My new book Emotional Support Through Breast Cancer, the alternative handbook, is a culmination of a process that started almost 10 years ago, when I was twice diagnosed with breast cancer. Before being diagnosed, as a psychologist, I sometimes supported women with breast cancer and considered I had a pretty good take on what they were going through and my clients were too polite to disabuse me of this. Little did I know!! Life on the other side of the fence turned out to be completely different and much harder than I could ever have imagined, both emotionally and physically. Indeed, I was so struck by the differences and fed up with the general lack of awareness I experienced amongst most of the people treating me and around me that I decided to set about writing about these issues from my new dual perspective, in order to raise awareness.
I started with a series of articles that were published in both the popular press and professional journals, which provoked many responses from women saying things like, ‘Thank goodness I’m normal, I thought it was just me who was still lying awake at night worrying about recurrence several years after diagnosis, until you said you did.’ Or the women who told me how sick they were of trite judgements from others such as: ‘It’s time you got on with your life!’; ‘You should be over breast cancer by now.’ or ‘You’re over-anxious.’ Strong themes that also emerged from their feedback were their fear of speaking out about how they felt about breast cancer, for fear of being judged and/or their treatment being adversely affected, and the ignorance of the health professionals treating them. However, they wanted me to speak out for them.When I did so, I was often met with skeptical responses from health professionals, saying things like,‘Oh it’s just the minority who feel bad ongoingly ,’ or ‘you’re overstating how traumatic the experience is.’
This chasm of a mismatch between the views of the health professionals and the women themselves, plus my new found awareness, spurred me on to write my first book, The Psychological impact of Breast Cancer: a psychologist’s insights as a patient, written for health professionals, the aim of which was to highlight both good and bad practice and what seems to help and what doesn’t.
This book was read by women with breast cancer, too, although it wasn’t really meant for breast cancer sufferers. The fact they were reading it, and the feedback they were giving me, highlighted more than ever the need for a support manual that didn’t downplay breast cancer’s emotional effects and that validated women’s deep and enduring emotions about the gamut of effects the disease has. There was also a need to directly challenge the whole notion, so prevalent in society at large, that you’re abnormal if you can’t ‘move on’ or ‘get over’ an extreme life trauma such as breast cancer. In fact, I challenge the whole assumption that you can get over breast cancer, especially given that scars remain, both emotional and physical, and fear of recurrence is ever-present. How can we ‘get over it’?
Our review of the book is here.
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