Before Anything Else: Your Nervous System

When cancer enters your life, something shifts — often before you can put words to it.
You may notice that you feel different, react differently, or no longer recognize yourself in the same way. Emotions can feel stronger, flatter, or confusing. Closeness may feel overwhelming, while distance can feel painful.
Many people quietly wonder: What’s wrong with me?
What helped me most was learning that nothing was wrong at all.
My nervous system was doing exactly what it is designed to do when something feels life-threatening.
Survival mode changes everything
A cancer diagnosis doesn’t only affect the body medically. It affects the entire system. Before the mind can fully understand what is happening, the nervous system shifts into protection — fight, flight, or freeze.
This can show up in many ways:
heightened emotions or emotional numbness
deep exhaustion that rest doesn’t always fix
increased sensitivity to noise, touch, or people
a need for control, or a need to withdraw
difficulty making decisions or feeling close to others
These reactions are not signs of weakness.
They are signs of a body trying to keep you safe.
Understanding brings relief
For me, simply understanding this brought a surprising sense of relief.
It softened self-judgment. It explained why things felt harder, and why I couldn’t just “go back” to how I was before.
I wasn’t failing at coping.
My system was prioritizing survival.
When we begin to understand the nervous system, many things start to make sense — our emotions, our boundaries, our relationships, even our fatigue. Nothing needs to be fixed before it is understood.
A gentler way forward
Regulation doesn’t mean forcing calm or staying positive.
It begins with recognizing what state we are in and meeting ourselves there.
Sometimes that means slowing down.
Sometimes it means creating distance.
Sometimes it simply means not asking more of ourselves than is possible that day.
This understanding became the foundation of my journey — not instead of medical treatment, but alongside it.
An invitation
If you recognize yourself in these words, know this:
You are not broken.
Your reactions are not random.
Your nervous system is responding to something profound.
This is where my own journey truly began — and where I will keep returning, as I continue to write and reflect.
From here, exactly as we are. 

With love, 

B.