Coping with Fear of Diagnosis

The fear of breast cancer is unlike any other—psychologists and other experts agree on that. The fear can take many different forms, depending upon where you are in the breast cancer experience. Understand that many of your fears are shared by others. While fears are normal, they are uncomfortable to live with. We'll help you figure out how you can manage the fears, instead of letting them manage you.

Most women go through several stages of fear when they are first diagnosed. The stages, and the order in which they happen, are very similar in most people:

• You just can't believe what you've heard and completely deny it.
• You get angry at the doctor who told you and anyone else, such as a lab technician or nurse who reads a result to you.
• You appeal to a higher power and ask over and over, "Why did this happen to me?" or "What did I do to deserve this?"
• You feel resigned, there's nothing you can do to help yourself.
• You accept the truth, hard as it may be, and decide to fight with everything you've got in you.

A big part of the fear of breast cancer diagnosis is all the uncertainty and the feeling that you've lost control of your life—being swept away on an uncharted journey that you don't want to take. It's hard to imagine how anything good could happen on this particular trip.

It turns out that this isn't necessarily so. While no one wants to be diagnosed with breast cancer, many women in treatment or finished with treatment say that the experience made them stronger and helped them to become closer to their families and learn more about themselves.

Being diagnosed is terrible, but once you start the process of getting the best available doctors, the best information, and the best support you can from those who love you, you are in good hands.