Episode 6 Shownotes - Feel Better Now

You are listening to the Best Life After Cancer Podcast, Episode #6.
Hi, and welcome back! This has been a crazy week here, and when I wrote this episode, I thought it was just what was going on in my life. I have recently been diagnosed with kidney stones, and this past week I had a lithotripsy, a procedure where they use sound waves to break up stones in the kidney and ureter. One of the benefits of being in medicine is that getting stuff done is a lot easier and less stressful, but even with that, it still isn’t fun. In NJ, you have to have a COVID test and be shown to be COVID negative for any nonemergent surgical procedure. I have a lot more sympathy for patients getting the test – they stick a qtip up your nose and it feels like they swab your brain. But, I was negative, and got the procedure. I knew all the folks in the OR, from the surgeon, to the anesthetist, to the guy who runs the lithotripter, so it was almost like getting together with a group of friends, except they put me to sleep while they stayed awake and chatted. I spent the rest of the day after the procedure home in bed, actually using a lot of the time to edit last week’s podcast. My littlest kept checking on me, refilling my water. It was interesting – he said it was the first time he ever remembered me spending a day in bed, and it worried him. I went to work the day after, but then on Saturday, I spent a lot of the day resting and letting my body heal. I bet a lot of you listening have had that experience – never been one to lay in bed, always full of energy and ready to go, until one day you aren’t. It is a strange feeling, for sure, and I felt lots of emotions – guilt, anxiety, but also a bit of relief that I had accepted that I needed the day of rest and decided to take it. It is a reminder to me that we need to be in touch, and listen to our bodies, and take the rest when we really need it.

But today, I am going to focus on what so many people are truly here for, today more than ever before, – how to feel better right now. This builds on what we learned in week one, with not trying to escape negative emotions, and week two, with understanding the differences between thoughts and circumstances, so the first part of today is purposefully meant to be a review.

For most cancer patients, feeling better is their primary goal. When I talk with patients, when we really get down to it, the truth is that patients aren’t looking for a guarantee of a cure – they just want to feel better – right now and for as long as they possibly can. They would like to find freedom from the anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, grief, shame that their cancer diagnosis brought. Many times, patients think of emotions as something outside of them, happening to them solely based on the circumstances in life. They don’t feel happy on a daily basis now, and they think they don’t have any control over that. This is in great part due to the society we live in. We are constantly bombarded brightly colored, enticing ads, constructed by huge teams of ad execs, edited to maximize desire and excitement, tested on subjects over and over again as the ads are perfected to be as lucrative as possible. These assail us everywhere– on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, magazine, on billboards as we drive, with each and every ad telling us that we don’t control of our happiness, that it comes from outside of us and that we have to eat or buy or own or win whatever they are selling to be happy. For most of us, this brainwashing started when we were children. I remember even at 7 realizing that the ads made me want toys that ended up breaking or not doing what the ad showed them doing, and that they did not live up to the hype from the ads. As adults, we see happy people driving beautiful cars on empty roads through gorgeous terrain. We think the car will buy us a happy vacation with the perfect spouse to a natural wonderland with no one else there trying to photobomb our picture. It is no surprise that when we get all the things we think we want from all the ads, we are still unhappy. We continue to look around us at what needs to change to be happy. We need a different job, or spouse or house and THEN we’ll feel better. Brooke Castillo talks in her podcast about how desparately she wanted to be thin when she was young. She tells that at one point in life she began to wonder if she was happy, would she care so much if she was thin? She tells that she came to recognize how many really thin, miserable people there were in the world (I bet we all know at least one!) and she reminds us that we all know happy people who aren’t thin. Amazingly, for her, once she put more emphasis on happy, she got thinner as well. The same is true in studies of lottery winners. They have not been shown to be more happy on a daily basis after they win – their financial woes may be less, but they still aren’t guaranteed happiness. So many of us wonder, how could that be – wouldn’t winning a ton of money fix all of life’s problems? I definitely see this applying to cancer patients as well. While the question is more extreme, but would you rather be cancer free or happy? Is one a guarantee of the other? I have met a lot of cured people who for sure weren’t happy. “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a professor diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, is an inspiring, uplifiting look that shows how happiness clearly can transcend a terminal diagnosis. What I really want to teach you is that the only reason we ever want anything is because of how we think it will make us feel. For the longest time, I was sure it didn’t apply to me, that I wanted things for my kids or my patients or my spouse, not for me, so if you are thinking that too, stick with me for a bit. I will give you a quick example from my life that helped prove to me that I do want it for how I feel. I have a son who struggles in school with the social aspect. He had some ups and downs his first year at a new school. I thought I wanted him to fit in for him, and I had a thought, it shouldn’t be this hard for him. Working with my coach let me explore that. Is his life meant to be without challenges? If I take all of the challenges away now, will that really benefit him in the future? Is it POSSIBLE that if he doesn’t work through all of these challenges now, things will be worse later? All possible, and likely true. If I could make him feel better now, what would that mean? I was making it mean that I am a good mom that protects her son. It is something you have to think on a bit, before you can understand, but what I realize is that the struggles are the currency of growth. Without the struggles, our lives will be stagnant. So for you – lets just assume this is true and that all you want is truly because of how you think it will make you feel. The first step is to figure out how you WANT to feel. Then, ask yourself what would give you that feeling. Is it something outside of you? A doctor saying you are cured? A negative PET scan? 10 doctors saying you are cured? I will tell you, for many patients, being told their scans are negative makes them feel better for a day, or a week, and then the worry comes creeping back. That is because they are looking for the release of anxiety from OUTSIDE of themselves. Or they say they want to feel happy and for them that equates to having life back to “the way it was”. They are arguing with reality, and again can never really feel happy, because they can’t turn back the clock – what they are looking for to make them happy again is outside of them. We can all win the “Feeling Lottery” when we really realize that all we really want in life is to feel a certain way. So – at this point, do you want to good news or the bad news? Actually – it is the same – I am here to tell you there is only ONE way to feel anything – through the thoughts you have in your mind. This is the best possible news – all you have to do to feel better is change your thoughts – but if you are a glass is half empty person, it is awful news, because changing the circumstances outside of you can NEVER make you feel anything – when circumstances change, your thoughts about life change – it is still not the circumstance – rather just a different thought in that amazing brain you have. So – the way we can feel more happy is by consciously choosing what we want to think. I have an example I like to think of to illustrate this – it shows how thoughts change feelings, not actual circumstances. Imagine a person is told by someone close to them that they won $1,000,000. The recipient of this news doesn’t have the money yet, but they are thrilled – immediately, they are picturing all they will do. The money is not there, but they are thinking thoughts about it. Now imagine that this is a social experiment, and what the person told them wasn’t true – they were told this just to prove that a thought makes them happy – and they are happy until they find out it isn’t true. There was never money, but they went from blah to happy and then to pissed, all just with thoughts and sentences. The same things happen in cancer patients – a doctor may see something suspicious on a scan, and you feel terrified, but later you find out it was nothing – there was nothing there at the time the doctor saw something – it was your thoughts of what it MIGHT mean that caused your fear. Or the opposite may be true, you are told your scans are fine, but really there is a cell that escaped at diagnosis, waiting somewhere to set up shop – you go around feeling happy, even though you already have a cancer cell that has spread, and we just don’t know it yet. Our thoughts bring our feelings, and the thoughts do not have to be based on actual truth – we just have to believe them. If you think, I just don’t want to worry any more – whether you think that winning the lottery, or being certain you were cancer free would bring that – can you see it could be possible to feel that now without the lottery or battery of tests telling you that you are cancer free? The truth is, we don’t HAVE to worry. Worrying is not a requirement. It is not necessary for a great life, and doesn’t give us any better guarantee.

I am going to explain the steps to feeling better. In my coaching, we did an exercise, and I want you to do this as well. What are the 3 most common feelings you feel? I just went through my worksheet from when I started coaching. They were anxiety, frustration and happiness. Thoughts I had at work brought the anxiety, and thoughts I had dealing with my kids led to frustration. I had a lot of happiness, but a fair dose of anxiety and frustration too. I have worked long and hard to find better thoughts to bring me better feelings. I can tell you – nothing changed in my life or job, and nothing changed with my kids – it was all my thoughts. So first – find your feelings, and then look for what thoughts are causing them. This goes back a bit to episode 2 – you have to understand what is in your mind and what is in the world. We keep trying to changing the external world to feel better – getting a new job, finding a spouse, having a child, making more money, having scans done that are all negative, getting a doctor’s pronouncement that you are cancer free. We grasp and seek and strive to find the elusive feeling. If these things make us feel good – we have to recognize it’s our thoughts – the job is perfect, I adore my husband, a baby is exactly what was missing in my life, if my doctor says I am cancer free, it must be true. If your feeling is bad from these things, you got it – still the thoughts. Examples – why does the same crap happen at this job as the last, I thought I would never be lonely once I had a husband, this child does nothing but scream, just because the scans are negative now doesn’t mean they still will be in 3 months. With the feelings – you have to identify the internal cause for your emotions – how your brain is INTERPRETING the world. Second – know and name the feelings and lean into them, instead of avoiding, resisting or reacting to them. Remember from week one, they are just a vibration in your body and can’t hurt you. When we feel them all the way through, we realize they are not that big of a deal and really not something you have to avoid. Third – manage your thoughts. You have to change the thoughts you are thinking, and let me tell you, your brain is GOOD at thinking the thoughts it always thinks. Remember from the primitive brain podcast – the brain LOVES easy, and these thoughts are like the ruts in a dirt road. Each time a car goes over it, the ruts get deeper and deeper. Same with our thoughts. The more we think the same thought, the easier that path is in our brain. When you get “good” enough at thinking a particular thought, you may not even be aware any more that you are thinking it! It zooms down that neural pathway like a super sunscreened kid along a slip and slide with the hose going full blast. Choosing new thoughts is time consuming and requires practice. It is not instantaneous. You have to be aware that you are thinking the old thought, before you react or buffer it away, and then switch your brain to the new thought. You may have to do this 50, 100 or 500 times before it becomes the new pathway. It seems like many coaches think 100 is the magic number – if you track 100 times that you interrupted an old thought and brought in a new one, at that point, the new pathway should start to outweigh the old. But every time you let the thoughts go down the old pathway, every time you resist, react or avoid your feelings to squash the thought, you strengthen it. Finally, you need to embrace emotional adulthood. What this means is that we stop blaming the world or other people for our negative emotions and take responsibility for them. This is probably one of the easiest points to understand, and hardest to apply. When we let ourselves be the victim, and let either other people or circumstances beyond our control decide our emotions, we lose all ability to feel better. We can’t change other people, we can’t change our past or childhood and often, we can’t change circumstances in the world, so when we can’t fix or change these things and we believe they are the sole cause of our feelings, we are stuck feeling helpless, disempowered and miserable. When we take full responsibility for our feelings, we have full power to change how we feel. This is a really tough concept when it comes to things like child abuse or cancer. Accepting responsibility for our feelings is NOT condoning things done to us as a child or deciding to “give in” to the cancer. What this means is that neither abuse as a child or a cancer diagnosis have the power to make you feel helpless, hopeless, or powerless, unless you give the circumstance the power. In cases of abuse, people can chose to think they survived, and even thrived DESPITE what someone did to try to screw them up. With cancer patients, they can chose to think that they are survivors, and blessed despite the hardships their cancer diagnosis has brought. I need to point out here that blaming yourself is ALSO not emotional adulthood. There is no benefit to being the victim to the overbearing, mean voice inside your head that tells you that all the ills that have befallen you were your own fault. There is no way there can be a positive outcome from this either, so choose to take responsibility for your feelings and thoughts, and not let the bully in your brain beat you up, either. The bottom line – you are taking responsibility if you aren’t blaming anyone or anything for how you feel, and this includes events, other people and yourself.

I love examples of where I have seen this working in people’s lives and where I have seen it in my own life. I told you that 2 of my feelings were anxiety and frustration. I have so many examples of where I have seen this in my life, but finding one I could share that wouldn’t totally alienate a family member, my spouse, the institution I work for, or someone else integral to my existence is surprisingly challenging. Ultimately, though, I settled on this one, which is simple and easy to understand. For years, I secretly blamed my husband and kids for not being able to lose weight. They would fuss and complain if there was a meal without bread, pasta or white potatoes, so every meal had bread, pasta or potatoes. They also felt that there should be dessert EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. I thought I couldn’t lose weight if that was what we were serving and used that as an excuse to not ever really commit to my goals. Then I realized that this was me playing the victim. Just because they eat them does NOT mean I have to eat them. Even if we are out, and that is all there is. Even if there is nothing else made for dinner. I have accepted full responsibility for everything I put in my mouth. I don’t eat the bread and pasta. Occasionally I will plan lasagna for them if I have a dinner meeting and know I will be out, and occasionally it gets cancelled, I come home and then realize there is only pasta for dinner. In this case, it is still my job and responsibility to not be the victim and just give in and eat it. I can fast. I can have a banana and peanut butter. I can stop and pick up a salad on the way. I can make a salad with whatever wilted, sad stuff is in the bottom of the crisper drawer and realize I don’t have to love it, it just has to fuel me for today. AND – I can choose to sit with them while they eat it without being annoyed, grumpy or a pest – it is not their job to make my eating plan easier, and it IS my job to eat on plan and not use it as an excuse to be bitchy to everyone around me! I have even gotten to a point where I make them some desserts, and don’t eat any of it – they love banana cream pie, and that is something I loved as a kid, but don’t love enough now to play the victim card and feel sorry for myself and convince myself to have it even though it isn’t on my food plan.

Watching from the outside, I have seen literally dozens of people let their jobs or bosses completely derail and ruin their days, weeks or even years. The story is so close from one person to the next. There is something they don’t like about their job, and they think they need to change that circumstance to feel better, and sometimes they even jump from job to job looking to eradicate it! Let’s imagine a specific example. A friend says he doesn’t like his boss because he micromanages. This leads to him feeling resistant, which creates complaining to coworkers, not taking the initiative at work, confirmation bias (or looking for all the examples that prove that his thought is correct). The result is that he creates a situation where the boss has to micromanage, and he still feels rotten. The alternative is taking responsibility for his own feelings, and choosing to think that he will do his best work regardless of who or what the work situation is. This will ultimately create a more productive worker, that often will prove to the manager that they don’t need to be micromanaged, and may even lead to promotions where they aren’t even under the micromananging boss anymore!

It all comes down to our thoughts. In cancer, you can choose to be aware of your negative thoughts, and choose instead one of many thoughts that will bring you more happiness TODAY, and repeat them every time your brain offers the original negative though. Recall, it takes about 100 redo’s of a thought to establish a better pathway. A few I have worked with patients and they have used succesfully: Today, I am having a good (or great) day (focusing on the now and keeping from worrying about the future). I have done everything in my power to have the best outcome, and it is out of my hands. (releasing the thought that worrying improves the odds) I am strong, and fierce, and will deal with whatever comes my way. (telling yourself that the future is not known, but you can deal with whatever comes). There is a lot of good that came out of this experience for me or this cancer diagnosis helped me to see the blessings in my daily life. (list these, and use as a daily gratefulness practice). I gained a lot of strength from this journey. All of these will bring more happiness today.

Ok, folks, that’s what I have for you today! I started a month long weight loss challenge on the facebook page June 1 – it is a new group on the page – I’d love to have you join me! Have a great week and I will speak with you next week!