I saw more clients today than I have done for a while. It’s the day before chemo – the day I am traditionally safe to push myself and work a little harder – this is the day I usually feel good and can mange being busy and productive. Got that wrong. I have not fully recovered this cycle and I really am not feeling too great inside or outside. I read chemo makes your skin ‘silky smooth’. I am not sure if this is wind up? My skin looks grey today and my mouth? So sore…full of sore and painful skin that I am so fed up of now. This has not gone completely – and the remainders of the oral thrush stick around too. Slightly worried now, as I don’t know what the chemo will do tomorrow if I am not fully recovered, and still harboring the side effects from 3 weeks ago. I do hope it is kind to me.
I have noticed a few friends have disappeared off my radar a little. Life does go on outside of planet cancer – my planet cancer – but I do feel a little abandoned somehow. I know I am not. I know these people are close to me even though they don’t make personal contact regularly. I am not that demanding and expective. But I am sensitive and the mood swings I have been having this cycle have contributed to this heavily. I am starting to be dragged under by the feelings of heaviness and uncertainty again. I am fearing the chemo control I once had in my grasp is slipping and this new drug is taking away the skills and resilience I had managed to craft for myself for the first 4 cycles. Aware of my unhelpful ‘self-talk’, I am not always able to match this with the positive responses it needs to minimize itself in my head. I am quickly dragged into a spiral of thinking that only ends in me thinking quite dark thoughts. Thoughts about my existence and thoughts about how others may be seeing me – are they seeing me cope? Are they judging me for continuing to carry on working throughout the treatment? Are they looking at me and thinking I have got to much to say for myself? Are they thinking all I do is go on about the chemo like no one else has never had chemo before? Are people avoiding me because they don’t have cancer or chemo in their lives and they want it to stay that way thank you very much.
I am consumed these automatic negative thoughts and they are dangerous – and can spiral your mental health out of control.
What causes the negative thinking? Negative thoughts are cognitions about the self, others, or the world in general that are characterized by negative perceptions, expectations, and attributions and are associated with unpleasant emotions and adverse behavioral, physiological, and health outcomes. Research shows that negative cognitive styles are associated with increased stress reactivity, low mood and accelerated cellular aging. I’ve been reading a lot about the chemicals in our brains that control behavior.
The more that your thought patterns trend negative and slip into rumination—continually turning over a situation in your mind and focusing on its negative aspects—the easier it becomes to return automatically to these thought patterns. Make sense? Such ruminating can damage the neural structures that regulate emotions, memory, and feelings. Even when our stress and worry is completely hypothetical and not based on any real or current situation, (which is usually the case) the amygdala and the thalamus (which helps stimulate sensory and motor signals) aren’t able to differentiate this hypothetical stress from the kind that actually needs to be listened to. So we get caught up in one hell of a messy head listening and tuning in to messages that are actually not real, and based in any solid evidence. It’s our thoughts that keep it active, and it’s these thoughts that keep us anxious and thinking negatively.
Cortisol, a stress hormone, has the job of breaking down the hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps form new memories. The more cortisol that’s released in response to negative experiences and thoughts, the more difficult it can become, over time, to form new positive memories.
Negative thoughts can hamper positive thinking and the smooth functioning of your brain. Negative feelings and attitudes can lead to chronic stress which can disturb your hormone balance, damage your immune system, deplete the brain chemicals that create happiness, accelerate aging, and reduce your lifespan. The exact same set of threats I am under due to cancer and chemo. Reading this, and realizing this has saddened me. I am actually adding to my physically problems by thinking the way I do. Well, I am not helping myself, or my brain chemistry am I? I am doing my best to eat, drink and exercise in all the right ways to combat the chemo – but the biggest organ in my body that really needs the help is my brain. And that is out on it’s own.
How can I make ‘happy’ happen? I feel unbalanced, out of control and unwell from the treatment of drugs I have been taking for over 4 months now. I am being kind to myself too here – this is serious. Anyone who can go through chemo and still be able to live a decent life, with the components they need to smile and function on a basic level of human-ness are all total heroes to me. Unless you have been here – you will never get what happens to you on every level and how the drugs rinse your system of everything you once felt was normal and healthy. But I do believe that I could do something for myself to shake up my negative thinking and change it.
Rather than being in the passenger’s seat in this process, science has proven without a doubt that you can take control, affect the balance in your brain, and hack into your happy neurochemicals.
Have you heard of Dopamine? This chemical motivates you to take action and encourages the persistence and drive required to meet your needs, seek reward, or approach a goal. The anticipation of the reward is actually what triggers a dopamine good feeling in your brain causing it to release the energy you need to move towards the reward. Then, you get another pleasure hit when you successfully meet the need or reach your goal. Goals for me right now? Get through my sixth cycle of chemotherapy tomorrow with the minimalist of side effects, and keep striving until I get across the finishing line on 4th November. I must focus on this. It is closer that it ever was, and as each days goes by I edge towards this attainable goal.
I want to be able to have Christmas with my friends and family, taste food, drink wine like I used to, and feel well, healthy, happy and safe once more. I am so very grateful I am still here, and will spend another festive season with those I love very dearly and who have scaffolded me though this life-changing experience.