"Amoena" Article

Emotional Rollercoaster:  Has breast cancer turned your life upside down?  

Excerpt - The Power Within  pp. 21-23

The Power Within

If you’re currently riding the emotional rollercoaster and have begun to feel rather queasy, you’re probably desperate for a way to get back onto firm ground. Perhaps you’re ready for an emotional health-check but, like many women, don’t know who to turn to, or fear that you couldn’t afford the luxury of a personal counsellor or psychotherapist.

This is why many hospitals and cancer professionals in the UK have welcomed the approach taken by clinical hypnotherapist Michael Mahoney. Using his many years’ experience in helping women to deal with the psychological effects of breast cancer,
he has produced a CD that helps women to understand why they feel the way they do, and how they can empower themselves to regain a sense of integration and control.

“Understandably, the medical profession’s main focus is treatment of the disease of the body. But I have found increasing numbers of ladies coming to see me three months or longer after successful completion of their medical treatment, clearly defining the problem of emotional healing lagging well behind the physical,” says Michael.

In his experience, a woman’s family can often adopt a ‘snap out of it’ attitude once she is physically recovered. “Though supportive during the ordeal of chemotherapy, radiation, etc., they cannot come to grips with the emotional reactions of their wife or mother whom they now see as being perhaps excessive in dwelling on what was in the past.”

So what is the answer? “After working with breast cancer survivors for many years, I found that there were common threads to my patients’ healing needs,” says Michael. “Emotional feelings of powerlessness, unstable future expectations, lack of understanding from family members, general weepiness, coming to terms with what they have been through, relationships with their spouse, etc., remained long after they were physically ‘healed’.”

Michael set out to restore this balance of self through clinical hypnotherapy sessions. “These ladies were once ‘whole’ prior to the cancer diagnosis, and had a base feeling of what that was like,” he says. “The distinction between that previous feeling of  wellbeing and the post-recovery feeling of ambiguity had to be addressed. By working with the subconscious mind, these women were able to restore feelings of optimism, restored balance of thought and total healing, and this gave them back the power of
‘self’.”

However, Michael found that women were often coming to him as a last resort. “Many women in this situation cannot bring themselves to seek out treatment – especially if they are working, and the emotional breakdown seems to come so much later that it almost seems removed from their illness. It takes much courage to attend support groups, and the very feeling of not being in control may keep them from getting the support they need, not to mention the cost. The beauty of the CD is that women can
do the programme in the privacy of their own home, with no appointments to keep and without the worry of what others may say. It fills a very large need.”

A wake-up call?

Michael Mahoney’s exhortation to recognise that the moment we’re in is where life is certainly resonates for all of us – not just breast cancer survivors. We are so busy regretting or reliving the past, fearing or planning the future, that we forget to live in
the ‘now’. Whoever it was that said “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” definitely had a point.

Often, though, we feel as though we need practical advice – things we can actually do, buy or apply – to help us change our lives. But with emotional problems the solution really does lie within. Try to remember that, like everything else, good and bad, this will pass. No feelings can last forever – certainly not at a high intensity. Give yourself back some control. Feeling hopeless and helpless – as though you’ve lost control over your life – is natural, but no-one really takes away your power over yourself when they give you a diagnosis of cancer. It’s easy to feel like a child when you’re ill, expecting the doctors and experts to make everything right. But if you hand over all control then you risk remaining in a helpless, childlike state. You can choose to regain control by treating your medical team as experts who can give you information, although it’s up to you to decide what to do with it.

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