Cancer and Isolation - Reflections of a Cancer Therapist
The energy level was high and big feelings filled the room. A couple of challenging exchanges between therapist and client lead to deep reflection and meditation that would have lasting effects for several days and sleepless nights. Did you feel that? “What?” - the connection? We aren’t the same- you’re in a different phase of life, you can’t possibly understand. You have a family, you’re married with kids” he says. - “Yes, this is true - yet…isolation.” We stop and look at each other through the bright screen lights of our computers. We share in a moment of silence yet in those moments of silence more was felt then words could speak. We found meaning and connection though the feeling of isolation. Ironic.
I live for these moments. Moments of deep connection. My energy is soaring. This is “the work.” He proceeds to ask me how people cope with this feeling. A feeling that is so profoundly uncomfortable and foreign. A feeling that we were sheltered from and never knew existed. In the high of my soaring energy, I respond “I don’t know. This is an area that everyone of us feels and I don’t have an answer.” I give a response that is unhelpful to him and only relates to myself, “I cope with it through this therapy space, but when I leave this space, it’s gone.”
Coming down from the natural high of this session, I begin to feel it. The isolation. It haunts me through the night as I toss and turn in bed for hours replaying the moments, the words and feeling the feelings. This is it, that deeply uncomfortable and unsettling feeling that we can’t seem to get rid of. We drown ourselves in activities, parties, chores, exercise, responsibilities, relationships, drugs; we’d do just about anything to escape this feeling. Isolation. As I allow this feeling to take over my mind and body, I reflect. Was this feeling ever an “absolute thing” that always existed yet we were unaware. Cancer has a way of bringing out feeling in us that we never knew we had. Feelings that were never felt. Its no wonder why our previous coping skills don’t work, this is a new feeling so there should be new copings skills learned. Right?
Alone. Many of us are surrounded by family and close friends during the time of treatment. Despite everyones’ well intentions and presence, we feel it. Isolation. This got me thinking. My job, isn’t one of my roles to “teach” clients’ new coping skills that would help them overcome feelings like this? This frequently comes up in session, yet I still experience a loss of words, loss of coping, this is beyond the “evidence-based practices” we were taught in grad school. This is raw and painful. It starts in infancy and never quite goes away. Connection. We spend our whole lives seeking it. We find it in many relationships, different interactions and on different levels. In grad school we’re taught that we must be “blank slates” for our client’s. No transparency, tight boundaries. I reflect. Do my clients’ want me to be a blank slate? Or did my clients’ seek me because of my colorful experiences. My experience with cancer and the cancer community? Connection.
Isolation. That night, I sat with it, I wore it, I allowed it to cover my body and it felt cold. I don’t try to remove it. I give it room. I wonder how long I can tolerate it? How long before I begin to feel numb? How long before I drown it with a “coping skill?” Can I ever make peace with it? Will it ever be my friend? Then it happened, 6am, the morning chaos. I hear the sound of my husband starting the morning brew which, as everyday, prompts me to start the morning grind. The hustle of mornings have never been my favorite. I get out of bed and start to prepare hot school lunches, wake the kids up for school as I franticly race everyone out of the house. Thirty minutes left to get ready. A freshly applied face of make-up and curls set in place, I once again take to the therapy room for my 8 am session. Just like a freshly vacuumed room, so are my emotions. Blank slate.
Two sessions later, and here it comes again. The word that robbed my sleep. This time it’s with a mother of two young children. A women who spent the past 18 months on a journey with breast cancer. She feels lost, easily angered by her children and less tolerant of her family and friends. She’s not comfortable and doesn’t feel normal in her “new body.” We sit in silence until she utters the word, “isolation.” I lock eyes with her. She asks me if I know what she means? She’s seeking a connection. “Yes” I tell her. This time I try something different. Knowing that we are wrapped in the safety of our connection, I invite isolation to join us. I wonder how long before we start a conversation about coping skills? Can we sit with the pain? That’s what we did. We didn’t try to fix it, or figure it out. We just left it. It faded.
As I reflect on the thousand’s of sessions I sat through, I stop and wonder. Why is this hitting me so hard now? I’ve always felt it, I know its “a thing.” But why now. Was this my season to “figure it out?” I take to my personal therapy session. According to Merriam-Webster, isolation means “the action of isolating: the condition of being isolated. Stresses detachment from others often involuntarily.” Cancer is something that happened to us, involuntarily, so it’s natural to feel this way. But there’s more to this puzzle. Our family and friend’s are right there, waiting for us to return, seeking a connection of our former selves, but we’re not here anymore. This experience shock us to the core. We were put in a situation of life or death. We looked at life and chose it knowing it wasn’t guaranteed. We were robbed of the innocence of never knowing the feeling. The power of choice didn’t feel powerful at the time of our decision to proceed with treatment. It felt like a punch in the gut, betrayal, weakness, shame. Did we isolate ourselves? Was isolation a “coping skill” used to help us survive the pain? And if so, why does it feel so foreign and painful?
It doesn’t matter. Just like a violent scene in a movie, we can’t unsee it. So stop trying. “Accept it like you would any other feeling, knowing that it will fade and return,” my therapist advised. She has a way of keeping me grounded. As I sit with this I remind myself of the profound power of choice. Be prepared, seek it, and when you find, invite it, embrace it. Connection. It will come in the form of new relationships, connecting with various aspects of our past selves and in new situations. Just know, like everything else, nothing lasts forever and you can’t take anything with you. It’s not for you to possess. Grow a healthy attachment to it, trusting that even when it fades, it will appear again.
Written and felt by: Mary Mathew, LMFT
Cancer survivor, cancer therapist, seeker
