A very important, and often overlooked, “cause” of cancer is the emotional wounds we may be carrying with us.

All dis-ease begins in the energetic field and when it’s not moved through it eventually takes hold in the physical field. It is believed that a chronic negative thought or feeling can kill us faster than a bad germ. This is why it is so important for us to take the time to really think about our energetic health and emotional wellness.

E-motion is really just energy in motion. If it stays in motion, we feel it fully, then release it, and it doesn’t create a problem. When the emotion is too painful or big or hard to process, the danger can be that we don’t want to feel it, stuff it away to deal with at another time, and then it gets stuck in our energetic field.

This stuck energy or blocked emotion creates areas of dis-ease, which will eventually take root in the physical body. This could be felt as aches or pains that don’t go away, tummy troubles or chronic digestive issues, a weakened immune system, or even cancer.

Taking a truly holistic approach to cancer recovery & prevention requires us to look at all the possible root causes, including our emotions & stress levels. This area of our health and wellness is just as important as our physical body and the treatments & support we bring in to help us heal. Let’s dive deeper into how our emotions can increase the risk for cancer.

Negative Emotions & Increased Cancer Risk

Second only to food, emotions and thought patterns are our primary epigenetic modifiers. This means that what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling can actually change the way your genes are expressed…turning genes off or on!

Our emotions and thought patterns also influence the physiology of our body, especially our immune system. Chronic stress, overwhelm, depression, anxiety, etcetera depletes the adrenal hormones, increases inflammation in the body, and can suppress the immune system. There has even been some research showing that when a person mentally “gives us” and has no more hope, their immune system (NK cells, T cells, B cells) will lay down its arms as well.

Research has also demonstrated that feelings of powerlessness and despair increase cancer risk. As well as feelings of loss, grief, deep hurt, & resentment. You can read more about the research behind emotions & cancer here: Nurturing Emotional Wellness in the Face of Disease.

Emotions & Organs

Another interesting thing to consider, according to certain philosophies like Traditional Chinese Medicine, specific emotions can get stuck in specific organs. Like “anger” in the liver, “grief” in the lungs, “worry” in the spleen, “fear” in the kidneys, or “anxiety” in the heart. When you have cancer or other health challenges in those specific organs it would be good to also consider if you may be holding on to any of those emotions.

I have worked with several clients over the years who had lung cancer despite never smoking or being exposed to toxins like radon, or asbestos, or other known air-borne risk factors for lung cancer. However after reflection, they all recognized they were holding on to feelings of grief and sadness. 

I’ve also had several clients with metastasis to their liver who recognized they were holding on to a lot of unresolved anger and resentment. Now of course it will never be just one thing, like anger, that will cause cancer but it can be an important piece to the puzzle when we’re exploring all the root causes & risk factors at play.

The Cancer Personality

There has also been some fascinating research on what is known as the “Cancer Personality”, done by Dr W Douglas Brodie. After 30 years of working with cancer patients, he observed certain personality traits that all of his patients had in common.

Here are some of those traits:

• The caretaker & people pleaser (worries for others more than themselves)
• Avoids conflict & suppresses their emotions (esp anger, hostility, or resentment)
• Has a high need for approval & acceptance
• Has a hard time coping with stress
• Lacks closeness with family, spouse, or friends…often due to fear

You can read more about Dr. Brodie’s work here.

Do any of those traits ring true for you? If some resonate, then this could be another clue in what may have led you down this path and, more importantly, what you can support going forward.

Now what’s really interesting is that people at highest risk for cancer not only have many of the above traits but also experience an especially damaging event, or emotional shock, that they were mentally unprepared for about 2 years or so prior to their diagnosis.

Emotional Shock Starts the Cascade

Many cancer patients remember a particularly stressful event or period in the month or years leading up to their diagnosis. This is definitely true for my clients. More than 90% of them report being under very high stress before they were diagnosed and often can recount an intense emotional event  about 2 years before their diagnosis.

This could be the loss of a loved one, a difficult pregnancy or birth, a divorce, an act of deception, or a myriad of other big emotional events or traumas. The links between emotional shocks and cancer is based on the work by German physician- Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer.

He studied 20,000 people with cancer and found each of them to have an emotional cause. He proposed that once an emotional shock occurred, the body would go through a sequence of events that, if not interrupted, would eventually cause cancer to grow. The sequence would start with high stress causing interrupted sleep, dysregulated melatonin levels, adrenal depletion & cortisol imbalance, & then eventually nutrient deficiencies and immune suppression.

What he found was that when he helped his patients resolve the emotional conflict, the cancer immediately stopped growing at a cellular level. Eventually, the cancer would become encapsulated, discharged, or dealt with by the natural action of the body. Diseased tissue would disappear and normal tissue would then again appear.

Here were some of the emotional “roots” he found & the correlation with various cancers:

• Ovarian – extreme loss of someone close to you, a “low blow”, abandonment
• Liver – lack & deprivation (esp around money, faith, food, or respect)
• Lung – fear of death or suffocation, fear for loved ones that you want to “breathe for”
• Breast – conflicts related to the home & relationships with a spouse, partner, children, or other family members
  • L Breast – child, home, mother
  • R breast – partner or other family member
• Endometrial/Uterine – sexual conflict
• Lymph – blame & fear of not being good enough, loss of self-worth
• Prostate – unable to let go, needing to control everything
• Pancreatic – clashing with a family member (esp father), feeling unworthy, fear of lack
• Colon – being wronged, deceptive acts from another, inability to forgive
• Cervical – extreme frustration

You can read more about Dr. Hamer’s work & see the full list of emotional “roots” here: https://www.alternative-cancer-care.com/

Preventing Recurrence or Spread

Another important point that Dr. Hamer speaks about, is the emotional shock caused by cancer itself. Moving through a cancer journey can be traumatic for many. Surveys find that up to 50% of cancer patients experience symptoms of depression while up to 25% experience anxiety.  And an estimated 30% of cancer survivors experience PTSD linked to their cancer journey following completion of their treatment.

A 2016 German study in Psycho-Oncology found that 82.5% of women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer had symptoms of PTSD between the time they were diagnosed and the start of treatment, and that even a year after diagnosis, 57% of the women still had some symptoms of PTSD.

Dr. Hamer proposes that perhaps metastasis or recurrence is actually the result of new emotional conflicts that were brought on by the very stress of having cancer or of the invasive, painful, or nauseating therapies experienced.

We simply cannot ignore how important your emotions, feelings, and experiences of stress are to your health and your risks for cancer.

Start With an Emotional Timeline

Taking a truly holistic approach to cancer recovery & prevention requires us to look at all the possible root causes, including our emotions & stress levels. As well as creating healing plans that support emotional wellness.

As a first step, I encourage you to sit down with a journal and map out an emotional timeline of events. Starting with what’s freshest in your mind and then progressing all the way back to childhood, think through all the moments of your life that had an emotional charge. Get it all on paper then go back through one by one, close your eyes, slow your breath, and feel what comes up as you revisit each moment. 

Some events may have no emotional charge left. Perhaps you’ve already processed and moved through your feelings from that event. However others may still have strong feelings associated with them. Notice what you feel, which emotions are coming up, and where you feel them. Without judgment or need to understand, just take notes of what you’re noticing.

The first step to resolving emotional conflict is to bring awareness and light to the emotions. We can’t heal what’s hiding. Then you can bring in professional support via therapy or other modalities plus nervous system regulation and energy healing. There are many tools available to help you resolve these conflicts and get your emotions flowing again.

Inside The Healing Collective we have all of our members and clients start with “Energy”. We teach you a simple daily practice to help you ground, move, & elevate your energy while bringing in strategies that will help support your emotional wellness. We offer monthly coaching calls on energy healing plus access to 1:1 energy healing sessions.

If you’re ready to elevate your cancer recovery & prevention plan, we would love to support you inside The Healing Collective. You can learn more here!