Counseling Can Help People With Cancer

Counseling can help you sort out many different types of problems that you may face when you have cancer. For example, it can help with

• Coping with your reactions to cancer
• Family and relationship issues
• Exploring personal issues
• Dealing with practical issues

People have many reactions to a diagnosis of cancer. You may feel fear, have strong reactions to changes to your body, or be anxious about treatment. Some people feel very angry, or find it difficult to cope with a feeling of loss of control. You may feel very stressed about having to cope with side effects of treatment, such as fatigue, pain or sickness.

Cancer can also affect your family relationships, in terms of how to discuss the diagnosis with your children and your partner; it may also affect intimacy with your partner. There can be role changes within the family, especially if you are no longer able to fulfill the role you used to, even temporarily.

Cancer can stir up many deeply personal issues such as spirituality, sexuality and relationships. It may also affect your usual work and pleasure activities or your goals and ambitions.

Cancer may also cause financial strain. You may need to have difficult conversations about financial support, mortgages and pensions or making a will. All of these can cause tension within the family and extra stress for you. There may be practical problems such as transportation to appointments and treatment.  In terms of communicating with your physician(s), you may want to deal with things in ways that your friends or family don't agree with.

It can help to talk through any of these issues and feelings with someone outside your circle of friends and family, who are often too close to the issues to see them clearly and objectively. A counselor can help you find different ways of coping that hadn't occurred to you before, and because counseling is confidential, you can be honest about what is bothering you. 

Naturally, there is no evidence to suggest that having counseling will help treat or cure your cancer. Nor is there any convincing evidence that it will help prolong your life. But there is a lot of evidence that counseling can help you to cope better with the many difficulties you face, during and after your cancer diagnosis and treatment, and can greatly reduce the stress you are under and improve your quality of life.

Research has found that counseling can help people overcome the depression and anxiety that cancer can cause and assist in dealing with phobias about cancer treatments, such as fear of  injections or being confined to a small space during an MRI scan.

Although some doctors and nurses may provide their patients with emotional and psychological support, many don’t feel comfortable doing this. Some health care staff may not feel able to give support or they may not have the time. Their main focus is on treating and curing your cancer. Of course, this is very important, but many people are also worried about how they can cope with their illness emotionally, and how it will disrupt their everyday life. Because of this, some cancer units now have a counselor or psychotherapist as part of their team.

You can find professional therapists for cancer in Claremont online, and address emotional issues inherent in a cancer diagnosis in a more effective way.