Issues Treated
Complementing cancer therapy
Hypnosis can help ease the anxiety of being treated for cancer, and reduce its symptoms.Phyllis Alden, consultant psychologist in the department of clinical oncology at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, 1999
If you are currently receiving treatment for cancer, hypnotherapy may help you to cope with the emotional and physical demands of the treatment.
While hypnotherapy is not a cure for cancer, there is growing support for the role it can play in helping people feel more in control of what is happening at this very challenging time in their life.
Conventional medicine over the last two hundred years has more or less seen people in terms of physical bodies. This has led to amazing advances in conventional medicine such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, etc, but neglected the role a person's mind plays in their health and well being. Today there is a growing awareness that people's physical health is very much dependent on what people think and feel.
Unity of the Mind and Body: Psychoneuroimmunology or the study of how the mind, nervous system and our immune system are interconnected has been one of the greatest discoveries in the last fifty years. In the words of Dr. Candace Pert, the mind is not just in the brain but also in every cell of our body.
In an interview in 1999, Phyllis Alden, consultant psychologist in the department of clinical oncology at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, said hypnosis can help ease the anxiety of being treated for cancer, and reduce its symptoms.
In his book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, Dr. Bernie Siegel MD explored the powerful role the mind can play in fighting illness. He wrote convincingly from his own experience as a surgeon that the power to heal comes from the human mind through will, determination, and love. Over the last 20 years, his philosophy and advice have led many physicians and other healthcare professionals to help patients participate in and influence their own recovery.
Specifically hypnotherapy can help with the following:
Stress and Relaxation:
Hypnotherapy can help people to deal with the various emotions one experiences after they receive a diagnosis of cancer. One of those emotions is understandably stress, which can reduce the effectiveness of the human immune system in fighting illness. The experience of most people who have hypnotherapy is that it is a very relaxing experience and helps them to feel less stress. By having a different perspective on what is happening people can change how they feel and therefore improve their immune system. One of the aims of hypnotherapy treatment is to help the person to make time daily to relax by using self-hypnosis. Other emotions people may find hypnotherapy helps with include depression, fear, anger and hopelessness. These may in fact be natural emotional stages in coming to grips with the diagnosis but hypnotherapy can help support the person through these stages to a place where they can have more control over what is happening.
Reducing side-effects of chemotherapy:
The side-effects of cancer treatment can be very distressing. One of the common side-effects of chemotherapy for example is anticipatory nausea. This can be reduced or even eliminated with hypnotherapy. Vomiting also after chemotherapy can be reduced. It is important that people continue to eat well in order to have sufficient energy but the combination of the illness and chemo therapy can leave the person feeling they do not want to eat or can't eat. Hypnotherapy can be used to restore a person's appetite.
Empowerment and self-esteem:
Dealing with serious illness can leave a person feeling powerless and lacking in self worth. Hypnotherapy enables the person to have an active role in his or her own treatment. This gives the person a sense of control and improves self-esteem.
Focus and Visualisation.
Apart from relaxation, one of the key aspects of hypnotherapy treatment is visualisation. This helps the person to focus on how the chemotherapy is fighting the cancer cells and how their immune system is part of that battle, seeing that they are playing a crucial role in strengthening their immune system in fighting the cancer and in defending their body from further attack. The use of visualisation in healing is not new. Florence Nightingale wrote frequently about the importance of people visualising their own recovery. She was far more enlightened than many of her contemporaries.