Cancer Support Groups

 

I ended up yesterday visiting one of the online cancer support groups I used to visit more frequently when Cro was first diagnosed. Which is well over three years ago. 

The main reason I went there in the first place was to be able to vent to people who understood and who wouldn't mind. It was also useful to be able to find out information and ask other sufferers and carers questions, but I would say that was not the main reason to go there, and I suspect for others it was similar to me.

If you are in the company of others who either have cancer themselves or are caring for someone who does, then you do not need to make any introductory comments or worry about the way that people will take what you say. In the non-cancer world, you sometimes see people bracing when you drop the C-word, and to be honest it can be a pain in the arse (both for you and for them). I completely understand it, because when someone says they have cancer or that their partner or relative does, you can be flummoxed about how to respond. Do I offer sympathy, do I say what a bastard cancer is, do I ask them 'how they are doing' or something which I will regret afterwards as too mundane.

But if you are already in the unwanted club of cancerees or cancer-carers you can just vent or sympathise or joke without any preliminaries. It is in its own way liberating. You will also occasionally see a new person arrive and be so grateful (and a bit shocked) to have found a place where everyone knows what it is like and nothing is off the table. Worried about having sex when you have cancer? Ask away. Worried what you will do when your father finally dies of this in a few weeks? Ask away; there is sure to be someone in a similar boat. Want to vent because you are looking after a partner with a recent diagnosis that you were intending to divorce and now feel, resentfully, that you can't? (no seriously, I have heard several similar stories on there). Ask away. 

So there is a very good and helpful side to such groups. You can of course get lots of factual information about diagnoses and treatment and support, but to be honest you can get all of that pretty well in any hospital, so I think the connection is the most important element.

However (there is always a however), I do have one issue that makes me put a mental caution on cancer support groups and on other support groups that I have been in. I visited a couple of online bereavement groups in the first months after Cro died, partly to vent, but also to listen to what other people had felt or noticed or found useful. 

 The 'however' is that in both the cancer support and the bereavement support groups, you could see a process by which people got rather stuck in a rut. If you cannot accept a diagnosis or come to terms with it in some way, or if you cannot accept the reality that your loved one has died and that nothing that you do will change that fact then you could get into what looks like a loop. People who seem 'stuck' say the same thing each time they visit the group, and there seems to be no development in their thoughts, but a kind of fossilisation. Now of course you do not need to accept the fact that you are going to die of something, and everyone is free to use the methods - including denial - that work best for them. But I did sometimes think that there was an element of 'emotional self-harm' in some people's visits to the groups. The analogy is that just as people who physically self-harm can be doing it as a way of releasing their feelings, maybe the upset that you get from expressing your despair in public could be a way of meeting some kind of emotional need that you have, whether for stimulation or desensitisation. And that feels different from the intention of most users. 

Also, I have a slight worry with regard to the groups, that people come on there and say things to the group that they will not say to real people in their real lives. And I understand that some things are hard to say, but are you sure that there is no friend of yours who is willing to 'go there' with you and let you express your fears and frustrations in person? It reminds me of some (younger) people who are using ChatGPT as a 'counsellor' instead of asking a real person. It may work for you, but is there no real person that you trust enough to ask instead?