Why I Told My Clients I Have Cancer

Self-disclosure–what to share about yourself with a client, and how–is a big topic of debate among therapists. Some old-school psychologists think that you should share as little as possible, and be a “blank slate” to avoid distracting the client from “the work.” Other therapists, especially those who operate within a feminist or relational lens, tend to believe that appropriate self-disclosure can strengthen the professional relationship and move the work along.

Most agree on a few things, though–don’t share personal medical details with your clients, and don’t share anything that you haven’t fully worked through already. It’s one thing to mention to a client that you went through a divorce years ago and that there’s no shame in it and that healing will come; it’s another to tell a client that you’re actually on your way to the attorney’s office after work.

I was, until recently, completely on board with these general guidelines. Then I got diagnosed with cancer, and suddenly they didn’t work for me anymore.

Almost immediately, I dreaded having to explain my absence to my clients somehow. I didn’t know anyone in my field who’s ever gone through anything like this. Neither of my supervisors at work did, either. Most of the time when something medical interferes with work, it’s rather more straightforward than cancer treatment–for instance, a surgery. You tell your clients, coworkers, and supervisors varying degrees of detail about the fact that you’ll be out for 6 weeks, and gently shut down any inappropriate questions.

I, however, was about to start chemo and I’d be working through it. I wasn’t sure how much, and I knew that might change as I went through treatment. As it turns out, it’s uniquely impossible to be vague or coy about cancer treatment. I knew right away that if I tried to spin some bullshit about how I’d be off a few days every other week for “my treatment” and then start showing up in wigs, I would come across like I’m either ashamed of it, or think my clients are children. People know what it means when you miss work every two weeks and lose your hair.

Unable to get any clear direction from professionals with more experience, I went next to Google. Here I found a number of articles by therapists who’d had cancer. They all told their clients that they’d be “leaving this position” and referred them to other therapists. I was confused. Were they not planning on returning to work? Would they have to just build up an entirely new client base? That sounds like a lot of fun on top of recovering from chemo.

One article described a therapist processing her imminent departure with her clients and having to pretend that she was moving on to another job, and reassure her clients that it wasn’t because of them and that she really valued working with them.

Later, she received an email about her own former therapist, who had terminated treatment with her the same way. He’d died of cancer.

Ultimately I decided that this level of deception and fakery not only goes against my ethical values, but would literally be impossible for me to manage. Telling my clients I had cancer was painful enough; I couldn’t imagine having to also pretend that the cancer was actually a cushy new job. Having to apologize to my clients for leaving our work unfinished as if it had been my decision, rather than a horrible thing that happened to me.

So I went for the opposite extreme. I told every single one of my clients that I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and would be undergoing chemo followed by surgery. I invited them to ask me any questions they wanted about it and reassured them that I wouldn’t answer anything I truly felt uncomfortable with. Some didn’t ask for any details at all. Most asked if I felt okay to be at work. (I did.) A few wanted to know more–what stage, what type of surgery, what chemo feels like, if cancer runs in my family.

Was it awkward? Sometimes. Did it distract from the client’s therapeutic needs? Maybe, in some ways. Is that ideal? No.

The problem, though, is that therapists are in fact human, and we have human bodies that fail in the same glorious ways as everyone else. I don’t believe I could’ve continued to do this work effectively throughout my chemotherapy while actively deceiving clients about what I’m going through. I also don’t think that would make me a very good role model.

A lot of surprising conversations came out of it. One client revealed his own battle with cancer, years ago. He’d never talked about it. A few mentioned that they really ought to be doing breast self-exams because it runs in their families; I told them where to get more information and explained that when caught early, breast cancer is extremely treatable. One client, surprisingly, brightened and smiled when I told her. She explained that a beloved relative is a survivor of breast cancer several times over and that this relative is her mentor and source of inspiration.

Another client said she was glad I told her. “I’ve been working on being more vulnerable and open with the people in my life,” she said. “If you’d tried to hide this, it would’ve sent the wrong message.”

That conversation was a reminder that while therapists often keep personal information from clients in order to “protect” them or to avoid distracting them, clients may interpret this secrecy as a product of shame, callousness, or both.

That’s not to say that my transparent approach hasn’t had its downsides. It does sometimes make my clients feel awkward about sharing their own problems; cancer tends to be that thing people remind themselves at least they haven’t got, so it can be weird to vent about your shitty job when someone’s just dropped cancer into the conversation. But I always reassure my clients that 1) I’m here because I want to be, and 2) I still see their problems as valid and important even though I have cancer now. The awkwardness usually doesn’t last.

It does sometimes make things harder for me, though. When I was first diagnosed and didn’t know the staging or prognosis, I could hear the unasked question on many of my clients’ minds. No, I didn’t know if I was going to survive or not. (Even now, with chemo going swimmingly, I can tell you that I’m pretty unlikely to die of cancer, but recurrence is a thing and it could happen anytime.) I could only tell my clients the same thing I could tell myself–that I had no reason to expect the worst, so therefore I’d hope for the best.

Sitting with uncertainty is one of the most difficult things in life, and probably the most difficult thing about cancer especially. Yet it’s also one of the most important skills to develop, for me and for my clients too.

As treatment went on, I often found myself having to be a bit performative when clients asked how I’m doing. It’s true that chemo isn’t too bad and that I feel okay most of the time. But some days are very hard. Yes, there were days when I wished I’d stayed home from work, but I didn’t because I wanted to be as consistent as possible with my schedule. (There were other days when I called off even though I’d planned to be there.)

Most days, I’m not my best self at work. I’m just not. It’s just impossible. The only other option would’ve been to take all four months of chemo off work entirely, but that would’ve been worse for my clients, worse for me, and ultimately impossible. I don’t have enough medical leave for that.

So although I don’t tell my clients many details about treatment, I continue to be transparent. I’ve told them that I feel tired a lot. I’ve mentioned that chemo sometimes leaves me with bone aches, which is why I stay home a few days after each treatment. I keep a positive attitude and tell them that many chemo side effects are very well-managed with medication and that chemo isn’t what it used to be. My hope is that if any of them end up being diagnosed with cancer, or having a loved one who is, they’ll remember that, and they’ll remember not to be afraid and to ask the doctor for help if they need it.

Disclosing this to my clients a week after diagnosis–telling 40 or so people that I have a potentially lethal illness and then taking care of them around that disclosure–is the most difficult challenge I’ve faced in my professional career so far. I found myself having to reassure people about something happening to me, something I found (as most people would) horrible and terrifying.

This situation turned the usual ring theory inside out. Normally the person at the center of a trauma or tragedy is the one who gets taken care of by everyone else. But as a therapist, it’s my job to take care of my clients. Which is probably why the conversations were sometimes so raw and awkward–my clients sensed that they “should” be the ones comforting and reassuring me, but they also understood that that’s not their role. And because of the strong therapeutic relationships we’ve already cultivated, we were able to talk about that directly.

I had my last chemo treatment this past Monday, so things are going to be more straightforward from here on out. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to stop having conversations about this with my clients. I have multiple surgeries and other procedures in my future and it could drag on for years. I may not be able to be at work as much as my clients (or I) would like, but I hope that by being open and honest I can reassure them that help is available even when I’m not there and make sure they know how much I wish I could be there with them.

Over the past four months, I’ve had to radically redefine what professionalism and appropriate self-disclosure mean to me. As it turns out, vulnerability isn’t just good for my friendships and partnerships; it’s good for my professional relationships too.


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Why I Told My Clients I Have Cancer
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Where I Am and Where I’ve Been

Closeup of a frozen creek.
A scene from my favorite winter hike so far. Also an apt metaphor.

For weeks now I’ve been begging myself to write something, anything. But the words just don’t come.

It’s not that I don’t care anymore about the things I used to write about. Though I do click away from the news a lot of the time, I know I care, it’s just that my brain is usually too full with a buzzing sort of panic about my impending loss of autonomy, mobility, dignity, bodily integrity. That’s when I’m not panicking about simply dying.

I think about very little else anymore. The surgery. Researching everything I can about the surgery. Looking up and buying things for after the surgery, special clothes, pillows, anything to reduce my dependence on other people. Writing down lists of questions to ask some doctor at some point. I’m not always sure which questions should be directed to whom–the medical oncologist, the surgical oncologist, the plastic surgeon, the anesthesiologist, a social worker. Recounting to my parents my meticulous list of boundaries to retain whatever control I can over this impending horror–instructions about when they can and can’t see me in the hospital, when to give my phone back to me, who can touch or see what or how. Listing activities I may be able to do while I’m recovering–reading, writing, knitting, gaming, drawing–and making sure that I acquire everything I need for all of these things just in case something sticks. Planning out outfits that I will be able to dress myself in, independently. Asking the surgeon questions like, “Are you saying you don’t RECOMMEND that patients do this on their own, or just that they may find it uncomfortable and want to ask for help?” Because I will take the discomfort.

It has turned into a full-on obsession, and some part of me realizes it’s not healthy, but at the same time it’s also a coping method. It is easier, and probably healthier, to make packing lists than to let myself “be with” the fear, and imagine over and over being ripped open and stitched up again with tubes coming out of places they shouldn’t be and stuff that’s not supposed to be inside my body being inside of it and stuff that was supposed to be in there not being there anymore. And to be clear, I certainly imagine plenty of that. It comes completely unbidden. It’s a wild, untamable, primal fear. I’m like an animal being led to slaughter. My mind flings itself against the bars of its cage, over and over, despite the damage it does.

This is what it looks like to face down your worst, most paralyzing phobia. I used to say, half-jokingly, that if I ever required the sort of surgery that involved general anesthesia and opioids, I would refuse and simply die. Life called my bluff. I’m not dying, at least not yet.

Plenty of people have pointed out that there’s something maddeningly counter-intuitive about treating early-stage breast cancer, and that’s that it often feels like poisoning and mutilating a perfectly healthy body. I had no symptoms aside from an innocent-looking lump that nobody, not me and not the doctors who initially observed it, really thought could actually be cancer. Now that lump is gone thanks to an overwhelming response to the chemo, and I have to face the idea of having part of my young and tumor-free body hacked off so that I don’t die later. There’s also the thought that if I hadn’t noticed the lump, I might very well be dead now, or rapidly getting there.

The thought keeps going through my head: “And for what?” But I know for what. It’s so that I don’t die. That’s literally all. And though a double mastectomy doesn’t guarantee a cancer-free future, it at least offers a strong hope for one. Without it, that hope would be quite frail.

At the same time, and perhaps because I never exactly felt “sick” or thought of myself as sick, it feels like I’m sacrificing an awful lot just to have what I always naively assumed I’d have anyway–a reasonably long and healthy life. The surgery doesn’t feel like a treatment; it feels like the disease itself. I’m not healing from cancer, I’m healing from something I elected to have done to me, for reasons I can’t quite remember some days.

And yet, being the sort of person I am, I never seriously considered not doing it. Anything other than the double mastectomy seems like a betrayal of who I am, not to mention a betrayal to my loved ones who would have to spend the rest of their lives, like me, fearing recurrence. None of us deserves that kind of fear.

The surgery is a sacrifice that present me is making for future me, for some version of myself I can’t quite envision yet but will have to eventually become. That person will have accepted her new body, or at least gotten used to it. That person will, like the women in my support group, joke cheerfully about the awkward things that happen when you have no sensation left in your chest anymore. That person will maybe date new people again and find some way to explain the breasts, or not. That person will still think about cancer but not every single day.

That person will no longer believe that she’d rather die than get surgery. That person will also be much older than her years.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the way I’d recommend doing exposure therapy for your medical phobia. But this is the way I’ll have to do it.

This is my longest, darkest winter, the winter time stood still. You don’t move forward when you’re fighting something like this; you’re just planting your feet, pushing back, and hoping not to be thrown off the ledge. My career is at a standstill—I have no idea when I’ll get enough supervision hours for independent licensure now. I forget the last time I met a new interesting person; it used to happen every week. I exercise and yet my body grows no stronger. I don’t really get to try and learn new things anymore. Everything I’d planned to do—practicing on the motorcycle, starting a vegetable garden, volunteering at the humane society or the botanical garden, planning a future coaching business, looking into selling my bread at the farmers market—is now delayed indefinitely.

That I knew something like this was probably coming doesn’t help much. For the two years leading up to my diagnosis—the two years since I moved to Columbus—I loved my life so much that I knew it couldn’t last. “Something’s going to happen to fuck this up,” I thought. I’d spent most of the first 24 years of my life pretty miserable, and now I finally wasn’t, and it couldn’t last.

And it didn’t.

And yet, unbelievably, it also did.

There is so much joy still in my life, if not every day then enough to carry me through. I spend entire days with friends sometimes, or else catching up on my library books with the cats cuddled up against me. My parents and sister and I laugh till our sides ache as my brother demonstrates parkour on the lawn in front of my house. Letters and cards arrive weekly in the mail from distant friends, some of whom I’d honestly thought had forgotten me by now. The teapot whistles urgently on the stove. Snow falls, and then rain, and then more snow again. There’s an orchid show at the botanical garden, and I went with my camera, struggling to kneel to take the pictures and stand back up but doing it anyway. It’s 8 degrees, but we go hiking anyway. The regulars at my yoga studio are starting to recognize me, and to know what the hat means. My older brother in London sent me a Switch for my birthday; now when I close my eyes I see beautiful scenes from Zelda instead of body horror. My body aches unbearably sometimes from chemo, so people bring me things. My oncologist calms my panic with his presence the moment he enters the exam room. A coworker finally learned to text just so she could check in on me when I didn’t answer the phone.

And, outside, the days slowly lengthen, and the January chills are gone. Three seasons will have passed by the time all of this is even on its way to being over. The mint in my backyard will have grown back. It has a way of enduring.

As it turns out, I have a way of enduring too.


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Where I Am and Where I’ve Been