Why do you need this program? Because the cancer experience changes us. Sometimes people suggest you can just “sail right through it,” but the reality is often much more difficult.
As they wheeled me in for the first MRI at MD Anderson Cancer Center, I remember feeling hysterical, like I might laugh or cry or scream. I wanted to shout: “You don’t understand! I’m really healthy!” Instead, I was a good patient. Quiet, compliant and immobile.
But there were other feelings underneath: anger, despair, fear, shame and self-blame, a desire to give up.
What happens to feelings when they are set aside for the sake of survival?
Sometimes they fragment, landing in parts of the body or in the back of the mind, waiting to be remembered.
About 6 months after the end of active treatment, I signed up for a free pilates class. I had never done pilates, but I had done lots of dance and yoga. I figured I could handle it.
Imagine the scene: I’m lying on the pilates table being hooked up to machinery, my body still weak and my mind still too fatigued to follow directions well. If you’ve been through cancer treatment, this might sound a little familiar. And it was familiar to my body – it brought back a flood of memories from chemotherapy treatment.
Frustrated and embarrassed at feeling unable to follow instructions, I started crying and couldn’t stop.
I left that day but returned later to take some private lessons. Eventually, I was able to tolerate the discomfort and begin to befriend my body in this new way.
Recent research in neurobiology finds that ignoring or repressing emotions or memories does not make them disappear. Instead, the limbic system, the emotional part of the brain, stays activated as though the initial experience is actually happening.
You might not be talking about it, but you are still feeling unexpressed emotions, in the mind or in the body.