A guest blog from Sarah Woolf.

In 2018 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Over many months I received chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy and hormone drugs. While my head knew this was a treatment to cure me, my body was painfully aware that it was being poisoned, cut and burned. I was left with debilitating fatigue and was no longer the lively, spirited person I had always been. I had to give up my job as a Movement Psychotherapist working in end-of-life care, and was unable to be there for my teenage children. Even taking a shower exhausted me.

I felt I had been put through a washing machine, coming out a different shape, and I became a shadow of the person I used to be. I became depressed, grieving for the person I had been.

Our mental and emotional wellbeing depends on our physical health

Little seems to be understood about how dependent we are on our body for our mental and emotional wellbeing.

Ironically, I was now experiencing for myself what I had discovered when I worked and did research with people in hospice care. I remember Ann, whose lost mobility meant she could no longer go food shopping or cook – something that was an important part of who she had always been, like her mother before her. Charles had severe arthritis and was grieving his loss of being an active, sporty, army man.

We all rely on our body in different ways to express who we are – our breath, our legs and arms, our heart, enable us to be active, to work, play sport, be a friend, take care of our children. Our mind, speech, appearance and senses enable us to process and communicate our values and thoughts to others.

When illness, treatment, trauma or aging changes our body, this can curtail our being able to do the things that bring meaning to our lives, how we see ourselves and are seen by others. The impact of this will vary from person to person. For example, broken fingers might barely affect one person’s life; for another they might prevent them playing sport for a while. But for a concert pianist, this could end their career and be life-changing, causing an identity crisis, grief and mental ill health.

As we become more aware of the rise in mental ill health linked to illness, I believe we need to understand and address this previously unrecognised link between physical, mental and emotional health.

During illness we can feel our sense of meaning as person is under threat as we lose our ability to do things that are important to us. We can feel vulnerable, not just physically, but socially and psychologically too. This sense of loss can cause grief, anxiety and even depression. In this way illness, treatment and aging can have a direct impact on our body, mind and soul.

Being treated as body parts added to my ‘dis-ease’

Our soul, I discovered, is not thought about much during medical treatment. Here the focus is on our body parts detached from their meaning to us as a person.

While staff were generally kind and caring, personal parts of my body received a barrage of physical treatments by people who didn’t know me as a person. In over 100 appointments including mammograms, examinations and radiotherapy, I was asked to stand, sit or lie with my breasts exposed. A healthcare professional then manipulated my breast mechanically, as if it were an object. I felt that my body was treated like a car whose mechanical parts were being tinkered with. During radiotherapy, the nurses even used my body as a table to put their notes on, as if it wasn’t part of me as a person at all.

During over 18 months of treatment, I almost never saw the same person twice. So, while I was experiencing loss to my humanity and connection in my own life, my experience in the hospital made me feel even more invisible and lost. I felt I had become redefined as an ill body part. No one had any understanding how my treatment and the way I was being treated was impacting me as a person and affecting me in my life.

Ironically, the treatment which was designed to cure me physically, was actually adding to my ‘dis-ease’ in myself, mentally and emotionally.

The healing power of human connection

My need to be met and seen as a human being during my treatment became urgent. I discovered that if I waited long enough, I could see the same health professional at my appointments. At last, I started to see the same person each time. This marked a turning point in both my physical and emotional recovery.

As we started to get to know each other, I began to feel more seen and respected as a person again. They asked me how I was and at last listened to how much the fatigue caused by the treatment had changed my life, how I was feeling about myself, and my mental and emotional health. Being able to talk about this, being believed and understood, helped me grieve and process these losses and changes in my life.

We started to make joint decisions about my treatment, and I felt valued as an expert of my own body. We made changes to my drug regime enabling me to start to recover – physically, mentally and emotionally.

I wrote an article about this which was published in the British Medical Journal.

I have been overwhelmed by the positive responses I have received from people from all over the world.

About Me – being met as a person

Health is defined by the World Health Organization, as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease”.

As a psychotherapist, I know how much being met, seen, listened to and understood within a mutual and non-judgemental relationship can improve mental and emotional health. At times of illness, when we are feeling so vulnerable, this can be at its most important.

In order to be restored to our lives, to ourselves, we do not just need healing physically. We need human relationships, interactions and care where we are seen, acknowledged and valued as a whole person whose body and lives have real meaning to us. This requires a huge shift in our approach to healthcare, where we currently become re-defined by our illness and ‘de-constructed’ into diseased body parts. Inadvertently this can actually worsen mental and social wellbeing.

When I was approached by the PRSB to write this blog, I asked myself if changing our record-keeping could really make a difference. Could it really help build a human relationship with each person, making this the foundation of restoring our wellbeing as a compete and meaningful human being? It’s a big ask.

Actually, on reflection, I think changing just one thing could be pivotal in helping to turn this around.

I imagine how it might be if, instead of health professionals seeing first the technical details of a person’s ill body parts, they opened the file and the first thing they read was an introduction to the person – with their photo and a short summary, written by the person themselves, of who they are, three things that are important to them and how their illness is affecting their lives.

“My name is Sarah. I love my family and friends, being in nature and dancing.
My medical treatment gave me fatigue and changed the sensitivity in my body which was my tool of work as a Movement Psychotherapist. I have had to give up the work I loved and no longer have the energy I once had. This made me depressed.”

Maybe then I might have felt met as a person and felt less lost in myself. Maybe this would have helped the health professionals who work under so much stress, to work in a more human way in partnership with me – helping them to find their work more meaningful too. And together, maybe we could have made better joint decisions about what treatment could have best helped me, while enabling me to express and work through the changes going on in my life.

Perhaps if there was more of an interest and care ‘About Me’ as a person, I would have been able to have healed in body, mind and soul.