Ep #48: Part 5: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Acceptance

Today’s episode is a part 5 in a 5-part series called The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief, and today’s segment is all about Acceptance. When it comes to cancer, acceptance does not mean you reach a point of, “it’s all great,” but that you reach a point of, “I’m living and dealing with cancer.” Full stop. I’ll teach you how to arrive to acceptance, and help you return to it so you can spend more hours and days in the present moment while constructively moving forward.

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

+  What acceptance is - and isn’t

+  Why acceptance improves emotional health

+  Two strategies to help you move into acceptance

+  Why you can’t “fake it ‘til you make it” with acceptance

+  Truth & Dare Quote: When you reach the acceptance of your cancer, you open the door to a deeper acceptance of yourself.

Featured on the Show:

+  Episode TDC #35: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief

+  Episode TDC #44: Part 1: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Denial

+  Episode TDC #45: Part 2: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Anger

+  Episode TDC #46: Part 3: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Bargaining

+  Episode TDC #47: Part 4: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Depression

+  Book On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

+  Book ACT Made Simple by Russ Harris, M.D.

+  Book Loving What Is by Byron Katie

+   WANT TO CREATE A LIFE YOU DESERVE? Whether your goal is to get healthy, change careers, improve relationships, focus on self-care… You can create whatever you desire. If you need help figuring it out, it's time for private coaching, no more waiting for Monday.

+  Are you looking to use your cancer as a catalyst for emotional self-awareness and powerful change in your life? That’s exactly what my work with Truth & Dare Cancer is all about. If you need help getting started, book a free consultation call, and we’ll explore how you can take the first step. To schedule go to truthanddarecancer.com/call.

+  Join the Truth & Dare Cancer Facebook Community. It’s a safe space where I and lots of other like-minded women with cancer hang out and share our stories, struggles, tips, and support.

+  I’d love to hear your perspective and thoughts about the conceptual cancer topic – just tag me on Facebook or Instagram @truthanddarecancer handle

Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Truth & Dare Cancer, the only podcast that teaches you how to supercharge your self-healer, navigate fear, and recalibrate your life by using cancer as a powerful catalyst for change. On this show, we get real about all things cancer. And now here’s your host, cancer survivor, mathematician and certified life coach, Ceca Mijatovic. Hello and welcome back! You are listening to the episode number 48 of the Truth & Dare Cancer Podcast. If you have not yet done so please subscribe to us on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast, and like us on Facebook. Just use @truthanddarecancer handle on Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms. To access the show notes for this episode go to truthanddarecancer.com/podcast and select episode number 48.  I’m your host Ceca Mijatovic and today we are wrapping up part 5 of a 5-part series on how to embrace the 5 Stages of Cancer Grief. We finally made it to the acceptance. For those you who haven’t heard the parts 1 through 4 I urge you to take a listen, they are so helpful, especially if you are currently in one of the stages of cancer grief. Here’s a quick recap: in episode 44 we covered denial. I talked about anger in episode 45 - and how much research is coming out right now that links repressed emotion, like anger, with higher rates of cancer. In episodes 46 and 47 we dove into bargaining and depression. Not the lightest topics, I know, and they all Bring us to today’s topic: the fifth and final stage of grief, acceptance. We’re going to dive in deep to what acceptance is - because lots of people misinterpret it - but first I want to circle back to my original intention for this series.  Everyone experiences grief during a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and aftermath. The challenge is that there is so much else happening during that time - navigating health information, big decisions, treatments, dealing with our own fear and family members’ fear, etc. - that often we push our own grief to the side just to get through this intense experience.  But grief, unfortunately, doesn’t go away until you process it. And more and more research studies are showing that unprocessed emotion can create chaos in our bodies and become harmful to our physical health. So, my intention for this series is to help you process your grief and express and feel all the emotions that are surfacing for you during your cancer journey.   As we dive into acceptance today, first I want to remind you that these five stages of grief that we’ve been discussing aren’t sequential or linear. You won’t spend an equal amount of time in each stage, and you may not experience all of them. And while you are in a particular stage, you may spend most of your time in that stage while dipping into other stages. Let’s start off with acceptance by talking about what acceptance is - and what it isn’t.  Acceptance is not an approval of or agreement with what's happening. Acceptance is simply not arguing with reality. As Byron Katie says, “When you fight with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” Acceptance is simply saying, "what is, is" In your cancer journey, acceptance does not mean you reach a point of, “it’s all great,” but that you reach a point of, “I’m living and dealing with cancer.” Full stop. You’re no longer arguing with the reality that you have - or have had - cancer, but instead you are dealing with it. When you reach the level of acceptance of your cancer - again, not saying that it’s okay, or approving of it, or embracing it, - but simply saying, “I’m living and dealing with cancer,” you open the door to a deeper acceptance of yourself.  You are a different “you” now - the “you” that has cancer. And accepting your new self - the self with cancer - may take emotional work. But it’s worthwhile work, for sure - research shows that self-acceptance improves emotional health, and emotional health improves physical health.  So let’s explore two strategies for creating space for more acceptance. The first strategy I want to offer for helping you to move into acceptance is acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. Russ Harris, M.D., describes ACT in his book ACT Made Simple as: “accept what is out of your personal control, and commit to taking action that enriches your life.” ACT is an acceptance and mindfulness-based set of strategies that research has shown to be particularly impactful for cancer patients who are transitioning out of active treatment and into the phase of “survivorship.” ACT has been shown to reduce anxiety, fatigue and sleep impairment in people with cancer. Many coaches, counselors, and therapists, including myself, are trained in helping their clients use ACT effectively, and many cancer support groups may also teach ACT skills. I use portions of ACT in my coaching approach as well. Let me know if you need more information, or you can ask your doctor for details as well.  ACT helps improve mental health, well-being, and emotional balance. A second strategy I want to offer you for moving into acceptance is a ritual to let go and honor what has happened to you. When we “honor” what has happened, we don’t approve of it. We’re not glad it happened, or happy about it. We haven’t forgotten about it.  We simply say, “This happened to me. This is part of my journey.” Our attention to it and acceptance of it allows our subconscious to find rest as it releases resistance to it. Now, imagine that your grief has taken form as a specific object. The object should symbolize how you felt when you had cancer. It’s the shape, texture and color of what that grief felt like. If you are not driving right now while listening, Close your eyes and feel the grief, and let an object come to mind. Don’t overthink it. Now: imagine putting this grief on a shelf. It happened. It’s a beautiful thing, because it happened to you, and you bore it. It was part of your experience. It happened. And now, you don’t have to carry it with you all the time. You can commune with it over time, when you want to spend some time with that part of yourself. You can also create your own ritual as a way to honor all the pain you’ve gone through.  As we wrap up this episode on acceptance, and this series on cancer grief, I want to offer a caution: you cannot fake acceptance. You can’t just jump to the acceptance phase just because you want to.  Also, be wary: some people in your life will want to push you into acceptance. They prefer not to deal with your pain and grief. They will want you to be happy and positive immediately. That will just cause more damage and pain in the long run. Trust the process of grief. Trust the stage you’re in. Inhabit it fully, but don’t get stuck there. That’s the key: to inhabit each stage of grief fully, but not to get stuck there for too long. As I said before: These stages aren’t sequential or linear. Imagine a circle divided into 5 pie pieces, like a pie chart, where each piece around is a stage of grief, so we have denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance around forming a grief circle. And you are standing in the center of this grief circle. You won’t spend an equal amount of time in each of the pie pieces. And you may jump from one to another in no particular order. For example: you may go from anger to depression to acceptance and back to anger again. The ultimate goal is to arrive to the acceptance piece, and over time spend more and more hours and days in acceptance. And remember the saying: “Peace of mind comes piece by piece.” So you may circle and hop around the grief circle for a while before acceptance and peace become predominate feelings in your day-to-day. If you’re ready for some support as you move through the stages of cancer grief, I invite you to book a free consult call with me to talk about private coaching. This way I can address your specific grief pattern given your unique circumstances. My private clients have finished their active cancer treatment, but they are struggling with anxiety and depression about cancer recurrence, and are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives before cancer. I help them figure out what they want to create in their lives going forward and release the anxiety and fear that’s holding them back: in their relationships, in their careers, in the way they perceive and accept themselves. Then together, we collaborate on making their vision a reality. If you need help getting started, book a free consultation call, and we’ll explore how you can take the first step. To schedule go to truthanddarecancer.com/call and I’ll also include the link in the shownotes. And did you know that I have a free closed FB group for women just like you? One essential aspect of healing is to have a community and be surrounded by other women going through cancer and experiencing so many same things as you are, especially when we talk about radical acceptance. So now you can have that experience, and you are invited to join my free closed FB community called Truth & Dare Cancer and once you join you can continue the podcast conversation with other women going through or living with cancer, who just get it. To join go to truthanddarecancer.com/facebook -- I’ll also include the link in the show notes. To recap: you can’t fake acceptance. You must arrive to it - usually by experiencing the other stages of grief I discussed throughout this series. Acceptance is simply not arguing with reality and simply saying “what is, is.” Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, has been shown to be an effective mindfulness-based intervention for cancer patients. And when you’re moving into the acceptance stage of grief, a ritual to honor and release what you’ve gone through can be very helpful. Let’s continue this conversation in my free closed FB community Truth & Dare Cancer. If you got value from this episode and know someone else that would get value from it as well, please share it with them. And in the meantime, I dare you to find the truth in your cancer! Thanks for tuning in. If you want to stop identifying with your cancer, you can download a free “You Are Not Your Cancer” guide at www.truthanddarecancer.com/podcastfreeguide.

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