Asking for support

• Feel free to talk about day-to-day things. Having cancer doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to talk about anything else. Many people find it helpful to talk about everyday life as well as major issues they’re facing, so there’s no need to feel limited.
• Let the person know that you want to talk about issues related to your cancer. This lets your listener know that what follows is something that’s important to you.
• Think about which issues are most important to you. You may feel as though there’s a lot on your mind, but when you focus your thoughts you might find that there are only two or three things that you really want to discuss.
• If you can, try to tell the person about what in particular is worrying you. You may find it easier to narrow down what’s worrying you by taking the conversation in stages. You could start by saying something general, such as, ‘I’m worried about how things are at the moment’. This can make it easier to then focus on particular problems.
• Say if you’ve been worrying about something a lot. This lets the person listening to you know how important the issue is to you and they can focus on that.
• Asking the other person if they understand may help you feel listened to. You could use any phrase you like to do this, such as, ‘Do you see what I mean?’ or, ‘Does that make sense to you?’ If you’ve agreed for some things to be done, you may also want to sum up what’s been said at the end of the conversation.
• After you’ve spoken about important topics, don’t feel embarrassed going back to small talk. You don’t have to discuss serious issues all the time. Just chatting about everyday things can also help you feel that normal life still goes on.

Humour

A lot of people are unsure about whether they should use humour when talking about difficult subjects. This is a really personal thing and depends very much on how you and the people close to you normally interact with each other.

Humour can be helpful in some situations, but it has to be used carefully so that it doesn’t seem as though you don’t understand the seriousness of the situation. Humour can be a useful way of coping as it can help make situations less frightening. If joking about things has been part of the way you’ve coped with challenging things in the past, it may help you now. If, on the other hand, you haven’t used humour in this way before, it may not be helpful.