Managing My Mind & Emotions After Jumping on the Crazy Cancer Carouselfeatured

Do you know what someone who has been diagnosed with cancer is thinking about?

I’ll tell you!

From the day of diagnosis to at least a week afterwards….your ONLY thought is “am I going to DIE”?  This phrase repeats over and over and over and over. You become obsessed with it.

At least that is how my mind responded.

Then, as more time passed……my grey matter started to wander with other thoughts like: “If I am going to die……how many YEARS do I have left?” or “How much will I have to SUFFER during this whole cancer journey?”, and I can’t forget “Am I going to lose my hair?”

I think for a cancer patient to have these thoughts soon after diagnosis is TOTALLY normal. Of course you have to give your mind a fair amount of time to wrap around this news and sort it out and make sense of it.  It is a daunting and emotionally exhausting task, but after some time passes by, you will most likely NOT burst into tears every time someone talks to you about your cancer.

But what I have always been aware of is that your mind is VERY powerful. It can be your biggest gift and help you accomplish great things, but it can also be your worst enemy and hurt you tremendously if you let it.

In my first few days after diagnosis I was researching online everything I could about stage 3 rectal cancer. I came across a YouTube video of a holistic doctor (Dr. Leonard Coldwell from Germany) who believes that all cancer stems from a “splinter in the soul” and unprocessed emotions. He actually uses hypnotherapy first when treating his patients in order to uncover the real “root” at the heart of the cancer.  But anyway on one video he was discussing how early in his career he witnessed a hypnotist tell a person on stage he had under that he was putting a burning red hot iron on their hand and it was going to burn them. The hypnotist of course did not have such a thing, and only put a spoon on their hand. Within seconds, the person developed a burn blister on their hand! This was all caused by their MIND! That is when Dr. Coldwell realized how incredibly powerful our thoughts and mind are. If it can cause bad things like the blister, it could also cause good things like healing too.

Yikes!

This REALLY made me stop and reflect about what I was allowing myself to THINK about!

If I kept myself wallowing in the world of self pity, fear and death, guess what? MAYBE I was going to keep this dark energy swirling around me and bring this upon myself.

While I do consider myself a realist, meaning I don’t live with rose colored glasses on…..I like to see and acknowledge the truth and reality in front of me, I did see the importance of being responsible with my thoughts and emotions and making sure I didn’t dwell on negative things, even when facing such a difficult illness.

That is when I decided to work on changing my mindset!

I started to watch really funny television shows from back in the day that I knew would make me laugh on YouTube and Netflix and Amazon Prime Video: Frasier, Cheers, I love Lucy, etc! I also started asking people for suggestions for funny movies and other things they have read or seen.

At least temporarily…… it really did take my mind off of my cancer believe it or not!

I also decided to start a routine in the morning when I first woke up that focused on things that I knew brought me joy. I absolutely LOVE Paris, and beautiful clothes/shoes/makeup, and looking at gorgeous interiors and home decor, and looking at nice photography…. So I just Googled these things and found a bunch of Instagram sites and YouTube personalities that I could follow and just admire their gorgeous photographs or videos that I knew would lift my spirits!  It is just such a lovely way to start my day.

My favorite Instagram sites are: This is Glamorous, Lydia Elise Millen, ClassyintheCity, WithLoveFromKat, Paris.With.Me, Johannes Huebl (a male model and great photographer) and David Gandy (British male model…with really nice photographs on his site).

Another thing I did was make sure that I took notice when my mind started to “wander off of the reservation” too far. If I realized that I ended up on a cancer website and for example saw that the statistics for recurrence with stage 3 rectal cancer was high…….I stopped myself and exited out of that website if it was bringing me down and making me panic.

While I do NOT try to delude myself that I can completely dissolve my own tumor with pure positive thinking……I do take responsibility for my negative mindset when I have it and I try to stop and change it to be at least neutral.

Finally, I also started this blog as an outlet for me to have a project to work on and think about while I am going through this whole crazy ordeal I call the Crazy Cancer Carousel.

It was incredible how uplifted I became just from the idea of picking out a logo, creating photos to use for my posts….and deciding what I was going to write about!

I urge anyone out there who may be going through a serious illness or knows someone who is to really be mindful of your thoughts and to make sure you bring some pleasure and joy, even if just for a brief minute, into your daily life.

Here’s to putting our brain cells to better and more helpful use! 🙂