The emotional healing of breast cancer book has oncologists talking

There is nothing said about the past traumatic stress disorder caused by the diagnosis. Nothing was available which described how the emotional impact of the diagnosis affected them in their pursuit of healing.

My groups around this theme became more and more successful and began to practice completely focused upon women with breast cancer. I offer residential programs, one-on-one counselling and one-day workshops.

Addressing these emotional issues for women made such a huge impact on the quality of healing, the quality of life and the quality of life for them.

I found that very very inspiring. Furthermore I found that women who are addressing these emotional and spiritual dimensions were responding better to conventional treatments. We collated some of the best statistics, as Prof Candace Pert has commented, anywhere in the world on long term survivors and quality of life for women with breast cancer.

I knew I was onto something very important. A woman’s emotional side is not addressed nearly enough. People talk about mind body spirit, but don’t talk about mind body emotion spirit.

Yes, they are interrelated. It all becomes about healing your life much more than just feeling the cancer. In fact, when people heal their lives amazing things happen, such as spontaneous or unexpected remissions.

From my experience of working with thousands of women with breast cancer, I realise they are very unaccustomed to talking about their emotions. They find it very easy to describe what is happening to them deep on the inside.

They find it easy to describe how it’s affected their family; they can even talk about their fears of receiving a diagnosis where they automatically hear the death sentence.

The psychological aspects of breast cancer have been written about, spoken about and even taught about – but the emotional and spiritual, including fear of death is rarely addressed. We need to help them look at this and it’s beyond counselling.

It’s beyond therapy because it set in choosing relationship with the inner self. Very often that never allowed that deep in a personal relationship to develop because of the demands of modern life. It’s almost as though they’re working of only one or two of potential three or four dimensions, and I see the emotional damage which prevents system deeper intrapersonal relationship.

I’ve often wondered why women have done so well with my work. Firstly; I think it’s because I’ve had experiences as a care giver and then trained as a health professional and many other different approaches.

And then I’ve had the experience as a patient, that really puts a cream on the cake for me, having a trilogy of experiences. People can relate to my story and that helps trust to be established. When they talk to me it’s not with a therapist, it is with someone who has shared their experience.

It is soul to soul. As therapists we can get caught too much in the therapy and forget that soul interaction. It’s much deeper and seems to be the magical process it really helps people to move forward.

I tried to express all this in the poem that’s at the front of my book. It sums up the experience of 20 years helping women with breast cancer who number in the thousands who all come with a similar story.

It’s about repression, the inability to really express the emotions at a deep level, it’s not the superficial emotions. That is why the book was called women of silence.

The poem itself speaks a lot to women and they all say that when they read it.

They know that I know – and in that knowing it helps them trust me as a practitioner and then they really share their story at a deeper level, whether it be in a group or a one-on-one consultation.