During the doctors appointment yesterday I had a brief talk about how I feel, what’s going on and for the second time in the same day “the tyranny of positive thinking” was mentioned. Now I get my humour is black and a couple of people have expressed issues with the way in which my friends so casually divided up my stuff last weekend.
There is a notion that feeling scared shitless, sad, upset, pissed off or angry at life is not allowed when something big happens. The theory says you have to face it with a positive attitude. That somehow feeling upbeat and positive all the time will help.
Am I in control of my emotions? No more or less so than others, so the answer is no, not all the time
There is a belief that when faced with a big problem like this, facing it with anything other than a positive frame of mind means the battle is lost. It’s on TV, in magazine and there are shelves full of self-help books in any bookshop.
Actually “belief” maybe too strong a word, there are a lot of people publishing books, appearing on TV shows and writing magazine articles pimping this “think yourself well or die” stuff that you know a lot of people are making a mint off this idea.
And doctors and therapists seem united that it’s all total bullshit.
I know personally this is about the scariest and most emotionally consuming thing I’ve ever been through, and the last 18 months has been full of them. I’ve got a great support group of both professionals and those I’m close too and I have moments when I feel so fucked.
Never hopeless, but it’s a very real fear. I noticed today I was stumbling a little, I’d catch myself and a few steps later it happened again and only with my left foot. It maybe nothing, may just be that I’m wearing new shoes, or it could be sign of something bigger.
It was the same last night in the food store, I totally forgot what I came in for and was aimlessly standing in the aisle admiring the great selection of toothpastes when I came in for something else entirely, I just could not remember what. Short-term memory was something I was told could be an issue until the tumour starts shrinking. I’ll make a note and carry on doing what I’ve been told. Does it scare the living shit out of me, absolutely and that does not make me a bad patient (two pints with dinner Tuesday night took care of that “label”).
There is a bunch of bullshit and hype that says if you don’t have a positive attitude and that if you let it get the better of you, then you end up in a depressed cycle and you are feeding the tumour in some way.
This totally invalidates people’s natural (and lets be clear here, very understandable) reaction to having “that” conversation. I spoke to one of the group therapy leaders prior to joining the group next week and she was the first person on Wednesday to refer to “the tyranny of positive thinking”.
She said well-meaning families have brought the problem to her, one of whom said something along the lines of “He is going to die because he is not positive about the outcome.” She was no longer surprised that families feel this and works hard to make it clear this is not everyone’s style.
Lets face it the Kean way of dealing with these things is a stoic “Oh well…” with a smidge of denial mixed in. It helps me and this is so ingrained that a couple of self-help books is not going to dent it.
Insisting that I put on a happy face and cope in a way that would be against all my natural instincts would be would be an added burden. This is a coping mechanism that has worked for generations, I’m not saying it’s the best, or even the most effective, but on June 9th it works for me.