Your Feelings When You Are Told You Have Cancer

A multitude of emotions may assail you at the time when you are told the tragic news of having cancer.

You may greet the news with an instinctive denial – there is some mistake or that reports mistakenly got swapped; I cannot have cancer! A gut instinct of denial and rejection may be your first reaction. However it is important to move to the next step of acceptance so that you can plot a course of action to fight your cancer.

doctor informing cancerTo begin with you may become angry – you never harmed anyone or you were doing it all right and now this had to happen.

“Why Me” is not at all an unreasonable feeling to have.  The situation may be cause for grief, stress, anxiety, sadness and depression – not just for the cancer sufferer but for family and friends close to them as well.

It may be that guilt is one of the emotions – that you may somehow become a burden financially and emotionally upon your loved ones – that you are somehow responsible for the fact that you got the cancer.

One may also feel lonely and isolated. Others may distance themselves or the sufferer may feel that no one understands. This is also natural and nothing unusual.

What is important is to move on from these emotions and then formulate a plan for your treatment and for your life.