How You Talk To Yourself Matters When You Have Cancer

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Kathryn White, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

How you talk to yourself matters.

Your body hears everything you are telling it. And then it integrates those thoughts into your mind. And then those thoughts become patterns and then habits and then eventually they become what you believe about yourself and voila, there is your personality, your essence, who you are.

So ask yourself this. Who do you want to be? What messages do you want to be sending your body, mind, and spirit?

As a person you want to be mind-full of how you treat yourself, as a cancer patient you want to be hope-full for your body, mind, and spirit. This means the language around cancer matters too. What words are you using to describe yourself?

Survivor or thriver?
Fighter or nourisher?
Warrior or champion?

Listen to the energy around these words. Survivor can imply you are just getting by whereas thriver can help you to believe that you are ok and that you are flourishing in life despite your diagnosis. Fighter has angry, aggressive tones around it, whereas nourisher implies a more loving and caring, and more nurturing self. And warrior, brings in the image of the battle ready hardened fighter, whereas champion sends the message of strong but with joyful confidence.

Think about this, how would you speak to someone that you love about his or her illness? How would care for a child who is sick? Would you call them to battle or would you sooth and comfort? What you say has energy around it and can also create an energetic response in the body.

What if you shifted your words that you use towards yourself? In particular, as related to my role as a cancer support coach, I encourage cancer patients to consider the message they are sending their body and how it responds.

We all know that stress is having a major impact on people’s health. So, if someone is already sick how would it benefit them to increase their stress levels by introducing negative perceptions about themself or their illness. People living with cancer are already stressed. Feeding the mind and body negative language creates a state of stress and then fight or flight in the body. The result is increased cortisol (the stress hormone), which only elevates the stress response in the body more.

As a cancer patient it is important to try to keep your thoughts calm, your body strong, and your spirit in a peaceful place. So think about the words you are choosing and ask yourself if they are in your highest good. Then try changing how you talk to yourself. You may see and feel a difference, or you may not. But, sometimes regardless of whether we have the proof or not, we just have to believe in the possibility.

You can learn more about living life with cancer on my Living to Thrive with Cancer Podcast. Episodes are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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