When I was struggling the most from an emotional perspective with my illness to be honest I found it hard to talk about how I was feeling. Nobody actually censored me but I definitely censored myself. I believed that others would judge me for “not coping well” if I told them how I felt. And because of that fear I didn’t feel safe to talk about my feelings anywhere. You might feel the same way.

On the other hand maybe you have tried to talk to a friend who is clearly struggling with that sense of sadness or fear that many people with cancer go through. You don’t know what to say. And what you have said seems to have put your friend or family member off. They might even have stopped talking to you. Whether you are the person with blood cancer or the person trying to help the two videos below might revolutionise the way you approach handling the difficult emotions that so often accompany hearing difficult news or worrying about the future.

The truth is a lot of people do not want to hear about our struggles with fear and/or a huge sense of loss concerning what blood cancer has taken away from us. It isn’t that people don’t want to help it is just that we are woefully badly prepared as a culture to deal with suffering. But some people do want to hear. Not least the professionals and I am not ashamed to admit that I have gone for counselling myself and still do. Several of the patient groups have telephone helplines you can call which can be incredibly useful. In extreme the Samaritans are available 24/7. If you think about it carefully you may even find some of your friends and family are much more open to such conversations than others. As an additional source of help I invite anyone who is finding things really rough at the moment due to blood cancer to join one of the many online forums including one for readers of this site.

Many months ago now I first watched a couple of brief videos that I share below and found them really helpful. The second is where I first heard the phrase “the tyranny of the positive” which rapidly became part of my vocabulary.

The idea is that “positive thinking” which can be helpful in some situations can be oppressive at times. It fails to distinguish between emotions and thoughts. Emotions cannot be positive or negative they just are. Thoughts on the other hand can most definitely be negative. And whilst you cannot directly control your emotions you can most definitely argue with yourself and persuade yourself that a thought is wrong and should be replaced with a positive alternative thought.

Emotions tend to prompt thoughts but thoughts also prompt emotions. Both working together tend to prompt your actions. And you do, even in your most severe emotional state, have responsibility to control your actions no matter how much as you might feel like smashing plates or something else because you are so upset!

Honestly if you have just been diagnosed, or heard some difficult news such as that you need treatment again, I would say at this stage don’t try and pick yourself up. There might be time for that later. Let yourself feel sad for a bit, it is OK to do so.

These two crucial YouTube videos helped me more than anything else as I faced treatment for my own blood cancer and my father’s stem cell proceedure in the same month. The videos are only short and if you can only manage one watch the first one on this page.

The idea is that we shouldn’t try to suppress deny or repress our emotions. Let them be. Yes work on your thoughts but do so after acknowledging and accepting your emotions. You are not meant to be strong, just present.

Strength will come, we are remarkably resilient. And one way it comes in my view is gaining knowledge of what is to come. My dad had a real up hill battle with his DLBL but I am shielding with him right now and looks like I may still be shielding here when it comes round to the two year anniversary of me starting chemo and his getting his stem cell (autologous) which happened the same month. Life can be tough. But there IS emphatically real hope.

Both short clips are from psychologists who have done a lifetime of research work behind these ideas. The common theme is that sometimes people try to help us with the “at least it’s not as bad as X” type of statements. Or perhaps the “cheer up and be more positive” type of statements, or maybe, “I promise you everything is definitely going to be just fine” All of which can be infuriating when you are facing major emotional turmoil due to the challenge of blood cancer.

These kind of statements can be so annoying to someone who is really suffering because they seem to diminish the pain we are feeling. And they can devalue us, making us feel the person doesn’t care about us.

A desire for everyone to just be happy and be positive can be understandable. And yet when blood cancer is demolishing our lives why should we rejoice? And if our friends and family make like it really isn’t that big of a deal well it can be very hurtful and as one of the videos show we just tend to not bother talking to those people about how we feel any more.

Sometimes we don’t want cheering up. We don’t want pat answers. We don’t want to be told “it will be alright for sure”. We don’t want to be told our emotions are negative and should be fought against or denied.

At times the best thing someone else can do is simply be with us and not talk at all. Sometimes all a friend needs to do is show up. In the ancient book of Job (found in the Bible) when disaster struck him his friends came and sat with him quietly for days. They showed him compassion by doing so. It was only by opening their mouths that they started causing trouble! You don’t have to be religious to relate to just wishing your friends or family wouldn’t say anything sometimes. These videos are not religious at all but seem to make a similar point.

Of course our friends can say useful things to us. But there is often a time when we just want our emotions to be heard; to be understood, to be seen.

And we need to be kind to ourselves too

We need sometimes to just say something like “Ah yes I see I am feeling sad / anxious / depressed / angry today. And I can see why. These feelings will come and go. They are not bad of themselves. But I will choose not to be dominated by them. And yes, I will remind myself of reasons to be grateful. And yes I hope to watch these emotions waft away. But for now this is how I feel and I’m not going to apologise for it or deny it or try to pretend to myself that I don’t. And whilst I won’t show these emotions to everyone, if I can find a safe space to share them with someone I will.”

Much much more to say about the. But check out these two very brief but helpful videos

The first is called “How to help a friend in grief” and makes the point that trying to simply cheer someone up is often really damaging. We can’t heal someone’s pain by trying to take it away from them.

Pain desires acknowledgement. It wants to be seen and heard. And by allowing someone to feel sad we do ultimately help them to feel better, just not as quickly as we often want in our instant quick fix society.

So how can you help someone who’s depressed? The answer might surprise you. “Your job as a support person is not to cheer people up. It’s to acknowledge that it sucks right now, and their pain exists,” Devine said. Read more: https://t.co/YktnoawoPi #depressionhelp #howtohelp

— Megan Devine (@refugeingrief) May 29, 2020

If it takes you two years or more to “get over” a diagnosis of blood cancer so be it. And in fact who says you have to “get over” it at all or that life can or should ever go back to exactly the same way it was before.

We sometimes need desperately for someone to understand that things really do feel bad for us, and just that process of being heard stops us from feeling so alone. No wonder we benefit from being in this group where others genuinely do understand what we are going through.

Watch this charmingly simple but profound video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2zLCCRT-nE

The second video is a brief TED talk on Emotional courage. It explicitly discusses this idea of the Tyranny of the Positive. Here’s a couple of quotes from the transcript to whet your appetite 

 “Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness.

People with cancer are automatically told to just stay positive. Women, to stop being so angry. And the list goes on.

It’s a tyranny. It’s a tyranny of positivity. And it’s cruel. Unkind. And ineffective. And we do it to ourselves, and we do it to others . . .

Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification. Like that delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator – the more you try to ignore it the greater its hold on you.

You might think you’re in control of unwanted emotions when you ignore them, but in fact they control you. Internal pain always comes out. Always. And who pays the price? We do. Our children, our colleagues, our communities.”

The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage by Susan David https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDQ1Mi5I4rg

Watch this TED talk here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDQ1Mi5I4rg

Learn More

Our Culture can’t cope with Suffering

What causes mental illness?

Holistic counselling and pastoring (Biblical counselling #3)

The four pillars of mental health and wellbeing

Should a Christian go to counseling with a secular therapist?