A breast cancer diagnosis is devastating. No woman ever expects to hear her doctor tell her she’s suffering from breast cancer. If your doctor does sit you down to have this conversation with you, it’s not uncommon for you to experience a myriad of emotions that run the gamut from shock to horror to fear to determination. There’s no wrong way to feel about a breast cancer diagnosis, but it’s imperative you focus on the outcome rather than the things that are going wrong in life.
Take a Moment to Feel
Hearing the words from your doctor outlining your breast cancer diagnosis is shocking. You have every right to spend the rest of the day allowing your emotions to take control. Really give yourself some time to feel them. Cry, scream, and feel your emotions. Let the fear, the terror, and the anger take over your body and let it out. You deserve a chance to feel these things, but don’t allow these negative feelings to overtake your mind and your body. You have one day to allow these feelings to make themselves known and after that, you’re focusing on all the good still in your life.
Stay Optimistic
Once your day of feeling all your negative emotions is over, it’s time to focus on optimism. Research supports doctor’s beliefs that patients with a better attitude often face a more positive outcome after being diagnosed with cancer. There’s no indication there is a medical reason for this other than the fact that people with a positive attitude face less stress and fewer episodes of anxiety than those with a poor attitude. Since people with a good attitude are more likely to get up and exercise, laugh, and really enjoy life, they do have a much better chance of living a fuller, healthier, and longer life.
Choosing optimism despite your breast cancer diagnosis is helpful. A good attitude allows you to experience more joy in life, which allows you to feel less stress. When you’re less stressed, your immune system works harder and more efficiently, and you’re better able to get through this difficult time. Your positive attitude can help your breast cancer prognostics tremendously.
Choose Grace
You aren’t perfect, and neither is your body. It’s all right to be mad and to feel upset, but don’t focus on it. It’s not a realistic expectation to feel upbeat and positive about a cancer diagnosis every moment of the journey, and it’s important to remember that. You are allowed to have moments of sadness and depression, and you can sit down and cry all you want. The goal is to focus on the positives while maintaining a good attitude. It can have a really significant effect on your outcome to surgeries, complications, and even treatment.
Put the negatives aside after day one, but let them creep up on you and experience them when they come along from time-to-time. The point is to feel them, and then it’s to tell them to go away and focus on being positive once again. It might not cure you of cancer, but a positive attitude and a graceful way of living can help you get through this.
Choosing grace means allowing yourself to remember you’re not perfect. You won’t respond to every medication, and you won’t have a good day every day. Just remember to choose grace rather than to choose the perfection of being the best cancer fighter and survivor imaginable. It keeps you humble.
Your good attitude might not change your cancer diagnosis, but it can certainly help you better cope with it as the months go on. Setbacks seem less intimidating, and hope for the future can make it easier for you to fight. Believe in the good and let yourself imagine you will be in remission eventually, and you might just see that day turn into a reality before much longer.