How to Survive the Aftermath of Bad News
On coping with an election lost
Last week, half of the U.S. got the results they were hoping for – the candidate they voted for was elected. Proverbially, they got the “all’s clear” scan they so desperately hoped for. For those in this camp, hope probably feels a lot easier to hold because things are good.
But the other half of the country got their version of a diagnosis of aggressive cancer. The scans did not come back clear. The tumor has grown. And now they are left with uncertainty about the future.
This is where hope gets really hard.
When things go our way and our world feels in our control, hope is like offering water in a rainforest. Everyone has enough of it, so it sort of loses its value.
But the desert…that’s where water becomes the most precious resource precisely because it’s so hard to find.
So today, I am going to focus on how you can find and keep hope after receiving really bad news. This can pertain to last week’s election results or anything in your life that is hard right now.
Coping after receiving bad news
There are a lot of strategies patients with advanced illness have taught me about how you find hope, even in the hardest places. If they can find it staring death in the face, we can find it too no matter the size of fear or uncertainty. Here are some practical strategies that I have witnessed in the work I do.
Acknowledge “the suck.” One thing I hear and see time and time again is how important it is to say, “Wow, this really sucks” when bad news comes. If you get a scan that shows your cancer is growing, that really, really sucks and you should acknowledge it. Then, move into acknowledging how that makes you feel. “I’m scared. I’m worried. I don’t know if these treatments will work, or if I’ll ever get better.” Give voice to the reality of your situation and how you are feeling.
Shrink down your circle. Something I’ve witnessed this past week is how many people have shrunk back into their own inner circles to focus on loving the people around them and acting at a more local level. Many of you have said in response to this loss that you went and had dinner with your family or took a long hike or met up a good friend for coffee. What’s unanimous about all of this is that these are all activities rooted in things you love – people you love, places you love, activities you love. I see this a lot when working with patients whose disease progresses. When they realize things have gotten worse, there’s often a moment of clarity where they suddenly feel extreme focus to spend time on the things in their life that they love. They shrink into their inner circle, and this is a valuable way to cope and recover.
Focus on what you can control. Part of the reason bad news is so hard to receive is that it both reminds us that we are not entirely in control of our futures and that we also don’t know what the future will bring. When there is worry that the future holds bad things, fear sets in. To combat this, it’s key to focus on what you can control. Pick something small in your life – it could be a side project, showing up to love on your kids, or starting a new hobby (this is why so many people got into baking bread during the early days of the pandemic). It’s only important that you choose something where you have control over the outcome (you can grab a book on bread and bake a loaf, you can write a poem, etc.).
Forgive what you cannot forget. This can refer to forgiveness of self or forgiveness of others. Many patients report that either they ignored symptoms early on or that the healthcare system and providers ignored their complaints of symptoms, both leading to the outcome of being diagnosed with cancer at an advanced stage. Both scenarios are worth being furious about or extraordinarily disappointed in at the least. Interestingly, one of the most effective ways to distinguish anger is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a radical response to something unjust or infuriating. We should be angry. Hold people accountable. Learn from oversights and mistakes. But ultimately, forgiveness is the pathway through which anger for things we cannot control can leave. In fact, in a randomized controlled trial comparing forgiveness and anger-reduction treatments for those who experienced past hurts, researchers found that the forgiveness treatment resulted in greater reductions in hostility and negative psychological symptoms and greater empathy compared to the anger-reduction condition. This pattern of reducing stress and improving psychological outcomes repeats in other forgiveness interventions.
Spend time where and with who and what makes you feel good. Take extra time this week, this month, this year to spend time in activities and with people you love and try to limit those you do not love. Surrounding yourself with goodness – through good news, good people, good food, good hobbies is the best way to combat hopelessness and grow more goodness.
Focus on how you or others have made it through in the past. Finally, it can be helpful to remind yourself how either you or others in the past have overcome similar situations. This is a technique that can ground us in the reality of surviving in the face of bad news based on historic accounts of resilience and survival.
Whether you got good news or bad news this week, I hope you find a way to hope and that you hold space for those who cannot hold it right now. May we all be kinder, more loving, and more unified this week.