Mind-Body Medicine: Support & Empowerment
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Following Your Lead
Just as all of our clinicians at CTCA do, our mind-body therapists empower you to be an active participant in your cancer care.
“We put the patient in the driver’s seat as often as possible,” Dr. Puckett says. She emphasizes that there is no set agenda for each counseling session. “We let the patient or caregiver decide what it is that we’re going to discuss and deal with in each session,” she adds.
Dr. Puckett says CTCA patients value being truly listened to and taken seriously when they participate in the counseling sessions. “There aren’t many occasions in our lives when we get the opportunity to sit with someone who’s just there to listen, hear us and really get to know us in a deep way,” she adds. “We can offer that to people, and in many respects, it’s a unique part of our role.”
As subtle as it is, Dr. Puckett says that having the opportunity to open up and share everything that’s going on in your mind, according to your own agenda, can be a way of gaining back a sense of control. She notes, “When a person is diagnosed with cancer, some of the control in his or her life is taken away. But the chance to get to be in charge of something—even something as commonplace as a conversation—is really important. Letting the patient set the agenda about what he or she wants to work on can be a very powerful thing.”
Your CTCA mind-body therapist will guide you through your session if you are not sure what you want to discuss. However, for the most part, he or she will open up the conversation and follow your lead.
Dr. Puckett is quick to point out that sometimes neither patients nor caregivers limit their conversations to talking about cancer. She says, “These are people with lives, relationships, jobs, families, dreams, etc. People may want to talk about everything in their lives, and that’s completely OK.”
