‘You’ll beat cancer if you stay
positive’. This topic and its impact on our emotional well-being has been one
of the most popular with hundreds of comments that hit close to our heart.
Our members have many a time
heard the words ‘stay positive’, ‘a positive mindset will breeze you through
chemo’, ‘You are so beating cancer’s arse’ ‘If you stay positive, you will get
through this’, ‘You caught this early, you’ll be fine’, ‘You’ve SO got this’,
‘If anyone can kick cancer’s arse it is you’, ‘You’ve got the better cancer’.
However, the reality of how these words make us feel is very far from positive.
What became quickly clear was a
sense of how our feelings of fear and sadness due to cancer are minimised by
others. We felt we were not allowed to be anxious, sad or fearful. A member
said, ‘it shook me to the core’, and another saying ‘it was deeply painful’,
when needing to smile whenever her cancer was mentioned. What we almost all
agreed on was that the relentless positivity force hindered our ability to
process the trauma that we had endured, minimising our emotions to meet the
expectation of others, and this we found utterly exhausting and effortful.
Many of us felt that putting on
our positivity cloak was a must for others around us as they would not be able
to cope. This extended to immediate family, friends, and colleagues. Sometimes,
we’ve had to apologise for not ‘coping’, amid not being allowed to grieve the
losses we experience due to cancer.
There was a sense that we felt
less positive whenever we tried to enforce this positivity, and so we’ve ended
up being selective in our approach, censoring what we say to whom and
pretending everything is fine and allowing ourselves the dishonesty to others
when our feelings are not validated. This has meant we’ve lost friends and
family members along the way.
The truth is that pretending
that we are ok when we are not, is not a helpful line to take. We are not
doomed and gloomed, we do have ‘positive’ days and we are hopeful and
resilient, we want to survive to the best of our ability, and this is a really
delicate point when it comes to secondary breast cancer. But the reality is
that our fears can be very real to us. The sadness from the loss to our
identity, and the side effects of treatment which linger on for years put us in
a vulnerable position and can be limiting. In fact, we are not fighting cancer,
but we are fighting the side effects of treatment. We acknowledged that
embracing our difficult and upsetting feelings can help us experience a
multitude of emotions that can only be beneficial longer term. We’ve learned
that suppressing our emotions will backfire, validating them, and addressing
them with appropriate tools can lessen the need for the ‘toxic positivity’
which we have found unhelpful.
An interesting point that
emerged was a delayed experience of Post Traumatic Stress symptoms when we’ve
in fact tried to be jolly and ‘positive’ through treatment. The reality of what
has hit us has emerged later after a few years. This evidence shows that the
inability to process the trauma that we have endured has led to a delayed onset
of PTSD symptoms which isn’t the longer term aim of ‘being positive’.
We can refuse to be jolly and
sunny when having sad days. We believe that a positive outlook is helpful of
course but not the relentless optimism which can be blinding. We have learned
that we can accept our vulnerabilities without resigning to them, and by
embracing our emotions we are not denying them the attention they deserve.
We
agreed that allowing us to ‘feel’ is to ‘empower’. A balanced approach to our
emotional experiences will suit us better longer term. In fact, there is good
evidence to show that one of the reasons behind depression is the inability to
fulfil positive expectations. We do not want to feel depressed, we want to be
able to thrive and grow from our trauma, so counter intuitively or not forcing
the positivity cloak on can only increase the discrepancy between where we are
and where we are expected to be.
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