Coping With a Cancer Diagnosis: Moving From “Fight” to “Accept and Heal”

What are you fighting for? Coping with a Cancer Diagnosis

Often after the initial shock and denial of a cancer diagnosis, people go into “survival” mode. This often becomes “Fight” mode. Or “F*ck cancer“ mode.

I humbly suggest that you may want to avoid those two modes. I’m not a doctor, nurse, therapist or even a science guy. But here’s my laymen’s explanation of why, which comes from my learnings during 3+ decades of healing my cancer.

Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic in Your Cancer Journey

There’s a good chance that stress/anxiety contributed to or exacerbated your cancer.

After food, water and shelter, safety is the most important need in Maslow’s hierarchy. When we’re in our “Fight or Flight,” (sympathetic nervous system) response, we don’t feel safe.

Detoxing, repairing, recharging, regeneration and healing can only happen when our nervous system is in a calm, “Rest and digest” (parasympathetic nervous system) state.

So, if you, your family and friends talk about “fighting,” “battling” or “waging war” on your cancer, the battlefield is your body and mind. That’s where all the destruction -- including the collateral damage - occurs. By talking (or hearing others talk) about your cancer this way, you’re creating a chronic state of fight or flight.

If you are coping with a cancer diagnosis and decide to “F*ck cancer” instead, you’re filling your body with anger and rage. Anger is one of the most toxic emotions there is. It has no impact on the person/thing you’re angry with, but it eats you up from the inside out. Chronic resentment can keep you in a chronic fight or flight response. In both cases, your words (and those of the people around you) are literally shooting yourself in the foot, leg, torso, head, etc. This chronic fight or flight state is exhausting physically and mentally and weakens your immune system – just when you need it the most.

Okay, so if I don’t fight it or get mad at cancer, what am I supposed to do?

Great question. What worked wonders for me is what I call the “accept and heal “mode. Years ago, there was a time when I stopped fighting cancer and accepted the disease. I said, “I have cancer. Today. But today I begin walking down my healing path and tomorrow is a new day.” Reaching that point of acceptance was a launchpad for my healing journey.  

From there I began to cobble together a “healing regimen” of simple, low-cost lifestyle changes and alternative/complementary modalities which took my healing to the next level.  

This “accept and heal” approach involves no violence. No battlefield. No internal toxicity from the words I say and hear. It’s a calm, peaceful, serene, and most of all, safe space.

A perfect place to start your healing journey.