Emotions and anxiety with a cancer diagnosis: How do you cope?

I got a prescription for Ritalin to deal with fatigue and focus issues while on chemo, and it seems to be helping in both regards. Something to ask your medical team about? I got mine on recommendation from a palliative oncologist.

I understand how difficult it can be. I think the biggest help for me was understanding that ...
cancer is hard.
It turns your world upside down. It makes you feel out of control. Your body , is fighting against you.
I learned that those feelings are normal reactions to a what is an unusual situation for me.
I had to learn to give myself grace.
To plan to make things easier .
To balance what I did and my expectations with my energy level.
To not expect myself to always be emotionally physically and mentally "charged".
To save my energy for the things I really wanted to be a part of.
For ex ... vacuuming the same day I had something like a doctor appt...not happening. The robot vacum, found it so helpful.
Instacart, again, so helpful. Amazon is my christmas shopping. Why waste energy walking around shopping , when I need it to be with family, to go to church, etc.
Giving myself grace ... to spend a day just resting was such a gift.
Hoping you can find your balance in expectations! Prayers for you to feel better soon.

No advice but surround yourself with thise you can cry and vent to. Letting it out, helps! Agree with above @lbrockme give yourself some grace and only do what you need to do. Hugs!!!

Pray continually and ask God to help you through this difficult time. Also considering taking a daily iron tablet to help with your low energy. I take two to three iron tablets a day. It helps keep my energy level up. Eat foods that you like and that make you feel good. My two favorites are steak and yogurt. (Not together.) I feel so much better when I've eaten either one. Eat natural foods as much as you can. Prepared foods have too many preservatives in them.
lbrock has some very good ideas also. Don't try and do everything at once.
Also, think about what is the worst outcome? Death. But then you will be in Heaven and in good health. You may have to leave loved ones down here for a while but they will eventually be up there too! Not everyone believes this but it's true. After all God sent his own son, Jesus to live on Earth as we do. Jesus died and then rose from the dead and went back up to Heaven. It states in the Bible that 500 people saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. (They couldn't all be lying.) So we know that Heaven is real and waiting for us.
Best wishes! I will say a prayer for you.
PML

I’m 7 years out from stage IV treatment and I can feel your situation.
I can’t remember the medication but anxiety medication was part of my prescription regimen while going through treatments and beyond.
Be truthful with your doctor in how you’re feeling and ask if you can be prescribed something for your anxiety.

MOJO

I’ve never been on prescription anxiety or depression drugs, but I did get a script for Xanax when I was diagnosed. I cried off and on in the beginning. I told my husband, if I cry, I’m taking one. It was lowest dosage and it’s the type of drug that you take when needed. It worked for me and I do not use it now.

Best wishes, Cindy

@glendafl Just knowing that this is normal can help a great deal. It's like coming to a great boulder in your life's road, and you try, but you can't go around it, can't go above it, and you can't go underneath it . . .you have to go through it. I think, mentally and emotionally, we want to side-step the entire treatment course. . . (we, of course, would physically take another path) . . . but we cannot. Giving yourself more grace, letting yourself know its okay to be anxious (that's part of it), can sometimes take the edge off the worst of it. A person in cancer treatment often has to live moment-by-moment, because we are taking the onslaught of so much chemically, and we aren't quiet sure, even from week to week, how our body will respond to the chemo or radiation or flu, or virus, or infections. There are no check-lists that say our body will do this or that, and doctors can only share what typically happens. . . so, we often have to wait and see. And this can surely cause anxiety.

What helped me was to surround myself with a few good people, ask for help, admit I was anxious, and then let those moments PASS. Mostly, I asked God to help me let those moments pass. And He did. I remember, specifically, one night I was particularly anxious - waking up in bed in a sweat, my heart racing. It was then that the Lord reminded me of the big open Wyoming skies I had watched when I was vacationing a few years prior. I remembered how those big skies would be clear one minute, and then a storm would rage from seemingly nowhere. The sky would be covered in dark, ominous clouds, and it felt unsettling to be almost enveloped by the impending storm clouds above. But here's the good part. . . .those clouds would MOVE overhead, and then they would PASS OVER. It was in that instant of remembering that helped me in the very moment of my anxious thoughts in bed that night. I needed not fight the anxiety, but name it, realize I was anxious, and then be calm to let it pass over me. Our human nature is to fight something, give it all we got, so-to-speak - in fact, you hear that all the time when it comes to cancer - fight it! But I say, take a moment to consider this . . . that we imagine being on the other side of it, and let it pass over - like storm clouds in the sky that move and leave sunshine in its wake. The sky does not storm forever. 🙂 That imagery helped me a great deal that night, and in the months to come. It was certainly more of a spiritual experience, for I taught myself how to rest in those anxious moments, giving it more fully to God to handle, and waiting for the anxiety to pass over, leaving me breathing normally, returning me back to a state of being able to cope again.

Cancer is hard. But you can do it. I read a lot of positive Bible passages out loud, so I could hear myself say them. I filled my mind with good things, and then, in some small way, it helped to balance all the not-so-good things that go along with cancer. I didn't always "feel" positive, but it was good to hear positive things over and over again. We can't always trust our feelings in life. . . they can deceive us, take us down a path of mental exhaustion and destruction. We have to tell ourselves the truth, and that helps separate those emotions that deplete us from those emotions that wash our very soul. 🙂 Thought always precedes emotion. Getting our minds in the game and feeding ourselves healthy thoughts benefitted me greatly. And at times, when I didn't have the strength to think positively, I would ask God to give me something praiseworthy to think on - and then find another person who could "loan" me their good thoughts for a while! 🙂

I hope this helps in some small way.

I needed that more than you will ever know! Thank you for the post!

Me too, wonderful, and yes, it's normal for cancer.
God bless you.

I'm walking and hiking. It helps a lot. I also asked for a referral to a psychiatrist and got an Ativan prescription. I use it situationally, and it also helps a lot.