What I Learned from My Cancer Diagnosis

When I first got my diagnosis, I was completely overwhelmed, and truly unable to process what was happening. It was a whirlwind of appointments and tests, and my port insertion surgery, finally leading up to my chemotherapy treatments, all in under a month. I wouldn't have been able to tell you then that cancer would teach me anything.

After a time, and after things settled down, when appointments and treatments became a regular part of my life, I was able to really sit with it and figure out what I had learned, and what I was still learning.

For starters, I learned one of my main core values; one I never realized existed but was at the root of everything, and many of the things that I would get upset about if someone didn't respect it. Since I didn't even know what that was at the time, I didn't know how to protect it. Yours might be different, but for me, that was TIME. My time was the single most valuable thing to me. Having my time taken up by cancer treatments made me angry. I was no longer in control of my life; or at least it felt that way. I had exactly two choices: go through the treatments to live, or don't and quite possibly not live to see my next birthday. I, of course took the first option. I didn't realize that my time was so valuable until it was taken up by cancer treatments.

Control is the next thing I learned. I already knew, logically, that I couldn't control everything. But after my diagnosis, I truly learned this, like a felt sense of learning, not just the logical knowing. I couldn't control the fact that I had cancer, only how I reacted to it. This leads me to the third thing I'm learning.

Boundaries (still learning): Since I valued my time, and I could only control my reactions, I had to learn how to protect my time around those things I couldn't control, as well as the things I could. I didn't know before what I valued, and because of this I didn't know how to create boundaries. Learning how to set them up, for me, has been like taking baby steps. I have to learn to walk before I can run, so to say. I'm still learning all the things I value, and as I do that, I'm also learning how to create boundaries to protect them.

One of the biggest things I learned is to love and respect my body. This is truly something I am having to relearn. I'm in my 40's and I was already feeling pretty comfortable in my own skin. However, I feel like cancer took that from me, took almost everything, broke me down, and is now building me back up into someone else, inside and out. On the outside I don't even look the same. My hair is a different color and texture, no longer long, of course, and my mastectomy (with expanders) changed my physical shape. I'm struggling again with my weight and my energy level is quite low. I'm now having to learn to love the new me on the outside and respect the limits of my body on the inside.

I'm also learning more about chronic stress and how it may have been a major contributor to me getting cancer in the first place. This is actually the overarching lesson I am learning right now, and is at the root of everything. All my life I've been a people pleaser with very little of my own boundaries, always the "yes man" (woman in my case). I've also had more than my fair share of major life events; raising two kids, one born with a heart condition, seeing and helping him through his heart transplant right before he turned 22, raising the younger one, trying to help him stay out of the shadow of his older brother, two marriages, two divorces, multiple other relationships, before and in between, and one health condition after another the older I got. These health conditions and injuries that I now attribute primarily to chronic stress, including cancer, as I said before. Learning this, about chronic stress, has led me down yet another thing I'm learning, up next.

I've been trying to get to the root of the chronic stress, but this is a lot more complicated than it sounds, so allow me to explain. During my learning and discovery journey, I've had to revisit my childhood, my marriages, my friendships, and even work relationships, to see what's at the root of it all. It goes deeper than being the people pleaser. One of the things I learned very recently, that is an underlying cause of chronic stress is that, for me, I equated acceptance with approval. As a child, my parents doled out approval; for good grades, good behavior, church performances, cleaning my room, and the like, but never expressed acceptance, in the sense that no matter what I did, succeed or fail, they loved and accepted me anyway. So I strived for that approval, believing that is what made my parents accept me. I didn't realize until a very recent event in my life that, (which I'll go into momentarily), that acceptance and approval are not the same.

This recent, small, but very significant, event that changed my perspective was my decision not to go to my walk/run training that weekend. I voiced this to my boyfriend, expecting some type of response, (primarily a negative one and ready to defend my position), but was met only with silence. The story in my mind was that his silence meant disapproval. I had no idea what thoughts were going through his mind, though I would later find out. In thinking about the silence, and possible disapproval, my thoughts led me down a strange, eye opening, path. I realized that I didn't actually need his approval; I just wanted acceptance, a true understanding for why I chose not to go. We did talk about this in great detail later. I learned that the reason he was silent was, in fact, his own negative thoughts believing I had "quit" something else, essentially that he disapproved. But he pushed it down, reasoning that he didn't want me pushing myself too hard anyway, so it's probably a good thing. Still, he said nothing in the moment, or in the minutes that followed. If either one of us had gone back to the other shortly after, we could have resolved it sooner. In hindsight, though, the silence is what led me to this great epiphany about myself. If I had not been thinking about it at all, and just dismissed it, I wouldn't have made the self-discoveries necessary to bring up the topic at all, get to the bottom of it, and learn what he was thinking, and share the realization that I had come to through it all.

As we talked, I also realized there was another incident that happened in my recent past that should have taught me this lesson but missed the mark. It was a conversation with my dad while I was still going through chemotherapy. He recognized that I was a "people pleaser". When I confirmed this, I also included that I was constantly trying to get his approval, mom's approval, (though hers came long ago), my boyfriend's approval, even the approval of my kids. What he said next paved the way to repair my relationship with him, but it didn't sink in enough to help me realize the bigger picture with all of my relationships, until very recently, as I said. He said, "You don't need my approval. I love you no matter what, exactly as you are." These might not have been his exact words, but it's close enough. He also went on to say he was proud of me, and would be, no matter what, succeed or fail.

In recalling this incident, while talking with my boyfriend, my previous ideas of acceptance and approval, reaffirmed that I had been doing this my whole life; equating one with the other. In recognizing this behavior in my relationship with my boyfriend, I can now do what's called "memory reconsolidation", and work toward separating them, towards asking for acceptance rather than approval.

So let's bring this full circle. My childhood belief, (that acceptance and approval were the same), led me to be a people pleaser, strive for approval and even perfection. So much so that I was living with this undercurrent of fear. Fear that if I messed up, or did something that others might not like or understand, people, those I loved, would be disappointed, and that if they weren't proud of me, didn't approve of something, they didn't accept me, they didn't love me. THIS is at the root of my chronic stress.

Looking back at my overwhelmed self sitting in all those doctor's offices prior to my first chemotherapy treatment, I realized that she had no idea how much deeper this fight would go. It turns out cancer didn't just teach me that my time is precious; it forced me to look at how I was spending my energy and who I was trying to please. It was never just about surviving treatments; it was about breaking down the internal habits that were slowly wearing me out long before I got my diagnosis. I am finally learning to separate love from performance, acceptance from approval. Unlearning a lifetime of people pleasing takes time, but with every boundary I learn to set (and protect), and every time I choose self-acceptance over someone else’s approval, I am reclaiming my health, my peace, my life, and my sanity. I am learning to exist simply as I am; healed, changing, and entirely whole.

Has your cancer diagnosis taught you any unexpected lessons about yourself or your relationships? I would love to hear your stories! You can share them in the comments below, or click the Community Forum link to jump right into the topic discussion.