Body Positivity for Cancer & Palliative Care Patients

Loving your body despite problems and imperfections is a real challenge for cancer and palliative care patients who may feel like their body is rebelling against them in some way. As the appearance, form, and function changes or decreases, patients can struggle with various negative emotions that are difficult to manage when piled onto all of the other issues surrounding the disease or infirmity.

In a time when health is the main focus, body positivity may seem like it should be far down on the list. However, it is an essential part of emotional and mental well-being and maintaining maximum comfort and self-care through difficult times.

How can a cancer or other palliative care patient focus on body positivity?

Accepting and Understanding Physical Changes

Along with understanding treatment options and how they might make the patient feel, it is equally important to know what will happen to their appearance and physical abilities as time goes by. Focusing on self as more than a body is an integral part of this process. Still, body positivity is possible when tempered with lowered expectations brought about by the illness itself.

Palliative care specialists ask about the patient’s strengths or things they have overcome in their past that gave them a sense of control and power. These are two things that an ill or disabled body may not provide anymore, but they are still inside waiting to be noticed.

Dealing with Body-Focused Emotional Changes

Mindfulness and focusing on the moment can help assuage any sadness, fear, and other negative emotions that come with recognising physical limitations. An essential part of this is making sure the patient knows it is okay to feel that down by their body or upset that they do not look as good as they used to. A system of distraction to more positive thoughts and communication with caring friends and family who focus on other things may help.

Dealing with a diagnosis or painful treatment is tough enough. Cancer or other serious illnesses can trigger shock, depression, or a type of grief for the body and life they once knew and enjoyed. Body positivity efforts can slowly chip away at these feelings to reduce the burden of strain that individuals must carry throughout the treatment or end-of-life experience.

Methods to Embrace Body Positivity

Before the need for palliative care arose, the patient undoubtedly felt better when they presented themselves to the world with their own sense of style, grooming, and more. When possible in the midst of treatment, take time to recreate these things for them. Everything from relaxation techniques that help minimise distracting pain to an afternoon makeover can help. A pretty robe and a brightly coloured cap can boost positivity more than a hospital gown ever could.

Some hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies switch people to clothing and personal care supplies they offer. The patient needs to maintain as much normality and control as possible. They should always be asked if they want to keep their preferred personal care supplies like favorite shampoos, shower gels, perfumes, makeup, etc. Every detail, no matter how insignificant, can help put patients back in control. Patients should be put back in control of their choices for how they want to live through their last chapter of life.

At LifeChoice hospice and palliative care, our goal is to help the whole person feel their best, experience physical and emotional comfort, and maintain as much body positivity as possible during the difficult times ahead.