I have never felt this good after chemo. Maybe close but honestly this is great. I do feel slightly odd but can’t really expand on that. But odd is better than sickly or worse. I do feel a little tired but I think that is coming more form my mind than my body. I don’t have the chemo hangover so drive the kids around on a few journeys. This tells me I am in a good place 24 hours after I met my new chemo drug. But I ain’t daft. I know this feeling may not last and I do not want to be lead into a false sense of security. I hate that. You know I do.
This feeling lasts a few days. I can today (04/09) feel my mouth start to move out. It takes the skin on the roof with it first, then returns for the sides of my cheeks and the inside of my lips. A cold sore is usually left – a parting gift? I will take your mouth and leave you a little pressie!! Bastard effects.
I sense a change in my movements too. Brain – hell it’s still slow – lagging far behind the rest of me. It doesn’t seem to care enough to speed up to the pace I would like, where I can operate with clarity and confidence. In fact the more emphasis I put on this ‘lack’ the greater it appears to be.
I am still reflecting on my experience in the unit this time. Questioning my part in it. Am I being unreasonable expecting them to listen to me as much as I require? I was right to challenge the meds – I would not have felt at all happy leaving without them. But why am I left with such a bitter taste in my mouth about both what happened? My therapist has often told me I have a tendency to ‘blame myself’ instinctively. I do. So I sit with that for a few hours. Self blame is a cognitive process in which we attribute the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself. Self blame is a component of self-directed emotions like guilt and self disgust. Blaming yourself for the guilt or shame of being a victim is recognized as a defense against the extreme powerlessness we feel in wake of a traumatic event. I have shared some of these traumas with you already – in earlier posts. So I am aware what is playing out for me here. It is not necessarily a bad thing – self blame. Indeed, feeling responsibility, guilt or shame keeps us from hurting others and lets us learn from our mistakes. It keeps us human. Think for a minute of all those around you who have let you take their share of their unpleasant feelings – the people who have wronged you, hurt, you, taken from you, abused you. Do you think they have ever learnt from their mistakes? Or do you think they just move these feelings from one person to another, making damn sure they never get to experience what is rightly there’s? Cowards.
However, it can become a problem when we blame ourselves for things we didn’t do. This is where I am. As a child I experienced many levels of trauma. Lack of attention was an issue for me – form all significant caregivers. I was not allowed to feel hurt, angry, betrayed or abandoned. I did not receive the right amount of soothing or unconditional positive regard to be able to heal and move on. So, I spent may years ‘stuck’ in this cycle of rejection with no ears available to me to hear my voice. I coped, and constructed techniques to survive. Sadly one of this was self-blame. This is why I struggle so much when I don’t feel understood. If something goes wrong, my first instinct is to look inward – ‘What did I do wrong?’
Directly or indirectly, we have have all heard messages like ‘There is nothing wrong with you – you don’t need to be upset – get on with it’….etc. These feelings are left unresolved, and I know only too well, after almost two decades of being a counsellor, how these can manifest in a whole host of interpersonal problems.
But now, with my own counsellor, I am working my way through these once again – only this time on a background of cancer and chemo. I am not well. I know that. I am fighting cancer and I am using my body as a vehicle for the chemo. So everything has changed for me – everything. Nothing is the same anymore. My sanity, my life, my place in my family, my place in my home, my place in my work role, my place in the whole world. All changed. All gone and all being grieved for to some extent. That is the bit you can’t see. You see the baldy head and the tears and the winces of pain and sickness. You see my eyes are dull and my personality is weak. But on the inside is where the real work is going on.
I am working at self-acceptance – I am a mess, but that needs to be OK right now. I am a beautiful disaster and I am human. I am not going to get this right first time – and I have to accept that, as I do not want to come back here again ever. I am stuck expanding all my energy into trying to shore up the castle walls as they try crumbling around me. Taking away this blame – this innate reaction to external stressors will – without taking away the responsibility keeps us accountable to ourselves, without setting us up for shame, guilt and devaluation. Self blame is a futile control mechanism. I have taken a direct hit and turned to self blame and as a result fallen into a state of false mental constructs and triggering past stories. We are all so busy holding on to our flaws and sense of unworthiness and fear of failure. I have to work at recognizing this – which I am – and through honest investigation nurture what I am feeling instead.