So often when I speak to my clients and cancer patients, they tell me that they feel scared, helpless and alone. Often they aren’t actually alone – they have loving partners, family members and friends surrounding them who can offer them varying degrees of support. And although they have people around them, they feel isolated and unsure of where to turn to or who to ask for advice about their condition.
This is just one of the reasons I created my Realign package. Navigating a diagnosis of cancer alone can be daunting and scary. You may wonder how you will get better or what the future may hold - and those thoughts can quickly spiral, causing anxiety and stress which can impact upon your recovery.
It’s so normal to enlist expert support when we want to address other areas of health, such as hiring a personal trainer when you want to lose weight, or a coach when you want to learn something new. From the remarkable results I experience when working with patients, I strongly believe the same should be true for cancer.
Here are three perhaps unexpected and under appreciated ways working with a holistic cancer wellness coach or mentor can help you to feel supported, calm, optimistic and empowered during your cancer journey.
Make changes quickly and feel better fast
A cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming. Very quickly you’re focused on the huge amount of information which is being shared with you, all whilst reeling from the shock of being told such devastating news. When you’re in this state of overwhelm it can feel impossible to make meaningful changes to help yourself feel better – which is where a dedicated cancer coach can offer vital support.
Much of my work is centred around identifying, addressing and treating the root cause of dis-ease. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people look at their emotional healing and root cause as a last resort, first focusing their attention exclusively on traditional medicine options. And the patients I see who focus on this first and take action to address these issues as soon as they are diagnosed do so much better. Those who are able to make changes quickly and adapt, particularly changes within their lifestyle such as nutrition, routine, self-talk and mindset, tend to experience and cope better with the symptoms of cancer and the side effects of their traditional treatment. Often they are able to unlock fresh enthusiasm for life and a calm trust in what’s to come.
Having a dedicated holistic oncology coach enables you to identify areas for change which are specific to you, and implement meaningful changes more quickly, so that you can experience the benefits and feel better in a shorter space of time. Anyone living with cancer will know how important it is to improve quality of life and restore some sort of normality, and this also has the secondary benefit of enabling and encouraging you to make further positive changes, improving more and more as time goes on.
The importance of cancer mindset
The importance of cancer mindset can’t be underestimated. Often when we come up against a condition like cancer we tend to focus almost exclusively on our physical body – on the cancer itself, the symptoms and the physical treatment pathways which will target or surgically remove it.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach, as long as we are also working on our mental and emotional wellbeing. Mindset and inner change work are often a ‘last resort’ option for most people – and in my experience, they offer the most significant opportunities for transformation and healing, and lasting improvements to patients’ health and wellbeing.
Most people avoid inner work because it feels much more challenging compared with making external changes such as eating more healthily or even stopping smoking. And it’s crucial when you’re living with cancer, both to address any emotional stress, trauma or unhelpful beliefs which could be an underlying contributing factor and to enable you to manage your diagnosis in a healthy way. Inner work can be confusing, messy and overwhelming – which is why professional support is needed to help us make sense of it all and unpick what’s going on within, so we can install healthier habits and coping strategies.
Although healing your emotional pain may be the last thing on your list right now, doing the mindset and inner change work at the very start of illness rather than when you feel you’ve exhausted every other option is a strategy with proven benefits.
Taking back your power
So often when people are diagnosed with cancer (or any serious illness), they quickly hand their power away to health professionals to heal their condition. This is completely understandable – it’s simply what we’re taught to do in the society we live in. We rightfully trust doctors and modern medicine and science to help us to feel better.
And that’s only one part of the picture. Actually, when you view cancer from a holistic perspective, you can start to appreciate how important it is to empower the patient. People living with cancer often feel helpless, lonely – as though their lives and health are completely out of their control and their treatment plans and day-to-day lives are out of their hands. They are fully dependent on their medical teams and practitioners to make them better – so they give their power away which gives rise to feelings of fear, anxiety and loss of autonomy, all of which can be triggering in themselves. Whilst it’s really important to trust healthcare professionals and take their advice seriously, it’s also crucial to take back your own personal power when it comes to managing and healing from your cancer.
I believe that cancer is a consequence, a symptom of a deeper, underlying cause. Every single person is unique, with a different combination of life experiences, toxin exposure, emotional wounds and unhelpful beliefs beneath their diagnosis. And the only person who can change the root cause is you. This doesn’t mean you have to go it alone – in fact, enlisting support from friends and family and a holistic cancer wellness coach can help you to first identify these factors, and then start to make meaningful changes which have a noticeable impact on your wellbeing and quality of life. Your cancer coach can support you throughout your entire cancer journey – following your diagnosis, during treatment and beyond.
My realign package has been carefully and consciously designed to help you take back your power, providing tailored support to enable you to feel better fast and experience lasting change.
Learn more: www.physiocareholistics.co.uk or www.soulalignedwellness.com
