How do you move forward when treatment ends?

Do you feel like you have the ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over you?

Are you struggling to feel happy that you have survived cancer?

When you finish treatment it can be like the safety net has been taken away.

The healthcare professionals wave you goodbye. Your friends and family breathe a sigh of relief that it is ‘all over’. You may feel exhausted, confused and anxious. But everyone expects you to be happy.

The "sword of Damocles" is a modern expression, which to us means a sense of impending doom, the feeling that there is some catastrophic threat looming over you.  That's not exactly its original meaning, however.

The expression comes to us from the writings of the Roman politician, orator, and philosopher Cicero (106-43 BC). Cicero's point was that death looms over each of us, and we ought to try to be happy in spite of that.

How do you move forward?

It may sound morbid, but it helps to remember that everyone you know will die one day. Sorry to break it to you. We all have an expiry date. The only certain thing in life right? Death and taxes.

But what we can change is how we react to whatever life throws at us.

There is one tip I teach in my confidence course, and that is you cannot be focused on fear, and also on gratitude and love at the same time. So you can practice gratitude rituals that will make the fear subside. It takes conscious effort at first, like any new skill, but you can train those pesky thoughts in your head to be your best friend, not your worst enemy.

You can find out more about my 12 step plan for Confidence After Cancer course here, with lots of tip, tools, planners and support - to help you to get from anxious survivor to happy, healthy thriver.

You can also get a free book - 7 steps to Supreme Confidence here