Over the years researchers have looked at a range of attitudes that people present as they attempt to prevent their cancer from returning following the hospital treatments. Typically these attitudes have related to being: optimistic vs. pessimistic; passive vs. aggressive; introvert vs. extrovert; neurotic vs. emotionally stable; truthful vs. untruthful and others.
While there is merit in looking at these particular character traits, in my experience they skirt around the most important trait, which is self-commitment to freeing themselves from perceived restrictions, and also having the courage and determination to not let people and circumstances stop them growing their life to a mythical quality they alone perceive. Over and over again, I have seen people who use the cancer diagnosis as a wake-up call to re-define themselves and ‘get on with a quality life’. Then there are some who only prolong their lives for a certain time, not in an arbitrary way, but in order that they may experience the last fulfilment of certain dreams—like a ‘last hurrah’. For example, they may prolong their life and not die until the last grandchild is born, until the last award is given—and then they are out of here.
Then there are those people who, when diagnosed with cancer, feel an overwhelming depression at the forward-looking task to achieve a mythical quality that has been importantly defining their life—and has been challenged for some months or years in the lead-up to cancer diagnosis. These people tend to become passive and resigned to not being able to overcome particular circumstances that they alone define as powerful hurdles to their dreams and desires. Deep in hidden recesses of their minds, they keep visiting the circumstances, reviewing the related negative definitions of themselves and wrapping themselves in accompanying negative emotions. Sometimes, people pull themselves up in the midst of this, and with help from family, friends, or lovers, they refocus and mythically realign themselves to the momentum, dreams and definitions of these helping people—and they recover from their cancer.
Those who cannot change their focus, nor their negative definitions, form a resigned and depressive fog of defeat to never being able to live out their dreams. They mythically link certain unfulfilled passions, needs and wants from earlier times in their lives, often from childhood or adolescence. They find ways to ignore and suppress the desires that define their growth-dreams, along with ignoring the hopelessness of the present ongoing circumstances. This does not help them overcome the circumstances nor make the circumstances go away. They eventually separate from some nature of themselves, and eventually their resignation reduces zest and enthusiasm for other important parts of their life—and their cancer returns.
When a person bring the concept of hopelessness into their cancer treatments it lessens their long-term ability to overcome the cancer, even with strong treatments. However, the word ‘hopeless’ should never be applied to any person’s fight against cancer. While a person lives there is ALWAYS hope. Hope needs to be turned into resolve, courage, determination and willpower to grow their lives once again.
The formation of a cancer mass in an individual sometimes can be quick to develop to a detectable size—when they strongly resign themselves to some limiting life-defining circumstances. A few months of resignation in some people is enough to develop a cancer while in others it could take years. However, in people who determine never to accept resignation, the formation of a cancer mass will almost never form into a detectable size. Those with a belief in their own uniqueness of personality, and who can refocus and dream of higher-purpose needs to fulfil their lives, tend to be able to stimulate their body’s self-healing abilities and keep cancer masses to a minimum.
I have known people who had been declared terminally ill and given only a few weeks to live, yet are still alive and well years later. In general, these are the people who have either used the diagnosis of cancer as a ‘wake-up’ call to focus on being true to themselves, in emotions, life beliefs, their self-definitions, and how they behave to fulfil these beliefs—or they hook their momentum to others, use contribution to connect, and in time and experience, mythically redefine themselves and get on with life.
Every person has to breathe their own air in their own ways. Every person is responsible for the health of their mental attitudes. Each person needs to strive to continually re-experience their own higher-purpose quality life, and not allow themselves to be overly controlled by another person’s (or system’s) idea of what a quality life should be. While we all may respond differently to life events according to our particular character traits, our responses have to enable congruence between ourselves and our inner nature—ti enable us to experience happiness, contentment, freedom and satisfaction with ourselves. People who get diagnosed with a cancer mass have recently gone through life experiences which have lacked these mental qualities. They have given up, embraced a type of depression, and become resigned for a period of time.
The Mind in Cancer
There are two parts to our minds. There is our conscious self, with its intellect and sense perceptions, and then there is that part of our mind we call our non-conscious, with its emotions and intuition. While we, our conscious mind, collects experiences of the changing world, our non-conscious mind responds to whatever we focus our senses upon, and how we filter these with meanings, and it links these experiences to our lifetime of memories and meanings—metaphors that tell the story of our life journey.
There are those who use mostly intellect and sense perception to make decisions from moment to moment for the quality of their existence. They generally distance themselves from their emotions and intuition. They are more difficult to hypnotise, are usually organized, directive, decide quickly, take an analytical approach to problem solving, are consistent, vigilant, self-assured, will be most influenced by their own preexisting beliefs, opinions and private agendas. They tend to have a stable sense of self, don’t like ambiguity, and relate to hard facts. They like to make their own decisions and restrict surrendering control. In clinic interviews they always ask a lot of questions and may be labelled resistant patients by the medical system, but if you let them participate in working out their treatment plan, they can become compliant and mostly, do very well.
Then there are those who use more intuition and feeling to incline their decisions from moment to moment. They shy away from intellectual debate. They are more easily hypnotised, are biased towards feeling emotions over logic, are sensitive to emotional environments and are more easily deceived by the salesman’s persuasive logic. They tend to be more poetic in their description of symptoms, have a greater tolerance for ambiguity, and tend to be very suggestible. These people fare better with positive reinforcement particularly from a counsellor, psychologist or hypnotherapist, whom they trust.
Then there are the array of people who fall between these two. Depending on the situation, they vary in the way they balance their intellect, sense perceptions, intuition and emotions. They vary in their abilities to use concrete thinking and/or abstract creation.
The people who overcome cancer engage the following character traits: a belief in a positive outcome; a determined spirit. They accept responsibility for their disease and whatever outcome occurs. They see their disease as another challenge from which to grow, and they demonstrate this by their positive emotions and commitment to live way past the cancer treatment. They develop a renewed sense of life purpose and change their lifestyle to achieve this. The faith in their abilities to control of their own life resurfaces, and they balance their contribution to themselves along with others.
Jungian Timeline Techniques
Suppose a magician can wave a magic wand to grant prime physical health, along with anything else you ever wanted to come true, and it will happen over the next several years—for your growth, momentum, enjoyment, passion and contentment. There will be no restrictions to age, sex, education, finance, qualifications, acceptability, success, abilities, and so forth. But there is a catch. You must write the experiences down and as you do, commit yourself to doing them, then and there, 100%—otherwise the magic offer will be permanently removed. If you do this you will have just described your heart’s deepest desires, and where and how and with whom you would obtain love, joy and contentment (total happiness) without ever feeling restricted.
And so you agree. However there is one last necessary requirement for the magician to permanently grant this wish. You must voice the mythical ‘buts’ that have been holding you back. These are the limiting rules that you have been using to define the restrictions to your life. Once these are concretely written down, the magician can remove them, and then you will then be free to grow your life as your heart desires.
There are many types of psychotherapy that are useful for boosting the immune system against cancer. They dissolve the limiting definitions of self with their accompanying destructive emotions—the (rules/beliefs/likes/dislikes through which the person filters their circumstances in life) based on the myths of their earlier life. As well most psychotherapy creates the require character traits to fulfil the wants/needs/wishes/goals that mythically define their idea of a quality life for the future.
When people with cancer are asked how they can move on to a ‘sweeter, more fulfilling life’, very often they will respond with ‘I don’t know’. The aim of a Cancer Support Program then is to get these people to accept that this is the most important question at this stage of their life—that answering this question is critical, and that a commitment to finding out the strategies and steps towards a ‘sweeter-life’ goal, will have a positive effect on assisting their immune system to prevent the return of cancer.
For more than twenty-five years using Jungian Timeline Techniques, and Self-psychotherapy, I have observed that most people with cancer fall into one or more of the following broad resignation categories of beliefs.
Resigned to never being able to experience love and intimacy with ‘that someone’ ever again.
Resigned to never feel free enough to express themselves as they would have desired.
Resigned to never to feel free to experience social equality and a right to share.
Resigned to never being able to physically do things to a certain level ever again.
Resigned to being stuck and never being able to risk experiencing something new to grow.
I have observed that every person who profoundly overturns their resignation, dissolves their limiting beliefs/rules, and starts to feel a sense of freedom, also begins to feel more love for themselves, becomes more fulfilled, finds ways to change their relationships, behaves more socially positive, and feels more accepted by others.
Our Inner Self Yearns for Vast Horizons and Options
We have been guiding our clients to take control over their own destiny, by transforming how they identify themselves, so that they no longer are framed by what they should do according to others, versus what they should do to grow with love and joy for themselves. They need to understand what it is that truly fulfils them in relating, creating, expressing, doing and becoming, that would bring them to a life of momentum and enthusiasm. The answer to this question is the thing that most profoundly improves their immune system against cancer.
Can a cancer patient take on this life-altering work alone? Yes, there are strong characters who can commit to this, even if it forces them to walk through every one of their worst doubts and fears. But then if you are a person who would like help with this journey, consider doing our Cancer Healing Support Program. For more information and to find out if this program is right for you, please contact us for an initial consultation.