I’m excited to share that I’ll be speaking as part of the University of Minnesota’s 2026 THRIVE Cancer Survivorship Series.
My presentation is called When the Body Says Enough: Stress, Cancer, and Finding Your Way Back to Balance, and I’ll be talking about something I think we still do not talk about enough in cancer care: what happens to your mind and body after you have spent months—or years—just trying to survive.
The THRIVE Series is important to me because survivorship can be a really strange place to land.
During treatment, there is a plan. There are appointments, labs, medications, scans, procedures, and a medical team watching you closely. Your job, in many ways, is to get through the next thing in front of you.
And then treatment ends.
Everyone is excited. You made it. You survived. There can be this expectation that now you get to go back to your life.
But what if you don’t feel like going back?
What if you don’t even recognize the life you are supposed to be going back to?
That is where programs like THRIVE matter.
Treatment Ends. Your Stress May Not.
I remember being surprised by how strongly my mental health was affected after cancer treatment.
I thought I was supposed to be happy.
There was an assumption that I had made it to the other side and now I could celebrate and get back to normal. Instead, I felt really sad.
My body looked different. My body felt different. My relationships felt different. Some of the people I thought would show up for me didn’t. Other people showed up in ways I never expected.
It felt like my entire world had been turned upside down, and I did not feel prepared for that.
I also didn’t feel like anyone had really explained that this might happen.
So much of cancer treatment is understandably focused on keeping you alive. But physical survival and emotional recovery are not the same thing.
Sometimes it is only when the appointments slow down and the immediate crisis begins to settle that you finally have enough space to realize what you have been through.
And that can hit hard.
Research supports what I see in my work every day. Fear of cancer recurrence is common across cancer types and can remain present long after diagnosis and treatment (Luigjes-Huizer et al., 2022). Anxiety, depression, distress, and other emotional challenges can also continue well into survivorship (Brandenbarg et al., 2019).
That does not mean every cancer survivor will develop a mental health condition. It means that struggling after treatment is not unusual, and it deserves to be talked about.
Cancer Can Change Your Sense of Safety
One of the things I want to help people understand during this presentation is how much stress they have actually been living under.
Cancer affects more than the part of your body being treated.
Your body may hurt when you get out of bed in ways it never did before. You may be exhausted but feel pressure to get back to work. You may believe you should be able to perform, produce, parent, socialize, exercise, or care for everyone else exactly the way you did before cancer.
Meanwhile, your nervous system may still be operating as though danger is right around the corner.
A sniffle isn't just a sniffle anymore.
A lump, pain, headache, cough, or unfamiliar sensation can suddenly feel very important.
A scan may be routine to your medical team, but there may be nothing routine about it to your body.
Fear of recurrence can create a kind of hyperawareness where you are constantly scanning yourself and your environment for anything that could signal danger.
For some people, that vigilance expands into food, household products, clothing, supplements, chemicals, exercise, or other choices. You start asking, What is safe? What should I avoid? What am I doing wrong? How do I make sure this never happens again?
It is understandable. Something happened that taught you that your body could change your life without warning.
Your brain is trying to prevent that from happening again.
Brain Fog Adds Another Layer of Stress
Then there is the cognitive side of cancer.
Cancer-related cognitive impairment—or what most people simply call “brain fog”—is real and increasingly recognized in survivorship research (Wolfe et al., 2025).
It can be incredibly frustrating.
Maybe you spent months isolated from people during treatment because your immune system was compromised. Then you finally start socializing again, and everything feels fast.
People are talking quickly. The conversation moves on before your brain catches up. You know the word you want to use, but you cannot quite grab it. It almost feels like the word is floating right in front of your face and you just cannot pull it into the sentence.
That can create another level of anxiety.
You may start questioning yourself or wondering why something that used to feel easy now requires so much effort.
Again, this is where normalization matters.
Sometimes simply understanding that there is a reason for what you are experiencing takes away a little bit of the fear.
Learning to Hear What Your Body Is Saying
During my THRIVE presentation, I’m going to spend time helping people recognize what stress actually feels like in their bodies.
Many of us are remarkably good at functioning while stressed.
We get things done. We take care of people. We go to work. We show up for appointments. We keep moving.
Eventually, that level of activation can start to feel normal.
You may stop noticing the tightness in your chest, the clenched jaw, the shallow breathing, the irritability, the urgency, or the feeling that you can never quite settle down.
I use the window of tolerance as one framework for helping people understand this.
When we are within our window of tolerance, we can usually think, feel, connect, and respond to what is happening around us. When our nervous system becomes overwhelmed, we may move into a more activated state—anxious, angry, restless, hypervigilant—or toward shutdown, where we feel numb, disconnected, exhausted, or emotionally flat.
Understanding the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems can help us put language around some of those experiences.
The goal is not to perfectly regulate your nervous system all day long. That is not realistic.
The goal is to get better at noticing.
What is happening in my body right now?
What is my body asking for?
Am I listening?
Learning to Listen to Your Body Again
Many of us become skilled at overriding physical signals. We push through exhaustion, ignore discomfort, say yes when we want to say no, and convince ourselves that we can deal with what we are feeling later. Over time, it can become difficult to recognize when our body is telling us that something is too much.
Part of healing can be learning to notice those signals before we become completely overwhelmed.
Maybe your shoulders tighten during a conversation. Your chest feels heavy. Your stomach turns. You suddenly feel restless, irritated, exhausted, or unable to concentrate. Those sensations are information. They do not always mean something is wrong or unsafe, but they may be your body's way of telling you that something needs your attention.
Sometimes our bodies recognize a boundary before our minds do.
Instead of automatically overriding those sensations, we can become curious about them. What am I noticing? What might my body need right now? Do I need rest, movement, space, connection, or permission to say no?
For cancer survivors, reconnecting with the body can be complicated. Trust may not come easily after an experience that changed how you relate to your health and physical sensations. The goal is not to monitor every feeling or respond perfectly. It is to become more willing to notice what your body is communicating and to take those signals seriously.
Healing is not always about getting back to who you were before cancer.
Part of healing is learning who you are now, paying attention to what your body can handle now, and respecting it when it tells you that enough is enough.
Why Nature Is Part of This Conversation
Anyone who knows my work will not be surprised that nature will be part of this presentation.
Movement and time outdoors have been a significant part of my own healing, and I hear similar stories over and over again from cancer survivors.
There is growing research behind this. A review of nature-based interventions involving nearly 2,800 cancer survivors found benefits across areas including stress, anxiety, fatigue, sleep, pain, mood, and feelings of connection (Olson et al., 2023). A more recent systematic review also found promising physical and mental health benefits from outdoor exercise among cancer survivors (Ortega-Gómez et al., 2025).
Nature does not have to become another task on your wellness checklist.
You do not need to hike ten miles.
Sometimes it is walking around the block. Sitting under a tree. Standing outside long enough to feel the temperature on your skin.
I like to invite people to take their shoes off and notice the ground beneath their feet. Notice the grass, temperature, texture, pressure, sounds, smells, and what is happening around you.
It helps bring your attention back to this moment.
And when your brain has spent months worrying about what might happen next, returning to the present can be powerful.
Finding Your Way Back to Balance
My goal for this presentation is not to give people another list of things they are supposed to be doing perfectly.
Cancer survivors already get plenty of advice.
Eat this. Don't eat that. Exercise. Rest. Reduce stress. Go back to work. Be grateful. Enjoy your life.
That can become its own source of pressure.
What I want people to leave with is a better understanding of what stress feels like in their body and several tools they can realistically use when their body starts telling them enough is enough.
We’ll talk about movement, boundaries, connection, nature, and ways of grounding yourself when your nervous system feels overwhelmed.
More than anything, I want people to know they are not alone.
What you are experiencing may feel intensely personal, but you are far from the only person experiencing it.
If treatment ended and you expected to feel happy but instead you feel sad, scared, exhausted, angry, disconnected, confused, or unsure of who you are now, there is nothing unusual about needing support.
Talk to someone.
That may be a therapist. It may be another survivor. It may be a caregiver support group, a survivorship program, or a community of people who understand what it means to live through cancer.
Learning to trust your body again takes time.
Learning to listen to it may be one of the places healing begins.
Join Me at THRIVE Series in October
When the Body Says Enough: Stress, Cancer, and Finding Your Way Back to Balance will be presented virtually on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, from 6:00–7:00 p.m. Central Time as part of the University of Minnesota Cancer Survivorship Program’s THRIVE Series.
The series is free and open to cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, family members, healthcare professionals, and anyone interested in learning more about survivorship.
I’m grateful to be part of a program that recognizes that survivorship involves more than getting through treatment.
Because surviving cancer is one thing.
Learning how to live in your body and your life afterward is another.
Register now to be a part of the THRIVE Series!
If you are a cancer survivor in Minnesota or Wisconsin and are finding that the emotional side of cancer is harder than you expected, WanderWell Therapy also provides trauma-informed therapy through Walk & Talk Therapy in the Twin Cities West Metro and telehealth throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Schedule a free 15 minute consultation to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to struggle after cancer treatment?
Yes. Many people are surprised by anxiety, sadness, fear of recurrence, grief, exhaustion, relationship changes, or a sense of disconnection after treatment ends. The structure and urgency of treatment may disappear before your mind and body have had time to process what happened. If these feelings are interfering with your daily life or simply feel too heavy to carry by yourself, additional support can help.
Can chronic stress cause cancer to return?
We do not have evidence that allows us to say that stress alone causes cancer or causes cancer to return. Stress does affect many systems in the body and can affect sleep, mood, relationships, health behaviors, and overall quality of life. Learning to manage stress is worthwhile because you deserve to feel better—not because you should feel responsible for preventing cancer through perfect stress management.
Who can attend the 2026 THRIVE Series?
The University of Minnesota's THRIVE Series is designed for cancer survivors and caregivers, but family members, healthcare professionals, and others interested in survivorship are also welcome. You do not need to have received cancer treatment at the University of Minnesota to participate.
What can I do when my body says “enough”?
Start by noticing rather than immediately trying to fix the feeling. Pay attention to what is happening in your breathing, muscles, heart rate, thoughts, and energy level. Sometimes your body may need movement. Sometimes it needs rest, connection, space, or a boundary. Grounding yourself through your senses or spending a few minutes outside can also help you reconnect with the present moment.
