Episode 028: Finding Your Way During Cancer
Aug 09, 2018•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
Yes, it’s hard to put up with cancer, but isn’t it also true that you’ve had to stand up to challenges before? Isn’t it true that you’ve had to come up against problems, against pressure, you had to deal with uncertainty, so is there anything that’s helped you then? Something that’s made things easier? Something that you could perhaps apply to your life right now? This is just one cool strategy that you’re going to hear about from Lisa. Lisa Beatty is a psychologist at Flinders University in Adelaide and she has developed this fantastic online program called: Finding My Way, that helps you and me to deal with cancer physically and mentally. Here is what we cover in this conversation:
Common hurdles for all cancer patients (including you)
How to deal with depression during cancer
Why you should not put off things for later (during treatment and beyond)
Building momentum in recovery
How cancer stereotypes get in your way
Why cancer is a family illness
Getting distress help without leaving your home
and much, much more!
Links
Finding My Way
Cancer Council SA launches Finding My Way
Depression and anxiety in long-term cancer survivors compared with spouses
Carers Australia
Episode 023: Getting The Support You Need, On Your Terms
Full Transcript
Joe: Lisa, you obviously have seen a lot of folks who struggle with the mental side of cancer and I guess some things come up over and over again. What are some of the commonalities that you see?
Lisa: Yes, there are quite a few commonalities, regardless of what sort of cancer type people have or whether it’s advanced or early stage cancers, there are lots of similarities in terms of the initial emotional impact. There’s the initial shock of the diagnosis. I see a lot of people struggling with guilt about what they’re putting their family through, also a lot of distress. It might not necessarily be at the level we’d say is clinically significant depression or a depressive episode, but it’s definitely impacting on their ability to enjoy their life and do their normal activities.
Also, things like a lot of worry and fear during treatment, about how their treatment is going, whether it’s working, uncertainty about how their test results are going to be going as they go through. There are lot of those, those are the common worry, fear, anxiety, distress, and sadness and depression can be really prevalent as well. We know that when people are going through treatment, depression is the most commonly diagnosed problem for people. Where they actually have lost interest and pleasure in normal activities and they’re feeling consistently down and sad and depressed, as well.
They’re the most common hurdles that we see. Then on top of that, there are also things like a lot of people struggle with body image changes. If they’re going through things like chemotherapy, then their body image can really quite drastically change. A lot of hair loss, not just on their head, but whole-body hair loss. Also, people who have had surgery or might have, for example, if it’s bowel cancer, they might have a stoma for the first time. It’s a lot to adapt to.
I think that’s the biggest thing, summarising all of that into one sentence. It’s a huge adjustment. We would tend to just say that these are people having difficulties coping when they’re adjusting. They’ve never had to adjust to anything on this scale before.
Joe: Yes, absolutely, Lisa. You mentioned clinically significant. When we’re talking about depression or anxiety, clinically significant, does that mean that it’s similar to depression you get outside of cancer?
Lisa: Yes. I think that’s a really good point to make, that depression in cancer is the same as depression in the general community, in terms of how it looks. It can be a bit difficult to tease apart somethings because the side-effects of the cancer tre...
