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YOU CREATE YOUR LIFE
I am reading a fabulous book at the moment – “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R Covey. It’s ultra inspiring and teaches you how YOU create your life.
Stephen R Covey is one of my mentors and I very much appreciate his ability to motivate and inspire us with his well-chosen words of wisdom.
I was particularly inspired today by Covey’s suggestion that we develop a personal mission statement, philosophy or creed and the reason I appreciated it so much is that we often don’t do this. To clarify your goals for your life – to set them down in writing and then to focus on them and live by them is one of the most empowering things you can do.
I would challenge you – on this Easter weekend – to create your own personal mission statement. The following mission statement is an excerpt from Stephen Covey’s book, written from a female standpoint:
- “I will seek to balance career and family as best I can since both are important to me.
- My home will be a place where I and my family, friends, and guests find joy, comfort, peace, and happiness. Still I will seek to create a clean and orderly environment, yet livable and comfortable. I will exercise wisdom in what we choose to eat, read, see, and do at home. I especially want to teach my children to love, to learn, and to laugh – and to work and develop their unique talents.
- I value the rights, freedoms, and responsibilities of our democratic society. I will be a concerned and informed citizen, involved in the political process to ensure my voice is heard and my vote is counted.
- I will be a self-starting individual who exercises initiative in accomplishing my life’s goals. I will act on situations and opportunities, rather than to be acted upon.
- I will always try to keep myself free from addictive and destructive habits. I will develop habits that free me from old labels and limits and expand my capabilities and choices.
- My money will be my servant, not my master. I will seek financial independence over time. My wants will be subject to my needs and my means. Except for long-term home and car loans, I will seek to keep myself free from consumer debt. I will spend less than I earn and regularly save or invest part of my income.
- Moreover, I will use what money and talents I have to make life more enjoyable for others through service and charitable giving.”
Isn’t that great? I know I usually write an article about something related to breast cancer, but this blog is all about empowering yourself and I found this mission statement to be wonderfully empowering. I wish to add one more paragraph to the above:
- I will seek and and be worthy of divine assistance, maintain a positive attitude, keep a sense of humor, and if I find that I have regrets and emotional baggage, I will do everything within my power to free myself from their chains so that I can be the very best person I am capable of being.
Have a fabulous Easter weekend.
If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com). It is my honor and my goal to help you through this.
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I was taught by a dear friend of mine, Judy, the importance of living in the moment when I was going through breast cancer. I guess it had never occurred to me before then…
I was sitting with her in the sunshine on her porch and I had just been diagnosed and was feeling fairly traumatized by the notion that I had an unwanted “guest” in my body.
Judy was listening to my long litany of things I was worrying about – chief among them being “What if everything I do turns out not to be enough?” Judy gave me a gift that day, by saying “Well you can certainly go down that road and worry yourself endlessly. Or you can choose to just live in the moment. Appreciate the here and now as fully as you can.” That turned out to be life-changing advice, and I thank my friend Judy from the bottom of my heart for that beautiful lesson.
We Can Get Lost In the Past and Agonize About the Future
Being a human isn’t easy. Our brains, which are so marvelous at figuring out complex things, can also be the bane of our existence. We can listen to the tales our brain tells us – worrying endlessly about what happened at a party last week, what people will think, how big our credit card bill is – on and on and on.
Sometimes our brain gets fixated on the future, however, and if we are anxious or fearful about that, it can be paralyzing. The trick is not to let our mind control us, rather, to take hold of the mind and direct it where you WANT it to go.
The reason I believe that living in the moment is important when you’re going through breast cancer is because there are so many things about which to be anxious and fearful. Living in the moment truly strips that away and helps you to be more fully alive NOW (which is really all that matters – the here and now!)
My Favorite 9 Tips On Living In The Moment
- Release Your Self-Conscious Anxiety – If you can, release your worries about what people are thinking of you. Most people are so focused on themselves, they really are not thinking about you as much as you think they are. Who cares what they think anyway? It simply does not matter.
- Truly Savor The Present Moment – Be alive to it, use all of your senses. Really hear the song that is playing or what your child is telling you, totally immerse yourself in the beautiful colors of a sunset, truly feel your clothes touching your skin, taste that mouthful of food you just took – endeavor to identify exactly what you’re tasting. If you’re doing something you perceive as boring (like walking to the bus stop), treat it as a meditation and observe with new eyes each thing you see on the journey – a bird, another human (smile at them!), a squirrel rushing past. Your world is changing constantly – be alive to it.
- Be Very Mindful – All The Time! – This works especially well in your relationships with others and initially can be a little hard to do. But the more you practice it, the better you get at it. Simply put, it involves NOT reacting with anger in situations where you normally would. Take a moment and really think about what is being said, how it’s meant. The Buddhists call this recognizing the spark before the flame. In short you are inhabiting your own mind more fully, by not reacting and pausing a moment to think about things you are being fully present. When you do respond, do your best not to respond in anger but with thoughtfulness.
- Don’t Avoid Pain – By pushing away painful thoughts (or even physical pain) you are simply postponing dealing with it. By facing it fully, accepting it for what it is and then releasing it (whether via a talk with your psychotherapist or a massage or whatever you need to do) you bring yourself fully into this moment.
- Meditation Assists – Living in the moment gets easier with meditation because you are actively clearing thoughts from your mind (like the wind blows clouds from the sky) when you meditate and concentrating on an affirmation or your breath. When you notice your mind has wandered, simply bring it back to the present moment and your breath.
- Forgive What Has Happened In The Past – That old saying “To err is human, to forgive divine” has never been more true. When you forgive someone for a wrong you perceived they have committed, you free yourself from the past and this allows you to be more present now.
- Do One Thing At A Time – When you are multi-tasking (and I know you are… we’re all guilty!) you are quite unable to focus on any one thing and give it your full attention. Resist the urge to rush through it. Do it slowly, thoughtfully, mindfully, like it was the single most important thing you ever had to do. Try smiling while you’re doing it.
- Leave Blank Holes in Your “To Do” List – Resist the urge to schedule things really close together for 14 hours straight. Give yourself a little wiggle room to breathe, meditate, take a walk or simply sit and do nothing! We have become human DOINGS rather than human BEINGS. Just sit and “be”.
- Do Something Nice For Someone – Whether it’s for someone you love or a total stranger, nothing helps you to be more in the moment than to let someone know you care by doing something nice for them. Even just smiling at a stranger as you pass by could have an impact on their entire day. Hold a door open for someone, give up your seat on the bus to an older person, cook your spouse their favorite meal unexpectedly, tell someone how much they mean to you. It feels really good – to them and to you.
A final note: When I am stressing about something it’s almost always because I’m reaching too far into the future and feeling concerned about it. It helps to bring yourself back to “right now” by asking yourself “Am I okay right now?” If the answer is yes, then feel gratitude and stay with that feeling for as long as you can. Because right now is all we have. 90% of the things we worry about never happen.
If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com). It is my honor to help you through this.
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Understanding how our emotional health impacts our physical selves was something that I really wanted to grasp when I was going through the breast cancer journey. Being a massage therapist, I knew the two were inter-related and important.
Repressed Emotions Can Be Detrimental
One of my favorite authors, Dr Bernie Siegel, was a wonderful source of information to me and helped me understand how our emotional health impacts our physical health.
In his book Love Medicine & Miracles, Dr Siegel shared the importance of expressing your emotions when cancer is diagnosed. He said that feelings of anger and rage are usually well founded and must not be repressed. Dr Siegel stated “Unexpressed feelings depress your immune response.” He went on to say that the people who show and express how they feel “survive adversity better than those who are emotionally constricted.”
Dr Siegel discussed a 1979 study by Leonard Derogatis and Martin Abeloff, John Hopkins Medical School, who studied 35 women with breast cancer and found that those who lived longer were much more expressive in their anger, fear, guilt and depression as compared to those women who suppressed their emotions.
This illustrates how much repressed emotions are injurious not only for your mental health but also your physical health. Emotional honesty not only improves your health, but also helps you to receive better quality of care from your family and your health care providers.
5 Ways To Release Pent-Up Emotions
- Seek help from a qualified counselor – a psychotherapist can assist you to offload all of that toxic rubbish you’ve been carrying around in your brain for so long.
- Go stand on a mountain top – or some other secluded place – and have a word with your Maker. Pour out your heart. Rest assured that your words will be heard.
- Find an Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner – I used this myself when going through breast cancer and it helped alleviate stress and anxiety to a huge degree. Dr Mercola has an informative video on his site about this technique.
- Try meditation. It is an inward journey that will help you to come to know yourself much better and helps to alleviate so much of the anxiety and fear surrounding a cancer diagnosis.
- Bodywork such as deep tissue massage and aromatherapy can help you release emotions that have been residing within you.
This is so worth doing – emotional toxicity causes so much disruption in our lives such as depression, insomnia, physical pain, and yes, cancer. Seek some help, give yourself the best chance to heal.
I send my love to everyone taking this journey right now. If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net and Simon Howden
Strategies for Coping with the Anxiety of Living with a Serious Illness
Finding out you have a serious illness is devastating. It forces you to come to terms with your own mortality, and while you should keep fighting every day, it’s most certainly harder to relax and find happiness when you’re faced with that thought each and every day.
For many, this causes significant anxiety. Even if you’ve responded well to treatments, your life is undoubtedly going to change. It has to, because you’ve been faced with a life changing event that has changed the course of your life forever.
But that anxiety becomes a problem when it holds you back from finding happiness in life. There are going to be trials, and times when it’s difficult to think positively, but the more time you spend focused on the adversity and the risks ahead, the less time you spend living for yourself in a way that makes you happy. Everyone will someday have to face their own mortality, but until they do, everyone deserves to try to live a life that is free of regrets and filled with joy.
Stopping Anxiety in its Tracks
Of course, this is often easier said than done. There is certainly no denying that the never-ending doctor’s visits, treatment side effects, and physical aches and pains can make controlling anxiety more difficult. But there are still ways to help you cope with the stresses ahead of you so that you still wake up each day ready to enjoy life. Some of these include:
1. Goal Creation
The simple act of creating goals is extremely important for those living with a serious illness. You need to make sure that you’re always working for something, and that when you complete a goal you still have more to do. It’s good to be focused on the future and not feeling stuck.
Many of those with anxiety disorders (unrelated to serious illness) struggle with this as well. I certainly did. It caused me to spend each day focused on just getting through the day, and suddenly I woke up and a year had passed and I had accomplished nothing.
Even though serious illness can reduce some of your ability to meet some of these goals, there are always new goals you can try. Make sure you’re constantly working for something so that each day is one spent achieving something in the future.
2. Permanent Creative Outlets
What Ms. Clark is doing with this blog is also incredibly valuable. When you suffer from anxiety, you no doubt have all of these thoughts in your head that you can’t seem to release. Putting them all on paper and sharing them with others is the type of creative outlet that many people need to simply take those thoughts out of their head and share them with others, and the permanence of a blog or journal ensures that at any point you can go back, see what you were feeling, and see how you are now.
Those that don’t like to write can try art as well. But anything you can do that lets out your emotions in a healthy way is valuable, and will reduce some of the pressure that these thoughts have on you.
3. Fake It
It can be hard to feel optimistic when you are struggling with a serious diagnosis, even if you’ve managed to overcome it. When optimism fails, you try faking optimism.
We’re not talking about denial. Denial is never healthy. We’re just talking about pretending to be a person that isn’t affected by their diagnosis. Pretend to be someone with a positive outlook, even if it doesn’t come naturally.
One of the most interesting things about the human brain is that when it’s confused, it tries to adapt to being confused. By pretending to be positive, you’re confusing your brain, and often you’ll find that your mind turns you into a more positive person as a result in order to become less confused. It may sound silly, but it’s very effective, and absolutely worth a try for a few months.
- Your Spirit and Anxiety
Still, in the end it’s not about the diagnosis. It’s about who you want to be and how you want to live your life. Your own willingness to recognize your anxiety and overcome it is going to be the key that moves you forward. If you show your own inner strength by dedicating your life to happiness and enjoying yourself, you’ll find that no diagnosis can truly hold you back.
About today’s Guest Writer: Ryan Rivera has worked with many people struggling with chronic illness, and provides anxiety recovery tips at www.calmclinic.com.
Thanks, Ryan! We appreciate your words of wisdom.
If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com). It is my honor to help you through this.
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Johns Hopkins Advocates Integrated Cancer Care
For those who were not able to attend the webinar put on by Johns Hopkins Medicine on December 17th, following please find my notes and ramblings from that webinar. I hope you find them useful.
The webinar was titled Integrative Medicine: How Acupuncture, The Mind/Body Connection, Holistic Eating and Chinese Medicine and Other Modalities Can Help Survivors During and After Treatment. Which is kind of a long-winded title, but they wanted to tell you exactly what they’d be covering and that title does the trick
Webinar Overview
The webinar was presented by Dr Linda Lee and Mr Jeff Gould and it ran for about an hour. Dr Lee spoke about how the Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine Center viewed integrative medicine as being the best of scientific medicine with a broader understanding of the nature of illness, that integrative medicine enhanced conventional medicine rather than replacing it. They preferred the term “integrative” rather than “alternative” or “complementary” because alternative seeks an “alternate” approach to conventional medicine, it connotes a turning away, while the term complementary was too broad.
The Johns Hopkins website further defines integrative medicine: “Integrative medicine encompasses a broad range of therapeutic approaches to achieve optimal health and wellness for those who are ill or those who are concerned about disease prevention. It is a powerful resource for those seeking to participate actively in their healthcare.”
A Holistic Diet for Cancer Patients
Dr Lee spoke first and discussed holistic eating quite simply – she quoted author Michael Pollan, whose advice was to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I loved that – it says so much so succintly!
Dr Lee warned us against eating highly processed foods and too many food additives. She said we should try not to eat too much meat, especially beef, and that we should strive for a balanced approach in our food choices. Volumes could be written (and have been) about the best nutrition for cancer patients – for more definitive information, see my page Diet and Cancer.
Dr Lee addressed the concerns of those going through chemotherapy, she had some good advice for what to eat when you don’t feel like eating, for those taste bud issues and digestive problems. She advised using a blender or food processor (I would say JUICER) and put your food into that.
She had no real recommendations about WHAT to put in the blender – other than you wouldn’t put a spaghetti dinner in there, for instance. She just said it’s easier to process liquid foods like smoothies and shakes. She recommended having multiple small meals, rather than 3 bigger meals per day. Dr Lee recommended the book One Bite At A Time – Nourishing Recipes for Cancer Survivors and Their Friends by Rebecca Katz, which I’ve added to my Recommended Reading list.
I’ll go a little farther than these recommendations and direct you to my article Do You Know The Benefits of Juicers For Cancer Patients.
Dietary Myths in Cancer
Dr Lee discussed some of the dietary myths she had encountered from her patients – we’ll start with the myth, then Dr Lee’s refutal:
- Avoid sugar because it feeds cancer – this one surprised me because I do advocate avoiding sugar if you have active cancer in your body. Dr Lee disagreed, saying a moderate amount of sugar is okay, it won’t cause your cancer to get bigger. So, I’ve softened my stance on this a little bit and found a good article for you that discusses moderation.
- Eat whatever foods you want and as much of them as you like – eating as much as you like of something isn’t advisable if you’re undergoing chemotherapy and having digestive issues, smaller meals are better.
- Eat fried foods because they will give you more calories if you’ve lost weight during cancer treatment – Dr Lee advised fried foods are NOT a good idea because they increase nausea.
- Being overweight is better than being underweight – Not true for breast cancer, Dr Lee says. Fat cells create estrogen and if you had/have estrogen receptor positive tumor(s) being overweight can actually cause more problems for you.
Vitamin Supplements
Dr Lee advised caution when taking vitamins – because adverse affects are not always known and they may have interactions with some of the drugs you are on. She did not have anything against taking vitamins, she merely advised caution, suggesting a person see an herbalist or dietician for guidance (I’d say see a trained naturopath) and always let your oncologist know what you are doing. Dr Lee suggested referring to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine website.
Mind/Body Approach
My favorite part of the webinar was the discussion of how using mind/body medicine can help cancer patients. Dr Lee went out on a limb and said that STRESS CAN AFFECT CANCER GROWTH. I’ve been saying this for years and I was so glad to hear someone from the medical world acknowledge and affirm this.
Dr Lee advised that chronic emotional stress can have a negative impact on cancer, and she discussed how the hormones released during stressful periods affect inflammation, cellular immune response and other key factors and that getting stress treated was really important. She advocated the use of one or more of the following therapies (all of which I also recommend on this site and in my newsletters):
- yoga
- meditation
- tai chi
- massage
- Cognitive Behavior Therapy
- guided imagery
- hypnotherapy
- support groups
- journaling
- exercise
I found a good article for you from the Mayo Clinic which discusses exactly how stress hormones wreak havoc on our body.
Mr Jeff Gould On The Chinese Medicine Approach
The second part of the webinar was handed over to Jeff Gould, a Chinese medicine practitioner at the Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine Center. Mr Gould discussed many aspects of Chinese medicine, I will highlight the most interesting points he made:
- Chinese medicine is what he termed individualized medicine. He might see 10 patients with breast cancer, but each patient may get a different treatment protocol based on the symptoms they present with on that day.
- Chinese medicine is very holistic – practitioners don’t just treat physical symptoms (such as cancer), but also the emotional and spiritual aspects of a person. He said one of his patients, in an effort to describe what they felt like after an acupuncture treatment, called it “a lightness of being”. I thought that was a very good description.
- Mr Gould called Chinese medicine a highly effective adjunct to Western medicine, it has been utilized quite effectively for over 3,000 years.
- Mr Gould mentioned that the Chinese also use diet as a therapy – that Chinese medicine looks at the energetics of food vs the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. They use food to promote health AND also to treat illness. I was quite interested to find out that certain restaurants in China will have doctors who will greet you at the door, take a look at your vital signs (which are quite different to Western medicine – they are more likely to look at your tongue and take your pulses than to check your blood pressure, etc.) and then recommend certain things on the menu to assist with your current signs/symptoms.
- When using Chinese herbs, your herbalist will tailor make a formula for you based on your unique constellation of symptoms and these are modified each week as symptoms change.
- Mr Gould specifically mentioned chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, saying that the best time to treat that is BEFORE symptoms begin – he said it’s much easier to keep it from happening than to treat it after it has already happened.
- We were reminded that herbs are drugs and as such, can have side effects and interactions with other drugs. He also warned to use a trained herbalist when using herbs for any illness.
- Mr Gould also did not recommend using Chinese medicine alone to treat cancer, but as an adjunct.
All in all, I thought it a very good webinar, well presented, and with good, concise information. If you have any specific questions, please contact me.
If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com). It is my honor to help you through this.
Image courtesy of Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Following on yesterday’s article about EMF radiation, I am getting quite a few inquiries from my readers saying “HELP ME SLEEP!” or “how can I sleep better?”
Initially it might seem like the two articles are not connected, but they definitely are. If you are trying to sleep in a room that has high electro-magnetic frequencies, chances are your sleep is going to be disturbed.
Melatonin Plays a Role
Also the whole issue about melatonin comes into play – I mentioned in yesterday’s article that studies have shown women who have breast cancer normally have quite low levels of melatonin, often as little as one-tenth what they should. Check out yesterday’s article for that discussion.
If you have breast cancer or are wanting to reduce your risk of it, improving your quality of sleep is, I believe, absolutely crucial. Studies have shown that shift workers, especially nurses, are more prone to breast cancer and the researchers are discovering that lack of melatonin could be the cause.
Why We Don’t Sleep Well
Since there seems to be a great need out there to improve quality of sleep, let’s first examine some of the reasons why people don’t sleep well:
- Noise – from the neighborhood, a snoring spouse or pet, crying children, barking dogs, screaming ambulances – noise can be a big problem
- Light – too much light entering the bedroom
- Pets – needy pets sleeping on your head don’t help!
- Alcohol – a big sleep disturber
- Caffeine – stimulates your nervous system, and lots of caffeine over the period of a day can build up
- Thinking and Anxiety – an inability to shut the mind off or feeling anxious about things
- Jet Lag – constant travel can be a problem for your inner time clock
- Restless Legs – sufferers of this syndrome have an irresistible urge to move their legs to relieve sensations described as itchiness, pins and needles or other discomforts
- Hot Flashes – whether you are menopausal or undergoing treatment for breast cancer, you know how completely sleep can be interrupted by these darned things
My 12 Best Tips On Sleeping Better
- Remove EMFs – See yesterday’s article about removing EMFs from the bedroom.
- Noise Reduction – It can be difficult to control the noise factor. I have tried earplugs but I hate the sensation of them in my ears and find that makes sleep difficult. Often just turning on a fan can be helpful – the “white noise” from the fan and the movement of air can be soothing. Also, there are “white noise” machines available from places such as Sharper Image, Amazon.com, etc. Just ensure you don’t place it close to the bed (again, the EMF problem). If a snoring partner is the problem, one of you should move to another room to sleep, if possible.
- Light Reduction – Make your bedroom as dark as possible. This is important because if your bedroom is full of too much light (including light from an alarm clock), it directly inhibits the production of melatonin. Use room darkening shades if possible and rid your bedroom of as many appliances as you can that create little lights at night.
- Pets – People love their pets, but pets have no place in the bedroom, I am sorry to say. They can disturb your sleep by wanting to play or wanting to be let out or… whatever. If you are having trouble sleeping (unless of course the pet helps you to sleep), getting pets out of the bedroom helps a lot. Here’s an article from webmd I found extremely helpful.
- Limit Alcohol – Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not help you sleep. Studies show that alcohol decreases the duration of sleep and its efficiency. It also increases your risk of breast cancer.
- Limit Caffeine – How caffeine affects us varies widely. For instance I’m very intolerant of it, I can’t have it past about 1 pm in the day or I’ll be awake half the night. My husband can drink black tea all day and all night and sleep like a baby. I believe each person’s tolerance for caffeine is pretty different. Just be aware of what yours is – it is, after all, a stimulant to the nervous system. If you’re finding that you don’t sleep well, try limiting your caffeine intake after about 3 pm for about 2 weeks and see what happens.
- Meditation and Positive Affirmations – Thinking too much and anxiety are double trouble, much prone to them myself. Here’s what helps me. If I meditate for 20 minutes prior to going to bed, I sleep much better. The use of positive affirmations helps with anxiety. One of the tenets of Buddhism is living in the moment. If you find your brain is running amok and going through all those “what if’s” and it’s creating massive anxiety, ask yourself this question. AM I OKAY RIGHT THIS MINUTE? 99% of the time, the answer will be “yes”. Tell yourself, “I am okay right now and right now is all that matters”. Are you aware that 90% of the things we worry about never happen? Just breathe. Be here now. If you have a roof over your head and food in your belly, you are doing just fine. Here’s a nice article from zenhabits.net about living in the moment.
- Jet Lag Tips – A big sleep disruptor. Here’s a good article from USA Today on how to reduce jet lag.
- Restless Legs – This can be a big problem for a lot of people, including me. I found a great cure for it when I was living in Australia – maddeningly the cure isn’t available here in the US. It’s a supplement made by a company out of New Zealand, Blackmores, and it’s called P.P.M.P. which stands for Potassium phosphate Magnesium phosphate. I get them sent over by friends. I haven’t found anything else like it here in the US. The Mayo Clinic has an article about RLS with some tips and tricks which may help.
- Aromatherapy – Breathing in a good quality lavender essential oil just prior to bed helps immensely because it has wonderful calming qualities. I put a drop or two on my pillow before retiring and sometimes even put a drop into my night moisturizer for my face for a double good benefit. I use it with my massage clients too (and I sell it, you can get it from me by going to my Contact page.)
- Cool Those Hot Flashes – I wish I had the cure-all for this. I’ve found many things that assist, nothing that makes them go away entirely. I wrote an article recently with some tips and tricks.
- Wolfberry/Goji Juice – I started taking this as soon as I got a diagnosis of breast cancer because of the positive research I’d read about its health benefits. One of the great side benefits (so much better than a side effect!) is that my quality of sleep is vastly improved and everyone I’ve recommended it to has said the same thing. I’ve done my research and there are only two good brands that I recommend, in fact I made a video about it because I’d received so many inquiries.
I really hope that this helps you get a better night’s sleep. Let me know by commenting below!
If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com). When you’re in a desperate situation, you need an ally. You can depend on me to help you through this.
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Newly Diagnosed? Dealing with Anxiety and Fear
It has been my observation that newly diagnosed cancer patients generally have anxiety that is off the charts, and who could blame them?
Fear obviously plays a part in their anxiety – fear of death, pain, loss of function – it can all be life-changing and very scary.
The Difference Between Anxiety and Fear
In an effort to help move you through these sometimes paralyzing feelings, I’ve found some words that I hope will help you.
It comes from the book Living Beyond Limits by David Spiegel, MD:
“There is an important difference between anxiety and fear. Anxiety is a general sense that something is wrong, which can lead to discomfort, restlessness, and worry, but which is not specific enough to point the way to any resolution of the problem. Fear is something more specific – you know what you are afraid of, and this tends to make the possibility of effective action to control or reduce the fear more real. One of the best means of treating anxiety is to convert it to fear, to change a general sense of discomfort to a fear of something in particular. Thus, a general sense of anxiety in relation to cancer or other illness is best addressed by seeking to define exactly what it is you are anxious about: the discomfort associated with the treatment, the possibility that the disease will spread, the threat of death. Each of these issues can be explored and addressed, which can reduce the discomfort they cause. The way to tame anxiety is to confront it directly. Ask rather than avoid.”
Learning The Language of Cancer
I believe Dr Spiegel gave excellent advice. A lot of the anxiety of a new diagnosis comes from, I believe, all the new language you have to learn about medical treatments, from those overwhelming discussions of survival chances based on this therapy or that, the side effects of this or that.
Here are a few tips to help you deal with anxiety and fear:
You must ask questions until you come to understand what is being recommended by your doctors and treatment providers. No one could absorb all of that information the first time around, so take notes. It is also good to have a friend or spouse with you – another set of ears listening is really important because I guarantee you, at some point you will be in overload mode and stop listening and possibly miss an important point.
Dr Spiegel also makes the point that as a newly diagnosed patient you must study for the role as though you were learning a new job. He suggests that doctors, nurses, social workers, and other patients can be your teachers.
I would add to that list of people/teachers: other breast cancer survivors, psychotherapists (to help you manage your stress levels), naturopaths or nutritionists, and massage therapists.
That’s the role of a good healing team – to help you manage your anxiety and fear, to provide you with excellent care, to answer all of your questions in ways that you are able to understand, and to refer you to other members on the team when it’s necessary.
Try not to stay in fear-mode for too long. Dr Spiegel’s advice to convert your anxiety to a specific fear and then tackle it by addressing each fear is a good one because if you are living in a state of fear you are not focusing on your healing and I believe that’s important to do, especially with a life-threatening disease like cancer. Don’t beat yourself up because you are experiencing fear and anxiety, but do your best to move through it so that you can start the healing process.
I send my love to everyone taking this journey right now. If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
Photo courtesy of Ambro and stock.xchng
Normally, getting ready for my day is a pretty mundane thing. But today, my iPod was playing some really great music and I was dancing (trying not to be too critical in front of the bathroom mirror – just enjoying the movement and the tunes) and it got me thinking about the healing power of music.
A Supercharged Brain and U2
When I was going through chemotherapy, the night following my infusion would generally be mostly wakeful. Those darned chemicals were racing around my body and seemed to supercharge my brain. So I’d lie for hours and listen to music.
You are never so attentive and mindful of a song and what goes into it as you are during the black of night when there are no distractions. Using headphones also brings the music closer, you can hear every drum beat, every nuance of the singer’s voice. It was pure magic – I would listen for hours. (My favorite night-time listening music was by U2, I love them).
The Healing Power of Music
I found a wonderful website called caregiver.com – written for caregivers of dementia patients. They had this to say about the healing power of music:
Positive results include elevated mood, increased socialization and appetite and reduction in agitation. These benefits are attributed to the stimulation the brain receives during a music therapy session, a sort of “cognitive workout” inspiring us to coin the phrase, “What exercise is to the body, music is to the brain.” The power of music often inspires physical movement and can be used in combination to encourage gentle exercise.
I was able to find a number of articles on-line that spoke of the healing power of music. Benefits include:
- Soothing jangled nerves
- Calming mind and body
- Lowering blood pressure
- Boosting immune system
- Focusing mind and attention
- And so much more!
PBS has a video you can view (you’ll have to wade through the commercial first) about the Healing Power of Music. Pretty powerful stuff for brain injury patients.
Anyway – I believe music can be very powerful for those trying to overcome a disease such as cancer. It can soothe your soul, help you through the treatments, and boost your immune system. My suggestion? Get an iPod or MP3 player and load all your very favorite songs on it and take it with you to your treatments.
I am currently also putting together some healing meditations for cancer patients and will post them when they are available.
By the way, the song I was dancing to in the bathroom? Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, “Nowhere to Run”. Yep, it’s an oldie, but hey – I grew up in the era of the Vietnam War and that song meant a lot to us! Still sounds great today.
I send my love to everyone taking this journey right now. If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
Photo courtesy of adamr, stock.xchng
Making Healing Choices
Because every person is different – we come from different families, we have different ways of coping with life, different belief systems, different spiritual beliefs, different experiences, emotions and fears — all of this makes us who we are and directly affects how we make healing choices when dealing with a disease such as breast cancer.
One Size Does Not Fit All
I also feel that that very difference between each of us means that not one size fits all with regard to medical treatments, both conventional and alternative/complementary. It is because each person is so unique that I feel medicine in the future will stop throwing the exact same therapies at each of us to help us heal from breast cancer.
We have already seen a leaning toward that future of medicine with chemosensitivity testing, although it is currently more prevalent in EU countries than here in the US.
Being a natural therapist, I needed to be able to make my healing choices from a combination of both conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine. I was able to choose each modality and combine them to help me get to that healing place quickly and because I had the breast cancer background already (having gone through it with both grandmother and mother) and had studied it so intensively, I felt very blessed and fortunate to have those healing choices.
Honoring Choices
I believe it’s important to honor the wellness choices every person makes and to respect their religious and spiritual beliefs, even if they are quite different from our own. Many doctors don’t take these important differences into consideration though – some act absolutely outrageously if one of us doesn’t follow their recommendations to the finest detail.
What Are They Thinking?
My own very good oncologist, although baffled at me sometimes, respected my decisions and did his level best not to say things like “You’ll come to regret that decision” or “Well, if you get it back again, don’t expect me to treat you.” Amazingly, other cancer patients hear those statements all too frequently.
One of my subscribers was told by her oncologist that she was a “dead woman walking”. That kind of negative, defeating statement fills me with rage!
It’s a pity that so many treatment providers tend to believe that the therapies they offer are the ONLY ones that should be considered. I know they do their best, but what I’ve discovered is that the answers to healing come from many different directions.
It is so very important to have doctors and natural therapists that really hear you, respect you as a separate human being, and treat you accordingly.
Trusting Our Inner Wisdom
We need to trust our inner wisdom with any healing choices. Pay attention to your differences and make the best choice for you. This is your journey and your body and you have every right to choose what happens. Choice may be the only true power that we have during this difficult journey with breast cancer.
Can I Help You?
If I can help you on your path, I’m honored to do so. I send my love to everyone taking this journey right now. If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClarkcom) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
Lastly I’d like to share this quote from Buddha (this also appears on my “About Me” page):
“Don’t blindly believe what I say. Don’t believe me because others convince you of my words. Don’t believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts. Don’t rely on logic alone, nor speculation. Don’t infer or be deceived by appearances. Do not give up your authority and follow blindly the will of others. This way will only lead to delusion. Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real. Discover that there are virtuous things and there are non-virtuous things. Once you have discovered for yourself, give up the bad and embrace the good.”
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng and Master isolated images
I have run across another good cancer blog you might enjoy – it is called People Beating Cancer (.org) and its subtitle is “A Healthy Exchange of Information and Inspiration”.
Its creator, David Emerson, was 34 years old in 1994 when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an “incurable” cancer of the bone marrow.
Between 1994-1997 David fought three relapses of his cancer with radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and a stem cell transplant. On his third relapse his doctors told him there was nothing more that could be done and that he had 6-12 months to live.
I love it when cancer patients prove doctors wrong!
David is still with us today and that’s because he chose to look further afield for his healing – to try things of which the FDA doesn’t approve, and then he fought the second biggest fight of his life when he sued his HMO and the doctors’ group that had the contract to care for him because he wanted “to exact a reckoning of how bureaucrats could declare the therapy that saved him ‘medically unnecessary’.” You can read his whole story here. The litigation is ongoing.
Bravo! Now I’m not against doctors, don’t get me wrong. I think they are marvelous. What I am against is our system of medical care. I believe that there is SO MUCH ROOM for improvement that I could write a blog about it every day for the next 365 days and only scratch the surface.
I was impressed with David’s blog, there were loads of interesting articles there. One article in particular “What Do Your Genes Say About A Future Cancer Diagnosis?” caught my eye, because I have done quite a bit of research myself on the role that genes play (having a mother and grandmother die from the disease you are diagnosed with can definitely spur you on) and I liked what he had to say here:
“…I do everything that I have read that turns cancer genes off. This anti-cancer list includes
1) supplementation
2) nutrition
3) exercise
4) sleep/relaxation”
I was glad to see that we agree about the importance of taking nutritional supplements, eating carefully, getting exercise and that sleep and relaxation are so very important.
My hat is off to Mr Emerson and may he continue to thrive.
I believe that it is crucial to take your healing into your own hands – doctors do their best, but generally their hands are tied. It is up to us to empower ourselves and be proactive with our healing.
If you’d like to stay connected, sign up for my free e-newsletters on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com) and I’ll do my utmost to keep you informed and empowered on your healing journey… and beyond.
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