Keeping Family and Friends at a Healthy Distance When You Have Cancer
The following is adapted from Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment.
After learning you have cancer, you’ll find out quickly whether your friends and family act as a great help or a hindrance. Most likely, they’ll be a bit of both. That means you’ll need to find a way to keep them at a healthy distance when you need time to yourself.
Why might you need personal distance?
Most of your loved ones will be completely well meaning, but you might find that some are too aggressive in trying to help. Others might be awkward in relating to you due to their own issues. And many of them might need emotional support of their own that you’re not in a position to give.
While I’m sure you want to support your loved ones, in your cancer journey, you come first. That’s why it’s time to create some healthy boundaries that will ensure you have the space you need to heal.
The Role Your Family and Friends Play in Your Cancer Journey
Your cancer diagnosis and journey can overtake your whole world. But what about those around you? How does your diagnosis and journey affect them? What role do they play in your journey and how do you navigate this often-sensitive terrain?
First, it’s important to realize that cancer affects everyone around us. Just as you’re going through the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—so are your loved ones. How you and your loved ones communicate will have a major impact on each of your experiences.
An excellent scientific review concluded this about families of cancer patients:
Families that were able to act openly, express feelings directly, and solve problems effectively had lower levels of depression. Direct communication of information within the family was associated with lower levels of anxiety. The results from the current study suggest that researchers and clinicians need to be family-focused as cancer affects the whole family, not just the patient.
Open and honest communication can reduce your loved ones’ anxiety, which in turn can reduce behavior that you find overwhelming or negative.
Anticipate Changes to Your Relationships
Your family and friends can be neutral, a healing force, or toxic. It happens that some will change after the shock of the diagnosis wears off, and this can be for better or worse. It is important to know that this is all normal and based on their “stuff” and not you.
Frankly, sometimes your loved ones are more of a wreck than you are. Although you might have to limit or eliminate some of those within your circle, they also need a break. They received bad, life-altering news as well.
It can be difficult facing your loved ones’ grief alongside your own, but if you go into this journey expecting your relationships to change—which they will—you should be able to navigate the changes with less tension and conflict. You’ll also be more mindful of negative influences, which will give you the chance to step away when needed.
What if Loved Ones are Stuck in Negativity and are Poisoning You?
Some people might adjust after the shock of the diagnosis, but others never will. And in your new world, toxic people, bad relationships, and other negative influences cannot be tolerated.
Usually, except for people you live with, it is difficult, but appropriate, for you to distance yourself. If someone is being a negative influence in your life, you owe it to yourself to prioritize your mental and physical health by getting some space from that person. This is about you and your life, literally. You decide what and who you allow in your life.
For individuals who please people and strive for “happiness for all,” this is enormously difficult. But I suggest thinking of it this way: if you were sick and there was a pill that could help or cure you, would you toss it out and not take it? Allowing personal relationships to poison you and your process is just like not taking the pill.
Surround Yourself with Healthy Influences
The people who are on this journey with you are crucial, so make them count. Choose supportive, positive people to surround you. They will be the ones speaking into your life most often, offering help, and being the most available for you to ask for help.
It might be awkward and painful to distance yourself from people you care about, but if they’re doing more harm than good, you need to give yourself space for now. This is a fight for your quality and quantity of life; for you, this is the paramount and singular priority.
Ultimately, these well-meaning people want what’s best for you. If that means distancing yourself from them, the choice is clear: give yourself the space you need to thrive.
For more advice on improving your quality of life when you have cancer, you can find Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment on Amazon.
Dr. Paul S. Anderson is a nationally recognized educator and clinician who has decades of experience with cancer and complex chronic illness. As head of the interventional arm of a human trial funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anderson oversaw research into integrative therapies for cancer patients. Dr. Anderson was the founder of a number of clinics specializing in the care of people with cancer and chronic illness and is now focusing his efforts on training other physicians and writing. He is the co-author of Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, with Dr. Mark Stengler and the anthology Success Breakthroughs, with Jack Canfield.