Navigating the Different Emotions as a Young Person with Cancer

What Emotions Could you Experience During the Diagnosis and Treatment?

There is a range of positive and negative emotions you could face during your diagnosis and treatment. These emotions could be joy, hopelessness, isolation and loneliness, sadness and depression, fear, anxiety, hope, bittersweet feelings, anger, stress, gratitude, and guilt (National Cancer Institute, n.d.; Wang & Wei, 2020). These emotions can come and go in a cycle, and range based on stage of cancer, where you are in your journey, treatment stage, and are also influenced by your social location, personal identity, and social supports.

Long Term Psychological Effects

Experiencing cancer as a young adult may pose serious psychological challenges that can affect you in the long-term depending on the journey, stage of cancer, treatment plan, amongst other things. For example, you could be placed at a higher risk for serious psychological distress (Hoffman et al., 2009). Other potential long-term psychological challenges include chronic fatigue, heightened anxiety, depression, higher risk for PTSD, and cognitive difficulties (Hoffman et al., 2009).

Ways to Cope

There are several ways to cope with your short term and long-term emotions and psychological distress. Firstly, we try to ensure that you have the proper tools and resources needed during your journey and diagnosis, as this could lower your risk of long-term psychological problems (Stein et al., 2008). Resources and tools include both interpersonal, educational/informational, and intrapersonal (Stein et al., 2008). Establishing a social support network consisting of social workers, psychologists, friends, or family members is an interpersonal resource and tool (Stein et al., 2008). Ensuring that you have proper access to accurate information about your diagnosis, what cancer is, treatment options, side effects, and social support service numbers reduce the risk of long-term psychological distress (Stein et al., 2008). Having the proper information to read and understand is very beneficial for patients (Stein et al., 2008). Finally, intrapersonal resources and tools are characteristics of your personality, such as having optimism, spirituality, reflexive and emotionally intelligence (Stein et al., 2008).

Social media is another great way to cope with your emotional and psychological distress. Using social media sites, you can find online support groups where you can talk about your diagnosis and journey safely, without feeling judged. Online social support groups create a shared sense of feeling loved, valued and a sense of community and belonging for the members within (Wang & Wei, 2020).

Other important ways to cope include meditation, self-care practices, doing activities you love, practicing self-love and properly grieving the loss of your old self, life, and identity (Canadian Cancer Society, n.d.; National Cancer Institute, n.d.).

Please reach out to us at support@colorectalcancercanada.com. We would love to help you navigate this journey together.

References

Canadian Cancer Society / Société canadienne du cancer. (n.d.). Your emotions and cancer. Canadian Cancer Society. https://cancer.ca/en/living-with-cancer/coping-with-changes/your-emotions-and-cancer

Hoffman, K. E., McCarthy, E. P., Recklitis, C. J., & Ng, A. K. (2009). Psychological distress in long-term survivors of adult-onset cancer. Archives of Internal Medicine, 169(14), 1274. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2009.179

National Cancer Institute. Emotions and cancer. National Cancer Institute. (n.d.). https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/coping/feelings

Stein, K. D., Syrjala, K. L., & Andrykowski, M. A. (2008). Physical and psychological long-term and late effects of cancer. Cancer, 112(S11), 2577–2592. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.23448

Wang, J., & Wei, L. (2020). Fear and Hope, Bitter and Sweet: Emotion Sharing of Cancer Community on Twitter. Social Media + Society, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119897319