Fighting Cancer From Within: How to Use the Power of Your Mind for Healing - Softcover

Rossman, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080506916X ISBN 13: 9780805069167

Verlag: Holt, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

A breakthrough guide for cancer patients on using the mind to treat the body, from a pioneer in
complementary medicine
Recent research has shown that the mind can make a tremendous difference in not only the daily experience of living with cancer but also in the potential for overcoming it.

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Martin L. Rossman-hailed as "one of the greatest healers of our generation" by Rachel Naomi Remen-shows cancer patients how to use imagery in specific ways that can help them in their fight against cancer.

Imagery is a natural, efficient way of storing and processing information, and one that has powerful effects on both emotional states and physiology. And while imagery is not a substitute for medical, surgical, or other physical approaches to cancer therapy, scientific studies have proven that it complements and enhances those treatments in many important ways. In this first book of its kind, Rossman provides specific ways to use imaging in fighting cancer.

Praise for Guided Imagery for Self-Healing:
"This superb collection of imagery techniques is a landmark
contribution to the emerging field of behavioral medicine." -Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Martin Rossman, M.D., is a pioneer in the field of alternative medicine. He is the co-founder and president of the Academy for Guided Imagery, on the faculty of the medical school at the University of California at San Francisco, and on the advisory board of Andrew Weil's Center for Integrative Medicine. The author of Guided Imagery for Self-Healing, he lives in Mill Valley, California.

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Fighting Cancer From Within

How to Use the Power of Your Mind For HealingBy Martin L. Rossman

Holt Paperbacks

Copyright © 2003 Martin L. Rossman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780805069167

Fighting Cancer From Within

1

Cancer Diagnosis: Nightmare, Challenge, or Bump in the Road?

The diagnosis is cancer, but what that means remains to be seen.

 

--Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

 

 

 

 

 

Almost everyone responds to the diagnosis of cancer with a period of shock, numbness, and disbelief. This is the mind's way of protecting us from having to process more information and emotion than we can handle, and it lasts for a variable period of time. As time passes, and you are able to better accept what's happening, the way you deal with this illness will depend on how you perceive it. The way you perceive it will likely be a product of how you generally react to a crisis, colored by your conscious and unconscious beliefs about cancer, its treatment, and its outcomes. The distress you will suffer early on will come more from this set of perceptions and beliefs than from the disease, and that is why it is important to address your reactions.

After the initial shock, people tend to have one of four common responses to their diagnosis: they perceive it as a nightmare, a challenge, a bump in the road, or they just stay numb throughout the whole experience and never really deal with it consciously. There are psychological benefits to each of these responses in the short run, but in the long run, there are advantages to adopting some attitudes over others. Fighting cancer is most often a marathon rather than a sprint,because modern cancer treatment has changed many cancer journeys from short-term illnesses to illnesses that people live with over long periods of time. Because one perspective may help you better than another, and because it is possible to change your perspective, your automatic response bears examination and questioning.

Assuming that your goal is survival, let's look at each of these responses to see what they may bring to your fight with cancer. Responding to a cancer diagnosis as a nightmare is probably the most common early response. Cancer has become a symbol in our culture for everything bad. Relentless, out of control, sneaky, evil, and deadly, it's the bogeyman of health. It brings up fear of pain, death, loss of control, surgeries and procedures, toxic chemotherapies, and damaging radiation. It may make you feel isolated, different than your peers, and even ashamed. It brings into your life something you don't want to have and something you can't ignore. It costs a great deal of time and money and affects the lives of everyone around you. It threatens to take your life. It's easy to see why you'd view it as a nightmare.

The first question I will encourage you to ask of your response is whether it serves you in your healing goals. Does this view help you if your goal is to overcome and survive this illness? Does it mobilize your will to fight? Your will to endure? Does it offer any hope, any bright spots, anything worth fighting for?

The one advantage I can see to the nightmare scenario is that it has the capability of mobilizing your anger and determination to overcome this intruder. I am reminded of an important bit of psychological insight that came my way courtesy of Mickey Mouse.

I was speaking at a conference on mind-body medicine held at the Disneyland Hotel several years ago. My friends and colleagues, two of the major researchers in mind-body effects on cancer, Drs. Carl Simonton and Jeanne Achterberg, were there, and we decided to go over to the theme park. As night fell, we worked our way over to the lagoon to see Phantasmic, having heard it was a great sound and light show.

The show was organized around Mickey Mouse, who appears onstage in his sorcerer's apprentice robes. He soon falls asleep andstarts to dream, and at first his dreams, projected onto a fine mist sprayed over the lagoon, are of pleasant things from old Disney movies. But then his dreams start to go bad--dancing pink elephants start to become distorted and scary and characters from other movies start to appear--the Big Bad Wolf, witches, evil queens, and monsters of all kinds. The music becomes louder, cacophonous, disturbing, and the lighting casts a progressively ominous mood. At the climax of what now has become a full-fledged nightmare, the whole lagoon bursts into flames! It's a scene from Hades. A huge 30-foot dragon menaces Mickey onstage as the music comes to a crescendo pitch, and when the tension is at its highest and you don't know how he's going to survive, he suddenly pulls out his sword and says, in his high-pitched voice, "Hey, wait a minute! This is my dream!" and runs the dragon through. The flames disappear, the lights come on, the music becomes triumphant--Mickey is awake! He's taken control! The happy strains of "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah" ring over the lagoon as a Mississippi riverboat comes around the bend with all the Disney characters singing and dancing and waving with joy.

We were all astounded. Mickey Mouse had reminded us that things not only happen to us, but we happen to things as well. We can submit to our dragons or stand up to them and fight for ourselves if we choose. Carl Jung, the eminent Swiss psychologist, said that the challenge to the conscious mind when it faces the fears that can live in the unconscious is symbolized by the legend of St. George and the Dragon. His conclusion? "You may conquer the dragon or it may eat you, but one way or the other, you have to deal with the same dragon."

By focusing on the mind-body aspect of cancer, I'm not implying that cancer is a psychological disease. I am saying, however, that the psychology of how you respond to cancer can make quite a difference in both the quality and even the length of your journey with it. My concern about staying in the nightmare mode is that it is tiring, draining, and disempowering. It gives all the power to the disease. Seeing cancer as only a nightmare obscures any possibility of overcoming it or even learning anything valuable from the experience.

Dr. Julia Rowland, the director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Institutes of Health, reported a survey funded by the National Cancer Institute in which 2,000 women with breast cancer were asked the question, "Is there anything else about your experience as a breast cancer survivor that you would like to share here?" The reviewers were struck by the many reports of self-discovery, insight, hope, and resilience and commented that if you didn't know it was cancer that had prompted these discoveries you might well seek out what these women had experienced.

Nobody, including the patients who were the recipients of these unexpected benefits, would consciously choose to have cancer, but the point is that there are gifts that can come with cancer, and it seems that it would be a shame to go through it experiencing only the difficulties. Why not look for and cultivate any benefits, while simultaneously fighting the disease?

A second common response to cancer is to experience it as a "bump in the road." It is viewed as something that happens to some people, isn't particularly meaningful, there is treatment for it, and some people are cured and some are not. George is a seventy-year-old retired military man...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Holt
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080506916X
• ISBN 13: 9780805069167
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar