Meditation: Meditation is a great practice to get more in touch with feelings and emotions. Meditative exercises like noting help to identify negative thoughts and process them in a productive manner. Apps like Headspace and Calm are paid apps that provide guided meditation sessions.
For free options, YouTube has hundreds of guided meditation videos and tips on how to achieve better meditative practice. Getting to know yourself better can help release guilt and shame while making room for forgiveness and gratitude.
Support Groups: While cancer can feel isolating, there is a network of people all around who have shared experiences and can provide support. Family and friends may not fully understand the feelings and emotions, however, others who have been through the same experience can relate and understand your perspective.
Other cancer patients and survivors can also share best practices on what works best in their self-care routine. Knowing how they dealt with feelings of isolation, shame, guilt, and hopelessness can be a good starting point in moving forward with your life after a diagnosis.
Staying Connected with Friends and Family: Maintaining your network of friends and family is essential to moving forward with a lung cancer diagnosis. While support groups give you space to share with a common group, family and friends will keep ties to normalcy.
Although guilt and shame can lead to the desire to isolate, letting others in will reduce the tension of bottled-up emotions.
While lung cancer feels isolating, there are numerous avenues for support in diagnosis and treatment.
Investing a self-care routine that is right for you is just as important as finding the treatment plan that is right for you. Although a cancer diagnosis is difficult, prioritizing self-care is an important step in beating it.