Mindfulness and Cancer Treatment
Mindfulness and Cancer TreatmentAlthough Huffington Post may not always have the most reliable information in the presentation of new studies that come out, this one is worth taking a look at as it directly relates to mindfulness, a key component of Action and Commitment Therapy.
Being a childhood cancer survivor myself, growing up, I had also participated in various meditation based ways to cope with some of the fears and phobias I had coming out of the ordeal; To this day, stainless steal kind of freaks me out as it reminds me of the operating room, anytime I have a pain in my back, i feel like my Wilm’s tumor (kidney cancer) is coming back, and the list goes on. However, I am accepting of these feelings. The book “Get out of your mind and into your life” by Steven Hayes brought up a lot of old feelings as I was going through it and honestly, it made me realize that I was pushing a lot of these feelings down instead of accepting them. It helps a lot going through the various components of the hexaflex.
In this instance, pertaining to this article, there is an essential therapeutic goldmine here that ACT could really capitalize on during the treatment of cancer. There have been many studies heard and doctors saying that a positive attitude can help the body’s healing process/ability to fight off the cancer. This can range from video games (https://www.roswellpark.org/cancertalk/201307/zapping-cancer-through-video-games) to getting a hair cut and looking good to boost self-esteem (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randi-hutter-epstein/chemotherapy_b_1627172.html) and the list goes on beyond these quick suggestions for articles.
This Huffington post article was interesting in their extrapolating of the findings in how mindfulness. Being there myself, when you are down on yourself and stressed, it releases cortisone (from around your kidneys so you can imagine how that effected myself) which causes more and more wear and tear on your body ON TOP OF the thing inside your body trying to kill you and the chemo or radiation that kills the cancer, but also makes your body weaker despite the constant advances in radiology and cancer treatment. ACT can be a cost-effective, low maintenance, and longer lasting mindful-based therapy that can truly help the masses of patients and their families dealing with the diagnoses.
What do you think?
acbsstudent
February 18, 2015