Emotional Support

Laugh more often. Laughter gives your immune system a boost.

Maintaining Optimism After a Cancer Diagnosis

by Ann Webster, PhD

 

To cancer survivors, health is not simply the absence of illness. Survivors face all sorts of physical, psychological, social, behavioral, and spiritual challenges. Cancer creates a great deal of fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, and even panic. Maintaining optimism and resiliency is often difficult.

A Letter from the Land of Cancer

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

On December 26, 2005, Walter Wangerin Jr. felt a lump in his neck. Doctors later confirmed his fears – he had lung cancer. Walter began writing letters to close friends and family, relating his experience with the disease. He wrote about confronting mortality, about the medical procedures he endured, about the strength of the relationships surrounding him, and about the hope he possessed. He later collected these letters and transformed them into a book. What follows is a selection from that book, Letters from the Land of Cancer.

Denial

by Suzanne M. Miller, PhD

Denial can be good. As one of the psyche’s primary defense mechanisms, denial is a natural way of distracting from or selectively editing out a painful reality. Since the late 19th century, however, when Sigmund Freud described denial in his psychodynamic theories as a maladaptive coping defense, the common wisdom has asserted that if we deny negative aspects of our lives, such as a threatening medical situation, we’re probably harming ourselves by not taking actions that could improve our health.