The Patient's Partner

People experiencing the invasive trauma of cancer have needs requiring special attention; and the partners of patients have special needs also. My role here is to address the special needs of you, the partner, thereby assisting you to best support, nurture and care for your patient/partner.

The statistics on marriage separation during this time is alarming. Suddenly the whole life game changes; all that was is no more. I have no need to describe these changes to you. If you are at this point and reading this now, the memories and experience of those changes, for you, are most vivid.

Dealing with Trauma

Men deal with trauma and grief in different ways to women. I want to emphasise different not wrong.

Generally, Women have a greater societal acceptance of the need for social and emotional support, along with societal “permission” and expectation for women to seek personal support. Whereas men seeking support are often perceived as the hallmark of a weak, deficient or defeated male.

There is, typically, a restricted range and depth of emotional support systems for male partners. There is a perception that men should be independent and cope alone, becoming action focused with a tendency to adopt a task focused, problem solving and quick fix approach.

This, unfortunately, often doesn’t assist with emotional resolution. These strategies will not work, as they can’t be applied to the model of dealing with the trauma of their partner’s cancer.

Cancer and the treatment of cancer is a major crisis that redefines and restructures people’s lives. It generates an uncertainty of the future and potentially, immediate and profound losses.

Men need to address the grieving of those losses, the acceptance of their own vulnerability, and develop a willingness to reach out for other’s support. This process will allow men to discover their capacity to share their inner self, and to take responsibility for their own emotional well-being. It also generates the need to reinforce their value as men.

Men often approach these needs in their own way, some of which are unhelpful. It has been identified that men commonly have three enemies when faced with dealing with a crisis as serious as their partner’s cancer treatment,

1. emotional loneliness
2. compulsive competitiveness
3. emotional timidity.

Men often are reluctant to talk deeply with other men. This tends to leave men emotionally numb and superficial and, as a result, their true selves are only partially visible.

Men tend to tough pain out; however, to heal emotionally and be available for their partners in treatment, you must feel their emotions and need safe places and relationships in which such feelings can be expressed.

The poet, E.E. Cummings wrote, "The moment you feel you can be nobody but yourself" is a good example. Also applicable here is the Chinese proverb "Crisis equals Opportunity". The opportunity here is to learn more about yourself and your relationship with your partner.

Stress

Stress means different things to different people. When we are truly stressed, our bodies, emotions and thinking all respond in ways that are uncomfortable.

For example you may be experiencing sleep disturbances, aches, pain, general weakness, headaches, blurred vision and be jumpy and agitated. Your thinking changes with concentration and memory difficulties, distractibility with reduced mental capacities, increased negativity and mania.
Emotionally you may experience depression and agitation, fear, anger, sadness, sorrow, a sense of failure and anxiety.

Most males commonly report difficulties with being able to 'control' their thinking and emotions, and express this as, "I just feel like sh*t". Your body has mechanisms to try to counteract the everyday stresses of living and to maintain it within normal physiological limits.

However, if stress is extreme, such as in situations that have not had to be dealt with before, or for long periods, then the normal mechanisms may not be sufficient. Basically, there are two way’s of dealing with stress. The first is to remove the stress, i.e. the source of the stress; and the second is to increase our stress management abilities.

The first strategy is what often leads to the marriage separation during this time of treatment. This is also the thought process behind most suicide. People do not want to die, they just want the pain to stop, and to embrace the flight response is what often leads to this strategy being adopted. Personally, I do not support this mechanism, although I have considered this option in the past. It does not solve the problems; it exacerbates the problem for others.

The second way we can reduce the impact of stress is to build up our capacity to cope. Much has been written about these strategies. Individual variations of effectiveness and sustainability can occur, however here are some things to consider;

Beliefs

Beliefs represent one of the larger frameworks for behaviour.

One kind of belief is called outcome expectancy. This means that you believe the goal is achievable. In relating this to health, it means that you believe it is possible for people to get over something like cancer. When you really believe something, you will behave congruently with that belief. Beliefs are largely unconscious patterned thinking processes and because they are unconscious patterns, they are hard to identify.

A really useful belief to know about is called response expectancy. Response expectancy is what you expect to happen to you, either positively or negatively, as a result of the actions you take in a particular situation. Note the emphasis on expectancy. There are no guarantees in cancer treatment, having a positive outcome expectancy increases the chances of a positive outcome.

Supporting your partner with a positive outcome expectancy increases your patient’s positive outcome expectancy. This sets up a cybernetic loop that assists in finding ways to support that belief. If eventually the treatment is unsuccessful at permanently removing all traces of cancer, the very least it will do is extend the quality of the patients life’s experience. How well you do this will depend on how you experience the world and the various aspects to life.

There are four aspects to life here to consider. These are

1. The feelings and ideas one has about themselves. This is called self worth
2. The ways people work out to make meaning with one another which is called communication
3. The rules people use for how they should feel and act which develop into the family system
4. The way people relate to other people and institutions outside the family, which is the link to society.

In every aspect to life; every person has a feeling of worth, positive or negative; the question is, Which is it?
Every person communicates; the question is, How and what happens as a result?
Every person follows rules; the question is, What kind, and how well do they work for them?
Every person is linked to society; the question is, How, and what are the results?

All of these come usually from the belief system developed from experiences within the family of origin. A picture of what the human being living humanly is, looks like a person who understands, values, and develops their body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and honest to and about them self and others; a person who is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.

When you add all this up, there is a physically healthy, mentally alert, feeling, loving, playful, authentic, creative, productive human being; one who can stand on their own two feet, who can love deeply and fight fairly and effectively; who can be on equally good terms with both their tenderness and toughness, to know the difference between them, and therefore struggle effectively to achieve their goals.

The Gynaecological cancer Society is running a pilot programme called the Patient’s Partner Programme. This programme is about an invitation to a conversation, a conversation starting men to talk to each other, and for these men to talk with their women. For information about this programme contact the Gynaecological Cancer Society from the homepage.

Larry Crouch
Dip Prof Couns
NLP Practitioner