Healing a Friend or Loved One's Grieving Heart After a Cancer Diagnosis by Wolfelt Alan D;Wolfelt Alan D;Duvall Kirby J.;

Author:Wolfelt, Alan D;Wolfelt, Alan D;Duvall, Kirby J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Companion Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CARPE DIEM

Today, tell someone about your feelings of helplessness then take one small, helpful action.

45.

IF YOU FEEL GUILTY, TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT IT

“Mistakes are part of life. Everyone makes them. Everyone regrets them. But, some learn from them. It’s up to you to decide if you’ll use your mistakes to your advantage.”

— Meredith Sapp

It’s common for friends and family members of someone who has cancer to feel guilty about their own relative good health. If you’re older than the person with cancer or if you have grown children and his are still young, you might think, “Why wasn’t it me?” If the person with cancer has taken good care of himself and you have not, you might think, “He doesn’t deserve that…but I do!”

Alternately, it’s not unusual to feel secretly relieved. “Thank goodness it’s not me/my children/my husband, etc.,” we might think. This sense of relief can then create what we call “relief-guilt,” in which you feel relieved but also guilty about feeling relieved.

While not everyone feels these feelings, rest assured that it’s normal if you do. Feeling relieved does not make you a bad person any more than feeling guilty makes you virtuous. Life-threatening illness simply stirs up a stew of really complex thoughts and feelings. Human beings are the only species we know of that lives with an awareness of its own mortality. And being human means coming to terms with dying when we are alive—a task that is never easy.

If you feel guilty about your friend’s cancer, talk to someone about it. Expressing your own thoughts and feelings about his cancer journey is an essential part of your journey.

Be careful, though, about sharing your guilty feelings with the person who has cancer. It’s important for you to be open and honest, but it’s also important not to overburden her with your own grief.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.