What If I Feel Lonely?
Completing intensive therapy may feel like returning to earth from another planet. It is common to feel that most of the people around you do not really understand where you have been or where you are now. You may feel unsure of your responsibilities, your role, or even your identity. You are not your pre-cancer self, you are no longer a full-time or part-time cancer patient, and you are not yet feeling normal. You are living in limbo.
You have left the security of organized, predictable, frequent medical attention. Even though you did not like being poked and prodded for all your evaluations and treatments, these inconveniences were accompanied by companionship and support. All that individual attention ended abruptly with your last treatment.
Your family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances may feel awkward trying to relate to you now that your treatments are over. You step in the elevator and greet longtime acquaintances. They say hello and then look from their shoes to the elevator numbers to the walls and back to their shoes. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, and not knowing what to say, they say nothing. Simple interchange that you use to confirm your sense of belonging is strained, feeding your sense of loneliness.
After dealing with serious medical and emotional issues, you may feel uncomfortable or impatient with others' relatively mundane conversation. It is especially lonely when you feel that you no longer fit into your old world but that you do not yet have a new world to replace that of being a cancer patient. Take comfort in knowing that you will fit in again with time.
The bottom line is that you went through treatment and faced a life-threatening illness yourself. No matter how much love and support you feel, you are the one facing your illness, your fears, and your future.
One of the hardest aspects of completing treatment is that the average observer seems to expect you to feel only relief and joy. The average person does not recognize the stress of completing therapy. You may keep your fears and anxieties to yourself to avoid sounding ungrateful or pathologically depressed. Surviving your personal challenge of cancer can be very lonely.
What Can I Do If I Feel Lonely?
Surviving cancer is lonely only as long as you keep other people shut out of your world. Take the time and energy to explain to the people close to you how you feel and what you are thinking. The people who care about you are not mind readers. Dealing with your survival is new territory for them as well as for you, and they need your input to know how best to relate to you and how to help you. Be sure they understand that you are not necessarily sharing your problems and feelings in order for them to fix things. Just having an understanding, sympathetic ear is comforting and healing.
If you believe that there are absolutely no people out there who could possibly understand how you feel, then you have not connected yourself with cancer survivors farther along the road to recovery. Many survivors understand what you have been through and how you feel now. Many appreciate the chance to share and help. They can help you in a way that the most well-intentioned, loving, and thoughtful people who have not experienced cancer cannot. Now is a good time to find out about support groups, hotlines, and one-on-one matched support people such as the American Cancer Society's "CanSurmount" if you did not pursue this during your cancer therapy. Some cancer survivors wait years to try a support group, having lived with loneliness, fear, and anger for an unnecessarily long time.
If you feel lonely, reach out to others.
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Tags: Cancer
Tags: Cancer