HOPE

HOPE

Our culture embraces positive thinking!  Look on the bright side!  Keep your chin up!  When the going gets tough, the tough get going!    

Research has long been interested in positive psychology.  For example, a study of 13,000 people confirmed that those demonstrating greater hope throughout their lives enjoyed better health, lived a healthy life style, were surrounded by greater social support, and lived longer.  There is a large block of evidence in medical literature confirming that depression and anxiety can be harmful to medical outcomes, cancer outcomes.

A cancer diagnosis opens the door to a variety of negative emotions:  disbelief, sadness, and anger are just a few.  If culture only embraces the bright side of things, a patient sometimes feels that acknowledging these not-so-uplifting emotions to friends and family, indicates the patient is not trying hard enough, that it is their fault they can't muster up a positive attitude in the face of medical crisis.  Then there is the guilt.  As a physical therapist treating cancer patients, there were many times my patients acknowledge to me their concern over burdening their family members with their illness because, well, they did not want to burden their family.  I am  so thankful these patients trusted my ears, my heart with their concerns.  Just to say what they felt out loud was unburdening.  

Psychologists have supported the importance of patients facing critical health concerns with acknowledgment of their feelings.  Shock and disbelief may encourage the patient to ask more questions and be inclined to learn to understand what is happening to them.  Anger can prompt a patient to develop that fighting attitude and fully invest their energy in their health team's care plan.  

Hope requires some form of difficulty or uncertainty to be ignited.  There is hope in the midst of all the chaos of medical treatments.  Hope can be achieving a goal of getting through one more chemo treatment.  Hope can help one focus on life's milestones:  attend that wedding, hold that newborn baby, see that child graduate.  Hope is focusing on what one can control.  Hope is acknowledging all your emotions, sharing how you really are feeling, and planning for the next couple hours---the next day.  

Realistic hope is the foundation for making helpful and necessary decisions, receiving joy in the moment, and experiencing comfort from loving individuals close to the heart.

To HOPE is to believe in possibilities!  

In closing

I am optimistic, expectant, encouraged and certainly hopeful that all my family, friends, readers, and Fittest Survivors will thrive in 2025!