Fighting Cancer with a Non-Positive Attitude! Part 2
Last time I said that the insistence that a "positive attitude" is critical to beating cancer is a form of terrorism against people who are fighting for their lives. This is a tragedy for so many people with cancer and their families! This "positive attitude", as it is commonly understood, isolates people and makes them feel wrong about having the powerful emotions that always accompany cancer. When you can't talk about your grief and fear, as well as your hopes and joys, it's hard to truly connect with loved ones. Everyone concerned tends to feel isolated and lonely, and may not even realize why.
Cancer patients and their families get the message that they're not really fighting the cancer if they're not unfailingly upbeat about beating the disease. Often, when they most need to explore the possibility of dying, patients are told, "don't talk that way! You're going to be fine!" But everyone who gets a diagnosis of cancer thinks about dying. That's not negative, it's not giving up, it's normal! Coming to grips with the reality of death is part of what helps people transcend the cancer experience and find peace.
In my last posting I said that the national obsession with being positive stems from two places. The first is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a positive attitude really is. In 1978, O. Carl and Stephanie Simonton published a book called Getting Well Again: A Step by Step Self-Help Guide to Overcoming Cancer for Patients and Their Families. Carl Simonton is a highly respected Oncologist, and his former wife, Stephanie Matthews Simonton, is a highly respected psychotherapist specializing in helping people with cancer.
In their book, the Simontons described the "Type C cancer personality". While this idea has since been shown by several later studies to be highly flawed, they also theorized that an individual's reactions to stress may contribute to the onset and progress of cancer. They felt their obsevations demonstrated that learning positive expectations, self-awareness and self-care can contribute to survival. In the book, and in their clinic, they teach techniques for relaxation, visualization, goal setting and building an emotional support system.
Getting Well Again was wildly successful and remains so today. It was one of the first popular introductions to the field of mind/body medicine, along with Bernie Siegel's Love, Medicine and Miracles, also published in 1978. These were important in bringing psychological considerations and the mind-body connection into the mainstream of cancer treatment. But their messages of positive expectations somehow turned into something quite unrecognizable, that is our current version of the positive attitude.
Neither the Simontons nor Bernie Siegel advocated suppressing emotions. In fact, the opposite is true. On pages 108-109 of Getting Well Again, it says, "Feelings constantly suppressed become bigger and more powerful, so that the fear of recurrence and death can become overwhelming." And then again on page 109, "we lead patients through a psychological process that helps them identify their feelings and... attitudes toward recurrence and death. The purpose of confronting the possibility openly is to remove it from the realm of forbidden topics and to clarify beliefs." (Italics mine).
So it turns out that even the gurus of the so-called positive attitude actually advocate allowing yourself to be human! Stephanie Simonton, herself, has referred to the positive attitude craze as the "tyranny of the positive attitude". Her work has been twisted to mean that you should totally deny your feelings, never talk about dying, and present a smiling face at all times. Even worse, rather than being just one piece of the picture, people have come to believe that presenting this false front is the most important thing in healing. Under this false belief, people are terrified that when they feel what they genuinely feel, it causes the cancer to grow!
You see why I call it terrorism against people who are fighting for their lives? In my next posting I will talk more about what has actually been helpful to people in fighting cancer, and why many of the techniques taught by the Simontons, and others, are extremely helpful feeling better and healing better.
All the best,
Judith Frost, MSW
The Cancer Coach
http://www.cancer-coach.com
Cancer patients and their families get the message that they're not really fighting the cancer if they're not unfailingly upbeat about beating the disease. Often, when they most need to explore the possibility of dying, patients are told, "don't talk that way! You're going to be fine!" But everyone who gets a diagnosis of cancer thinks about dying. That's not negative, it's not giving up, it's normal! Coming to grips with the reality of death is part of what helps people transcend the cancer experience and find peace.
In my last posting I said that the national obsession with being positive stems from two places. The first is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a positive attitude really is. In 1978, O. Carl and Stephanie Simonton published a book called Getting Well Again: A Step by Step Self-Help Guide to Overcoming Cancer for Patients and Their Families. Carl Simonton is a highly respected Oncologist, and his former wife, Stephanie Matthews Simonton, is a highly respected psychotherapist specializing in helping people with cancer.
In their book, the Simontons described the "Type C cancer personality". While this idea has since been shown by several later studies to be highly flawed, they also theorized that an individual's reactions to stress may contribute to the onset and progress of cancer. They felt their obsevations demonstrated that learning positive expectations, self-awareness and self-care can contribute to survival. In the book, and in their clinic, they teach techniques for relaxation, visualization, goal setting and building an emotional support system.
Getting Well Again was wildly successful and remains so today. It was one of the first popular introductions to the field of mind/body medicine, along with Bernie Siegel's Love, Medicine and Miracles, also published in 1978. These were important in bringing psychological considerations and the mind-body connection into the mainstream of cancer treatment. But their messages of positive expectations somehow turned into something quite unrecognizable, that is our current version of the positive attitude.
Neither the Simontons nor Bernie Siegel advocated suppressing emotions. In fact, the opposite is true. On pages 108-109 of Getting Well Again, it says, "Feelings constantly suppressed become bigger and more powerful, so that the fear of recurrence and death can become overwhelming." And then again on page 109, "we lead patients through a psychological process that helps them identify their feelings and... attitudes toward recurrence and death. The purpose of confronting the possibility openly is to remove it from the realm of forbidden topics and to clarify beliefs." (Italics mine).
So it turns out that even the gurus of the so-called positive attitude actually advocate allowing yourself to be human! Stephanie Simonton, herself, has referred to the positive attitude craze as the "tyranny of the positive attitude". Her work has been twisted to mean that you should totally deny your feelings, never talk about dying, and present a smiling face at all times. Even worse, rather than being just one piece of the picture, people have come to believe that presenting this false front is the most important thing in healing. Under this false belief, people are terrified that when they feel what they genuinely feel, it causes the cancer to grow!
You see why I call it terrorism against people who are fighting for their lives? In my next posting I will talk more about what has actually been helpful to people in fighting cancer, and why many of the techniques taught by the Simontons, and others, are extremely helpful feeling better and healing better.
All the best,
Judith Frost, MSW
The Cancer Coach
http://www.cancer-coach.com
posted by Judith Frost, MSW, EFT-Adv @ 8:17 PM
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