Fear of recidivism
by Dr. Olivia Regnault, Psychologist at AlphaPsy
In the last 10 years I have had the chance to work, as a trainee or as a psychologist, in very different sectors of medical psychology. There was the burn unit, oncology, neurology, infertility, renal transplantation and the chronic pain clinic. All of these patients, while having different physical health issues, often had one common aspect that I want to discuss here: fear of recurrence. Whether it’s the burn patient who has been burned at home and fears another accident when they return home; the oncology patient in remission who fears another cancer; the stroke patient who fears another stroke; the patient who has received a new kidney who fears rejection or deterioration of that kidney; or the patient suffering from acute pain attacks who fears when the next attack will occur.
Fear of the future is a common factor for all these patients. Whether we call it worry, anxiety, anguish, it is present for everyone. It hangs over our heads like a sword of Damocles, making us afraid that it will fall on us. Some patients even refer to it as a “monster in the closet”, the one we feared at night when we were children and which comes back, in spite of ourselves, to haunt our minds once we are adults.
As a psychologist, I think it is important to validate and legitimize this fear of the future. There is a risk of recidivism, yes, sometimes even a risk quantified in probability. We can’t control everything in life and we don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future. However, considering this probability, an important question arises for the future: are we going to let this risk, this probability, invade our daily lives and plunge us into constant fear? Or will we find an alternative.
Of course, this is not easy and it is often difficult to calm our fears. I have found, however, that mindfulness and the present moment can be powerful antidotes. They often bring us back to the essential, to what we really have control over: the time that is passing at this very moment (what we are doing, where we are, with whom etc.).
Living in the moment can develop in different ways for everyone. For example, by monitoring what we pay attention to. It’s about taking back control of our mind and focusing our attention on one thing and one thing only: what is happening here and now. I would like to point out that in our increasingly fast-paced lives, this often becomes quite a challenge. Do you remember the last time you felt really “focused” on one thing, paying full attention to what you were doing? If so, what you experienced in that moment was a mindfulness experience.
It is important to point out that we often find it easier to be fully aware when something pleases us or is enjoyable. For example: a good smell that we smell fully, a movie that we like and that we watch while being absorbed by the story, a text that we write while thinking only about it. It is often said that in these moments, “everything else” doesn’t matter anymore, what matters is just us, what we do, who we are with (if we are surrounded), etc. You will notice, the next time this happens to you, how incompatible this state of mindfulness is with anxiety about the future since we cannot, humanly speaking, think about two things at the same time. It is therefore worthwhile to try as much as possible to bring our mind back to thinking about the present pleasant moment, thus preventing it from falling into stressful thoughts about the future.
In light of all this, I hope I’ve sparked a reflection in you about the importance of cultivating mindfulness, that inner antidote to fear. When we do this, we find that we all have the power within us to set aside the future and focus on the precious gift of the present moment.