“Coping with Cancer” series by Adrian Pogacian – What is Coping with Cancer?

Adrian Pogacian, Writer and Host Content in Psycho-oncology at OncoDaily, leads a new series, “Coping with Cancer”, where he shares insights on how to face a cancer diagnosis with strength and hope. This series will provide patients with simple, actionable tips to help them manage the emotional impact of their journey and find a sense of control in their lives.

What is Coping with Cancer?

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
— Albert Camus

Each person constantly contributes to their own state of health. The word contributes indicates the vital role each person plays in creating their own health. Most of us assume that healing is something that is done from outside and, if we have a medical problem, our responsibility is simply to go to a doctor. This is true to a certain extent, but it is only a part of the truth. We all contribute to our own health through our ideas, our feelings and our attitude towards life in general and illness especially.

Therefore, coping emerges as an important psychological process, that involves the individual’s cognitive and behavioral attempts to reduce or manage a stressor caused by the illness. Coping with cancer is a skill that helps patients set their responses to the life‑changing diagnosis and its possible long‑term consequences, such as cancer-related fatigue and fear of recurrence.

A fundamental aspect is that coping with cancer has three main functions:

• eliminating or modifying the problem causing the stress
• altering the meaning of the experience
• managing emotional distress

Coping can be a behavior, a thought, an attitude, or a feeling. Coping can be external, such as an act of flight or watching a movie, or it can be internal, such as remembering a song or waving a loved one’s hand. It can be imitated or learned from the coping of another individual encountered, for example, in a therapeutic group session, or invented by the individual himself.

Even though coping, in general terms, is an appropriate response in circumstances involving physical or psychological distress, or both, the key issue is that coping is a balance between the resources needed to overcome the event and the resources available to the patient.

The problem arises when the resources regarding the situation far exceed those available to the person and it is this difference that led to the introduction of the concept of coping with cancer!

Other posts by Adrian Pogacian.

Adrian Pogacian, MS Psychology, clinical psychologist with executive education in Psycho-oncology, holding a degree in Global Health Diplomacy from Geneva Graduate Institute.

Currently, researcher and associate lecturer with focus on Impact of Cancer Diagnosis on Couples and Families, Communication in Cancer Care and Posttraumatic Growth. His expertise is on Coping with Cancer and managing Fear of Recurrence.

Additionally, Founder of INCKA Psycho-oncology Center, Host of Beyond the Cancer Diagnosis Interview Series as well as Writer and Host Content in Psycho-oncology at OncoDaily.com, Editorial Team Member of OncoDaily Medical Journal, co-author of the first Romanian Multimodal Care Guideline in Pediatric Onco-hematology, active contributor to the International Psycho-oncology Society, presently IPOS Fear of Cancer Recurrence SIG member and IPOS Early Career Professionals in Psycho-Oncology Committee founder member.