Comparisons to your old self or to others are counterproductive.
Train yourself to avoid comparing your current situation or self to your pre-cancer one. Avoid comparing yourself to people who are not dealing with cancer and to others who are. It is nourishing to be inspired by someone else’s achievements but defeating to compare.
Look toward building a new you as opposed to re-creating the old you.
Trying to recapture you before cancer is a goal destined for failure or at least major frustration. Your body, emotions, and perspective are different. Physically, think of yourself as building up to a new you, not back to your old self. Recognize your limits and handicaps so that you can work on overcoming the ones that can be overcome and accepting the ones that are unalterable. Emotionally, make your survival such a strengthening force that, after time for adequate healing, you feel unstoppable.
Focus on the good things that have come from your cancer experience.
Make a long list of the good things that have come from your cancer experience. Have them ready in your mind or, better yet, on a piece of paper kept in your wallet. At moments when you feel discouraged, angry, frustrated, or depressed, review your list. Although your situation may not change, thinking positively will help you see and feel it differently.
What does not kill you makes you strong.
Nietzsche’s words can apply to you. Like survivors of wars or serious accidents, you have faced a challenge greater than any that many people ever face in their lifetime. And you survived. Take pride and gather inner strength from the fact of your survival. If you can survive cancer, you can survive other challenges.
During the immediate recovery phase, when you are still experiencing physical problems and changes and when you face a host of transitional stresses, you may feel that the experience has left you weaker and more vulnerable, not stronger. What does not kill you makes you strong in the long run. Immediately following a fight or challenge the victor is tired and weak. In the long run the victor is stronger.
Break up life’s challenges into manageable pieces.
Every task, no matter how big, is composed of smaller, more easily managed parts. Learn how much you can handle, physically and emotionally, and then approach your life by focusing on the manageable. If you worry about how you are going to make it to your next checkup three months hence, just think about getting through the month, or week, or day. Ask yourself to handle what you know you can handle.
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