The Emotions of Cancer

By: Kris Kerlin, Director of Mission Impact                   

When someone is facing cancer we know that it’s not just their body that is affected. Cancer is a whole person experience and a relational experience that affects everyone that loves the person with cancer. It affects thoughts, feelings, behaviors, relationships, daily activities, sense of meaning and purpose, life force, spirit.      

Emotional support is providing care for the whole person. recognizing that cancer changes everything and creating a space for people to grapple with those changes.      CanCare is a safe zone for emotions and a place where you can be as you are – mad, sad, glad, afraid or any other emotion.

You can be in transition, you can have a good day, a bad day or just a day. There are not too many places that we can focus on the emotional part of ourselves and fewer where we can learn about emotions, how to identify them, express them and manage them.           

Emotional support looks like listening with the heart, hearing the feelings underneath the words and extending non-judgmental empathy. As we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month this May, allow yourself to attend to the emotional part of yourself.  Reach out for support, express your feelings, share them with someone who will listen and wants to understand, a CanCare volunteer. Give support, attend to feelings in yourself and others, be kind and empathetic, make yourself a safe place for someone else.   

Quote: Henri Nouwen – Listening as Spiritual Hospitality 

"Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings.  

The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. 

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you."    

Click HERE for a handout on Dealing with Emotions. 

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