Jae L. Ross, Assistant Attending Psychologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Assistant Professor of Psychology in Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, shared on LinkedIn:
“Recently, I received a phone call from someone on the West Coast asking if I could help resolve a matter before the end of their day. Doing so would require me to contact someone else on the West Coast, gather information, and hopefully get things sorted out. It was late afternoon on the West Coast, but already seven o’clock in the evening for me. My workday was over. I was settling in for dinner and a quiet evening, with no more responsibilities demanding my attention.
I explained that I would be happy to make the necessary calls the following morning. I could hear the slight disappointment in their voice. They were obviously hoping to have the matter resolved before their day ended.
I knew my decision was reasonable. Nothing urgent required me to rearrange my evening, and I fully intended to follow through the next day, refreshed.
And yet, for the rest of the evening, I felt guilty. I kept returning to the conversation, wondering whether I should have made those calls after all.
I’d given myself permission to wait until morning. So why was I having such a hard time honoring my decision to let myself rest for the evening?
I’ve been thinking about that evening, especially the difference between knowing a decision is reasonable and feeling comfortable with having made it.
Perhaps that’s what surprised me most. I hadn’t been asked to reconsider my decision. No one insisted that I make the calls that evening. But the thought that I might have let someone down was enough to make me question myself. I was physically free to enjoy my evening, yet emotionally I was still carrying the responsibility I had postponed.
I began wondering why understanding what we need doesn’t always make it easier to allow ourselves to have it.
That experience makes me think about the people I sit with in my work as a psychologist, particularly those whose lives have been rearranged by cancer.
We talk about the importance of listening to the body, of recognizing when it needs rest, of slowing down, and of allowing time for treatment and recovery. We fully understand why these things matter.
But I wonder whether we spend enough time acknowledging the distress that can come with doing exactly what the body requires.
When cancer enters your life, the need to rest may not be negotiable. Fatigue, pain, treatment effects, or emotional exhaustion can make certain activities genuinely difficult or impossible. Your body may require an entirely different pace than the one you want to maintain.
Yet the expectations around your life don’t necessarily disappear. The family gatherings still happen. The friend who needs help may still ask something from you. The household responsibilities still need attention.
You can understand that rest is essential and still feel guilty about everything left undone.
You can recognize that you may not be able to do everything you want and still worry you’re letting someone down. You may even begin to feel like a burden to the very people who love and care for you.
You can know your body needs care and still desperately wish it didn’t require so much of your time, attention, and energy.
And I wonder whether understanding the need for rest does much to ease the distress that can accompany it.
I’ve been thinking about the tension between those two very real experiences.
On one side is the desire to participate in life, stay available to the people you love, meet your responsibilities, and contribute in the ways that matter to you.
On the other is the body’s need for rest, recovery, and care.
Neither experience is unreasonable. The desire to care for others doesn’t disappear because you develop cancer. Nor does the need to care for yourself disappear because others depend on you.
And perhaps that’s what makes this tension so painful. The necessity to rest doesn’t diminish the distress of what rest may mean. And the distress doesn’t make the necessity any less real.
You may need to rest and still wish you could be doing something else.
You may need to decline an invitation and still feel deeply disappointed about missing it.
You may understand that treatment and recovery must take priority and still feel guilty about what those priorities ask you to set aside.
These aren’t contradictions that need correcting. But they also don’t sit comfortably together.
I’ve been wondering whether we sometimes approach these feelings as though one should eventually resolve the other. As though understanding the importance of caring for ourselves should somehow make us feel better about everything that caring for ourselves requires.
But perhaps that isn’t always possible. And maybe it isn’t always necessary.
I’m imagining what might happen if these two truths could go for a walk together. What would they say to one another?
‘I don’t like having to say no,’ one might begin. ‘I don’t like missing weddings or telling my family I can’t prepare dinner tonight. I don’t like knowing that someone needs me and being unable to help. I want to be there. I want to do these things. I don’t want to feel that I’m letting people down.’
‘I know’ the other might answer. ‘And I wish I didn’t have to ask you to stop. I know what those things mean to you. But I need you to rest. I need time to recover. I can’t keep going at the pace you’re asking of me.’
‘But I feel terrible about it.’
‘I know.’
‘And I don’t know how to stop feeling that way.’
‘I’m not sure you have to.’
For a while, neither says anything. They just keep walking.”
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