Emotional Wellness: The Other Half of Treating Cancer

By Dr. Niki Barr

You have cancer. Like a racing tidal wave, you are suddenly overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, grief and depression. The journey with cancer begins. Are you prepared emotionally?
Medical treatments for cancer continue to advance, yet tools to help cancer patients address their emotional wellness still lag behind. Now, physicians and psychologists are beginning to realize that healing is improved, sometimes greatly improved, when both the physical and emotional needs of patients are served. In Emotional Wellness – The Other Half of Treating Cancer, cancer psychotherapist Niki Barr, describes the emotional side of treatment to guide you through diagnosis, medical treatment, and beyond. This groundbreaking book gives you effective, easy to use tools to manage your journey through cancer calmly and confidently.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9780615685007

Book preview

Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wrote this book for, and dedicate it to, first my family members, some of whom lived and some of whom died with cancer. Then, I acknowledge with gratitude and great respect those patients, family members, and caregivers who continued to show up for appointments, however difficult, willing to deal with the numerous emotional challenges connected to the experience of living with cancer.

Most particularly, however, I must point out that without Dr. Janice Tomberlin, Radiologist, who referred me to Valerie Oxford, MSSW, at the University of Texas Southwestern Moncrief Cancer Institute, none of this could have come to fruition.  At Moncrief, Keith Argenbright and Lori Drew, Medical Director and Executive Director respectively, along with staff members, welcomed me and enthusiastically supported my effort to pioneer a psychotherapy practice working exclusively with cancer patients, their families, and caregivers. Through Moncrief’s support of the program, I extended my practice to include The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders; Careity Foundation; Texas Oncology-Breast Care Center of North Texas; and Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth.

Many people in my life continually inspired me to keep writing through to completion.  My deep gratitude goes especially to my cherished husband, Bob, my amazing children, my magnificent mom, and my dear friends on whom I relied throughout this process.  I particularly wish to thank Rebecca Popham-Masters, Editor, and Orion Wellspring, Inc., for helping me publish this work.  I am most grateful to everyone in this great group of people for their belief in my oncology work and in me. 

I am immensely blessed by each one of you.  May Emotional Wellness—The Other Half of Treating Cancer be a gift back, in some way touching you and those you love, and ever inspiring emotional wellness whatever the circumstance.

~ Niki Barr, Ph.D.

FOREWORD

Through my experience working with cancer patients for several decades, I can tell you that creating a state of wellbeing is a vital part of the ability to survive. The sad part is that most of us do not learn about survivor behavior and how to maintain our wellbeing until our lives are threatened.  Only then do we become enlightened; the curse becomes a blessing that we learn from and can share with others.

What I suggest is that we carefully review books already written, along with new ones like Dr. Barr’s contribution, and use them all as resources to teach children how to deal with adversity and life’s difficulties.  If we start in childhood, we can ensure having survivor behavior as adults.  All the sages of the past have told us how to accomplish this, but as life is now more technical and less personal, we need to use some current information to create a complete program encompassing mind, body and spirit.

One cannot really separate the three elements of mind, body, and spirit because our thoughts create our internal chemistry along with whatever spiritual beliefs and experiences influence our lives. Our bodies respond to the Body-Mind-Spirit Connection with the result of either disease or self-healing.  To get the optimum result of healing, we have to understand and accept that our minds have that kind of power.

As a medical doctor, I described myself early on as a tourist in the world of diagnosis and disease because I had not lived what my patients were experiencing. However, after becoming a patient myself, I felt I had become a native, truly educated about a patient’s experience of disease and not just the diagnosis.

This book will help you understand and treat your experience in a therapeutic way, and by that I do not mean just in terms of medical treatment to fight your disease—I mean marshaling all that is within you to add the critical other half of healing by using the Mind-Body-Spirit Connection successfully.  I saw the benefits of the lessons we can learn when my wife was diagnosed with a serious illness many years ago, and again just a few years ago. I was reminded of the terrible scare both she and I went through many years before her illness when our seven-year-old son’s x-ray revealed a bone tumor. Apparently I was acting so out of character in his eyes as I tried to cope with this potentially devastating news that he was prompted to say, with that special wisdom children can display, Dad, you’re handling this poorly. I have since learned to live the sermon, enjoy the day, and see the difference it makes in our lives and health.

For me accepting my mortality is an important component of what empowers me. By accepting that I have a limited time to live, I do not waste my life’s time or let others make me unhappy. I control only one thing—my thoughts—and so death becomes my teacher about life. As Mother Teresa said, I will not attend an anti-war rally, but if you ever have a peace rally, call me. So do not think of mortality as the enemy that you must fight, but instead expend your energy on loving your life and body and being well, physically and emotionally. 

When you let your heart make up your mind you will make the right decisions. Your feelings and intuitive wisdom are vital in making the right choices. I use patients’ dreams and drawings to help see what lies within us to empower our lives.  This activity blocks the rational brain’s tendency to allow the words of doctors to frighten us into thinking that, as the patient, we have no control over the outcome. 

Wordswordswords can become swordswordswords but when you make the choices and not your doctor and family, you are choosing to go through the labor pains necessary for self-birthing. With this sense of control, you will undoubtedly have far fewer complications and side effects. Making the choice, guided by your intuition, is about deciding what is right for you and not about trying to avoid dying. We all die and so the key is living fully.  Ask yourself what is accomplished by being bitter about everything you did or didn’t do and then dying anyway?

Go ahead and have some of your chocolate ice cream. I have letters from people who expected to die in a short time so went ahead and lived their chocolate ice cream.  But they didn’t die after all, and many end their letters with,  "I didn’t die and now I am so busy that I am killing myself! Help! Where do I go from here?" You take a nap…and then revisit the peaceful power of the Mind-Body-Spirit Connection.