Cancer showed me who ‘my true friends are’ – Amy Dowden highlights pain of friendship shifts during cancer
As the Strictly dancer touches on the emotional challenges of breast cancer, a psychologist sheds light on this common experience. By Abi Jackson.
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Strictly Come Dancing’s Amy Dowden said she learned who her “true friends are” while going through breast cancer.
Dowden, 34, who made her Strictly professional return last month for the current series, partnered with JLS star JB Gill, highlighted how cancer put a lot of things into perspective – including her relationships.
“I learned from this who my true friends are, and my family. You learn so much and I’ll never be able to thank my friends and family who’ve been there for me enough,” Dowden told the PA news agency. “Some of my friends put their own life on hold for us – some will cancel their holidays, their day trips, to be there for us.
“And then there were others who were sat at my wedding the year before, but we didn’t even hear from when I got diagnosed, and that still hurts now. They couldn’t even send a text,” continued the Welsh star, who married husband Ben Jones in July 2022 and also recently published her memoir, Dancing In The Rain – which documents her journey to fulfilling her childhood dancing dreams alongside living with Crohn’s, and being diagnosed with breast cancer in spring 2023 at age 32.
“And then there were other friends who just couldn’t have done enough, like laughing and crying with me, held sick bowls for me, cut my hair for me. Those people, I’ll never be able to repay for helping us get through it.
“Unfortunately, you learn in the toughest of times who really are the best people in your life. And now I just surround myself with them, because you are a product of the people who [you have in your life].”
As October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month gets underway, a psychologist who works in cancer support helps unpick the topic…
A common experience
Dowden, who completed chemotherapy last November but will need regular check-ups and injections for five years, has highlighted something many people dealing with cancer go through.
“Sadly, it’s something which comes up a lot,” says Robin Muir, centre head and clinical psychologist for cancer support charity Maggie’s in Manchester.
“The majority of people I’ve met over the years who have their own diagnosis will speak to that [notion] – you find out who you true friends are. And that goes with a great amount of sadness, a bit of anger, feeling let down, and it can be really difficult for the person at the centre of that experience to adapt and adjust to that happening to them.”
This is often part of a bigger picture of changes to somebody’s life and identity that can be challenging to navigate, especially alongside the uncertainty of being unwell. For Muir, it’s about supporting people through these shifts, rather than ‘fixing’ them.
Taboo topic
The psychologist believes a big part of this comes back to “how difficult people find it to talk about cancer”.
Muir adds: “Often people are dealing with their own personal responses in relation to a friend or even a family member’s cancer diagnosis. That might be feelings of grief, fear, it might be about what’s happened in their past, or their own worries about their own health, which mean they find it too difficult to have those conversations, and therefore sadly do that thing of avoiding somebody – often through just not reaching out, or the proverbial crossing the road to avoid the person. And that’s a great shame.”
Taking the pressure off
For those close connections who do want to show up and support someone going through cancer, Muir believes it’s helpful to take some of the pressure off in terms of needing to make everything OK and get everything ‘right’.
“Often something you see with friends and family is this incredible responsibility they carry for the emotional distress the person with the diagnosis is experiencing. And it’s an over-responsibility – it’s not proportional or realistic,” says Muir.
“So, what often happens is perhaps the person with the diagnosis wants to find space to talk about how they’re feeling, to express themselves, and they’re actually just looking for a good pair of ears. What, sadly, the other person is thinking is happening is, this person is asking me for solutions.
“The person with a diagnosis might be talking about their fear, their sadness at not being able to do things in the same way or changes to their body – very common psychological responses we see all the time. But that friend may be thinking: what do I need to say to make this person feel better? They’re approaching it almost as a problem that needs fixing,” he adds – but a lot of the time the things someone is dealing with are “not a fixable problem”.
As Muir explains: “Actually, this is a process of adjustment and adaptation to illness and side-effects of treatment.”
It’s OK not to know what to say
Muir wants to assure people that it’s normal not to know exactly what to say to someone going through cancer. In fact, sometimes just acknowledging this is the most helpful things people can do, or simply saying: “It sounds really hard and I don’t know what to say to make you feel better.”
Muir adds: “What we often see is [people falling back on] scripts they’ve learned perhaps from television or adverts, and these can be the kind of cliches people with their own diagnosis hate to hear. Things like: you just need to be positive, you’re doing so well, you’re so brave – all of which do very little to help that person feel heard and understood, and if anything can be somewhat invalidating.
“And if that person then starts to get the sense that it’s not working, it’s not landing, you can see why they then back away because they feel out of their depth.”
This is also why accessing support through organisations such as Maggie’s can be so important, as it gives people living with cancer, as well as their partners and loved ones, those safe spaces to talk and feel heard.
Visit www.maggies.org