Photo courtesy of stock.xchng and Lumix2004
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.
Photo courtesy of rgbstock.com and Zela
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.
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.
Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net and artur84
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.
The Paralysis of Analysis
When you are first diagnosed with any life-threatening disease, it is easy to be overwhelmed by all of the decisions you have to make.
Sometimes you might make the conscious decision NOT to make any more decisions until you have more information, or until you’ve talked to that friend who has been through it. Sometimes you feel absolutely frozen in fear and can’t make any decisions at all, what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King termed “the paralysis of analysis”. Good turn of phrase!
Getting past that immobilization can sometimes be difficult. I would encourage you to do just that, however, because there is nothing worse than paralysis in the face of a threat. You must have a plan for dealing with the threat. You will notice, in the coming weeks and months, that as you face the fact of your diagnosis you begin to observe that life goes on, even with this threat hanging over you.
I have some recommendations on getting through the decision making time.
4 Ways to Help You Move Beyond the Paralysis
- If a lack of information or understanding about the path you need to take is holding you back, talk to your doctor. Talk to me. Discuss it with that friend who has been through breast cancer. Do some searches on the Internet, or have a friend do the searches for you. Don’t let lack of information hold you back – we live in the age of technology when information is in abundance.
- If fear is holding you back, talk to a therapist. Discussing your plight with a neutral party can often be extraordinarily helpful.
- If anxiety is keeping you from making the necessary decisions, and if you don’t know how to meditate, learn. There is nothing more calming, more grounding, and more helpful than meditation to calm anxiety. It will also help you with your treatments for the disease. Meditation will help you focus on the problem at hand and help you make your decision for the right reasons and when you are calm and thoughtful.
- Seek solitude. A long walk along the beach or a river often helps because the atmosphere surrounding places with water is full of negative ions, which help you feel better. It can help to clear your mind and put things in perspective.
Psychology Today offers us this tasty little bit of advice: “You can practice confident decision-making by remembering a simple dictum over and over: You cannot have certainty and you don’t need it. By accepting that no certainty exists and that you don’t need it, you’ll instead harness intuition and, by extension, confidence.”
Decisions are an inevitable part of being human. It requires the right attitude. Every problem, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity.
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.
Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net and imagerymajestic
Everywhere I go this week, I’m running into people that are stressed. And it’s only Monday!
For those of you who are stressed out, I put together this article today with some things that I hope will help.
There are some nice You Tube videos (links below) that will help you de-stress.
This first one features pressure points on your hands and collar bone that you can press to help relieve stress (they actually work): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPH0ihwVPkM&
Here’s one called How to Meditate in a Moment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6eFFCi12v8
Here’s an hour worth of “Ocean Chill-Out Music” guaranteed to bring the stress down a few notches (skip the ad): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz8yTq0cqhg&feature=related
Here’s a great one called “How to Calm Down in 10 Seconds”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI3sVuH7rms
I feel better already just doing the research and finding the videos. Hope it helps you too!
Remember to breathe. And smile. Everyone will wonder what you’re up to.
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.
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng and Lumix2004
The Art of Detachment
I was recently re-reading my well-thumbed copy of “Why People Don’t Heal And How They Can” by Carolyn Myss and was struck by a statement she made about the importance of detachment, especially as it relates to healing.
Ms Myss was talking about the spiritual practice of detaching yourself from the fears of the mind and “viewing your circumstances as an experience through which you are passing, rather than as one that controls your physical life.”
I see a lot of fear in the newly diagnosed breast cancer patients with whom I work and so to say that I am interested in finding good ways of helping them reduce their fear would be the understatement of the year.
The English language really doesn’t have a good word that accurately describes the state of detachment discussed here. If you look in the dictionary you’ll see words like indifference and aloofness, and this is nothing like what we’re contemplating.
I was just reading a really great article entitled “Detachment, Abundance & Success: Just Another Day At The Beach” on erniegray.com, and he had this to say: “A better way of describing detachment in zen practice is a detachment from outcomes in a state of positive being.”
Mr Gray went on to say, “This was understood by Jesus, and is a common characteristic of some of the most successful people you may encounter. To experience and enjoy a life of abundance, you must learn detachment from outcomes.”
Now I realize that cancer patients (having been one myself) are often attached to the outcome of their treatments because they want to live, perfectly understandable and natural.
One of the places I like to go and offer help is an online cancer forum put together by the American Cancer Society, it’s called “What Next”. One of the forum participants was responding to a newly-diagnosed cancer patient who was having a good deal of anxiety and exhibiting more than a little fear. She responded with something like “Well, all you can do is your very best to get rid of the cancer. And even if you fail, you get to go and be with our Lord in peace and harmony” and I thought about that a good long time. Now THAT is true detachment to an outcome.
Why To Practice Detachment
Carolyn Myss, for those who don’t know of her, is a very wise energy healer (among many other things) and she had an interesting statement to make about detachment and healing. She said “Reaching a detached state of mind for even five minutes a day is so valuable that it can infuse your body with the equivalent energy of six months of living in genuine hope.
If you’ve been reading my blog articles, you will know that I am passionate about the power of the mind to heal. Genuine hope is such a powerful healer that without even knowing it, the cells of your body are working toward a more healing path every moment that you exist in that state.
In her book, Ms Myss offers an exercise to help you uncover your negative, limiting beliefs and replacing them with more positive, healing attitudes. Grab a copy of this book and see the chapter titled “Igniting the Healing Fire Within”. If you are struggling with your cancer diagnosis or are suffering from recurrences or metastases I highly recommend this book, it is filled with so much incredible knowledge of healing and offers the reader some compelling lessons on how to heal themselves.
The practice of detachment can take years, so don’t feel bad if you can’t get there after only a few days of trying. If can take a lot of effort to release your attachments and place all things in your life into a healthy, rational perspective, and recognize the need to back away from the uncontrollable and unchangeable realities life sometimes offers us. Well worth the effort though!
Another resource is Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong site, where I found an excellent article about developing detachment.
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.
Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.com and photostock
Dealing With the What-If’s
Every cancer patient will tell you that there comes a point on a sleepless night when the “what-if’s” come to haunt and harass.
No matter how strong the patient, how resolute, how focused in their healing… there’s always a dark night when the following questions come home to roost:
What if I can’t get well?
What if it comes back?
What if I die? How will my family cope?
I didn’t expect to have these feelings, but I did, and usually when I was ultra-tired.
Some Wise Words
I’m a frequent visitor on the American Cancer Society’s “What Next” forum and a nice man from England named Steve Darke had a great answer to this question recently:
“We go through so many emotions when faced with our own mortality but these emotions are shared by many of us… we must put weight to the positive emotions such as hope. If we choose to live our lives in fear then we are mourning away our future happiness, a happiness which is ours by right. I may die from this illness but I won’t let this illness take away my dreams for I believe without our hopes and dreams we are painting ourselves a very bleak future where all the colours find their way to darker shades of black from the tears that we cry.
“At least we have knowledge of the fate that may belie us, there have been many who say goodbye whilst parting and are never seen again; at least knowing the things we now know, we are able to speak the words that are unsaid, and right the things that are wrong. Here is something called ‘Wasted Moments’ taken from my book Reaching For A Rainbow – A Practical Guide to Living Alongside Cancer (written by Steve Darke):
I am neither a spring flower nor a mighty oak, I am just a man with frailty of life, it’s not the time I have but the journey that counts, regrets for the future of what might have been are what the reaper leaves behind as unfinished business, cast aside regrets and trivial things, say the things you have to say, share the things you have to share and live your journey to the end.
Beautiful words, thank you Steve. Steve has started his own blog and here is a link to it.
Some Help For Those Feelings
In order to help you keep the anxiety at bay, I’ll share a couple of things that really helped me.
- EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) – I found a practitioner that helped me work through those feelings early on. Here’s an 11-minute video outlining the technique and you can try it now. Definitely honor where you are now but don’t let fear and anxiety take you over.
- A quote from Louise Hay in “You Can Heal Your Life”: “Invite your fears in, then tell them to sit down and shut up!”
- I just looked Death square in the eye and said I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU. I’M ALSO NOT READY FOR YOU, SO YOU CAN JUST GO AWAY.
- Get a massage or some form of bodywork – it has such a calming effect and can be so 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.
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng and duchessa
Today’s favorite inspirational quote comes from Dr Bernie Siegel in “Love, Medicine & Miracles” and the subject is the importance of peace of mind.
“Getting well isn’t the main objective. That can set you up for failure. If you set a physical goal, then you may fail, but if you make peace of mind your goal, you can achieve it. My message is peace of mind, not curing cancer, blindness, or paraplegia. In achieving peace of mind, cancer may be healed, sight may be restored, and paralysis may disappear. All of these things may occur through peace of mind, which creates a healing environment in the body.”
When you consider the research being done about the body-mind connection, how stress often plays a huge role in the development of disease, and how often we are stressed these days, Dr Siegel’s comment makes a lot of sense.
Check out my free downloadable Guided Meditation if you need help with stress.
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.
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