EFT for cancer anxiety

How to Stop Cancer Anxiety?

Feeling anxious when receiving a cancer diagnosis or undergoing treatment is understandable, even expected. Whether it’s about treatment-related side effects, cancer spreading, or returning after treatment has ended, whether it’s about losing our independence, our support system, relationships, etc.

In the dictionary, anxiety is described as feeling nervous, worried, and on edge. These normal and common emotions help us cope with what our brain defines as a threat. After all, an illness such as cancer which we label as life-threatening, is exactly that, a threat.

Symptoms of Cancer Anxiety

There is no one-size-fits-all when coping with anxiety, yet many of my clients shared similar experiences. Some reported physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, sweaty palms, or a racing heart. Others talked about emotional symptoms such as panic, fear, dread, and worry.

Regardless of your particular symptoms, think of anxiety as an outcome. It’s the outcome of your mind and body trying to process your experience.

Cancer Anxiety in Survivors

And cancer anxiety is not exclusive to the duration of treatment; survivors often struggle with it as well.

For cancer survivors, anxiety may stem from and relate to their state of health. In this case, every ache and pain may trigger their fear that cancer will return. This may include being highly alert to any possible physical symptoms, extreme focus on their cancer status, and requesting medical tests and visits with their doctor more often or earlier than needed.

So, what can we do to minimize or even resolve cancer anxiety?

In this blog post, I want to share one particular practice with a great many benefits. This one practice has helped many of my clients get relief and is known as Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT.

EFT and Cancer Anxiety

EFT is a safe and easy-to-use self-help method based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The practice combines a gentle touch with mindful attention to thoughts and feelings.

Think of EFT as a form of “emotional acupuncture” or “mindful acupressure” that involves the stimulation of specific points along the face and body. Instead of using needles (as in acupuncture), EFT uses a technique of gentle tapping on these various acupressure points located on the face, hands, and body.

EFT also uses verbalization. It involves verbalizing the “issue” we want to focus on and experience relief for. The verbalization and tapping seem to release the intensity or charge of the “issue” we tap on.

Why is EFT Affective

This is a long answer, so to keep this post short, let me use the analogy of noise cancellation technology.

If every emotion we feel has a frequency, we will use EFT to generate the equal but opposite frequency (through tapping and verbalizing) that will cancel it. I will admit this can be a vague explanation, but for now, it’s a good start. You can learn more about EFT HERE

If you seek relief from anxiety and wish to learn more about EFT and how it can support you, reach out to me via my CONTACT PAGE, and I’ll be happy to share more.

Meditation and Yoga for Cancer Patients

More Doctors Prescrib Meditation and Yoga for Cancer Patients

THURSDAY, May 12 (HealthDay News) — Mind-body therapies such as yoga, meditation and deep-breathing exercises appear to be gaining more acceptance in mainstream medicine, according to a new study.

Meditation for Cancer

Doctors Prescribe Meditation for Cancer

Mind-body therapy is used by more than one-third of Americans, and that number is rising, the researchers noted. They found that one in 30 Americans using some type of mind-body therapy was referred to the treatment by a medical provider.

“There’s good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an integrative medicine fellow at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said in a news release from Beth Israel. “Still, we didn’t expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high.”

Nerurkar and her colleagues analyzed data from more than 23,000 households that took part in the 2007 U.S. National Health Interview Survey. Nearly 3 percent of the people in those households, or about 6.3 million people, used mind-body therapies after referral by a mainstream medical provider, the study found. These people tended to be sicker and used the health-care system more than people who started using the therapies without a referral.

What We Have Learned

“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed,” Nerurkar said. “It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health-care system and, possibly, better outcomes for these patients.”

The study is published in the May 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“These data suggest that mind-body therapies have really become a mainstream approach to care,” Dr. Russell Phillips, chief of primary care at Beth Israel and the study’s senior author, said in the news release. “But more research is needed to guide physician and patient decision-making regarding their use.”

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about mind-body therapy.
SOURCE: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, news release, May 9, 2011
Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

cancer hypnosis

Welcome

I have been meaning to write this blog for some time now, inspired by many of my clients and their stories I felt that others may benefit and draw strength into their lives.

My name is Avinoam Lerner and I am a Holistic therapist and a Hypnotherapist, a Healer if you will. If I’m being honest, it was not my intention to focus my practice on helping those diagnosed with cancer and chronic illnesses heal, nor did I think I would feel privileged to do so. Nevertheless I do feel this way and believe it is what I am here to do.

Over the years I have worked with many who despite of their dire physical predicament were able to beat the odds, recover and heal. My hope is that the information shared in this blog will move, inspire and uplift your spirit so that you too can be transformed and find your way back to health.

The purpose of this blog as is to become a place where intelligent, like minded people can connect and speak their mind about cancer, chronic illness and their personal journey towards healing.

I want you to know – I always encourage your feedback! Please, let me know how I’m doing along the way and share your own stories 🙂

You can also expect that this blog from here on out will be a hub and source for solid, interesting information every day.

I’d like to invite you to participate, and subscribe now to get involved with the latest conversations! The more we can learn from each other and share our thoughts the better.

It’s only together that we can create a community…share ideas…and maybe even change the world!

So subscribe, comment and let me know your story. I look forward to sharing this space with you.