Dr. Daniel - The Cancer Directory

The nitty-gritty issue for anyone facing a life-threatening diagnosis is the question of how strong is your will to live? This is a highly confrontational question, but a vital one to nail if you are going to succeed in fighting cancer. Carl Jung realized many years ago that all of us have an equal and opposite urge towards life (eros) and towards death (thanetos). When the eros side is strong, we feel powerful and passionate towards life. But when thanetos is dominant, death can seem very seductive.

So, do not feel that you are alone if the diagnosis of cancer has in some way excited you or felt like a good way out of the stress and distress of living. Ultimately, of course, we all have to die. Dying is a totally natural part of living. But it is awfully sad and wrong to give up and allow yourself to die because your spirit has been crushed by loneliness, grief, disappointment or a broken heart.

I have often witnessed incredible healing when someone has genuinely turned the corner and chosen life. For you, perhaps the diagnosis of cancer can be a real turning point and an opportunity to say ‘yes’ again to finding joy in living. This may happen quite naturally because often the diagnosis of cancer itself throws into sharp focus all that is precious about your life. But if you feel ambivalent about living, the best help you can get is to work with a transpersonal or psychosynthesis counsellor who will work with you gently and creatively to rekindle your zest for life. This is explored more fully in Chapter 9.

A little bit of stress is healthy and often brings out the best in us. But prolonged stress, particularly stress over that which we feel we have no control over is a major depressant of our immune function. It may be hard to accept but, usually, the stress we are experiencing is of our own making. This is either because we get ourselves into or tolerate ridiculously stressful situations or because we have innate self-stressing tendencies, pushing ourselves to unrealistic limits. It really comes down to deciding that your health and happiness is more important than the goals for which you strive. The diagnosis of cancer can be the most perfect excuse to pull out of anything that is causing you stress.

The next new trick you may need to learn is how to express your feelings in everyday life (not only in relation to the diagnosis). You have already discovered how those who are too nice have suppressed immune function. It is good to copy the Europeans and let rip with your feelings! Remember, anger is as good at improving white blood cell activity as laughter.

Another problem for our immune system is isolation and loneliness. So, do everything you can to get back into connection with people. This can be through belonging to groups who support and value you – whether that is a regular class, or a support, community or religious group. Nowadays, there are a huge number of growth and development classes you can join, and there are many support groups that either relate specifically to cancer or are less specific, such as women’s or men’s groups.

Perhaps you have more serious problems mentally and realize that you are actually depressed. Here again, you are not alone! It is estimated that up to 77 per cent of people with cancer are measurably depressed and it is really little wonder with all the uncertainty and trauma that are experienced. Most cancer units have a clinical psychologist whose job it is to help people come out of cancer-related depression or anxiety, so this route might be worth investigating if you feel really down. But a combination of support from a support group, counselling and spiritual healing can be equally good to lift depression. If you consider yourself to be a fearful or anxious person, this is another state of mind that it would be good to change. The best way of cracking fear and anxiety is by learning to relax and, better still, to meditate or to have a soothing massage or aromatherapy.

Most of us allow ourselves to be governed by the limiting beliefs we have picked up during our childhood as to what we are able to achieve or not. This means that, if we have learned that we don’t ever succeed, or that we are not loveable or that good things never happen to us, then this is what happens to us. It is like we have been programmed with faulty software, which will always stop us from reaching our potential and achieving what we want. But through the integrated medicine revolution, a huge number of effective ways of changing our state of mind have surfaced, including developing self-esteem and confidence, and replacing negative beliefs with positive ones. If you recognize that you are being run by your limiting beliefs, then NLP (neurolinguistic programming) can be a powerful tool to change this.

The first step is usually finding someone who will listen really well to what you are going through. This is usually found in a counselling relationship and, again, I would recommend transpersonal or psychosynthesis counselling, where the state of the spirit is given attention along with help to change our feelings, beliefs and behaviour in positive ways.

The counselling relationship is often believed to be only about helping you to accept what is happening to you, grieving appropriately and becoming adapted to the change. However, in transpersonal or psychosynthesis counselling, the relationship is more about trying to find out what is right about your life and only needs your focused attention to flourish. Help can be given to try to see the message in the crisis and to grow positively from the experience, rather than just learning to accept what is happening.

This is a far more positive and creative form of counselling that fits well with the integrated medicine model. Yes, you may need some straightforward compassionate counselling at first, to help you deal with the shock and your reactions but, later on, you need a counsellor who can help you reframe the crisis as an opportunity for healing and growth. A counsellor of this kind may also help you look at the benefits you may be gaining from illness, helping you learn how to get these benefits without having to be ill. A good counsellor will help you change from being passive in your life to taking an active role in the creation of your ideal lifestyle. He can help you rekindle your will to live and reconnect with that which really turns you on.

Often, a transpersonal or psychosynthesis counsellor will also be able to help you develop a positive mental focus through developing visualization or affirmations with you to help you strengthen your belief in yourself and in your healing. Your counsellor, or a spiritual advisor, can also help you in your spiritual explorations, perhaps helping you to open up to the possibility of healing from a higher source.

The important thing is not to see a counselling relationship as being only about helping you when you are in extreme distress or seeing it as meaning that there must be something wrong with you. Having regular counselling throughout your recovery process can completely transform a potential nightmare into a true blessing, helping you to grow and even benefit in the long term.

Another helpful role of the counsellor is to help you, if you feel you need to, face and plan for the worst-case scenario that could happen. You can then spend much less time worrying and fantasizing about it, and get on with creating a different, much more positive reality. This may mean that you choose to use some of your early sessions with your counsellor thinking about how you would feel, and what would need to happen if everything went really badly.