Embodied Experience and Psychological Adaptation in Breast Cancer
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Viviana Meloni is the Director of Inside Out multilingual Psychological Therapy, a private principal psychologist, HCPC registered, chartered member of the British Psychological Society, EMDR UK member, with recognition for her clinical leadership, and author of specialist trainings in trauma, emotional dysregulation, and personality disorders.
“I am not grateful for a breast cancer diagnosis, but I am grateful for the way it has transformed me”. Written during my treatment for breast cancer, this article explores the lived experiences of illness through the lens of psychology, where theory and embodiment inevitably converge.
It does not arrive as meaning. It arrives as a break in continuity that cannot be immediately integrated into experience. The sense of being a coherent self does not disappear gradually. It fails in real time.
As soon as I was told “it’s cancer”, I held my head with both hands, immediately, as if to contain something that was no longer staying within its internal boundaries. It was not a thought-driven action, but a motor response to sudden psychological overload, as if holding the head could prevent fragmentation.
Then I tried to shout “No” with urgency, but no sound came out, even though I felt myself screaming internally. Not language, but the discharge of a sound that preceded interpretation.
After the word “cancer”, speech no longer arrived as full language. It arrived as fragments: “cancer mastectomy chemotherapy.” Everything else remained present as sound, but without access to meaning.
There is a moment when hearing continues, but comprehension withdraws. I remember my breath becoming too close, too loud, no longer aligned with the situation in the room. What follows is not a thought, but reactions.
I covered myself with my coat, as if becoming less visible could restore internal coherence. Not a decision, but immediate withdrawal. I remember adjusting it twice, without knowing why once was not enough. I remember desperately trying to cover my face with the hood of my coat, it was not out of shame, but from a need to protect my identity, whatever it was in that moment. Then I went home.
I deliberately and instinctively threw away all processed food, biscuits, sugar and meat. I emptied the kitchen following a sudden internal awareness that, in order to orient myself toward healing, something in my way of living had to change. The action was immediate, as if the external environment needed to be brought into alignment with a new internal state. What remained was reduced quickly, almost radically, as if space itself had to be reorganised around a new internal necessity.
The collapse of before as lived reference
Very quickly, the mind attempts to reconstruct continuity through “before and after.”
But this is not narrative logic. It is a failed stabilisation attempt.
The “before” remains known but no longer inhabited. It stops functioning as a reference for identity continuity. What collapses is not memory, but the sense of being the same subject across time.
I remember trying to recall something ordinary and feeling its distance immediately, as if it belonged to someone I could describe but not be. What follows is not return, but reassembly under altered constraints.
The body as intrusive system
Attention detaches from external flow and is pulled inward by bodily signals. They are registered before they are interpreted, often too late to remain in the background. The body ceases to be neutral. It becomes an interruption.
Even stillness feels slightly misaligned, as if constantly checked from within. Perception shifts from narrative continuity to internal monitoring. I remember myself lying on a sofa, looking at the ceiling for entire days, but I was not bored. I felt like a cleansing process, like a detox. I was freeing myself from everything that had previously felt like a problem, making space only for what truly mattered: my inner peace, so that I could heal.
It may seem strange, but I began to sleep wonderfully from the day I was given my diagnosis, as if I had suddenly learned how to deeply take care of my vulnerable part. I started selecting everything that I allowed into my mind, my time, and my energy with a new and quiet clarity.
I also began observing people and their capacity to support me in such a moment. For the first time, I felt I had nothing to give in return. In that silence, only those who were able to recognise the transformation behind it remained those who did not judge but were able to stay close to me as I was. I felt as if I were being carried on a small mattress in the ocean, without opposing any force, simply allowing myself to be held.
Time as fragmentation of experience
Time does not break conceptually. It loses consistency in experience. Waiting periods expand without structure, not felt as duration but as suspended attention without resolution. I remember sitting in a waiting room, unable to locate time in anything around me. Other moments compress abruptly, especially during medical information.
I remember the devastation of hearing different oncologists offer conflicting opinions, each one pulling me in a different direction, while the weight of the decision rested entirely on me. In the end, I turned inward, listened to my body, and made the most important decision of my life. Between these states, no stable temporal line holds. The present becomes the only segment that does not require reconstruction.
Control as relocation of causality
Control does not disappear. It shifts location. It moves into concrete action, opening cupboards, removing objects, reorganising space.
At one point, I stood in front of the open fridge longer than necessary, not deciding anything, but sensing the cold air as something that still responded to reality.
These actions are not symbolic. They restore minimal causality, something I do still produce an effect.
Control becomes not prediction but contact with consequence.
Control under uncertainty
Control is no longer anticipation. It becomes the capacity to continue acting without certainty. Expectation is reduced structurally because prediction exceeds available cognitive stability. What remains is operational continuity.
Differential internal outcomes
Responses diverge. Some systems reorganise into new internal structures of attention and priority. Others become more permeable, what was previously held at a distance becomes accessible without the same separation.
This is not a resolution. It is reduced internal segregation. In this condition, silence is no longer absence but low, precious interference, a space where internal material is no longer immediately overridden.
Identity as redistribution
A new self emerges, it redistributes weight. Some elements lose salience. Others become unavoidable. Attention reallocates without decision. What changes is not the content, but the hierarchy of relevance.
Psychological adaptation and embodied awareness during cancer treatment
I have never conceptualised cancer as something to “fight against.” Rather, I found myself moving in the opposite direction, seeking to understand my experience within my body and to relate to it through awareness rather than resistance. From the perspective of psycho-oncology, I became interested in the complex and bidirectional interactions between psychological processes and physiological functioning, particularly the role of chronic stress in influencing neuroendocrine and immune system regulation.
While the development of breast cancer is understood to be multifactorial, driven by genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors, it is also widely recognised that stress and emotional states can modulate immune responses and affect overall wellbeing and adjustment during illness. Within this framework, my experience became less about attributing cause and more about cultivating a reflective stance toward embodiment, attentiveness to internal signals, and psychological integration during illness.
Selective living: Recalibration of thresholds and present dominance
I am not grateful for a breast cancer diagnosis, but I am grateful for the way it has transformed me.
Selection becomes automatic. Food is filtered through bodily sensitivity. Social proximity is no longer the default but tolerance-based. Energy is allocated according to internal capacity rather than expectation.
But selectivity extends beyond behaviour into cognition itself. I become selective with my own mind: I filter what I allow to develop and what I interrupt before it consolidates. I become selective with people as well. I no longer simply adapt to proximity, I decide whether something deserves my psychological energy before I engage with it. I filter rather than absorb.
Boundaries are no longer negotiated through external expectations but generated from internal state. What is acceptable or not is determined by internal regulation, not external judgment. Emotional input is filtered before consolidation. Across all domains, temporal processing shifts. Projection forward and reconstruction backward lose dominance because they require resources no longer consistently available.
What remains is present-centred processing. Not as choice, but as lowest-load cognition the only mode that does not require reconstruction. Silence becomes a low-interference field where experience is not distorted by projection or interpretation.
Collapse of continuity
What disappears is not meaning. It is continuity as organising principle. Experience is no longer structured through temporal extension. It is structured through immediacy. The present dominates not because it is chosen, but because it is the only mode that does not require reconstruction in order to exist.
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Read more from Viviana Meloni
Viviana Meloni, Private Chartered Principal Psychologist
Viviana Meloni is the founder and the clinical Director of Inside Out Multilingual Psychological Therapy, a London-based private psychology consultancy across popular locations including Kensington, Wimbledon, Chiswick, West Hampstead, and Canary Wharf. Viviana Meloni provides psychological consultations, assessments, formulations, and treatment in English, Italian, Spanish, and her company’s extensive network enables multilingual collaborations and liaison with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Punjabi, and Russian languages. She firmly believes that in every challenge lies an opportunity to grow, heal, and inspire.
References:
Bury, M. (1982). Chronic illness as biographical disruption. Sociology of Health & Illness, 4(2), 167–182.
Frank, A. W. (1995). The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. University of Chicago Press.
Leventhal, H., Meyer, D., & Nerenz, D. (1980). The Common-Sense Model of Illness Representation.
Holland, J. C., & Weiss, T. R. (2010). Handbook of Psycho-Oncology. Oxford University Press.
Stanton, A. L., & Bower, J. E. (2015). Psychological adjustment to chronic illness. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18.
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