Bebra Kaplan, MCSW, LMFTDebra Lewis Kaplan, LCSW, LMFT

Cancer Guide
CMBM Senior Faculty Member in Mind-Body Medicine and CancerGuides®
Integrative Psychotherapist in private practice in Dallas, Texas

What’s a Cancer Guide?

We recently had a conversation with Debbie about her work as a Cancer Guide. Here are some highlights:  

How do you feel about the work you are doing?

The work has never been more important on every level. You’re not only dealing with the physical need of people, but in expanding their base of consciousness, that they are not alone, and creating a safe place for healing on whatever level they need.

The desire is for the illness to go away, for the cancer to be gone. The healing comes from making peace with your situation, from trying to find a deeper meaning in the illness , from creating a sense of importance in your life, and from staying in the moment as much as possible. Those areas are important concepts you have to give someone when they are on this journey with cancer.

What’s a cancer guide?

A cancer guide is someone that takes the hand of a person with cancer and walks along side them along the journey in whatever way, pace and form they want to be guided and helped.

I lose my agenda for what I think needs to happen for another person. I become a safe container with education and knowledge on how to guide them along the way to whatever step is next for them.

Start with the person themselves. If someone is going to work with me, they have to be willing to look at how they are doing physically, emotionally, and spiritually with this diagnosis. Healing involves more than the physical body, and that’s where the mind-body connection comes in. We look at all the things they are doing for themselves: what are they doing physically? What support do they have for their emotional needs? And in that first interview, I always do an assessment of where they are spiritually. I also look at where there confusion is, where there anxiety is. And I always ask the basic question: how can I help you? With the understanding that your needs are going to change from moment to moment.

How does the person with cancer benefit?

My goal is to give them a sense of true caring, in that first session, and that they are safe with me. Most people with cancer are sorting out confusion, fear, and that they are protecting people. We’re looking at their social network. How much are they really able to talk about what’s going on inside them? If I can give them the sense that they are safe to talk, and to normalize their experience and their feelings, then I’ve done a whole lot for them.

I walk along side them. Believe it or not, a lot of cancer patients can’t talk about their anxieties and fears, especially with the people whom they love the most. They are trying to protect them.

I encourage them to read Jim Gordon’s book Comprehensive Cancer Care, to help lower the anxiety. It immediately gives them awareness that they have a lot of options. I have several copies, and if patients are really stressed and in crisis, I put it out in my mailbox so people can drop by and get it before they come to see me. It creates a bridge of hope for them.

When we meet, I honor what they are doing now—and I see myself as a gardener and cancer guide, planting a seed, and letting them decide if it’s a seed they want to water.

What does the health professional need to think about in choosing this work? And how will this benefit them?

On a very deep level, I think that somebody that wants to become a cancer guide has to be ready, willing and able to look at their own feelings about cancer, and what it’s like to work with someone that is struggling with an illness. It’s some of the deepest, most heartfelt work you can do.

As a cancer guide, you can grow in areas of hope, deepness of compassion, and enhance your own self-care as well as helping others—achieving a balance as a cancer guide that you can carry into every aspect of your personal and professional life. You learn integrative cancer care, but also learn to know yourself at a much deeper level, so you can help yourself and others.

The work takes the form that it does because of the commitment and passion that we feel. We are all moving together to help humanity move forward to a greater sense of connection and healing.

We are proud that Debbie is a senior faculty member in our Mind-Body Medicine and CancerGuides