From Broken to Beautiful: Kintsugi in Cancer Therapy

How Psychotherapy Helps Healing The Cracks

Whenever you mention that you work with cancer patients, the music at a party typically stops. Psychotherapy that concentrates on providing care for cancer patients is known as psycho-oncology. I have some experience in this field, and I find it very fulfilling. People often wonder whether it is depressing to work with individuals with cancer due to the constant fear of recurrence or death. I don’t believe so. We all successfully divert our attention from the reality that our lives can end at any moment. We are vulnerable. However, helping individuals navigate the sudden shifts in their lives is something I genuinely enjoy doing.

One thing I've noticed—just a personal view (n=1)—is that we often grow up with a belief that nothing can happen to us. We cultivate this pristine, protective impression that, even as we attend funerals and visit relatives in the hospital, none of this will ever happen to us. Usually, a cancer diagnosis is when this perspective is completely flipped.

The words people use reveal how they experienced the diagnosis

You can even hear the shattering experience in the words people use to describe what happened to them. People say they "simply cracked.“ „It felt like my life was falling apart.“ „As if someone pulled the rug out from under me." A strong belief that guided you through your life for decades suddenly vanishes. There’s a vacuum. You are shocked, stunned, and left with no explanation. The way we use metaphors conveys an image and changes how we think and act, as Lakoff and Johnson have famously pointed out.

Typically, one of the goals in psycho-oncology is to collaborate with a therapist to weave what has happened into one’s own biography. This doesn’t mean literally finding reasons why someone developed cancer. Instead, the question is, what does this mean for me? What matters to me now that I have this diagnosis? What is changing? What is remaining the same?

There is actually a chain of events. It involves feeling that things are breaking apart, putting them back together, and arranging them in an order that makes sense when reflecting on one's life. This chain reminds me of a concept you may not have heard of, but chances are high that you have seen it.

What was once broken has been strengthened

Kintsugi, also known as kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer, making the repairs visibly golden. The term literally means "golden joinery" or "repair." Typically, when something breaks, we try to conceal it or remove it from sight immediately, as seeing the broken pieces can be quite frustrating.

Kintsugi offers a different perspective. It reveals what broke apart and where it fractured. It does not attempt to conceal the past. It acknowledges that things now exist in a new state, different from how they once were. Cracks and scars are embraced with gold. Ultimately, what was once broken has been strengthened and now adds value. It has become part of the story. You can substitute "vase" with „it“ in the last few sentences, or you might express how it felt upon receiving a cancer diagnosis. There seem to be many parallels.

Kintsugi has been applied in many areas of mental health, usually in small projects and initiatives such as forensic patients, torture and trauma or to promote self-forgiveness in young adults experiencing shame and guilt. I have not found a clear application in cancer patients. However, I am certain that someone, somewhere uses this approach (feel free to write to me about it). There is a book called „Body Kintsugi“ by Bosnian writer Senka Marić about her experience with a breast cancer diagnosis and the changes it brought to her body.

Can digital therapy incorporate a bodily experience?

What does this mean for digital mental health and AI? My impression is that in mental health, there are areas where including the body is so critical that it is hard to envision a shift to digital approaches that lack this bodily experience. Yes, virtual or extended reality will likely have a place in embodied therapies. But will the sensory input be the same, even with sensors and actors simulating the experience?

Kintsugi in psycho-oncology may involve discussing what happened to your body, breaking pottery, putting it back together, and experiencing how that feels in your body. Does your scar feel different now? How do you view the darker skin on your chest now, the area altered by radiotherapy? Can you recognize the gold metaphor in your experience? Is there any aspect of your life where you feel stronger, wiser, or better now? In what ways could the repair have added value?

Clearly, these questions are open for discussion, as cancer and its treatment are widely regarded as negative experiences that fill our lives with fear, sorrow, and painful uncertainty. However, therapy cannot change these situations directly. It can only change how we perceive them and how we process them. Ultimately, it influences how we weave the experience into the fabric of our lives—perhaps adding a touch of gold to mend what has been broken.