“It felt like everyone was so focussed on treating the cancer that nobody gave a thought to the life I’d be left with afterwards.” Our members talked about lack of support and feelings of abandonment once our treatment ends. We are expected to bounce back but there is very little psychological support available to help us find our way forward. Coping with the shock and trauma from the day we are diagnosed often only manifests properly at the end of active treatment. It’s like a perfect storm. Treatment ends, our friends and family celebrate, our employers expect us back at work, but ..read more

  Our discussion revealed the many ways women with primary and secondary breast cancer experience loss - the loss of a once care-free life; of normality, of womanhood and sexuality, others described losses associated with the side-effects of treatment, others spoke about the loss of a career and those of us living with secondary breast cancer described grieving for others, or the loss of hope for a future with loved ones.   Many of us described putting on a ‘brave face’ or being ‘positive.’ Some of us were surprised to find that we had not thought about grief in relation to our exp ..read more

  Grief is not one emotion, it is not simple and it is not the same for everyone. An emotion which underlies grief is empathy, empathy for the person who has died, for their loved ones, for others around them. Empathy is a powerful emotion and enables us to make connections, even with people we don’t know personally. Grief and death are frequently taboo subjects but having a cancer diagnosis means we have all had to face the possibility of our own death, even more so for those of us with a secondary diagnosis; knowing we can express our fears in our private group enables us to share th ..read more

  In BRiC we have described feelings of intense sadness and how deeply we are affected by the loss of someone with cancer. For some of us there is numbness, which can shield us from our most painful emotions. We also acknowledged that our immediate reaction is often a combination of sadness, mixed with deep fear for ourselves. We realised that underlying our grief is the obvious - yet unspoken - fact that we are reminded of our own vulnerability, something that we carry with us, yet often suppress to keep going. This uncertainty, adds to our fear, which can then make us extremely appre ..read more

"...anger is like fire. It burns it all clean" Maya Angelou We tend to think of anger as a wild, dangerous emotion. A feeling to avoid. An emotion to suppress. But, Nazs asked us to think about whether we could use our anger to build our resilience, to help ourselves and each other? The Anger Poem We are angry at the loss of control that cancer brings Angry that it is unfair and we say 'why me?' Angry that we witness so many dying Angry so many are facing a poor prognosis Angry there is so much inequality  This may be me, it may be you Angry at our helplessness Angry at our powerlessne ..read more

‘None of us will ever forget the earth-shattering day when we were told ‘it’s cancer’. From that day, things change’.   In women who have all been diagnosed with breast cancer you might expect our experience of anxiety to be high. Discussion on anxiety in BRiC loom high. We have all experienced anxiety in some form or another, either throughout our lives or since our diagnosis. Anxiety around recurrence (for those with a primary diagnosis) and progression (for those with a secondary diagnosis) is never far away. Every pain we experience, every test, scan, routine mammogram, produces an ..read more

  Our experiences of overthinking the past (also known as rumination) and our fears about the future (also known as worry) is much of a topic for discussion in BRiC.    We have shared how overthinking can sometimes get the better of us, that we wake up at weird times in the night and get stuck in these repetitive negative cycles of thinking, how it can interfere with our sleep. Some of us have described its effect as paralysing, holding us captive, how it can lead us to self-blame and grieve over our actions; make us feel low in self-esteem and confidence.   Some of us hav ..read more

Depression. It's a word that has come into our everyday language, sometimes in ways which are not so helpful. We all feel sad, we all feel low, but when someone experiences depression, these feelings persist for weeks and months. Depression is not a sign of weakness. It's not something someone can simply "snap out of."   Clinical depression affects people in different ways and takes many forms, including feeling sad and unable to cope with everyday life, feelings of pointlessness, desperation and in severe depression, suicidal thoughts. It can cause physical symptoms like fatigue, pain ..read more

  ‘Confronting, accepting, even embracing fear, according to research, can lower uncertainty. ‘ A key flash point for uncertainty is once active treatment for primary cancer is finished and we are no longer attending regular appointments which give us momentum in attacking our cancer. We have time to reflect and to worry.  The enormity of what we’ve experienced sinks in and we wonder what we can do to prevent recurrence or spread. Cancer does not discriminate, it pounces on those who run marathons and eat their five a day just as regularly as it seeks out those who are not as healt ..read more

  ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.’ Sylvia Plath Our discussions have focused on strategies that our members have found useful to calm themselves, both in times of stress and generally in the day-to-day. We have confirmed that anxiety may be a major problem following a breast cancer diagnosis. Naz explained what happens to our brains when we take a moment, sit down and breathe. Our neural networks are highly active when we are busy doing things, occupied with thinking, remembering, attention, decision making and so on. When we stop and ‘do ..read more