Managing stress

This information outlines tips to help you manage stress if you, a family member or friend is affected by lymphoma. We’re here to support you.

On this page

What is stress?

How can lymphoma cause higher stress?

How can I manage stress? 

Could a talking therapy help me to manage stress?

Frequently asked questions about lymphoma and stress

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What is stress?

Stress is a natural response to feeling that you have too much to cope well with – physically, practically or psychologically (mentally and emotionally). In the long-term, stress can affect your general physical and emotional wellbeing. You can read more about this in our frequently asked questions section.

What are the signs of stress?

Signs of stress can be mental and emotional (psychological) as well as physical.

Common mental and emotional (psychological) signs of stress include:

• feeling irritable and impatient
• having difficulty concentrating
• having a ‘busy’ mind, with lots of thoughts going around your head
• feeling worried and anxious
• feeling unable to enjoy yourself or relax
• finding it hard to make decisions.

Common physical signs of stress include:

• having a higher heart rate
• feeling dizzy or nauseous (sick)
• having higher blood pressure (hypertension)
• sleep problems
• headaches
• muscle tension
• grinding your teeth.

Some other possible reactions to stress include feeling less hungry than usual, and having a lower sex drive (libido). 

For some people, high levels of stress can lead to panic attacks. 

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How can lymphoma cause higher stress?

Living with and beyond lymphoma can be stressful for lots of reasons. For many people, the uncertainty it brings can be very difficult to cope with.

Adjusting to life with lymphoma

As well as medical appointments for any tests, scans and treatment you might need, there are lots of things that you, and possibly your family, need to adjust to. You might need to make changes in your day-to-day life, for example, to your work or childcare arrangements. 

We have more information about living with and beyond lymphoma.

Everyone responds to stress in different ways. A cancer diagnosis can result in a feeling that the new challenges that lie ahead are insurmountable. People often use the expression that they have become ‘stuck’ in their worry. However, I have seen people go on to develop renewed motivation – they reflect on how they have coped with stress previously and apply it to this serious life event.

Barbara von Barsewisch, haematology clinical nurse specialist

Worrying about your health

It’s natural to feel worried about your health after a cancer diagnosis. As well as worrying about the lymphoma, you might feel more worried about your health in general. Some people become more concerned about the health of loved ones.

Even after lymphoma treatment, and if you go into remission (no evidence of any lymphoma), you might worry about your lymphoma coming back (relapsing). 

If someone you love has lymphoma

If a family member or friend has lymphoma, finding out about the diagnosis can be very unsettling and stressful. You might also take on new or different practical responsibilities to help support them. 

You might find our information about relationships, family and friends helpful. We also have a book: When someone close to you has lymphoma – this gives tips to help manage physically, practically and emotionally if someone close to you has lymphoma.

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How can I manage stress?

Having high levels of stress over time can affect your overall wellbeing. Over time, it could lead to heightened anxiety and low mood – including depression. It’s therefore helpful to find ways to manage it. 

As part of your personalised care plan, your medical team should offer you a holistic needs assessment (HNA). The HNA is a questionnaire to help you and your medical team make plans to help with any practical, financial, physical, emotional and social needs you might have. This should include helping you to find ways to manage stress.

I experienced stress during my lymphoma treatment. My consultant adjusted my medication and arranged counselling for me.

Patricia, diagnosed with follicular lymphoma

Healthy lifestyle

In general, following a healthy lifestyle can help with your overall health and wellbeing. 

• Build physical activity into your day-to-day life. You could go for a gentle walk or do some light household duties. You could also do activities like dance or some types of yoga. This can help to boost mood – particularly if it gives an opportunity to do something with other people. Just be sure to check with your medical team what is safe and suitable for you.
• Spend time in nature. Nature can help to manage stress and anxiety by giving you a sense of belonging in the world. This can include being in a garden, park, at the beach or in a forest. If you spend time with other people in nature, it can also provide an opportunity to socialise.

We outline some more general tips and techniques to help manage stress below. 

You might also find the videos on the NHS Inform website helpful, including how to deal with stress by opening up and why it’s important to reach out for help. 

Types of coping strategies

Some coping strategies can help you to make sense of your experience and might focus more on your feelings. Others help you to find solutions to, or avoid, a problem. It depends on what the problem is and on you as an individual. For some of these, you could work with a trained talking therapy professional, such as a counsellor.

There are many different coping strategies you could try to help manage stress. We outline some of these below – check with your medical team what is safe and suitable for you.

• Breathing exercises
• Connecting with other people
• Meditation (including mindfulness and yoga)
• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
• Solution-focused strategies and solution focused therapy
• Meaning-focused strategies. 

The NHS website has information about meditation to help you sleep. This includes a video about progressive muscle relaxation that guides you through an exercise to help relax your body and mind. Such tips might be helpful more generally to help relieve stress.

Breathing exercises

Breathing exercises can help you to feel calmer. Simply taking some deep breaths can help to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. This can prevent ‘overbreathing’, where you breathe more quickly and deeply than you need to (hyperventilation).

It can be helpful to practise breathing exercises when you feel calm, so that you can use them more easily when you are starting to feel anxious or stressed. 
There are various breathing techniques. Cancer Research UK has information about breathing and relaxation techniques.

One exercise that many people find helpful is ‘7/11 breathing’. During this, you sit or lie comfortably, breathe in for 7 counts and out for 11. If you prefer, you can breathe in for 3 counts and out for 5; the important part is that the outward breath is longer than the inward one. Find more detail about 7/11 breathing on the Human Givens website.

The NHS website has more information about breathing exercises to help with stress.

NHS Inform has resources to help explain where stress comes from and to help you to manage it, including an audio breathing and relaxation playlist and breathing and relaxation videos.

Connecting with other people

It can be helpful to share thoughts, feelings and tips for coping with others who can relate to your situation.  

You might want to connect with others who are affected by lymphoma through our support services, including our online support meetings, Facebook Support Group, Buddy service and Live your Life workshops. 

Lymphoma Action connected with a buddy, who had also been treated for lymphoma. She never told me to pull myself together. She never told me it would all be OK – and I was grateful for that. But she was there and she had been through this herself. That conversation was a life saver.

Tracey, diagnosed with primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma

Other organisations also offer ways to connect with others. For example, Macmillan Cancer Support has an online community.

You can also ask your medical team if they can signpost you to local sources of support.

It doesn’t need to be people with experience of cancer to be helpful – you might choose to connect with other people you relate to in other ways and those you enjoy spending time with socially.

Meditation

The NHS describes meditation as a way to stop for a moment and be calm. It can improve how you feel, both in mind and body. It could also help to lower blood pressure and get a good night’s sleep.

A key focus of meditation is to be ‘here’ or ‘present in the moment’ – to feel aware of and to notice your senses, but not to judge them.

Ways to meditate include yoga, mindfulness and breathing techniques. Meditation could be useful where you are stressed by something unavoidable, for example, a medical appointment. 

Meditation could help by improving your mood and reducing anxiety. Some people say that it helps by shortening the length and severity of chemotherapy-related sickness. In doing so, it can lower the stress you might feel about this treatment side effect.

Cancer Research UK has more information about meditation and how it might help people with cancer.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a type of meditation that encourages you to slow down and notice your body and thoughts, as well as what is around you. 

Mindfulness can help to lower stress by getting you to focus on right now. In doing so, this can help to lower the stress you feel about the future or the past. It could help you to feel more OK with uncertainty, and to have physical discomfort.

Some findings suggest that mindfulness could lower stress and improve quality of life for people affected by cancer, including those who are caring for someone who has cancer. However, more research is needed.

There are different mindfulness techniques. However, you can bring mindfulness into your day-to-day activities. The main thing is to be aware of all the senses you have available to you and what you are feeling.

For example, pay attention to the:

• feel of water on your body when you shower, its temperature, what you can smell and hear
• taste and texture of your food, and any sounds you hear as you chew it.

Mindsight mindfulness

Mindsight aims to help you pay attention to your thoughts and emotions without feeling overwhelmed by them. An example is to notice an emotion like sadness as feeling sad, instead of thinking that you are sad. The difference is that, while you feel sad now, you trust that this sadness won’t last forever. 

Mindsight might allow us to be more kind and caring towards ourselves and to others. In turn, this can improve overall wellbeing and lower stress.

Finding out more about mindfulness

You can find out more about mindfulness on the NHS website. Mind also suggest mindfulness exercises and tips. Ask a member of your medical team for more information.

There are also some courses in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). These aim to lower stress levels by encouraging emotional openness and acceptance. Usually, MBSR involves around 4 to 8 weeks of training in meditation techniques. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has a guide to MSBR exercises. Speak to a member of your medical team if you are interested in trying MBSR. 

Yoga

There are lots of different types of yoga. It’s often described as a ‘mind-body’ exercise. Yoga uses movements, stretching and breathing techniques alongside meditation and relaxation. 

Many people find yoga helpful in improving their overall wellbeing. Some studies suggest that yoga can have a positive effect on wellbeing in people who have cancer, although more research is needed – there is more on the Cancer Research UK website. If you are interested in trying yoga, speak to your medical team about which types are safe for you.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) focuses on helping you to think and feel differently towards the things that usually cause you stress. 

CBT can help you to notice unhelpful thoughts that make your stress levels higher. It might help, for example, if you’re worried about the possibility of lymphoma coming back (relapsing), or about having treatment. 

Once you notice the thoughts that heighten your stress levels, you then find ways to:

• Challenge unhelpful thoughts – for example, if you are very critical of yourself for not being able to do what you used to do, you could focus on being kind to yourself. You might think about what you’d say to a friend who was in the same situation.
• Manage realistic worries – CBT encourages you to think about how realistic your worries are and what you would do if the thing you are worried about did happen. Instead of thinking ‘what if’, you could think, ‘what could I do about…?’ or ‘what could I do if this happens?’ Thinking this through can help take away some of the power of worries that go around in your head. You can start to give more energy to those worries that are more realistic, and less to those that are smaller possibilities.
• Find alternatives to unhelpful thoughts and behaviours – for example, you might put pressure on yourself to continue with your usual day-to-day life even when you are having side effects of treatment. This can lead to higher stress levels. CBT encourages you to question your expectations and to think about those that are more realistic.
• Plan your activities – consider your day-to-day responsibilities and activities, choosing which to prioritise and give your energy to. This can help to maximise your ability to do the things you need to do, and the things you would most like to do.

You can find out more about CBT on the NHS website, including how to refer yourself.

I struggle with my mental health, and being diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma had really taken its toll on me. But it was when treatment finished that I really hit a wall. I realised that I needed help and found it at Cancer Support Scotland, my local Maggie’s Centre and also through my local GP who arranged counselling with CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). 

Joel, diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma

Solution-focused strategies

Solution-focused strategies can help you to find ways to address practical concerns, like finances. 

By breaking down problems into smaller chunks, you can then make a plan to address each part. Think about whether there is something that can change, or whether there is another person who could help.

You might find it helpful to write down what the problem is, or to talk it through with someone – a friend or partner, your clinical nurse specialist or a member of our Helpline Team. 

An example of a solution-focused approach is given below:

Problem: I don’t know how I will manage some of my day-to-day tasks while I’m coping with the side effects of chemotherapy. For example, work and childcare arrangements.

Strategies: 

• talk to my employer about what might help me – for example, taking some time out of work, any short-term changes to my role or working pattern
• talk to my children about any changes there might be to the way we would usually do things – for example, having a friend collect them from school if I am feeling unwell or if I have a hospital appointment
• find out what could help me if I have side effects of treatment
• think about anything that helped during my last treatment cycle that could help during the next one, if I have had treatment before.

Resources: 

• my medical team, for advice on managing side effects and for signposting to any local sources of practical support
• Lymphoma Action’s information including about day-to-day living, which covers some of the practicalities of living with and beyond lymphoma
• Lymphoma Action’s support services, including the Helpline Services
• friends and neighbours, for help with aspects of day-to-day living, such as helping with childcare and meal preparation.

Solution-focused therapy

Solution-focused therapy is a type of talking therapy. As it is not supposed to go on for a very long time, it’s sometimes known as ‘solution-focused brief therapy’.

With the help of a trained professional, you set realistic and specific goals, to make changes towards achieving what you hope to. 

Your therapist might ask questions about how your life would be if your problems disappeared, to help you think about where you would like to be, emotionally. They might also get you to think about how you’ve coped with challenges in the past, and what you could apply to your situation now. Although this approach cannot change your diagnosis, it might be helpful in managing stress. Some people find it helps to improve their overall wellbeing, sense of control and finding ways to cope with symptoms and treatment side effects, such as cancer-related fatigue.

If you are interested in solution-focused therapy, you could speak to your medical team about how to access it. Often, you would need to be added to a waiting list.

Meaning-focused strategies

Many people have questions if they, or someone they love, is diagnosed with lymphoma. They wonder why it’s happened to them and what the purpose of life is. Some people with a religious or spiritual faith begin to question this. 

Meaning-focused strategies aim to help you to make sense of what is happening in your life. They include trying to accept that you have lymphoma and recognising the impact of it on your life. 

Talking openly and honestly about your feelings can help you to make some sense of what is happening. In time, some people feel this helps them to go onto finding peace and joy once more in life. You might do this with someone close to you, or within a supportive environment, such as a support group or with a faith-based community, if you are part of one. 

However, it can sometimes be difficult to have such conversations with people you know. If this is the case, speak to your clinical nurse specialist to ask if they can help you find a trained professional such as a counsellor, to support you emotionally. 

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Could a talking therapy help me to manage stress?

Talking therapies aim to help you to improve your sense of wellbeing. Exploring your thoughts and feelings with a trained professional in a confidential environment can help to build a sense of inner strength and resilience. 

There are lots of different talking therapies, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and counselling, of which there are various types. 

Some therapists offer sessions over the phone, video call or text message, as well as face-to-face. 

Speak to a member of your medical team or your GP if you’re interested in counselling. You can also search for a private therapist in your area using the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists online tool.

We have a list of useful organisations, including those that offer talking therapies.

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Frequently asked questions about lymphoma and stress

We answer some common questions people have about stress and lymphoma. Speak to your medical team for advice specific to your situation, and to help you manage stress.

Can stress cause or worsen lymphoma?

From the available research, there isn’t strong evidence that stress can cause or worsen lymphoma or any type of cancer, or that it can make it come back (relapse).

Cancer Research UK has more information on whether stress can cause cancer.

Why is it important to manage stress?

It’s important to find ways to manage stress, to help your overall physical and mental wellbeing, as well as your recovery after treatment.

If your stress levels stay high over time, it might impact your health and wellbeing in negative ways, such as by:

• lowering your mood, which might lead to less self-care and withdrawing from the people around you
• making you feel things like pain and fatigue more so than you might do otherwise, which can affect sleep quality, memory and concentration
• increasing your blood pressure, which can lead to serious health conditions, such as kidney disease
• affecting your immune system so that you are less able to fight off infections
• increasing the risk of heart (cardiovascular) disease – The British Heart Foundation gives more information about stress and cardiovascular (heart) health
• activating other health conditions that can be linked to stress, such as asthma attacks, psoriasis and shingles
• using unhealthy ways of trying to cope, such as drinking too much alcohol, smoking or using drugs.

What can I do if I feel stressed?

Let someone know if you feel stressed. You can contact us if you’d like support with how you feel. 

Tell your medical team if your level of stress stays high over time, so that they can support you. 

Talking through concerns with them might help to reassure you and help you to feel calmer. As well as talking through ways of managing stress, they might also check whether any signs of stress could be linked to your treatment.

You might also be interested in our list of useful organisations, which includes a list of organisations that offer support to help with emotional wellbeing.