I’ve often heard and read people on social media saying something along the lines that a positive attitude won’t cure cancer.
No it won’t.
I don’t actually know anyone that believes having a positive attitude will beat cancer. That is wishful thinking.
There is no scientific proof (yet!) that being positive will directly affect our survival or improve our chances of being cured.
No one is actually saying this.
What cheerful and optimistic people with a positive attitude are saying is that it helps with the quality of your life regardless.
I know that if I go about my day with a positive frame of mind then I am going to have a far better day than what I would if I adopted a different outlook.
Cancer patients in my position know that what will treat cancer is the actual medical treatment.
But what I also know is that my own headspace has to be a place I want to be in because I’m there 24/7.
For that to happen, I choose to be positive.
I’d like to believe that my own positive worldview does in some way make my own life better because to go through cancer without this expression of hope and optimism would be so much harder.
We all have our own separate perspectives and experiences of cancer but for me, good cancer citizenship is living with a positive attitude. I want to be a role model not unhappy, bitter, negative or sceptical.
The ‘you must be positive to survive this’ narrative is a myth in itself. No one is saying that!
This whole ‘tyranny of positive thinking’ just isn’t real.
Jimmie Holland (2001) says,
“It is so sad that cancer patients are made to believe that if they aren’t doing well it is somehow their own fault because they aren’t positive enough.”
Cancer patients aren’t made to believe this. Who is telling me this? I’ve never heard this as a patient in the last 14 years.
Cancer patients do not feel guilty for not being positive enough. This is a narrative that just isn’t out there except perhaps in the media.
I choose to be positive and I do it for me but I do it for those around me. They prefer to see someone radiating a hopeful, expectant, cheerful countenance. So do I.
The last thing I want to look at in the mirror each day is a gloomy and pessimistic face who is scared witless.
Cancer can bring about serious mental health problems and these aren’t easily dismissed. It can breed fears, despondency, doubts, a lack of self-confidence, unhappiness and depression.
But an incurable diagnosis demands a different sort of response.
I’m not talking about living in a gloriously misguided world of self-denial and sweeping everything under the carpet.
I’m saying it is important to still cultivate positive thinking to counter the negative thinking you will undoubtedly experience.
The reality is for most of us that cancer is a mad cocktail of positive and negative emotions and some days taste better than others.
There are moments when I can feel overwhelmed, sad, angry, exhausted and morose so I do something about it by feeding myself with positive feelings and experiences. That isn’t an easy thing to do either. But it is important to combat stress.
According to one recent study, stress hormones can alter the behaviour of some neutrophils, potentially causing dormant cancer cells to reawaken.
Our attitude does matter and it matters enormously to how we manage stress.
It has been said that the disease is the killer, not the attitude.
But that’s not quite right.
The disease is a killer, correct, but the attitude can also be one too.
A positive attitude won’t cure you and make you better but it will make you feel better.
Mind over cancer won’t win it, but our emotional states do have a profound influence on our lives.