it can’t happen to her.

She cries in the shower where no one can see. She reads a new mystery by her favorite author. Enjoying ice cream, she lies in bed and watches Netflix. An Ativan stops the agony of rumination so she can sleep at night. She has trouble getting out of bed in the morning.

Neuroscience teaches that under (real or perceived) threat of danger, your body goes into fight, flight, or freeze in order to survive.

The fear response Roxanne had is faster than lightning and outside her control. 

Once you are aware of how your nervous system has reacted, here are some ways to soothe and care for yourself:

  1. First recognize that fight/flight or freeze is a normal biological reaction. It is a perfectly understandable and adaptive initial phase of coping. Be as kind and compassionate to yourself as possible. Give yourself credit for making it through each day. You are doing the best you can!
  1. Reach out. When you feel the fear taking over again and your breath getting shallow, call a friend who can handle it, talk to trusted family, or a therapist or support group. Let yourself cry. Let someone comfort and connect with you.
  1. Find ways to feel connected to your body. Run, walk, swim, put on music and dance, do yoga. Feel and move your body. Enjoy your circulation, your ability to stretch and your physical sensations. Even a few minutes of one of these activities can make a huge difference.
  1. Sense your belonging to the earth. Feel the safety of gravity keeping you attached to the floor or ground. Feel the parts of your body that are touching the ground, the soil, natural bodies of water, your chair or the floor.
  1. Observe your breathing without judging it. Enjoy the pulse of life within you as you expand and contract in each moment and with each breath.
  1. Write about your feelings. Express all of it in a journal, telling your unvarnished and uncensored truth.

 

 

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Showing 9 comments
  • Guruatma
    Reply

    Thank God you’re breaking it down and offering us real-live, simple and sensible tools to dilute the fear & terror element that inevitably comes up us.
    There’s a #7 – just reading your gentle and experienced words, herein, was soothing to me.

  • Guruatma
    Reply

    PS – the photo at the top of this page was soothing – and beautiful, too!

    • mm
      Kelly Inselmann
      Reply

      I’m glad you liked it Guruatma – there’s so much energy put into “positive thinking” when what we need is honesty. I always have appreciated you and your honesty. XO

  • Linda Griesel
    Reply

    I KNOW to do all these things. I advise friends to do these things. I did them myself when I was going through “active” cancer treatment. Yet, I’ve had a number of x-rays and MRI’s these last two weeks and had thoughts popping into my head like “what if I have knee cancer? Achilles’ tendon cancer?”
    Nonsensical, really, but I couldn’t deny that this was a familiar feeling – that same punch of terror to the gut. And I have a very real bone scan coming up that will determine the future course of my cancer care and my quality of life. What I’ve been doing is running myself ragged to not think of any of this. Not surprisingly, I CAN’T run from these fearful thoughts. So, yoga, swimming and having my feelings and fears validated, in this case by a therapist. Keep breathing and keep learning✌🏽❤

  • mm
    Kelly Inselmann
    Reply

    Yes-deep breathing, swimming and yoga. And knowing you are totally normal! I swam yesterday but not today. Keep me posted on the bone scan. XO

  • Nancy L. Seibel
    Reply

    I’m facing something this week that I find scary. A needle location of my very small tumor prior to surgery. You’d think I’d be afraid of the surgery, but nope, I’m scare of having to be awake while one more time, my breast needles are stuck into my breast. There’s the local anaesthetic, another mammogram or ultrasound, a needle inserted and a wire left protruding from my breast. This to me is so grotesque that even if it doesn’t hurt much it horrifies me. Rational? No. Real? Yes. What have I done to calm myself? #1,2,3,5 and now, 6. . People don’t want us to be scared. It’s not easy to find places where you can give voice to the fear without being told to feel some other way. The courage is there but you sometimes have to walk the path of fear to get to it. Thank you for allowing us to do that.

    • Nancy L. Seibel
      Reply

      Whoops! That second sentence should say “while needles..” not sure what breast needles would be!! Haha!

      • mm
        Kelly Inselmann
        Reply

        Ha!

    • mm
      Kelly Inselmann
      Reply

      Hi Nancy – Thank you so much for sharing this. I hope it goes smoothly this week. Of course it’s scary – thanks for joining me with acknoledging it. Sometimes worse when we know what’s coming…I love how #5 is the one you said you hadn’t done at that point-the breathing. I can so relate to that. No matter how many tools we have, for some of us – it pushes us past all our known coping into the wildness and new territory of fear. And it can happen at different points to different people. What freaks one person out, doesn’t phase another. When I first told my husband I was going to write “a book” about my experience and give people tips from yoga, he said and I quote “You need to put a disclaimer in there that says “This many not work.'” Because, as you say, sometimes you just have to go through it. I saw a quote from Aeschylus recently that said “The reward for suffering is experience.” You gave me some great ideas for another post. Sending love from Texas.

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