Mindfulness: This Is How It Helps Cancer Patients
When diagnosed with cancer, very diverse feelings emerge, such as sadness, fear, anger, helplessness, or injustice. When the condition of this disease is known, most people are accompanied by their family, friends and closest people, either sooner or later.
However, do they really show what they feel when they talk to them? Do you allow yourself to be invaded by emotion when it knocks on your door? The answer in most cases is ‘no’.
While it is true that some people let their emotions flow, whether they are sadness, anger or injustice, in most cases people make useless efforts to appear good to others. In fact, On many occasions they can experience what is known as Experiential Avoidance Disorder, manifested by the avoidance of everything related to the disease. This avoidance reflects a lack of acceptance of the illness.
All these efforts to put aside the discomfort are in vain, the person ends up finding themselves in a spiral of thoughts that are avoided with daily activities and that, beyond promoting a high mood, the intensity of the discomfort increases. In this way, both the well-being and quality of life of the person are harmed.
What is Mindfulness and how does it help cancer patients?
From psychology, these aspects are worked on through different techniques and therapies. In recent years, Mindfulness has proven to be effective in working on some relevant problems during cancer:
Mindfulness is a practice from Tibetan Buddhist meditation and, currently, it is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Its objective is to be aware of each physical and psychological sensation that our body sends us. However, the purpose of Mindfulness is not to eliminate pain or the thoughts or emotions that make us uncomfortable, but rather to hear what they have to say without judging them, giving them the attention they need.
This is because our body constantly speaks to us, every pain, thought, emotion or pain we have is a message from our body. When day after day we insist on not hearing it, it stalks us when we least expect it and with greater intensity, since we are not listening to what it has to tell us. Mindfulness facilitates the acceptance, understanding and regulation of these emotions, thoughts or physical sensations.
Basic pillars of this therapeutic philosophy
There are several types of Mindfulness and a multitude of activities to put full awareness into practice, but It must be taken into account that the most important thing is the attitude taken when performing these exercises
Shapiro and Carlson pointed out seven factors to take into account for practice:
