Monday 20 July 2015

Psycho Oncology

Do you have the cancer personality? I do relate to most of it. Apparently people who get cancer share common personality traits. A Shaman I consulted said if you get cancer before 30, it's a nutritional imbalance. After that and before 50 it is mostly psychological, and after 50 it's mostly hormonal. The psychotherapist at the clinic in Spain said lung cancer is triggered by loneliness. After talking to them both I decided to dig deeper on the psychology of cancer. 

Dr. W Douglas Brodie who has dealt with thousands of cancer patients for 28 years observed that there are certain personality traits present in cancer susceptible individuals. I have to say most of them are positive, commendable traits, which, I thought everyone had. I always say doing good should be the norm. Among the traits he mentioned are being highly conscientious, caring, dutiful, responsible, he also said "of above average intelligence". They exhibit a strong tendency toward carrying other people's burdens and toward taking on extra obligations, and often "worrying for others". 
Here's an excerpt,
" they become the caretakers of the world, showing great compassion and caring for others, and will go out of their way to look after others. They are very reluctant to accept help from others, fearing that it may jeopardise their role as the caretaker. Throughout their childhood they have been typically taught not to be selfish, and they take this to heart as a major lifetime objective. All of this is highly commendable in our culture, but must be somehow modified in the case of the cancer patient. A distinction needs to be made here between the care-giving and the care taking personality. There is nothing wrong with care-giving of course, but the problem arises when the susceptible individual derives their entire worth, value, and identity from their role as"caretaker". If this very important shift cannot be made, the patient is stuck in this role, and the susceptibility to cancer greatly increases. As already stated, a consistent feature of those who are susceptible to cancer appears to be that they"suffer in silence", and bear their burdens without complaint. These burdens of their own as well as the burdens of others weigh heavily upon these people through a lifetime of emotional suppression. The carefree extrovert, on the other hand, seems to be far less vulnerable to cancer than the caring introvert described above." 

Dr. Brodie also mentioned that most cancer patients experienced a highly stressful event usually about two years prior to the onset of detectable disease. The event being beyond the patient's control. When the control is lost, the patient has no other way to cope. Major stress suppresses the immune system, and even more to cancer susceptible individuals, excessive levels of stress combined with the underlying personality bring on the immune deficiency which allows cancer to thrive.
Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, a German physician known for developing GNM (German New Medicine) also agrees that every disease, including cancer, originates with a very difficult, highly acute, dramatic, and isolating shock. This experience simultaneously affects the psyche, the brain, and the organ. The development of this conflict then determines a specific development in the brain and of the cancer or cancer equivalent disease in the organ. Dr. Hamer further breaks it down into four phases; the conflict which leads to sleeplessness where the individual is unable to produce melatonin, the production of interleukin 1&2 is diminished, then viral-bacteria-yeast-like fungus can invade cells. Melatonin is the primary hormone responsible for regulating the immune system, when there is not enough of it, production of interleukin 1 and interleukin 2 is diminished. IL-1 protects against infection, and IL-2 regulates the activities of white blood cells. Stress induced bacteria or fungus that have pleomorphised in the body are now free to invade normal cells, which further results in normal cells mutating into cancer cells. 
Dr. Deepak Chopra, in the realm of quantum physics theorized that built within the cell is an intelligence system that drives our millions of cells to do what they do and that the connection between mind and body cannot be separated. Something directs these cells to create the chemicals in the body, these cells react to your thoughts. He articulates this beautifully in his book Quantum Healing, read this book, I highly recommend it. He explains it so deeply that it shakes your perception and yet with an understanding of something tangent at the same time.
If you've been reading my blog, you know that I have taken on Dr. Bruce Lipton's biology of belief, that our thoughts can reach every cell in our body. That our cells are directed by our mind, that cell control mechanisms frees us from the limitations of genetic determinism. 

Upon taking on this journey my mind continued to evolve, and is still evolving - to a level beyond consciousness, a level often undiscovered by most. This experience has taught me that I can choose how to interact with life and my own thoughts, and free myself, and deviate from the patterns I thought was me, thought patterns derived from culture, religion, from places, from events, from people, from my own belief systems. I no longer need validation that I had cared. 

So to prevent cancer do we have to be uncaring and selfish? No, because what kind of world will that be? What's needed is harmony, equilibrium, a balance, yin and yang, in people's hearts and minds, in our soul and in the way we nurture our world, and the way we treat the earth and each other. If we all truly care about each other, less people will get sick. I refuse to change the way I care I just won't allow it to influence my energy fields and I'm not going to let bad events or people disempower my own pursuit of happiness. I will become an observer, watch without judgement, and lend myself but I will choose my own thoughts. I have learned how to live in the Now, not dwell in the past, or worry about the future, sometimes we worry about things that never need to exist in the first place, it's just in our thoughts. It is the now that is here and real, live in it! 

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.
To give and not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving. - Max Beerbohm 
Do your little bit of good where you are, it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the World. - Archbishop Desmond Tutu 
Give your stress wings and let it flyaway. 

And finally, here's some quotes from bright minds that influenced the evolution of my mind.....

In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.  
 If we are creating ourselves all the time, then it is never too late to begin creating the bodies we want instead of the ones we mistakenly assume we are stuck with. 

The character of our life is based upon how we perceive it. 
Just like a single cell, the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but our responses to the environmental signals that propel life.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves. 

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
 How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. 
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. 

Self control is strength, right thought is mastery, calmness is power.
 As he thinks, so he is, as he continues to think, so he remains. 
 A person is limited only by the thought he chooses.