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Reckless Platitudes

This post has been ages in the making. I have debated its worthiness ever since I first had someone utter a religious platitude carelessly in light of my diagnosis. Is it worth writing about? Am I preaching to the choir?

I think I am but take this as a PSA, if you will. When words are used carelessly they belie a lack of emotional awareness that compounds the trauma inflicted by a cancer diagnosis or any other wretched disease. Syntax matters. Syntax is everything.

Platitudes are incredibly offensive to someone who has an illness. Why would you use such a trite phrase in a time of incredible pain? If you do not know what to say (I get it - emotional awareness is elusive, tact is hard & deep down you are scared for me), then choose to do instead - offer to run to the grocery store, to help, to clean, to hug, to hold.

Religious platitudes are even more offensive in this context, because not only is the speaker not thinking, they are choosing to use your moment of pain to proselytize, however inadvertently. Many invoke religion because it provides them comfort but it is self-serving. Isn’t it more thoughtful to take the patient’s beliefs into consideration, instead? Religion is a delicate subject in the best of times. In an illness scenario, a chasm of belief can trigger strong emotions in an already emotionally drained patient.

When someone is sick and vulnerable - and already expending their energy on trying to feel better, keeping track of doctors and tests, insurance claims, etc - it is cruelly reckless to unleash a platitude. Their mind is going a mile a minute and they are holding it together - but you can’t think of something better to say?

Especially because these platitudes, as I have come to understand well, are not really meant to soothe the patient but rather the speaker. The speaker is scared for you, but ultimately for themselves: will I get this too? The speaker needs reassurance that there is a reason that separates them from the patient. I ended up comforting people many times over the phone - and it became the main reason I told most friends of my diagnosis via text.

This is not to say that people do not have good intentions - they do - but most people do not think before they speak or prioritize their fear above your need for comfort. To those who say “but you know what I meant!” when being called out for saying something ultimately insensitive, guess what? It is not about your intention. While we are not mind readers, we do have analytical brains and a vast vocabulary so you can choose to do better by the stricken person in your life. Please do better by them. The burden to not be insensitive is on you - not on the cancer patient. And to think it is on the cancer patient says more about you than you will ever know.

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Let me walk you through things that have been said to me + others, and what we really hear. Please feel free to insert any illness in lieu of cancer.

Do you have the BRCA gene? Does it run in your family? (Or asking a lung cancer patient if they smoked, or if a heart attack patient was overweight.)

(Of course YOU got it, you were predestined, phew!)

You will be fine. You are young and strong.

(Are you listening? I just told you I had cancer - not a scraped knee. Also, you do not know I will be fine. I want something to hold on to and this sounds hollow.)

This is God’s plan. You have to trust that this is happening for a reason. Maybe God is testing you?

(Keep your religion to yourself. Your god is testing me by giving me something that kills millions of people indiscriminately? What sort of god is this, again?)

Think about it. Maybe this is God’s way of teaching you something.

(You need to learn to think before repeating platitudes mindlessly. Maybe you should get cancer?)

If you trust in God and do your part, you will be fine.

(So if this kills me it is because I didn’t try hard enough?)

Maybe this is life’s way of telling you to slow down and smell the roses?

(Do you understand how cancer works? I don’t think you do. Also, chemo messes with your sense of smell.)

Any phrase about needing to be positive/Thankful it isn’t worse/etc.

(Gratitude during the early days of diagnosis is a mind game. Of course I am grateful it isn’t worse but I still wish it never happened. These sentiments are not mutually exclusive and I do not have to twist my emotions in order to make them fit neatly into a gratitude box. Positivity is taxing and I have hormonal induced fatigue. Also, I am terrified.)

You are exactly where you need to be.

(Yes, I have cancer so I need to be in a chemo ward surrounded by my stable of doctors. But, that isn’t what you meant, right?)

It’ll be over soon and you’ll get back to your life. It’ll be your new normal.

(If you do not know the ins-and-outs of a treatment, do not say this. Cancer treatment can go on for years, and some things never go back to normal. The side effects are many and wide ranging.

English is a cruel mistress. Normal is also defined as “(of a person) free from physical or mental disorders.” That is not the present-day, new me. That was the old me.)

I know how you feel with hormone treatment - I’m pregnant so I know what being hormonal and swollen feels like!

(I see where you were going with this but....Congrats? You get a bouncing baby and I get PTSD and menopause!)

You are so lucky your fiancé stuck it out. He didn’t have to.

(Because I am damaged goods now? Cool cool cool. What would you say to those who go through cancer utterly alone and are afraid their scars will only attract cancer fetishists? [It’s a thing.])

This happened for a reason.

(This is by and far the worst repeat offender. Please never say that having cancer was good for me. The leaps in logic in this phrase are hard to comprehend but I will try to break it down.

1. You think there is a good reason for me to get cancer.

2. You think this reason is so good that it justifies me having cancer.

3. You think this reason is so good that it would be okay if I die from cancer.

4. You think that not dying from it means there was definitely a reason for it because I am now this new changed person who will be forever positively marked by my brush with death and everything will be great! TRAUMA SCHRAUMA!

5. Having had it means my risk for a recurrence/metastasis/secondary cancer is forever above the general population but that’s okay, because there was a reason for it.

6. You think there is a good reason for so many people getting disparate level of cancer care that ultimately results in their death. (Shameless plug for universal healthcare!)

7. You simultaneously think there is a reason for me to have it but for you to be free from it. (A little priggish, are we?)

8. What was this reason again?

Do you see how insensitive this is? And how it also reeks a little of judgement? “I’m not saying you had this coming....but everything happens for a reason! <:o)”

Seriously - would you say this to someone who just lost their child to cancer? No, right? So don’t say it to me.

Be happy already! It’s over! It is in the past!

(I have menopause and all that entails; I mostly can’t feel my breasts and sometimes when I do, I feel pain; I have joint pain and swelling; I have PTSD. If/When I have a child, my brain will tell my breasts to produce milk and they will get painfully swollen before my body has a chance to tell my brain to tell those hormones to abort their mission. I will relive what this cancer has taken away from me during what might be one of my most happy moments. Nothing is in the past. I want nothing more than my healthy, innocent past. You can’t give that to me - no one can. But you can at least refrain from making the present worse.)

This is not even a full compendium. These are just the ones that highlight how syntax can make a bunch of harmless words into sharp daggers. You know when people say life gives you lemons, you make lemonade?

Have you ever paid attention to the syntax of that proverb? Life happens to you and you make something of it. It does not say “you needed to learn to make lemonade so life gave you lemons.” Curiously, in Spanish the proverb includes a key verb that points to its true universal spirit: learn. The process is about learning and therefore adjusting, two much gentler verbs than the command form of “make”. Cuando del cielo te caen limones, aprende a hacer limonada.

Trauma is getting pelted with lemons falling out of the sky. There is post traumatic stress and post traumatic growth. Post traumatic stress is freaking out about lemons when you casually see them at the super market. Post traumatic growth is learning how to navigate the supermarket and realizing that you can decide to take a deep breath and make a gimlet, lemonade. (Just kidding, my oncologist has me on a strict alcohol intake limit.)

This is easier said than done. Many people are not equipped to deal with the lemons life threw at them - they can ignore the lemons and live in denial or be forever terrified of lemons popping up in unexpected places.

PTSD does not get better in a linear manner - and for many, it never gets better. And for every moment I hesitantly would identify as “growth”, there are three more of “stress”. And, never forget that at the end of the day, they both come from trauma. Trauma is never good. Never. To speak carelessly in a way that transmits to the patient that trauma is good for them is cruel. Words matter. Please, think before you speak.

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