Positive Thinking May Put Cancer Patients at Risk

We keep hearing about the importance of the power of positive thinking. Books and magazines, new-age experts and mental health professional all praise the benefits of positive thinking as if it’s the magic cure we all hoped for. Even motivational gurus tell us that being positive is essential to our success and happiness and still, danger lurks in the mind that focuses only on the positive in the form of denial.

Alternative Cancer Treatment in Boston

Cancer and Positive Thinking

The Danger in Positive-Thinking

A positive attitude can add healthy happy years to our lives and is considered to be the key to happiness. This happiness help cancer patients boost their immune system and therefore support healing. However, there is a great difference between manufacturing positive thoughts by denying all else and seeing things as they are. By denying reality we delay our healing. Taking a realistic approach and still choosing to focus on that which is well and valuable, that which promote a feel-good state of mind will strengthen your resolve to heal and support your journey toward health.

In my perspective, the positive-thinking-theory took a wrong turn when promoted itself as a substitute to the realistic approach. That wrong turn stripped its healing value and began broadcasting the message of false hope.

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster of Illness

When illness strike and we are riding the emotional roller-coaster it’s very tempting to deny the shock, the fear and the uncertainty we fill. It seems that as long as we don’t look at that which is wrong we won’t have to face it and therefore it will not affect us.

That plan however, is set for failure right from the beginning. It will fail because it takes effort to deny our true feelings and experience. Based on the concept that “what we resist persist” we only suspend the eruption of our emotional volcano.

This eruption of emotions, if not exhausted beforehand, will take place within us and only serve to suppress our immune system even more which means allowing illness to progress.

Since the path of healing is aligned with the path of truth, evaluate your thoughts on a regular basis. Make sure to see things as they are, and allow yourself to express the rising emotions regardless of their quality i.e. negative or positive.

As you see the big picture, the bad and the good, choose to focus on that which uplift you and makes you feel hopeful.

Share with us your view of positive thinking?

3 replies
  1. Julee Vitello
    Julee Vitello says:

    Thank you, Avinoam, for your clear thoughts on this topic. It has been a challenge for loved ones and myself at times, to sustain hope and a positive perspective, when things take a negative turn in our lives…whether it be illness, we lose someone we love through death or loss, we lose our jobs, etc. The positive thinking culture is phenomenally helpful to people who have difficulty seeing hope and finding the light in a situation.
    It is also, however, a source of guilt for many who embrace the notion that we MUST BE POSITIVE all of the time…because that does not honor the full spectrum of human emotions. And I agree with you, that one must learn to face, feel and ultimately move through and heal those negative feelings. Covering up with positive thoughts, and denying reality serves no one. And when people “fail” to keep a positive focus during times of challenge, some begin to feel like failures, unworthy of positive events, because they feel they failed at staying positive.

    It is important for us as a group of people who focus on facilitating healing of others through energy work, counseling and other alternative approaches to remind our clients and friends that facing our fears and our anger and our anxieties and our loneliness can be the only way of letting them go and moving on to a healing and hopeful perspective.

    Much love and light to you,
    Julee

  2. Julee Vitello
    Julee Vitello says:

    Positive Thinking
    “Human beings have a tremendous capacity to change, grow and evolve from the challenges they face. Suffering is a call to attention. Its an opportunity to awaken and evolve in our consciousness, to think and feel more authentically, with greater depth of awareness, presence and love. It’s an opportunity to realize, more and more profoundly, who we really are and to one day look back in gratitude. “-Brian Piergrossi

    Brian Piergrossi
    Author of ‘The Big Glow’, http://amzn.to/hmhugK Life Coach & Counselor, Spiritual & Meditation Teacher. Retreats, Workshops, http://thebigglow.com/retreats Personal Sessions worldwide via Skype & telephone. http://thebigglow.com/lifecoach Bio: http://thebigglow.com/aboutbrian .. LIKE this page for daily updates and inspiration and this page will like you back. 🙂
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  3. Avinoam Lerner
    Avinoam Lerner says:

    Hi Julee,
    Your point about feeling like a “failure” because you’ve allowed yourself to feel and be human is very important. Hopefully, others who read this blog will take it to heart and see it’s truth.

    Also, thank you for recommending Brian Piergrossi as a source for wisdom, truth and inspiration. I will certainly learn more about him.

    With joy,
    Avinoam

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