Cancer

All behaviour has a positive intention is one of the presuppositions or operating beliefs of NLP. At first blush this sounds a little unlikely. A cursory glance in the newspapers will show a huge range of cruel, stupid and just plain nasty behaviour.

That’s the point while the behaviour may be all those things the intention behind them was positive in some way.

Just think back for a moment, there has probably been a time when you have done something flat out stupid, if you look behind what you did to what you wanted to achieve I imagine you will be able to find something positive in the intention, even if the implementation left a little to be desired.

Of course this presupposition is impossible to prove but it’s a very useful point of view to adopt when dealing with people.

I heard a very nice version of this principle at work whilst listening to a podcast of a studio discussion between two cancer patients; Leroy Sievers, a journalist with terminal cancer, and Elizabeth Edwards amongst other things a US senator’s wife also suffering from cancer.

An audience member asked a question about ’saying the wrong thing’ to cancer patients. He felt he had put his foot in it some years before with a friend who was dying from brain cancer and he still felt guilty about it after all this time.

“How do you handle the situation when a healthy person says something insensitive?”

Elizabeth Edwards answered .

‘I had a 16 year old son who died in 1996 and I had a lot of people say some incredible things to me. And I got some wonderful advice from someone that had lost a brother, and he said:

“People will say the wrong thing but know that they intended to say the right thing“. ‘

‘And I’ve always kept that in mind however stupid the things other people say and believe me that was not the stupidest thing I’ve heard by some considerable distance. I always know that they meant to say the right thing and I think that all of us keep that in mind ‘

‘And there are times when I don’t want to hear it, when I’m on the campaign trail I’ve had people come up to me and want to give me a hug and say “My wife died of the same thing that you died of [sic]” and I don’t know what to say to that’

The presenter then offered this reframe: ‘It’s just a premature condolence’. Which provoked a laugh from her saying “That makes me feel so much better”.

Share This

There’s an interesting summary of an article published in the journal Cancer on the Cancer Research UK website: Emotional wellbeing found to have little influence on cancer survival. In a study of more than a thousand patients with head and neck cancers they found that ‘emotional wellbeing’ did not seem to extend the patients life expectancy.

Those weren’t the results most people would have expected (except perhaps hardened sceptics*). As someone who is interested in working with cancer patients and their carers to reduce the level of emotional stress they experience as a result of the illness I find this study very interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

As some of you may know I’ve been interested in using EFT and other techniques to help the relieve the stress and anxiety of cancer. I think the moment the doctor says “I’m sorry you have cancer” then most people get a huge dose of anxiety and stress to go with disease itself.

I have seen a few individual clients with cancer and done voluntary work with the Northumberland Cancer Support Group. Up to now I’ve always been a bit low key in how I promote this aspect of my work, but I think it’s time to be a bit more explicit about what can be done to help people in this predicament.

From what I’ve seen there is a huge amount of emotional suffering that goes on after the diagnosis. I think EFT, NLP and other techniques can reduce a huge amount of the suffering that goes with the illness. I want to offer these skills to cancer patients and their carers.

If you want to know more about using EFT in cancer care you can find out more on the Cancer Stress Relief page on this site. If you know someone who might benefit from this information please pass it on.

Share This