About The Author: Dr. Niki Barr

Niki Barr, Ph.D. founded a pioneering psychotherapy practice dedicated to working with cancer patients in all stages of cancer as well as with the patient’s spouse or partner, children, family members, caregivers, and friends in weekly, joint or individual psychotherapy sessions.

Over the course of her practice, Dr. Barr has developed many insights, strategies, and tools for achieving emotional well being whether as a patient with cancer or as a family member, caregiver, or friend of the patient. She is now preparing to share her many discoveries through her forthcoming book –Emotional Wellness:  The Other Half of Treating Cancer.

Dr. Barr is a dynamic and popular speaker with audiences of cancer patients and their loved ones.  Additionally, she speaks to audiences of oncologists, oncology nurses, patient navigators, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers and caregivers focused on how to best deal with emotions cancer patients experience.  Currently, she is planning and preparing a series of personally led seminars and workshops nationally and internationally, both online and in-person.

Cancer Patients and Caregivers Moving Forward Through Leaping Holiday Emotions

“This is not to be missed”.  I noticed the sentence written by a famous author promoting another author’s new book, and it seemed a fitting message applied to holidays.  How can we relax and celebrate holidays in the midst of cancer? Particularly when emotions seem to be especially volatile at this time.

HOLIDAY EMOTIONS

Regardless of your current situation, caregiving, cancer, no cancer, post treatment, recurrence, hospice—holidays bring up emotions.  Just thinking about the holidays can move you to quickly feel any or all of these in some combination:

1.          Anticipation              Fearful
2.          Thrill                       Comfortable
3.          Gratitude                 Uncomfortable
4.          Lonely                     Discouraged
5.          Generous                 Anxious
6.         Perturbed                 Overwhelm
7.         Pleased                    Apprehensive

What are you feeling right now?

WHY HOLIDAY EMOTIONS SEEM TO GRAB YOU

Yikes..out of nowhere a flood of emotions during this season can surprise you.  Your memories of past holidays collide with whatever is going on in your life now.  It’s a dance, really, of past emotions coupled with new emotion.  Awareness can help you understand moving you forward.

RELAX and CELEBRATE

So, knowing emotions are usually more intense during holidays, how do you relax and celebrate?  You lean into these emotions by making a decision to do just that.  And sometimes you make your way five minutes at a time, continuing to keep your decision front and center.

MORE TOOLS FOR ENJOYING THE HOLIDAYS

Check in with yourself frequently

Ask yourself:

How am I doing?

How am I feeling?

What would soothe this situation right now?

Routine

Your daily routine is very good for helping you feel relaxed.  Unfortunately holidays tend to disrupt it with family and friend visits, different eating times, etc.  As much as you possibly can stay with what you normally do every day.

Manage Time Spent Together

Do you have family and friends that “stay and stay and stay”, bringing you to wonder if they will ever leave? Or do you go to a family member’s or friend’s home staying for ridiculously long times? You will want to manage time together reasonably, which means ‘speaking up’ about how long works best for you.

Shhhh Quiet Please

Take some time to be quiet, even five minutes at a time.  Have your favorite thought or quote handy for soothing and re-connecting with relaxation during your quiet time.

HOLIDAY EMOTIONAL WELLBEING

Holidays under any circumstance bring additional: emotion, family and friends visits, cooking, cleaning, etc.  However, relaxing and celebrating anyway just feels better than getting sidetracked by debilitating emotions.  And who doesn’t want to feel better?

What do you do to bring in holiday relaxation and celebration? How do you meet the challenge of extra emotions?

Meet Niki Barr P.h.D.: Niki Barr, Ph.D. founded a pioneering psychotherapy practice dedicated to working with cancer patients in all stages of cancer as well as with the patient’s spouse or partner, children, family members, caregivers, and friends in weekly, joint or individual psychotherapy sessions.

Over the course of her practice, Dr. Barr has developed many insights, strategies, and tools for achieving emotional well being whether as a patient with cancer or as a family member, caregiver, or friend of the patient. She is now preparing to share her many discoveries through her forthcoming book –Emotional Wellness:  The Other Half of Treating Cancer.

Dr. Barr is a dynamic and popular speaker with audiences of cancer patients and their loved ones.  Additionally, she speaks to audiences of oncologists, oncology nurses, patient navigators, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers and caregivers focused on how to best deal with emotions cancer patients experience.  Currently, she is planning and preparing a series of personally led seminars and workshops nationally and internationally, both online and in-person.

Capturing Emotional WellBeing Within Life and Cancer: The Three C’s

Whether caregiver or cancer patient, family member or friend, it is an understatement that cancer tends to interfere with emotional wellbeing.  How can you feel wellbeing when on so many levels life is scattered with scare, worry, overwhelm, sadness, or whatever else you’re feeling?

In my psychotherapy experience, emotional wellbeing has to be chosen, is an intention, and a decision made on your part to feel wellbeing feelings.  If you decided to agree, what would emotional wellbeing be for you?  How would you know you have wellbeing?  What would someone observe in you that said, this one, indeed has emotional wellbeing?  Identifying what emotional wellbeing is for you is a great starting point.

Next, consider three things you could do right now to empower emotional wellbeing.  To keep things simple, I’m calling these the three C’s. They are Calm, Check in, Choose.

Bringing in Calm

Do you have a good strategy to bring in feeling calm when you don’t feel calm?  People meditate, have a yoga practice, take a walk, visualize a beautiful place, listen to music, or something else.  Either way, it’s essential to lean into feeling calm when you want to.

One of the quickest ways to bring in calm is to change your breathing pattern.  When you’re not calm, you will probably notice light, staccato, shallow breaths.  These serve to bring more of the same breaths, quite opposite than calm ones.

Calm breaths are long, slow, rhythmic take your time breaths.  These are the no hurry kind, often breathing for the joy of breathing.  When you breathe like this calm comes quickly.

Check In

After you notice you’re bringing in calm breaths, check in with yourself.  “How am I doing? How am I feeling? What would be helpful to me right now?

For example, upon checking in you learn,

I’m hungry

I’m tired

I’m mad she hasn’t brought me….

I am OK

I want to….

I’d like….

Choose

Based on what you learned from checking in, what could you choose to do now to enhance wellbeing?

For example,

I’m hungry…..I think I will heat up some soup

I’m tired….I will take a nap or rest

I’m mad she hasn’t brought me….I will ask her to please bring me whatever it is

I am OK….no action needed

I want to….call my friend

I’d like to…paint a picture, listen to a book on tape, watch a movie, cuddle with my pet

Bringing Calm, Checking in, Choosing to are three actions you can take right now to power up emotional wellbeing.  The three C’s seem to work best if used in this particular one, two, three order.  Try it out. Tell me what you think.

What to you like about the three C’s?  What did you find helpful with this emotional wellbeing exercise?