The Silent Anxiety After Remission: When the World Thinks You’re Fine

athanasiadoulinda

By Linda Athanasiadou

Remission is supposed to be the happy ending. The word everyone longs to hear. And I was grateful—truly. But what no one tells you is that after remission, a different kind of battle begins. It’s quieter. Less visible. But just as real. And it lives in your chest like a tight knot: the anxiety of “What if it comes back?”

After the last treatment, after the last scan, people celebrated. “You did it!” “You’re healthy now!” And in many ways, I was. My blood work was good. The tumor was gone. But emotionally, I felt far from whole. I smiled and said thank you while inside I was spinning. The safety net of constant care—weekly appointments, regular check-ins—had vanished. I was left alone with a body I didn’t fully trust and a mind that wouldn’t stop racing.

Every headache felt suspicious. Every ache sent me into a spiral. I kept checking my skin, my lymph nodes, my breath. Was this normal? Was I paranoid? And worst of all, I didn’t know who to talk to. The world had moved on. My friends were relieved. My family exhaled. But I was stuck in this in-between space: no longer sick, not yet at peace.

There’s a name for this—“cancer-related fear of recurrence”—and it’s more common than we think. Studies in 2025 show that up to 70% of cancer survivors experience significant fear after remission. It’s not irrational. It’s not weakness. It’s the mind trying to make sense of trauma while the world expects normalcy.

What helped me was naming it. Saying it out loud: “I’m scared.” I found a therapist who specialized in survivorship. I journaled. I leaned on other survivors—people who got it. And I gave myself permission to not be okay, even in the after.

Remission doesn’t mean life snaps back to what it was. It means building a new relationship with uncertainty. It means learning to live with the echoes of what happened and still choosing to move forward. I’m learning, still, that healing is not a finish line. It’s a process—with its own grief, joy, and unexpected grace.

If this speaks to your experience, I invite you to read my blog https://llindaathanasiadou.livepositively.com/life-on-pause-how-cancer-disrupts-everything-ae-and-what-helps-you-keep-going/new%3D1 where I explore the emotional journey that doesn’t end when treatment does.

Just because the world thinks you’re fine doesn’t mean you have to pretend. You’re allowed to feel what you feel. And you’re not alone in that quiet after.

Arx001

Yes, it’s tough. People who are not sick get stressed when they need a biopsy and they get devastated when diagnosed. But these happen mostly once in a lifetime or very rare. For us, at least for me, it’s a biopsy every two months.

Well this is life and we will handle it. I found one solution, living in the present moment. Also I accepted death as an emotion/state of being (or not-being) rather than an abstract idea. I guess many of us have this deep acceptance or understanding something healthy people can’t possibly understand.

bibliophile

It is very hard. People just want you to be "normal" again. After my original diagnosis and colon resection in 2023, people just wanted to hear that 'they got all the tumor, right? And you finished chemo. So now you're cancer free. Yay!' They didn't want to hear that I still had indeterminate lung nodules so I wasn't technically NED. So I quickly stopped telling them. And you pretend that you are okay (especially for your kids who want to have normal lives with basketball games and proms and not a sick mom) even though on every scan the nodules change just enough to wonder about, but not enough to really be sure, so you are always wondering if the other shoe is going to drop. And you really do feel good, so you just try to enjoy every moment. Then one of those indeterminate nodules got big enough that I had a lung resection in March and it was a met but, again, everyone wants to celebrate because 'they got it, so that means the cancer is gone, right? And you recovered so fast and are feeling so great. Yay!' Because people don't understand that when a really bad thing has happened, the part of your brain that analyzes risk is broken. That thing that you are afraid of, well that rarely happens, so you don't have to be afraid of it. But since it did happen to you once (or twice) already, there is no way to shut off that fear. So they don't really (want to) understand (even though they try) that I am still nervous about that first 3 month follow-up scan. 'It's going to be fine!' Which was last Tuesday. Which came back with an enlarged lymph node and 2 peritoneal nodules. And I don't know which is more discouraging: waiting to hear what the doctor is going to say about my prognosis and treatment options, or having to face that look on people's faces when I have to tell them, again, that I'm not really better.