10/22/2025
Cancer can be scary on multiple levels. It may include increased time with doctors, decreased time with family, painful treatments, feelings of grief and loss over who you were before your diagnosis, and can impact your relationships with others. Many individuals diagnosed with cancer regardless of stage may experience symptoms of anxiety—particularly death anxiety and fears that treatments will not work or will greatly alter the quality of one’s life—and depression including fatigue, sense of hopelessness, and decreased enjoyment of usually pleasurable activities.
Family members of those with cancer have their own emotional experience which can include worry about how the cancer will change them, how to manage their own fear that their loved one will die, and anticipatory grief if cancer treatments do not work. The grief experience before and after death is unique to each individual and can take time to process and understand.
At The Concord Center, Chris uses cognitive and behavioral approaches to help individuals and their families manage their experience of cancer and the psychosocial stressors that accompany it.
