BOOK REVIEWS
Critical analysis, thoughtful evaluation and meaningful significance for your cancer journey. Yours to browse through and choose from …
‘GETTING OFF THE EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER OF CANCER’
By Nikki Barr, PhD, 2014
Dr. Nikki Barr, PhD is a psychotherapist specializing in working with cancer patients, caregivers and survivors. Her book ‘Getting off the Emotional Roller Coaster of Cancer’ (2014) is a timeless treasure to be held by anybody affected by cancer.
Dr. Barr meticulously walks you through every step: starting with cancer diagnosis, medical treatment, all the way through surviving, and beyond to metastasis, recurrence, death and loss. It doesn’t matter where you are on your cancer journey. It doesn’t matter who you are in relation to this same trek. This is an invaluable resource for you to have if you have been touched by cancer.
Her earlier book ‘Emotional Wellness: The Other Half of Treating Cancer’ (2013) says it all. The one half is fielded by your entire medical team and trustworthy physicians who are huddled around you to give you the best medical treatment possible. The other half is handled by you dealing with your own emotional wellness. Just as an interlocking sculpture is incomplete without one or the other, so too your medical treatment and emotional wellness are inadequate without each other. The two must work in tandem. Physical and emotional healing are two sides of the same coin.
Even as you relinquish control and place trust in your oncology team, you also reclaim self-agency and focus inwards to help yourself through this life altering passage. The drab cape of helplessness and victimhood is discarded for the fiery one of hopefulness and self-empowerment.
Dr. Barr offers an Emotional Wellbeing Toolbox filled with practical tips on how to navigate every stage of the journey, acknowledging your feelings, noticing your thoughts and choosing your behaviors. This is the aspect where you know you have options and you could choose those day by day, depending on how dark the hour is or how sunny it is. For every step she offers you a list of choices based on her vast clinical experience and research that you are free to pick from. She describes coping tools for soothing diverse negative thoughts / emotions that may arise. She follows up with healing resources that you can reach out for. The book is laced with real life examples that will resonate with the reader.
Dr. Barr surmises well, “Cancer is a forever chapter in your life”. In order to lead an empowered life, you have to hit the ‘refresh’ button and start all over. It takes work. It is in your power to bridge the gap between the physical and the emotional.
~ Review by Sushama Kirtikar, February 2026