Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, Ph.D.
Dr. Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell is Professor of Global Health at Duke University, Director of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative, and Deputy Director of the Duke Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research. She received her PhD in clinical-community psychology in 2003 and for over 20 years has designed and rigorously tested interventions to improve physical and mental health under challenging circumstances. Rae Jean’s studies provide an evidence base for novel ways not only to manage stress and reduce anxiety symptoms, but also to promote flourishing mental health through experiencing more frequent pleasant emotions and greater personal growth and meaning. Her studies on occupational mental health include teachers and caregivers of orphaned and separated children in communities in Cambodia, Kenya, India, Ethiopia, and Qatar, although her primary focus has been on clergy in North Carolina. She has published nearly 100 journal articles and the book, Faithful and Fractured: Responding to the Clergy Health Crisis. Rae Jean’s devotion to making cancer suck less through an improved model of emotional care is a labor of love.
“Having Cancer Sucks”
In 2014, I had breast cancer and along with it, two surgeries, chemo, and radiation. For those of us facing cancer, it sucks away our time, energy, and vision we had for our future.
If you are a Supporter of someone who has cancer—a Beloved—it also sucks. The thing you want to do most (take away the cancer) isn’t possible. Unfortunately, our attempts to support our Beloveds can unintentionally make it harder for them. For example, we often:
request that our Beloveds come up with ideas of how to be helped at a time when they are overwhelmed and lacking creativity, and
ask our Beloveds about their health and treatment when they don’t feel like talking about it, resulting in them unnecessarily focusing on unpleasant or scary news, and sometimes trying to make us feel better.
As a psychologist who studies positive and negative emotions, it frustrated me that during my cancer treatment, I wasn’t able to help my supporters better tend to my emotional needs. Later, when it was my turn to support others going through cancer, I felt foolish struggling to know how. Alas, none of us knows how because there is no playbook for cancer support other than the standard Meal Train. We care for people’s physical nutrition but flounder to provide the emotional nutrition they really need.
When one of my best friends was diagnosed with brain cancer, I was determined to stop floundering. I interviewed numerous people with cancer experiences and, with my expertise in positive mental health, anxiety, and short-term pleasant and unpleasant emotions, generated ways to give and receive support that are less stressful and more satisfying. On these pages, I offer a radical new model of organizing supportive people and tips so you can make cancer suck at least a little less for you or someone you love.
You are not alone on this journey.
— Rae Jean