Living Positively After Cancer

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​So many cancer patients feel overwhelmed with the steady stream of medical treatment that they have to endure and in most cases this leaves a vast array of physical and emotional side effects that quite often are not addressed from a personal perspective.    

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So many cancer patients feel overwhelmed with the steady stream of medical treatment that they have to endure and in most cases this leaves a vast array of physical and emotional side effects that quite often are not addressed from a personal perspective.  You are left feeling scared about your future and worried for your family whilst at the same time, aware that the further through treatment you get, the support network that rallied around you initially, is perhaps staring to dwindle.  Despite this, you are still in huge turmoil and struggling with tasks you used to find fun or easy to do.  You feel so different about everything now but have no idea how to process what has really happened.  You may have been offered a free wellbeing course by your hospital or local cancer support group but this is usually a group led course with a mix of patients at different stages and a bundle of different personalities and opinions. You may have felt that the value and clarity it gave to you personally wasn’t as beneficial as you had hoped it would be.  You may also have received free personal counselling which, whilst is a useful platform to express your thoughts and feelings, doesn’t really deal with the root of these emotions or bring it into a whole healing approach to include the other essential wellbeing factors.  You will have your own personal challenges that you need to resolve in multiple different areas of your life in order to reach the peak of wellbeing and this isn’t easily sorted on your own or by one specific specialist. You most likely feel incredibly low and possibly empty about life.  A stark comparison to how you felt before the big C diagnosis.   What you actually need is someone that listens to all your challenges and can help you solve them whilst teaching you what exactly you need to do in order to reach the peak of wellbeing.   There are no magic potions, no one size fits all answer, it has to be tailored to you, your lifestyle and your personal goals.   I want to share with you the way to reach those goals and achieve the outcome you are craving.

My story:


When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer I truly could not believe what was happening and I have never been so scared in my life.  On top of that I was being told this was going to happen and that was going to happen and not to arrange anything for the next 12 months because of treatment.  It was all happening so quickly and I felt completely out of control.  On top of that I was managing my family’s emotions whilst wondering how long I might have to live.  Thinking about my son and if I would ever see him grow up into an adult – it was such a truly hideous time.

Some good friends rallied in true friend style and this was exactly what I needed.  One particular good friend insisted I have some initial sessions with a wellness coach who was experienced in cancer and my lovely friend actually paid for these first sessions!  I soon knew that personal coaching was exactly what I needed and my own paid sessions started halfway through my radiotherapy treatment.

Having someone independent to confide in was the first advantage to these highly valuable personal sessions.  Jennie helped me identify ‘My Big Why’ and soon I was learning exactly what holistic health and wellness actually meant and the changes I needed to make in order to achieve this.  There were many stumbling blocks along the way and Jennie always helped me through these blocks and found ways for me to enable change that I couldn’t initially see as possible for me. By month four of my coaching sessions I was really starting to feel the benefits and started to have a sense of vitality that I still find difficult to describe to others.  I think I once described it as ‘feeling like a dog with two tails’.  I was really starting to feel fantastic, both physically and mentally.

One of the most difficult aspects to my holistic healing was sorting out my emotional state, both past and present and this nearly led me to my downfall.   Once I had ticked all the boxes of physical healing I started to unravel after a few months of finishing my wellbeing programme.  I became depressed and started suffering a form of breakdown - all behind closed doors without really being able to tell my family or friends.  I started to isolate myself from everyone and didn’t feel the same about anything anymore.  Most things I had previously enjoyed, I now started to feel indifferent about.  Becoming well from a physical point of view is only half the battle, if you are holding in emotions of any sort, consciously or unconsciously, you will never reach your peak of health. I then began a second round of the battle, against my mindset and the negative effect this was having on my previous peak of wellbeing.

Having ‘My Big Why’ was really my first saviour and this just happened to be to change my career from Telecoms and IT in the corporate world, into a health and wellness coach.   The courses that I studied for this career change, also helped me enormously with my emotional issues.  As part of my training I was the learning the techniques to uncover trapped emotions and how to release them.  These tools put me back on track and I once again began to feel truly well again.

Life After Cancer is not an easy road and is SO MUCH MORE than just overcoming treatments and side effects.  There are emotion issues, financial issues, relationship issues and all sorts of other problems that can bring a huge amount of stress, worry and negativity to our lives.  After having been on such an awful journey, the very least we deserve for ourselves, is to give ourselves the best possible chance of survival and also to have some happiness and comfort in our lives again.  We financially invest in lots of things during our lifetime, cars, homes, big screen T.Vs, holidays, gadgets, clothing etc. and quite often overlook or have a different mindset when it comes to our own health, particularly as we have a great NHS system designed to afford us the treatment we need when we fall ill.  In the UK especially, we are not very accustomed to investing in our own health and many clients I now work with, initially find it a challenge to justify the investment of a 1:1 Tailored Wellness Programme.  Once the financial commitment has been overcome, my clients do not look back and I hear so many positive outcomes from having been through the programme both from a physical point of view as well as an emotional one. 

So if you are currently sitting on a cancer diagnosis, recent or past, or perhaps some other form of chronic illness, my question to you is this………DO YOU FEEL IT IS TIME YOU SHOULD BE INVESTING IN YOURSELF & YOUR OWN HEALTH?

If the answer is yes, then please do reach out and connect with me so that we can have an informal chat.  I offer free 1:1 trial sessions over Skype for anyone that is interested to find out how a Wellness Programme like mine might benefit them personally, no matter what your cancer diagnosis or where you are with treatment.  Just pop me an email across and I will send you a link to my appointment scheduler so that you can go ahead and book yourself a free no obligation session.  I will also send you my free EBook – 6 Steps to Living Life Positively After Cancer. (Download here)

Health & Happiness

Debbie xx