an unconscious desire to escape life or to avoid it

I was speaking with a doctor yesterday and I mentioned that I was being very mindful about not allowing fear to influence my decisions. She told me that her mother had breast cancer fifty years ago and is still cancer free and in her eighties. Apparently she could have had a lumpectomy at the time but she chose to have a double mastectomy instead. Just recently the woman said that the fear of the cancer returning took over her life and that she couldn’t remember a day when she didn’t have that playing at the back of her mind. In short, she realized that being diagnosed with cancer had intimidated her to such a degree that she never fully lived. Fear destroyed her life – not cancer.

I do recognize how easily this could happen with all of us. It’s like a permanent shadow that falls upon us like a rain cloud. Fear is imagination predicting the worst possible outcome. When our perception or choices are based in fear we retreat or compress ourselves. When we anticipate harm we take a defence stance; hold our breath, tighten muscles and remain hyper-alert.

It’s hard to get free of a cancer diagnosis because it doesn’t seem to have a definite end date. The closest we seem to get is, “The tests are clear – for now, but let’s keep an eye on it.” It’s a time bomb ticking! We no longer have an inbuilt ‘smoke detector’ but a high beam spotlight and a pack of guard dogs watching over us. I made my decision that I was cancer free after the lump had been removed. For many others it might be at the end of radiation or chemo or the five year check, but ultimately, it will be at the time that the mind accepts it to be so. I suspect that many people never get to this point. Imagine living fifty years of your life in fear of something that never happened.

Worst than that though, is that fear can be mesmerising. This is especially true when the fear is associated with survival. Survival is our strongest primal instinct; we have a sensing mechanism within our minds which operates just under the surface of awareness. Most of the time, we are not conscious of this scanning devise but it operates 24 hours a day. Once we have been diagnosed with cancer (or any life threatening disease or circumstance) the programming changes to ‘red alert’ which means it no longer sits quietly in the background. Instead of being alerted to danger when it exists we begin to anticipate danger even when it does not exist. The real danger of this is that we begin to obsess about disease and death – we begin to make it our story or our definition of who we are.

Last week I attended a party and met people I hadn’t seen for a few years. Most of them had heard through the grapevine that I had had breast cancer. Almost every person I spoke to that night mentioned it and then offered sympathy or advice to some degree. Interestingly, it also encouraged them to tell their stories about their own health problems or accounts of other people who had lived or died with cancer. At the time, I accepted that most of it was nothing more than polite chit-chat and care or concern for me. I later reflected how much of my life has become hijacked by cancer. To me, it’s over or at least that’s what I try to accept but it has somehow become my story or more succinctly, I am being defined by this story.

Socially it comes up all the time and I really do appreciate that it is well-meaning. What I find difficult is that there appears to be a cancer consciousness that seems to seek me out and taunt me with a constant reminder to stay associated with cancer. I see people wearing pink ribbons, fundraisers, billboards, breast cancer week, magazine articles and countless movies, news items and advertising campaigns. Most of these things are well meaning and I'm sure it is important to inform and educate people but has cancer become the flavour of the month? Are we now doing not much more than entertaining ourselves with fearful messages or more cynically, using cancer as a guaranteed cash cow for pharmaceutical companies or media ratings?

I mentioned before that fearful things can be mesmerising and that death and cancer are very common fears. But is this realistic or are we all propagating it? It’s hard to turn away from an accident and a huge amount of our entertainment is based on this factor – Fear Sells. Remember when the 911 images were shown repeatedly for months? Have you noticed since then that all violent images are shown for days after; even looped into loosely related sub-articles? They never used to show images of dead people, cruelty to animals, gang bashings or battered faces of victims but these days they are shown over and over. The more horrific the story and or the images the more mesmerised we are and the higher the ratings – the bigger the advertising dollars. Just have a look at prime time TV this week and you will see that almost everything showing is about disease, crime, death or anything fear based.

We do have a natural inclination to be fascinated with fearful things; it’s that survival system I mentioned before. But there is a huge difference between being cautious about perceived danger and being completely controlled and manipulated by manufactured illusions. Everyday people, leading ordinary lives, are living as if they are in a war zone. We are becoming more stressed, anxious, critical, suspicious and depressed - even though by all accounts we are living in better times now than ever before. Why are we so unhealthy and unhappy? You might come up with a number of answers to that question but on closer analysis I think you will find the answer is FEAR.

Fear is toxic to the body – it changes your physiology. From a cancer point of view we must pay attention to what we are taking in and be discerning about what we choose to engage in. What we focus on is what we attract and that stands for good or bad. The subconscious mind does not rationalize truth from lies, it simply pays attention to anything that creates intense emotion or is repetitive. Fear will also inspire anger, sadness, helplessness and depression to join its influence. Healing requires a strong desire for wellness; life needs to have purpose and pleasure. How can we fight for life if our real belief is that life is ugly, disconnected or a constant struggle? If we think and talk about cancer everyday we are perpetuating a cancer consciousness and the mind and the body are absorbing this programming. How can we convince the body to heal if we keep affirming how bad life is? I believe that the greatest cure for cancer or any disease is the will to live. I don’t believe that the will to live comes from responsibilities or obligations. I believe that sometimes we have an unconscious desire to escape life or to avoid it and perhaps even to lift off out of it and we need to question this. The will to live can only be strengthened when we love and respect ourselves, our lives and others. Having purpose, enjoying everything and being grateful for it all is life affirming. Laughing, loving, creating and dreaming expand and lighten our experience.

Sometimes we do need to talk through our fears and sometimes there is great comfort in being able to express ourselves with someone who cares. But let’s not make it our story or our definition. Most importantly though, let's not make illusionary fears our entertainment.

Copyright Sonya Green
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http://www.reinventingmyself.com/