Three people discuss how a cancer diagnosis memory became less distressing through simple breathing and allowing the memory to surface without resistance. One person describes the physical clench in their stomach and harsh self-judgment softening when they stopped fighting the memory.
Chapters
We have to learn from difficult things as well as from good things.
But I don't think it's efficient. I don't think our nervous system evolved that every bad thing that happened to us, we remembered it as if at the time we'd all be in a fetal position and we would never leave a room if every bad thing that happened to us we remembered it with such vivid emotion and physicalness. So, uh, it should diminish that.
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to share the, the descriptive version of it. When one of my most difficult parts of, of getting sick and thinking I was going to die was a memory sitting with my child and just not being able to overcome my terror of dying and connect with him. And I felt so guilty, and it felt like such a personal failure for me to not be able to break through the personal terror and connect with him. And I think that just feels a little less— that judgment, that self-judgment feels a little less severe, feels a little less, uh, yeah, a little less self-judgy, right? Because really what hurts is the— and my— the pit of my stomach doesn't, doesn't clench as much.
Even though I haven't had that direct experience of cancer, at 78, I think a lot about death and the impact on my children. And I can just, uh, I can just imagine how that was for you. And you're here, and that's in the past. And at the time, you were dealing with a pretty bad diagnosis.
Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean, everybody was like, okay, you better get ready, you're gonna die. And, you know, it was terrifying for me. I was not— I like to joke, I was a lot further along, a lot less far along the path than I thought I was, because it just totally— I was so terrified I could barely function. So it was, uh, And, and the, and the most painful part about that was that in that moment when all this was going on, my— I was unable to kind of be with the people closest to me because I was so terrified. And I really judged myself for that. And that's what this memory was really about. And so it was helpful to, to just take some breaths and allow that memory to be without just— I could feel the, the decrease in the intensity of that.
And look how— what a short period of time impacted you that way.
