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The Space Between is the podcast where strength and vulnerability meet for families navigating life with cancer.
Hosted by Amri Kibbler, a cancer survivor and parent, each episode offers honest stories, expert insights, and heartfelt support for those balancing treatment, caregiving, and parenting - often all at once.
If you're walking this path, you’re not alone. This is your space to feel seen, find connection, and heal.
[00:00:00] Dr. Sue Varma: Most people, even if they know they have a diagnosis, still won't get treatment. So I thought to myself, what can we do so that we can make skills and tools and resources for mental health available to everyone? Practical optimism, which is the practice, the intentional, deliberate choice to seek things as better, but not just to see things is better, but to actually make them better by doubling down through action. So that is sort of how I say optimists are born, but practical optimists are made. So it's a choice.
[00:00:28] Amri Kibbler: Hi, I'm Amri Kibbler, and this is The Space Between. I'm a cancer survivor and a mom, and while those roles don't define me, they have shaped who I am. I created this space to share honest stories, expert insights, and meaningful support for families navigating life with cancer.
[00:00:49] Amri Kibbler: If you're balancing treatment, caregiving, parenting, or just trying to hold it all together, you are not alone. This is your space to connect, to heal, and to feel seen, and I'm so glad that you're here today on The Space Between navigating cancer and family life. Our guest is the incredible Dr. Sue Varma.
[00:01:10] Amri Kibbler: Dr. Varma is a board certified psychiatrist and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She has over 20 years of experience in both private practice and as a clinical assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. She is a trailblazer in her field. She was the inaugural medical director of NYU's 9/11 mental health program, earning her a mayoral proclamation for her groundbreaking contribution.
[00:01:38] Amri Kibbler: She is a highly sought after keynote speaker and national media commentator. She's regularly featured on leading platforms like The Today Show. Good Morning America, CBS mornings and so many more. Her expertise has earned her two Sharecare Emmy Awards, and she's been honored as one of the world's top five leading health experts by global citizen for her pandemic work.
[00:02:02] Amri Kibbler: The Ivan Goldberg Award for outstanding service. Dr. Varma now brings her insights on medical wellness to a global audience with her acclaimed book, Practical Optimism, the Art, science, and Practice of Exceptional Wellbeing being Translated. In a dozen languages and counting. I'm so excited to welcome Dr.
[00:02:22] Amri Kibbler: Varma. So let's get started. Dr. Varma, thank you so much for being on The Space Between podcasts. We're so excited to have you. To kick things off, why don't you start by walking us through exactly what is practical optimism and how can that be a powerful tool for parents who are facing a serious illness like cancer?
[00:02:44] Dr. Sue Varma: Yes. So optimism, you know, really is our genetic tendency, our natural predisposition to see the glass as half full, as opposed to half empty. But what's interesting is that, you know, when I started my work now, almost two decades ago, working with survivors of nine 11, I. And talking about the concept of resilience and bouncing back from trauma and adversity, no one was really interested in the concept of optimism, and we dismissed it for a variety of reasons.
[00:03:10] Dr. Sue Varma: One, we thought that it was maybe too woo woo, not scientific enough, but also because we thought that this natural. The tendency to see the glass as half full or being a sort of positive thinker was something you were born with, and so we just dismissed it to, and if you're not born with it, then there's nothing you can do about it.
[00:03:28] Dr. Sue Varma: What I would learn from that experience working with both first responders and civilians and then, you know, hundreds, maybe thousands of patients now over two decades, is that optimism. Is a skill and it's a practice. And some days it's a five minute practice, just like yoga or learning how to ride a bike or a new language or a sport or an instrument.
[00:03:48] Dr. Sue Varma: And other days it's longer. And there is a genetic tendency. There's a gene that's associated with optimism that's called the OXTR gene. And really what it codes for is social skills, right? Emotional regulation skills. And so when I learned this, researchers found this out in about 2011. I thought to myself, why do we wait for the other she to drop?
[00:04:08] Dr. Sue Varma: Most patients are not gonna be able to go to therapy and therapy, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy is a great way to learn skills about how to reframe your thinking, especially during dark times in our life, especially during adversity. But the vast majority of people may never know that they have a mental health diagnosis, even though one in five of us will have anxiety, depression, substance use disorders.
[00:04:29] Dr. Sue Varma: But most people, even if they know they have a diagnosis, still won't get treatment. So I thought to myself, what can we do so that we can make skills and tools and resources for mental health available to everyone? And we don't wanna tell them, like, just go look on the right side because we know that that sounds dismissive and invalidating at best, what we call toxic positivity.
[00:04:51] Dr. Sue Varma: Optimism, but specifically practical optimism, which is the practice, the intentional, deliberate choice to see things as better, but not just to see things as better, but to actually make them better by doubling down through action. So that is sort of how I say optimists are born, but practical optimists are made.
[00:05:10] Dr. Sue Varma: So it's a choice. Yeah.
[00:05:11] Amri Kibbler: Wonderful. And before we dive into some of those skills, I wanted to also touch on, you know, you've shared that your mom had cancer during your medical residency, and I wanted you to share that story that you shared at the American Cancer Society about how your time with her, um, has shaped your view of emotional health and what you've learned about burnout and caregiving.
[00:05:36] Dr. Sue Varma: Yes. Thank you. Such a great question and you know, such an a, a personal and important topic. So, you know, as much as my thinking has been influenced by my clinical work, it's that much also influenced by my personal story. When I was a medical resident in my third year and I was working at four or five New York City hospitals.
[00:05:57] Dr. Sue Varma: And residency is, is very draining. The whole medical training in general, you know, you do four years of undergrad, of pre-med sciences. If you get into medical school, there's so much competitiveness. You know, they say that the acceptance rate is like less than 1%. So you're working really hard for a very long time, and in many instances since high school or earlier to get into this career.
[00:06:16] Dr. Sue Varma: And then in the, the medical school is four years, and then residency is is another four years. And sometimes you might do several years of fellowship after that. So it can be a 12 to 16 year journey. And it's very long and grueling. And I was working about a hundred hours a week working at five hospitals all over New York City, including the prison system and seeing very sick patients, some with severe medical problems, some with severe, uh, legal and forensic problems, very challenging.
[00:06:43] Dr. Sue Varma: And in the midst of this, I get a call one day and my mother tells me that she was diagnosed. With stage three breast cancer, and I knew what that meant for her because she had underlying heart disease and the treatment of the chemotherapy that she was required to get would put her into heart failure.
[00:07:01] Dr. Sue Varma: And so no doctor was capable, interested, willing, knew what to do with her. And we went from doctor to doctor and her cancer was spreading. And during this time I started to feel extreme weakness in my legs and I was like, what's going on? I'm medically healthy. I'm not aware of having any problems. And I went to see a neurologist, but it took me weeks because between my own patients and then running to my mom's doctors, I had no time.
[00:07:27] Dr. Sue Varma: I was already stretched super thin. You know, I prided myself in having friends, exercise, blogging, taking some acting classes. I was. Even in the play, an off Broadway play in the city. So I prided myself on having work-life balance, despite having no sleep and no time. And literally I felt like things were, you know, as they say, burning the candle on both sides.
[00:07:47] Dr. Sue Varma: So I went to the neurologist and I was like, I can barely stand now. I can barely walk. And she, you know, did an EMG and other tests and she's like, you're fine. And I'm like, but I'm not. And she's like, sorry, nothing more I can do to help you. And it felt very invalidating, you know, like, what am I supposed to do now?
[00:08:03] Dr. Sue Varma: Where am I supposed to turn? And in residency I was trained to be a psychiatrist. Um, we were encouraged to get therapy, but there was no time, there was no resources, there was no dedicated time set aside. And it was kind of like, you gotta figure this out on your own and we want you to talk to people, you know, to as part of your training to talk to a therapist.
[00:08:21] Dr. Sue Varma: But there was nothing done to actually facilitate that. And then the idea of like, you know, in my mind I was thinking F foing, psychoanalysis, laying down on a couch, having to dredge up memories of, you know, my parents and my childhood. And I was like, who has time for that? Who has money for that? And then one day a professor came into our class and he gave us a lecture on CBT, cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
[00:08:43] Dr. Sue Varma: And I was blown away. I was like, this is a short term time-limited. Problem oriented, solution-focused therapy that is focused on the here and now. I don't have to talk about, you know, what happened to me as a kid or didn't, you know, at a relatively decent childhood, I was blown away by this professor's talk.
[00:09:00] Dr. Sue Varma: That helped me realize that you can change the way you think to change the way you view the world. And that day I got myself a referral and I became a therapist ready for therapy. I was like, you've got me sold. If I can come in here and talk, I don't know what's going on with my legs, but I know that there's a lot going on in my life.
[00:09:17] Dr. Sue Varma: And just after a few sessions of being able to talk about the pressures that were on me, you know, I'm the only daughter in a South Asian household. Daughters are supposed to do everything, drop everything and be there for their parents. My father's a physician, but he had been out of training for a long time.
[00:09:30] Dr. Sue Varma: So I was the one advocating for my mom and all those appointments with different doctors and trying to find the right oncologist, willing to treat her with some sort of concoction of a lower dose or anything that we could do to help treat the cancer, but spare her cardiac disease and heart from worsening.
[00:09:46] Dr. Sue Varma: And so the therapist was like, the body expresses what the mind cannot, and I bet you that some of these. Physical, unexplained symptoms that you're having could be the fact that you have zero time for yourself. You don't know how to ask for what you need, which is time off right now. Because our program was also very much reliant on residents to be able to run, you know, at any given night when I was overseeing cases in the entire hospital, like what normally would have been 10 teams and probably a hundred staff members between nurses and residents and medical students and attendings.
[00:10:17] Dr. Sue Varma: There was literally one person, you know, so I was responsible for a hundred patients all over the hospital, extremely sick medical patients. And so she was like, you need to learn better skills to cope with your reality. And the sad part is that your reality is actually complicated and challenging and sad.
[00:10:33] Dr. Sue Varma: And so through that experience, I realized that so much of what we need is investment in early education and prevention. Starting in, you know, I would say kindergarten, and I'd love to see more resilience and mindfulness classes. But something that says life is going to be hard, right? Don't expect it to be easy.
[00:10:50] Dr. Sue Varma: You're lucky if things are easy, but at the same time, be prepared and this is what you do. So I feel like what I learned and then I pour into this book are these eight principles of what, you know, not necessarily natural born optimists do, but what practical optimists do, which is having a very clear vision and focus, which is the first pillar of practical optimism.
[00:11:09] Dr. Sue Varma: Intention, what do you want? What is your goal? For me, my goal was resolving my symptoms and getting better care for my mom, and then also being able to be there for my patients and to be able to continue the work that you want. So, you know, like we learn about this idea of competing agendas. You can't be in five different places at one time and at different times of your life, different things have to take the back seat and how do you do that?
[00:11:29] Dr. Sue Varma: So being able to advocate and give a heads up to my residency program to say. I need to take time off to be able to take my mom to these appointments, but don't worry, I'm gonna get coverage. And that's very hard. 'cause in medicine, there is no room for your own humanity. I hate to say, at least at that time, it was like, oh, you have 104 degree fever.
[00:11:46] Dr. Sue Varma: Grab yourself an IV pole and run around the hospital. You're sick. We don't care. I mean, we saw that during COVID with like first respond, you know, doctors being really fearful of infecting their families and like getting sick themselves and nobody cared. Like you just, you show up. And so this. My entire life has always been about you just show up, right?
[00:12:05] Dr. Sue Varma: And what I learned is nobody is saying. Me first, but we're saying me too, like I deserve a seat to the table and sometimes I, that means pulling up your own chair, carrying around a folding chair, metaphorically speaking and pulling one up when you need it.
[00:12:20] Amri Kibbler: I teamed up with Stacy Igel and Elyse Ryan to create S.E.A. Waves of Support: healing selenite bracelet sets. You keep one and gift the other to someone facing cancer or life's challenges. A powerful reminder, they're not alone. Learn more at seawavesofsupport.com. And a lot of these things that you're talking about experience this emotional overwhelms. Feeling physically depleted. These are things that, you know, all parents who are facing cancer and their caregivers, even though they don't have many of the other layers that you're talking about there, they're feeling, can you talk to us a little bit more about emotional resilience and the kinds of tools and perspectives that parents can cultivate, um, to help them to overcome these things?
[00:13:03] Dr. Sue Varma: Yeah, so you know, though, I think the hardest thing is it's like you're trying to. Take care of your own health and it's, it's a very difficult spot and you would know best about being in that challenging position of like, you need the care, right? And have to be physically strong, mentally strong at the same time.
[00:13:18] Dr. Sue Varma: I. You're trying to help navigate your children who, depending on how old they are, may have different levels of understanding of what's happening or involvement. But you know, when it comes to emotional resilience, I think what's interesting is something I just talked about on the news this morning is.
[00:13:35] Dr. Sue Varma: The role of exercise in developing emotional resilience with children and that there's a a critical age, and that might be between the ages of like 10 and 12, and what we found is that more physical activity at the age of 11, so every one hour increment increase in a daily physical activity of 11-year-old.
[00:13:52] Dr. Sue Varma: Reduces their risk of having mental health disorders by 12% at the age of 18. So if you can get your child leave sports activities, if it's running around anything, you're willing to take a jog or walk around the park with them. We know that. Front loading exercise, but specifically as a way to build emotional resilience because there's a critical window that's happening in that in those teen years, we see that children at the age of five have about five hours of physical activity a day, and it drops to about half by age 11.
[00:14:23] Dr. Sue Varma: So emotion like exercise, physical activity builds BD and bdnf brain derived neurotrophic factor. It helps boost the hippocampus and it quiets down the amygdala, which is sort of the fear and emotional reactivity center. And also talking through decisions. This idea of theory of the mind, like helping your child to take perspective for other people's feelings.
[00:14:43] Dr. Sue Varma: Like what do you imagine if you're reading a story, if it's a young child, you know, and let's say this kid misses the bus to go to school. What? Something simple like that. Something small. What do you think that they're going through? You know? And asking your kid, like, what? And if they're like, I have no idea.
[00:14:56] Dr. Sue Varma: Well, how would you feel if you're late to school? How would you feel if you have no other way of getting there? So constantly teaching your child to understand things from another person's perspective. That's not done much nowadays. I think like parents sometimes lack that language themselves. The parents don't have the ability themselves to have empathy or to recognize.
[00:15:14] Dr. Sue Varma: I think in this day and age, it often feels like every person for themselves. You know, like, I have to look out for me and mine. But what you're doing is a real detriment to your child because they will be lacking one of the most important. Skills needed for life, which is empathy, social and emotional awareness.
[00:15:32] Dr. Sue Varma: And all of that is crucial builders to developing emotional resilience because you have to be able to recognize what emotions feel like in your own body and to be able to acknowledge them in somebody else. So constantly teaching them an awareness of what does it feel like? Are you feeling worried, and where do you feel it in your body?
[00:15:49] Dr. Sue Varma: And I talk about this. In my book, in the principle on emotional, we're talking about with, uh, processing emotions and it's a four step thing. And you can do this with your kids, you can do this with yourself, but it's called name it, claim it. Tame it and reframe it. So this is a really quick way to build resilience by acknowledging, naming what is going wrong in your life?
[00:16:10] Dr. Sue Varma: What's going right, but what's going wrong? What's the antecedent? What's the trigger? So name the emotion. Name the antecedent, claim it where you're in the body. Are you feeling it? Are you holding tension in your neck, in your shoulders, in your legs? Are you feeling weak in your legs as I did? So claim it.
[00:16:26] Dr. Sue Varma: Where in the body are you feeling it? And then tame it. So helping your child self-soothe, and this is so important. All of us need to have the ability to self-soothe. And if you don't, this is a huge problem. So many adults don't know how to do this, and that's why we see people turning to drugs and alcohol, any sort of sort of unhealthy behavior because they don't have any, any other outlet.
[00:16:46] Dr. Sue Varma: And then these unhealthy behaviors can take on a life of their own. And then that's the teaming part. It could be a one minute meditation, it could be your child laying on the floor. And putting like a stuffed animal on their abdomen and just say, you know, take a deep breath in and out. Give this stuffed animal a ride on your chest and see the animal rise and fall, and then reframe it.
[00:17:06] Dr. Sue Varma: So depending on how old they are, if they're a little bit older. Asking them, you know, what would you tell a friend? So let's say, going back to that example of the kid who missed the bus, what could they do differently next time? How would you help counsel somebody? I mean, I'm using such a benign, small example, but you get the point and you can, you know, substitute, insert here, their mommy is sick.
[00:17:23] Dr. Sue Varma: How would you help them feel better? What would you say to me? Like, you know that I'm sick. And children are just so sweet in terms of how they find ways to comfort one another. The reframing is, you remember last year I was at your event for Alco and I, my son was in the hospital at that time and he had salmonella poisoning.
[00:17:42] Dr. Sue Varma: We had gone to a trip in South America and came back and it was a lovely trip, but he had to get IV antibiotics and. He was in the hospital for a week and it was very stressful and I still had to go about my days, you know, seeing him, spending time with him and trying to find a conference room to do telehealth sessions with my own patients.
[00:17:58] Dr. Sue Varma: But when I asked him, when you look back at that experience, what do you remember? And he was like, I remember that we spent time together. I got tons of Legos, I watched Netflix. So you know, the reframing of for what? What felt? 'cause we didn't know what was going on. We were just getting tons of tests, you know, 140 degree fever for like 10 days and was, and not breaking.
[00:18:16] Dr. Sue Varma: And so as a parent you're super worried, but it's fascinating to me, have kids on their own have a very interesting spin on things. 'cause they don't have the layers. Of, I think years of experience and the sort of negative stuff that we project onto situations so lacking that they naturally are really good at reframing things in a positive way.
[00:18:35] Amri Kibbler: Absolutely. Kids definitely have the skill of being able to pull out a highlight reel of their star moments that are just like little snippets of all the other things and, and they don't see the turmoil and all the, the other crazy things that are going on. I, I definitely saw that. Myself in my own experience.
[00:18:51] Amri Kibbler: And I wanna hop back to the first thing that you mentioned around the exercise and how exercise is an incredible tool for your children. And you know, you and I were talking about this earlier, that it's also in the media now, how incredible exercise actually is for your health, and that it's now been shown to be almost as impactful as some medications.
[00:19:10] Amri Kibbler: And I know that it's also one of your four M's of mental health. Um, so could you speak a little bit more about that as well?
[00:19:17] Dr. Sue Varma: Yeah. So you know, if somebody asked me and I was asked in the height of the pandemic to give really brief exercise, like New York City was coming to its highest peak of its death toll in April, 2020.
[00:19:28] Dr. Sue Varma: And there was this great benefit program with a lot of famous musicians and TV people, and I was asked to give, they like, we want you to give hope and inspiration. And I was like, how long do I have? Like an hour? And they were like, no, no, you have 59 seconds. And I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna give in 59 seconds?
[00:19:42] Dr. Sue Varma: That's gonna be hopeful, heartfelt, helpful, credible. And so I thought, what do I do with my patients? What do I do every day? You know, my dad was the ultimate practical optimist in my life and a retired psychiatrist who was like close to 90, but look, doesn't look a day over 70. What does he do every day?
[00:19:56] Dr. Sue Varma: And what are the best practices? So I came up with things that I was already doing, but. Phrased it in this way was the four MS of mental health, which is movement, mindfulness, meaningful engagement and mastery. And the um, the movement part of it is really anything. It is moving your body in any way, but doing it on a very consistent basis.
[00:20:17] Dr. Sue Varma: I. When we know that, you know, everyone's heard about this 10,000 steps a day, really what it comes down to for good mental health, five to 7,000 steps and beyond that, for your mental health, there may not be any more benefit, but 5,000 step is very achievable. Like literally just you going out to your yard and doing a couple of things here and there and walking throughout the whole day.
[00:20:35] Dr. Sue Varma: Parking your car a little bit further walking if you can, taking the stairs when you can go such a long way, you know, and really reducing the, the entry barrier. And I talk about this in the last chapter of practicing healthy habits, which is anything that'll help either lower the entry barrier. So going back to high school chemistry, anytime you wanted to move an equation going forward.
[00:20:54] Dr. Sue Varma: You needed to reduce this activation energy hump. And all of us have this right? Like getting to do something at first, that may seem hard. So lowering that hump can be walking with a friend after dinner, in general, 10 or 15 minutes walking after meals. But really anytime in the day that you're gonna do it, having an accountability partner goes so far 'cause you're less likely to say no to somebody else.
[00:21:15] Dr. Sue Varma: So if that's the yoga class. That you book because you don't wanna lose the money because the teacher is wait, you know, expecting you because your friends are expecting you. So set up these things in your life that make it almost non-negotiable and really hard to say no to have a yoga mat near your desk, have weights near your desk doing, you know, one thing I love, like they talk about doing squats every hour after every 45 minute, you know, do 10 to 15 squats and that could be the equivalent of your movement for the day, for example.
[00:21:42] Dr. Sue Varma: So I think there's so many ways, but movement is one of the four Ms. And I highly recommend that everybody. Do them because I find that from mild to moderate depression and anxiety, it can be as helpful as medication. But regardless, whenever I'm working with patients, I always ask them to include it and I sometimes I still have my old school prescription pad and I'll write it down as a prescription that like in addition, even if you are in talk therapy, even if you are on medication, I have tons of patients that don't take medication.
[00:22:08] Dr. Sue Varma: I think of these four MS
[00:22:10] Amri Kibbler: as a prescription. Incredible. I wanna talk about guilt. We always hear about mom guilt, but with parents who are facing a serious illness, many parents feel a deep sense of guilt that they're not able to do it all. What role does self-compassion play in your framework and how can parents practice it in real time?
[00:22:29] Dr. Sue Varma: Yeah, that's such a great way to understand that. Like self-compassion as an antidote to guilt. It's also an antidote to burnout. It's an antidote to perfectionism. It's an antidote to comparison, like literally is an antidote to everything. And in my book, I call it the pride, right? Like in this framework of the eight piece, one of them is pride and self-compassion is really interchangeable with pride.
[00:22:51] Dr. Sue Varma: But when people think of pride, they think of it as such a negative thing like. There's a negative connotation, like I'm not talking about egoistic pride. I'm talking about an intrinsic sense of self-worth that comes from being human. That's it. That doesn't come from meeting anybody's expectations, not yours, not anybody else's.
[00:23:08] Dr. Sue Varma: It simply says, I exist, therefore, I am. Therefore, I deserve space, and I give people a chart that anytime your mind goes to any of these sort of negative, critical things that I could have done better or I should have done better. Rephrase it and reframe it. So if all you are able to do that day was to give your child a hug and sit with them for three minutes, I'm a huge believer that quality will always win when it comes to parenting.
[00:23:34] Dr. Sue Varma: I know so many people who said, oh, my mom or dad were always around in my childhood. They were home all the time. They took me to all the games. So they have gratitude for that. But then when they think about the connection, they say that they lacked closeness, they lacked warmth. They didn't feel that the parents understood them or knew them that well, or that they didn't feel close enough to share that they were, you know, maybe experiencing a depression or mental health challenge growing up.
[00:23:57] Dr. Sue Varma: They wish that their parents had detected that they weren't doing well to have gotten them help earlier. So to me. It's really about the quality of the connection. It's not about showing up to all the sports game. Yes, that's wonderful, but what good does that do if you show up to the sports game, but you have no idea what is the emotional world of your child?
[00:24:13] Dr. Sue Varma: So I feel like being able to spend a few minutes with them and like laughing with them about the best part of their day, the silliness. 'cause kids are, they're sweet, they're s silly, they're innocent, they're resilient. And they will look to you in your mood. So if you're able to say like, let's just be in the moment.
[00:24:27] Dr. Sue Varma: Let's just have fun. You know, tell me a joke, I'll tell you a joke. Or let's draw together. Let's play you love Uno, let's do that. You love Legos, let's do that. So when it comes to the guilt, I would say your intention matters. And if your intention is I'm gonna take this moment, I'm putting my phones away, nothing else matters.
[00:24:42] Dr. Sue Varma: It's just you and me. Three minutes, five minutes. I mean, all of us have at least that amount of time in our day.
[00:24:48] Amri Kibbler: And so many of the things that you just talked about all come back to the practice of being present, which can be one of the biggest struggles. Do you have any advice for parents that are really trying to be present in the moment?
[00:24:58] Amri Kibbler: I.
[00:24:59] Dr. Sue Varma: Yes. So there's something I called Oasis moments and I say like, carve time out in whatever way, like for yourself, first and foremost. And you know, in the beginning of last year, the New York Times did a six day energy challenge and this is part of their well column. And they were like, how do we get more energy?
[00:25:15] Dr. Sue Varma: And being present. I shared two, two tips from the book. One was Oasis moments and the other one was about creating flow states. And for me, both of these really help a person be more present, but also more energetic and also improve their mood. I mean, the benefits are so any of the tips and tricks and techniques that I talk about, they're really evidence-based for best practices.
[00:25:37] Dr. Sue Varma: To do everything for you to reduce anxiety. A lot of these practices involve being present in the moment and you cannot worry and you can't ruminate and also be present. So it's kind of like a trick that you are fooling your brain into doing something. Positive. So you crowd out, there's no room for the negative.
[00:25:55] Dr. Sue Varma: So I would say these one minute oasis moments for me, you know, when I was training all those years in the hospital, it was like a utility closet. It was like I would go in to be like, oh, I have to get the needle and the tourniquet for the patient and get some tubes and I'll be right back. And then 59 seconds in there, I'm like, I'm taking a deep breathing moment.
[00:26:10] Dr. Sue Varma: So I would say your ability to be present. In your own body with your own breath, if only for a minute, will help allow you to be restored. And I would say do that throughout the day. Shut your door. Maybe it's a bath in the bath, you're in the bathroom. Maybe that's, I remember the early parenting days with my kids.
[00:26:26] Dr. Sue Varma: That was the only time I was ever alone in the shower. And so don't give up. Those carved out sacred spaces and those oasis moments for yourself. You know, if that means I'm every day going to take a shower and that is a time that the whole family leaves me alone, I will be gone for X amount of time.
[00:26:44] Dr. Sue Varma: Like I'm stretching in my room, I'm meditating. And I think it's important that if you have a partner to really bring them on board, that's such a big part of this because we never experience illness in isolation. It's, it's a family, you know, affair. All of us are going to be impacted by this. And of course, like.
[00:27:01] Dr. Sue Varma: Whether it's getting couples therapy, whether it's each of you individually getting therapy, if it's virtual, like remote, if that's, you know, all you can do, you know, and if you're lucky enough to have insurance, turn the back of the card and say like, what sessions am I entitled to? Like a lot of patients who are going through cancer will automatically will have, as part of the treatment team, they'll be a therapist or through the insurance, they'll be able to get 8, 10, 12 sessions.
[00:27:24] Dr. Sue Varma: And sometimes that can, that can go a long way. It's like learning a new
[00:27:28] Amri Kibbler: language therapy. It, it definitely is. Okay. Do you have some advice for managing fear and uncertainty? Um, that comes with, we talk about scanxiety and also how much of that do we show to our kids? Do we hide all of our fears and uncertainty?
[00:27:45] Amri Kibbler: What are your thoughts on that?
[00:27:47] Dr. Sue Varma: In general, I think a lot of people have, you know, look, there's two ways when I talk about optimism and pessimism, and I, I say neither. Extreme is helpful because the extreme optimist will say, nothing is wrong with me. And they won't ever get the test. They won't do the follow ups because they're like, everything is fine doctor.
[00:28:05] Dr. Sue Varma: You're worrying family members, you're worrying everything will be fine. So the ostrich effect or blind optimism, the extreme optimist buries their head in the sand and they think everything will work out, and as a result, they become. Like inactive and then the. Pessimist, extreme pessimist is so fearful of the negative results, the potential, and that not only ne negative results, the fear or the, uh, misconception that they won't be able to handle it.
[00:28:30] Dr. Sue Varma: And so that's a really big part of anxiety is that we and pessimism is that we overestimate the danger and threat and risk. And negative consequences, and we underestimate our own ability to handle it. So if you are able to say, alright, what is the worst case scenario? What provisions do I have to put in place to make sure that everyone in my family like is equipped to handle them?
[00:28:55] Dr. Sue Varma: And who else am I recruiting? What other, other professionals is there, extended family members? So I feel like that's where the practical part of all of this, the realist comes in, is that you marry a little bit of healthy skepticism. And I say just a tad and marry this with the optimism of, okay, I am gonna, I'm gonna plan for the worst, or I'm gonna expect for prepare.
[00:29:16] Dr. Sue Varma: For the worst, but I also would hope for the best because we do know that when it comes to every aspect of recovery in cancer, whether it's like survival, whether it's quality of life, whether it's recurrence rate, people who practice optimism interventions 10 minutes a day, imagining the best possible scenario, they are likely to fear better across all metrics.
[00:29:36] Dr. Sue Varma: So I would say one way of dealing with the cancer, the scan anxiety is to, is to write down productive worry, which is. You know, what do I need to do? And the unproductive worries, like all the rumination and the catastrophizing. And then when it comes to the kids, it really depends on the child and what their emotional level is.
[00:29:53] Dr. Sue Varma: A lot of times kids, when they have their own anxiety, they start to regress. You know, you might see milestones lost if they had just started to be toilet trained, they might have bedwetting again. So I would say to some degree, you do may wanna wanna shield them, but if they're older and they're conversant and may wanna be a part of the plan, that's a different story.
[00:30:10] Amri Kibbler: And are there any last affirmations or practices from your book that you wanna share?
[00:30:16] Dr. Sue Varma: You know, I would say, I just think of this as a journey and when I was growing up, there was a book that I really love and I still love it. It was called, wherever You Go, there You Are. And it's a book that I keep by my bedside.
[00:30:26] Dr. Sue Varma: I. And it's helped me navigate so many rough things in my life. And when I wrote this book, it was sort of, I, I wanna say a love letter to humanity. You know, like a gratitude for all of the positive things that I've gotten from the wise counsel in my life. Books included professors, parents, friends, and I wanted to give back in a way that would last forever, that people could keep this by their bedside and come back to it over and over again.
[00:30:50] Dr. Sue Varma: So I would say understand that anything that you wanna achieve in life, any problem that you're dealing with. Have a very clear and focused intention and be deliberate, starting with this pillar of purpose and ending it with practicing healthy habits, but it really could be the execution of any goal.
[00:31:04] Dr. Sue Varma: And then through it, working through emotions, like processing emotions, working through problem solving. I give people like a punch list of like 25 questions, like if you're going through a transition or career change or trying to pivot in life, how would you approach, approach a problem? How to stay present and people, I think people is a big part of it.
[00:31:22] Dr. Sue Varma: In developing community. We know that people. Who are, you know, living with cancer, having a strong social support network, also increase the survival rates and a lot of positive benefits of how to develop community, how to deepen friendships, but also how to have lighthearted, sort of what I, what I call micro connection.
[00:31:38] Dr. Sue Varma: So my hope and sort of last, you know, wishes like, like a sort of party is, is this book to be a gift and to keep it by your bedside and come back to it when you need it.
[00:31:47] Amri Kibbler: And where can people find you now that they've had a taste of practical optimism?
[00:31:52] Dr. Sue Varma: You know, I'm on LinkedIn, Dr. Sue Varma, and on Instagram where I'm the most active, more than LinkedIn.
[00:31:57] Dr. Sue Varma: And it's also the word spelled out, Dr. D-O-C-T-O-R-S-U-E-V-A-R-M-A. And then my website is also doctorsuevarma.com. But I would love for people to join on LinkedIn and the book is available wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And it's, um, being translated in about a dozen languages. So it's already out and.
[00:32:16] Dr. Sue Varma: Spanish and Chinese and other Croatian. So if you have family members in other parts of the world, you know, encourage them to also pick it up in their language.
[00:32:25] Amri Kibbler: And I, I can see it in the background there. Yes. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:32:34] Amri Kibbler: Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of The Space Between. If this show brought you comfort or a sense of community, I'd love for you to subscribe and share it with anyone who might need it too. You can join the conversation on instagram at thespacebetween_cancer.family, and head to amrikibbler.com for more resources designed to support parents navigating cancer.
[00:32:57] Amri Kibbler: Just remember, you're never alone. This podcast is here as a companion on your journey towards healing, growth, and connection.