I have an exam in my Behavioral Medicine class next week, so I've been spending the past few days reading my textbook. This unit deals with coping mechanisms, pain management, and dealing with the terminally ill. Normally, I'm more interested in things that I can relate to, and I think that's why a lot of people are interested in psychology in general, but the further I get into these readings, the less I want to read it.
It started out okay. I legitimately enjoyed reading about coping mechanisms and thinking about how a bunch of them applied to me during different stages of my treatment (despite how intently I told the social worker that I wasn't coping). One of the interventions was "expressive writing;" my textbook explains that talking or writing about a traumatic event has the following benefits:
- It elicits emotional support from others
- It helps one organize his or her thoughts and find meaning in the experience
- It provides an opportunity for clarifying one's emotions
- Studies have shown that it alleviates some long-term psychological distress
Well, would ya look at that? I did it! I coped! I've explicitly stated in some of my previous posts that writing about all my feelings makes me feel better, so it's cool to see that there's actual research behind it. What I do think is hilarious, though, is the fact that it's supposed to have alleviated long-term distress. I wrote a goddamn book, yet I still have breakdowns about all the crazy shit that happened to me. Thank GOD for this blog, because I don't even want to imagine what I'd look like if I just let all of this fester for years. And hey, thanks for listening, internet world.
That being said, let's talk about the not-so-great aspects of reading about things that are relevant to me: terminal illness. IN CHILDREN. I was being super productive and ready to continue with my studying (which is a rare occurrence as a second-semester senior), and I turned to the page about dealing with terminal illness in children. I glanced, GLANCED, at a paragraph that discussed how children don't directly ask or talk about their dying; they'll say things like, "Can we celebrate Christmas early?" because they know they won't be alive for very long.
Full disclosure: I am sobbing as I write this, and I was as soon as I read that. I was inpatient for Christmas. All I can see is the pile of presents outside 8-year-old Ashlynn's room that she never got to open because she was too sick; she died on December 27th. I was in the hallway when the receptionist hugged her distraught mother and said, "She put up a good fight." I don't want to learn about how to discuss death with terminally ill children because it reminds me not only of all the dying kids I met, but also of how I got to prance out of that hospital unscathed.
Every time I think of Ashlynn, I'm overcome with such crippling guilt and sadness that I feel sick to my stomach. I only shared a room with her for a few days, and it's been over three years, but I still have this extremely emotional response to these things that remind me of her. "Why her and not me?" She suffered for two years and died. I had a few rounds of chemo, and now my biggest complaint is that I forget things. STFU, ALLISON. YOU ARE ALIVE. This is what survivor's guilt is. The theme of my post-cancer therapy was, "It's okay to be sad." I went through a horrific experience, and it's completely reasonable for me to feel sad or angry about the things that happened to me. Right? I don't know, sometimes I don't think it is. Things could have been a lot worse. Thinking about Ashlynn doesn't just make me sad that she died; it makes me hate myself for ever complaining about what what I went through.
This also brings me to another point that's not nearly as huge but still significant in the present moment: I'm going to be tested on this in a week. I couldn't read more than a paragraph of this chapter without bursting into tears, and I'm telling you how it's bringing up these intense feelings of guilt and self-loathing, but I'm going to have to learn it all. I've been sitting here thinking about my options. Part of me thinks that learning material for a class shouldn't make me so uncomfortable that I feel like I'm going to vomit. Another part of me thinks I should suck it up because they can't make special accommodations for my emotional instability. Imagine that conversation. "Hi Professor, I can't be tested on Chapter 12 because I had cancer and thinking of dying kids makes me hate myself."
Fuck this. I have more feelings than my stupid little brain can handle.
How's that for expressive writing...?
