Key takeaways
- Emotional wellbeing lays the foundations for physical health and the changes we want to make to it
- Emotional wellbeing can be defined as experiencing and responding to a full range of emotions
- Resilience is responding to what has happened to us and growing from our experiences
In this module, we’ll explore two critical aspects of adjusting to life after cancer treatment: improving emotional wellbeing and improving resilience. First, we’ll think about what those terms mean to you and some definitions. Later on, we’ll work on how to build resilience and maintain it going forward.
Why is it important to pay attention to your emotional wellbeing?
Emotional wellbeing lays the foundations for physical wellbeing and any changes we want to make to it. People undergoing cancer treatment often report that they have no time to think about anything beyond moving from appointment to appointment, let alone asking, ‘How am I feeling today?’ Now you’re moving to longer-term follow up, feelings and emotions relating to your diagnosis and treatment may surface. This is normal, but also challenging. Pay attention to how you feel. The more we listen to our feelings, the more we’re able to respond to them.
Another way to think about this is being curious about why we feel the way we do. It’s easy to fall into self-criticism when experiencing challenging emotions like anger, sadness, despair or frustration, but this can feel worse than the emotion itself. Curiosity opens the door to understanding.
What is resilience?
Resilience is a different term, often used when we think about people who have experienced a life-threatening condition such as cancer, or overcome another type of adversity. In fact, we are all incredibly resilient and periods of suffering often make us more so. Again, there’s no one way to define resilience but there are a couple of things to think about: the first is that resilience refers to our ability to respond to what has happened to us, without ignoring, denying or avoiding it.
Resilience also speaks to our ability to use our experiences for growth. Resilient people recognise that difficult experiences don’t have to make you smaller; they can be impactful in a different way. They can even make you stronger.
While we have ensured that every article is medically reviewed and approved, information presented here is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions or concerns, please talk to one of our healthcare professionals or your primary healthcare team.