Anxiety and Breast Cancer

I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 28, in December 2002. That seems like a long time ago now, but at the time, I couldn’t imagine I would ever experience a day where I wouldn’t think about cancer most of the time.  Now, seven years later, I can confidently say I am totally “over it.” To help convince myself of this, I’ll be writing a regular guest blog on the experience of long-term survivorship.

One of the most notable early side effects of having cancer is coming up against a huge amount of anxiety. Fears about what will happen to your body, fears about the effects of treatment, fears about how to talk with your family and friends about it … and of course, the big one – the fear that you will die.  Many of these fears dissipate as the journey progresses from the unknown into the all too familiar. But long after treatment is over, we often continue to carry a tightly wound knot of anxiety around the fear of reoccurrence.

As women, we already tend to be seasoned worriers, claiming that we like to be prepared for things and that thinking in advance about negative possibilities helps us feel ready to respond. This may be true when it comes to taking an umbrella to a picnic, or bear spray on a hike, but I can’t imagine that any young woman could feel ready for a life-threatening illness, let alone know how to prepare for such a thing.

I’ve heard that for some women, the experience of being told they have cancer comes as no surprise. They say things like, “I always felt that something bad would happen to me.” For some women, it gives them something important to concentrate on; for others, cancer is the last straw – it renders them frozen with terror, such that even the smallest decision becomes too overwhelming to face.

My treatment was a total mastectomy of my left breast. At the time I was about to return to work (part-time) and still nursing my 16-month-old daughter. I had never experienced any kind of serious illness before, and this sudden situation caused me a huge amount of undo stress. I underwent three reconstructive surgeries during the next couple of years and, with them, some massive changes to my self image.

Even after I was completely reassured of my own health, I felt profoundly affected by the struggles of women I had met at breast cancer events and groups along the way. I experienced feeling guilty for having a less serious disease, feeling bad for losing a breast but not my hair (I didn’t have chemo). I worried that I hadn’t really appreciated the health I had prior to being diagnosed or truly enjoyed my body when it was whole. I still compared myself unfavorably to magazine pictures. My feelings of regret led backwards and my feelings of fear shot forwards, giving me little space in the present to feel at ease.

When it became clear that these thoughts were not slowing down — just sneaking up on me in more creative guises, I took advantage of several BC Cancer Agency stress-reduction programs.

I tried meditation classes, art therapy group and a facilitated cancer coping skills program. Everything helped a little bit, but it was right after I was introduced to Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness that my painful feelings began to make sense. I feel tremendously grateful to the teachers who helped me learn these skills.

Cognitive Therapy teaches you tools to identify patterns of unhealthy thinking. Amazingly, you can, with practice, begin to confront some of your most stifling fears and understand the process your mind goes through to cause feelings of fear and anxiety. Bit by bit, you can carve away at these seemingly insurmountable feelings and eventually get to a place where you can, at the very least, recognize them for what they are worth and choose to feel them or not!

The feelings were still there, but I was slowly learning how to disarm them as they surfaced. I learned how to create space around the present moment so that I didn’t dwell in feelings about events that had passed and that I could do nothing about, or those in the future for which I had no control over.

Sometimes I get teased a little at work when I take a moment of transition time at the beginning of lunch to settle myself before I eat – I try to do this regularly throughout the day. I only need a minute or two to create a calm space, a stillness in the eye of the storm around me.  Let it rage – for this small moment I am safe.

~ Vanessa