Who me? Cause My Cancer?

If you’re not living in a hole, you’ve heard about The Secret, a book and movie that has been sweeping the country. The contributors were even on Oprah, getting her enthusiastic approval. The book is based on the “Law of Attraction” which, in a nutshell, says that if it’s in your life, you brought it here. That includes cancer. Sorry Oprah, you blew it this time.

Did you cause your cancer? Read Louise Hay, she says so. She offers no proof but her profound understanding of how the world works, but she’s absolutely certain. She has a large band of followers that totally agree with her. Certainly The Secret folks would agree with her. Actually I wish it were that easy. If you can think it in, you can think it out. The ovarian cancer my doctors were certain was there was not cancer when the surgery was done. Does that mean I thought it in and out? Maybe, but maybe not. How could I be certain either way/

This approach can be ok if you can take the possibility in and use it to change how you look at things and how you do your relationships. Whether you believe in The Secret or not, you’re probably doing this anyway. But what if what you need to learn is to be more accessible to your own feelings like anger, fear and sadness? The only way to do feelings is to do them first hand, not through someone else or from afar. That means that, for at least a while, you dwell in those feelings. Will that make the cancer spread because what you think you get more of?

Balderdash! The true recipe for disaster is stuffing your feelings and pretending they don’t exist. Then you have to distract yourself from what’s real in your life through eating dysfunctionally, workaholism, drugs and alcohol, road rage.

Last week I was counseling with yet another person who was terrified that she was spreading her cancer because she couldn’t help being afraid. The Secret folks may be helping a few people, god knows they’re raking in the dough, but they are doing a tremendous disservice to people like the client above. One thing people with cancer don’t need is something else to be worried and ashamed about!

All the best,

Judith Frost, MSW
www.cancer-coach.com