What to Do About Stress

There is always some seemingly minor event to which our response sometimes appears to be out of proportion. Road rage is, I think, the best example. It takes only one straw to break a camel’s back, so when it comes to our health the "trigger" that finally upsets our body-mind’s natural balance and stimulates cancer’s unrestrained and rampant cell growth can be anything from smoking to bereavement, sunbathing to poor diet. In most instances, the interval between the cause and the effect is so great we fail to locate the cause of our disease, blaming it on something or someone else, preferably something that occurred more recently.

Where there is a clear connection, it is foolish to avoid doing something about the trigger. For example, if you used to smoke and have been treated successfully for lung cancer, it is absurd to take up smoking again; if you have unresolved issues, you have to attend to them. To do so effectively, you will need to stiffen your resolve and show you are not afraid; discover that life is to be celebrated, death not to be feared. You probably can’t change the stressful situations around you, but you can change your attitude, your perspective and your priorities. The greatest courage you can show is to face reality head-on and allow yourself to be seen for who you really are—and to accept this as one of the ultimate truths.

So how can you restore order? Can your immune system learn new tricks, forget old patterns? Can you enhance your immune function? Let’s look at the facts.

When we say we’re "stressed out," or that our "stress level is too high," what we really mean is that we’re in pain, are having problems or conflicts that are making us distressed. Distress is our reaction to stress: anger, worry, fear, depression. Distress is our response to any situation over which we feel we have little or no control. Your distress levels could be so high they’re affecting your response to your treatment, slowing down your recovery, and diminishing the quality of your life. You may be unusually intolerant of those around you or indifferent to what happens next. You may find difficulty in making decisions or experience memory problems.

Distress can reveal itself in various other ways—when we’re feeling panicky, uneasy, angry, powerless, depressed, grief-stricken, isolated, trapped. At a physical level, distress is revealed through symptoms such as fatigue, heart palpitations, confusion, tightness of chest, sweaty, dry mouth, muscle tensions, insomnia, irritability, loss of sex drive, decreased appetite. You know you are distressed when you think thoughts such as, "I can’t breathe, I can’t do it, I’m trapped, I’m not going to get out of here, I can’t manage alone, and no one will help."

Clearly, if your response to stressful situations is always the same, you reinforce the effects and condition your body-mind to repeat old patterns. Behavior that is not rewarded does not continue. If you train yourself to respond differently, you can break the cycle. What your body-mind learned through past experience, you now have to teach it to unlearn. There is no quick solution, but if you persevere you can succeed.

Facing cancer can challenge even the most optimistic person, but if you can try to see your cancer as a "fight or flight" situation, you can use the energy it gives you to keep going, to try to understand more about it (the stress) and yourself (the distressed), so you won’t see yourself as helpless or dependent, and give up. If you adopt the "flight" response, you will discover that the best place to run is not to a place, since there is nowhere to hide, but to a space you create when you meditate or do nothing; if you adopt the "fight" response, you will discover it’s not your cancer you have to fight (leave that to your cancer specialist), but your fears.

If you have any health or illness related questions you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. My answers to your questions will be posted on our blog and it is my sincere hope these will be helpful to you.

In light and peace
Joel