You may say: “How do you expect me to take any of the actions you mention in your previous articles when my whole life now consists of persistent fear and overwhelming anxiety?” There is no denying that a major change in life, such as your illness, entails fear and anxiety.
No one can claim to be feeling what you are feeling AND that is exactly why no one can do much about it except YOU.
Again, here you have a choice: to live in constant fear or to live despite the fear.
So, let us start by writing down your anxiety-causing fears. For example, fear of:
Death
Pain
Not being able to afford treatment
Your children having to cope with your illness or your absence
People’s pity
Other fears that are specific to you
All the above fears are legitimate and real. No one denies it. The best weapons against these fears are knowledge and positive attitude. We are afraid of what we do not know or understand.
Fear of death
Before your diagnosis, you did not have this fear of death, although death was as probable as it is now. Only now you keep reminding yourself of it through your illness.
Let us seek information about the rate of survival. With medical advances, recovery is close to 100% in many cases. Work on achieving that.
Let me go to the extreme and say that someone’s case is terminal, and death is imminent; they have a few months only. They can spend these few months refusing the idea of death and being miserable, OR they can utilize them to sort unfinished business and organizing their belongings and house.
It can be a blessing in disguise when someone is given notice about death. They get the chance to organize what they are leaving behind, do things they always wanted to do but never got to, say their goodbyes to loved ones, leaving them with good memories.
They depart having lived their days to the full and feel at ease that everything they are leaving behind is in order. It is a challenge. It can be faced.
As for the issues of “why me”? and the tangled emotions of “I don’t want to die”, there is no remedy except acceptance. Look at these two issues as obstacles to living your days efficiently.
AND, in quite a number of cases, patients reverse a doctor’s expectations
Fear of pain
Fear increases the experience of pain. No one looks forward to pain. But when it is inevitable, we seek information on how to reduce it, medical and psychological.
Try these pain management tips:
With every shot of pain, take a deep breath and breathe out the pain.
Use visualization to imagine yourself on a different plane, observing but not feeling what is happening to you.
Try to analyze the pain you are experiencing. Concentrating on what is going on distracts your mind, and the pain is experienced as less intense. There is no way to measure your experience of pain and as such you do not know that the pain is less. But try this technique with anger. Busying your mind with analyzing what is going on in your mind during an anger episode, reduces the anger.
Fear of not being able to afford treatment
You can explore several options, take these steps:
Seek information about organizations and institutions that provide financial help.
Contact the ministry of health.
Make use of campaigns such as crowdfunding.
Ask friends to contribute money instead of presents and flowers. Make use of rich relatives, friends, and officials. There is no shame in that.
Fear of your children having to cope with your illness or your absence
You set the example for them when it comes to coping. Whichever way you deal with your illness will be their way. Being a realistic model to them would be your most important achievement. Catered to their age, be truthful in giving them information and genuine in expressing your emotions – without dramatizing. Give them the confidence that “together we will make it through despite the possible negative consequences”. They would feel that they are sharing and contributing, instead of helpless and scared. And they will keep a good memory and example to follow in their own lives.
Fear of people’s pity
People’s pity should be least of your concerns. Pity is for the brainless and helpless, and you are neither. Pity people who pity you. They don’t know you and they don’t know better. If someone expresses pity to your face, ask them why they pity you? Do they think you are not capable of handling difficulties, no matter how hard? If someone just gives you a look that expresses pity, just nod your head and say: “to you too”, with a big smile on your face. You are not a victim. Defy them and feel entitled to educate them. You are a person with a problem, working on its resolution. Who in the world is without a problem? Some worse than yours!
Other fears that are specific to you
Handle them one at a time, with determination and defiance to live well in spite of everything. Write down what it is you are afraid of, and why. Look at it the next day and perform a reality check. Does it have any factual basis, or is it based on your general fear and troubled thoughts? Fear of death seems very factual to you. BUT death is factual to all people, old and young.
Once you stand up to one fear and anxiety and manage them, even if not fully, you will feel empowered and capable.
