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Article: Cancer Healing and Containment by Judith Edwards

PostPosted: Tue May 23, 2017 2:33 pm
by Rosa_M
Any cancer diagnosis is a trauma, both for the person who hears the words ‘you have cancer’ and the family and friends surrounding the afflicted patient. For some people these three words spell the beginning of a new state of mind, designated as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
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In this state of mind it is often hard to sleep, often the traumatic diagnosis is relived through nightmares and flashbacks, and people may experience feelings of isolation, irritability and guilt. These symptoms can range from mild to severe, and can have a significant impact on a person’s daily life. Post-traumatic stress disorder may be treated in various ways, but as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist of over thirty years (see Edwards, 2016), I would be thinking about derivatives of ‘the talking cure’- or at least a form of people talking together which can help unpack the thoughts of the traumatised individual and render them more manageable over time. This is ‘containment’: what the dictionary defines as ‘the action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits’.

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