By Emily Esfahani Smith — 2017
The time between diagnosis and death presents an opportunity for “extraordinary growth.”
Read on www.theatlantic.com
CLEAR ALL
It wasn’t until I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from my urologist who informed me that I had prostate cancer that I started to panic. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he was saying. He then ticked off a list of things I had to do.
72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues compared to just 48% of non entrepreneurs.
The neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus — and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021.
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Understanding the patterns of reaction to a prolonged illness with perhaps years of remission and a significant chance of being cured will help you put your emotional survival in focus while your doctor concentrates on your physical survival.
After treatment ends, one of the most common concerns survivors have is that the cancer will come back. The fear of recurrence is very real and entirely normal. Although you cannot control whether the cancer returns, you can control how much the fear of recurrence affects your life.
Just as cancer affects your physical health, it can bring up a wide range of feelings you’re not used to dealing with. It can also make existing feelings seem more intense. They may change daily, hourly, or even minute to minute.
Many people living with cancer experience anger. Often, the feeling arises when receiving a cancer diagnosis. But it can develop any time throughout treatment and survivorship.
In McLaren’s view, we typically perceive emotions as problems, which we then thoughtlessly express or repress. She advocates a more mindful approach, where we step back and see our emotions as sources of information.
I don’t know what happened to emotions in this society. They are the least understood, most maligned, and most ridiculously over-analyzed aspects of human life.