Coping (Magazine): Fear

Sometimes I go days without having anything to write about, and sometimes I have a pile of drafts for posts waiting to be shared. With all of the ASCO news over the last month, I'm in one of those "pile of drafts" phases. I have a whole bunch of articles that I've saved that I haven't yet had a chance to share and comment on.

One of them came from someone's Facebook post about a month ago, an article from Coping magazine. I've linked to Coping articles before, and they're usually very good. They provide information about different types of cancer (including lymphoma), but there are lots of other sources that give more detailed information, so that's not usually why I check out Coping. Instead, I think they're a great source for inspiration. Their articles are just as likely to be written by a survivor as by a doctor or other health professional. On down days, it's worth just checking out what's there, just to see if something speaks to you -- an interview with a celebrity, perhaps, or another first-person story from a survivor. They even have an excellent section caregivers, who have their own special coping needs.

The article that I have had sitting on my list for a while is from the March/April issue; it's called "Facing the Fear of Recurrence." For someone with Follicular Lymphoma, that fear is kind of constant -- or, at least, present in some form. But, really, it's there for any survivor (or, at least, all the cancer survivors I know).

The article talks about fear, and how the mind and body have evolved over time to use fear. Fear can be positive -- short term, it warns us to get out of the way of something bad. Long term, it teaches us to avoid things that can harm us.

But, of course, fear can be bad, too -- especially long term. We can avoid things that might harm us, but to such an extent that we are paralyzed by that fear, and stop living our lives. And what's the point, then? We fear that cancer will take things away from us, and then we're so worried, that we end up not doing those things we were afraid to we were going to lose.

I'll give you the last few lines of the article (but you should read all of it yourself):

We are born with a full range of emo­tions. Joy, anxiety, love, sadness, guilt, happiness, peace, and even fear all have purpose in our lives. When any emotion, especially fear, begins to overwhelm you, remember two things:

• As a survivor, you have come through fearful times before and can do it again.
• Fear can actually empower you to be more active in your ongoing well-being.

Fear doesn’t need to rob you of your goals and dreams, but your goals and dreams can be the best tools you have against fear.

We can't let fear paralyze us.  We can't let Fear win, any more than we can let Cancer win, when we have some weapon to use against it. We have to live our lives.