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Facing Cancer from Within

A client of mine, let’s call her Mary, was diagnosed with a very aggressive stage four anal cancer. This was not her first battle with the disease as she has already survived breast cancer. Knowing what lies ahead of her, she felt her back was to the wall and that she must take ownership and responsibility in someway for what she is going through. She decided it was time to do what she feared the most, to look inside.

Mary has served a wonderful reminder to me why so many of us decide to not look inside, into our own mind, thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Looking inside is frightening. In fact it was so frightening to her that when she was given the option to have a colostomy, which is a life altering surgery with significant consequences, she still chose to shy away from healing her pain. To treat not only her physical part but also the part of her that does not feel she is worthy of healing.

It was hard for me to understand why despite of what’s at stake, she was hesitant to do the work. Mary was a client of mine working on issues not directly related to her cancer, which put me in a unique position to witness her journey and finally accepting the daunting task of looking inward.

Further discussion revealed why Mary would have preferred to have altered her body and pay such high cost to her quality of life. She was afraid. Afraid of looking at that part of her she kept locked deep within, that part she believed to be broken, lack of worth, distorted… a part which later she found wasn’t based on her truth but rather on other people’s view.

This was completely natural. It is natural of course for us to fear any serious medical condition or procedure. But what I could not understand at that time was that her fear of her upcoming medical treatments was less frightening than the “non-evasive” work of healing her mind.

Anthony Robbins once said that as people “we tend to move away from pain toward pleasure.” There are no lengthy recoveries; no pain medications, no physical hardships involved in Immersive Healing and Hypnosis for Cancer, yet the pain inside is scarier than the pain of surgery.

Mary’s cancer spread beyond the anus and surgery was no longer a viable option as it will not serve to isolate the tumor. She had little options available from a medical perspective and that is when her courage kicked in. She interpret this dire news as a call to action, a call for her to heal from the inside out. She felt ready to face what she feared the most, herself.

Would you have chosen surgery before healing as well?

Every healing journey starts with the onset of bad news. Those few words “you have cancer” challenge even the most optimistic mind. It forces us to think of the unthinkable, our families and our lives in a way we did not expect. The nature of bad news is often aggressive, debilitating and many of my client’s described it as a “defining moment after which nothing stayed the same”.

Transform Your Fear of Cancer

Generally speaking, we fear cancer more than other ailments because of our perception of it. Our societal view of cancer is for the most part dire, like a death sentence. Most literature focuses on statistics of those who lost their battle with the disease, not with those who survived although more and more people do.

Are we expected to face these three life changing words with grace and equanimity? Some may be able to do so but they are the exception and not the rule. Shock and fear, and even denial are common responses along side with anger and even shame.

One of my clients recently stated “I feel so angry – not with anyone in particular, just with the situation and what it means for me and my loved ones. I keep thinking, why me?”

Facing or acknowledging what we fear lays ahead is essential. It shortens the wait-and-recovery time between delivery of the bad news and setting forth on the path toward healing. The shorter this period of time the better it is. The danger we want to avoid here is the common mind-traps of hopelessness and helplessness.

Respect Your Feelings

One way to avoid these traps is to learn to respect these feelings. Unpleasant as they may be, they are valuable and necessary, and here is why: think of your external senses, touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste, one is not more important than the other or better than the other; they all have their use and play part in the way we make sense of the world. So, too, are our emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, debilitating or exciting, our emotions can be seen as the inner senses of our mind that provide us with the report of how we are doing inside.

Tuning in or listening to your emotions, giving yourself time to process what you learn and summoning the courage to proceed is the first step toward a transformative journey, a journey back to health. This is what Immersive Healing and Hypnosis for Cancer allow you to do. No one can guarantee healing. No one can guarantee cure. These are desired destinations we fight for, we shoot for the stars but we must remember that until we get there it is the journey that counts.

It may help to study what Rumi has said, “And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.” ~Rumi

I would like to hear from you about your defining moment and how you coped?

Posts

Mary’s Time to Look Inside

How to Overcome Your Fear of Cancer Diagnosis When Fear is the Natural Response?

Respect Your Feelings