If you’re not up to reading a really, really angry post, with a few choice words, then please go no further.
Before I get started, though, I would like to truly thank Dr Karen R Brooks, an author, academic and newspaper columnist, who over the past few months has been such a loving, outstanding support. Thank you, Karen. I love you dearly.
I have been feeling angry for a long time, but it is very hard to articulate that anger (or I felt so guilty about trying to articulate it that I simply could not voice it). But the other day Karen (thank you, sweetheart) sent me an excerpt of a review of a book by Barbara Ehrenreich. It suddenly not only made sense of everything I’d been feeling, but in one wondrous swoop it lifted from my shoulders all that guilt I’d been carrying about (and which burdens so many people with cancer). It also made me very angry (yes, even more so!), because as I thought more about what the review said, I realised how people with cancer are made to feel guilty in so many subtle, different ways.
This post is a healing post for me, because it is the post where I am going to say, “Sorry, but I’m not falling for that guilt trap again.” I am absolutely over people who make those with cancer feel guilty.
The review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, appeared in the Washington Post in mid-November this year. Here is the part of that review Karen sent me:
… studies proclaiming a link between a positive attitude and cancer survival … are full of problems and discounted by most researchers. Furthermore, the popular insistence that cheerfulness can help beat the big C, while it can be a great convenience for health workers and even friends of the afflicted, who might prefer fake cheer to complaining, leaves patients in the uncomfortable position of having to deny their very real anger and sadness, even to themselves, for fear of being complicit in their own illness.
You can read the full review at the link above.
That small excerpt in itself hit a horribly painful nerve deep within me. How many times have I been made to feel guilty that I was depressed, or hopeless, or scared? That if I entertained those feelings, well then, I was simply going to allow the cancer to beat me, and it would all be my own fault if I died. How many times have I sat on my sofa, all alone, shaking in fear because I couldn’t banish the dark thoughts, and thinking those dark thoughts alone would condemn me? How many people have prattled on to me about the ‘power of positive thinking’, not realising that all they were doing was deepening my own pain, forcing me to suppress any feelings of anger or fright or grief — all emotions I was utterly entitled to feel. Perhaps they thought they were making me feel better. Instead they greatly increased my pain.
People diagnosed with cancer go through a huge range of powerful emotions. They are absolutely entitled to every one of those emotions, they need to move through them (in the same way people need to move through the grieving process), and they need to move through them at their own pace. Telling people to brighten up, or buck up, or try and put it behind you, or thinking like that won’t get you anywhere, or try to be positive, and numerous other empty platitudes, does such immense, immense harm.
I’ll repeat something that review said “… the popular insistence that cheerfulness can help beat the big C, while it can be a great convenience for health workers and even friends of the afflicted, who might prefer fake cheer to complaining …” So be positive and cheerful, girl. Not only will that kill your cancer, it will make everyone about you feel that much brighter, too, as you’ll be such a nicer person to be around!
Oh dear, yes. I never realised until I developed cancer myself what a burden it can be – simply because the person with cancer often has to console many of the people about them. That is not true of everyone. I have family and friends who have been immensely strong for me, and I thank them and love them so much for it. But as for others, who I had to work hard to console and who, after a while, gave up actually asking me how I felt and came out with factual statements like, “Hello! I bet you’re feeling a whole lot better today! Right? Great!” … well, what can I say. I was forced constantly to say yes, I was feeling better, when all I wanted was someone to console me because I was hurting so badly inside. People with cancer have a double burden to carry – they not only somehow have to make it right for themselves, they often have to make it right for those about them, too. You are literally forced into false cheerfulness by the needs of those about you.
That is so bloody unfair.
Once that review got me thinking, I remembered many of the other subtle guilts I have been forced to feel.
One of the great guilt trips (which appears in many guises) is that you yourself are responsible for your own cancer, perhaps by hiding deep secrets or bad feelings (or whatever harmful little pimple of bad emotion you harbour deep inside). You have cancer? Then it is all your own fault, man, because you’ve been harbouring ‘unresolved issues’ haven’t you? This is a great one in alternative medicine. As just one example, on this page, about half way down, it states the belief of Louise Hay that “cancer is connected with deep hurt, long standing resentment. Or a deep secret or grief eating away at the self.” The site helpfully gives us Hay’s healing affirmation which we can say ten times a day in which we manage to forgive ourselves.
We have to forgive ourselves. Oh, well then, why don’t we just go all out and crucify ourselves at the same time and get it all over and done with. Thanks. Very. Much. Peace, light and harmony to you, too.
I also have problems with those who advocate alternative approaches to treating cancer because that often also increases stress and guilt. Despite what I say below, I am not against alternative approaches to treating cancer at all. I will happily try something if it resonates with me; I have most certainly tried alternative practices (although I’ve given up trying to forgive myself!). I don’t want to get into a debate about whether or not conventional medicine is better or worse than alternative medicine in treating cancer. Everyone is free to make their own choices and I fully support anyone with cancer going down Route A as opposed to Route B. Whatever makes you happiest, most comfortable and more confident, then do it. You can also mix both conventional and alternative happily and with few problems, and there are very, very few conventional medical practitioners who will want to try and stop you trying alternative approaches (whatever conspiracy theory the alternatives are trying to push down your throat).
What I hate (and deeply resent) is the guilt that gets ladled about on so many alternative medicine sites.
I have already mentioned Louise Hay’s theory that we’re all responsible for our own cancers by harbouring unresolved grief etc. The site where I found that little gem (www.cancerfightingstrategies.com) presents a guide to some alternative approaches to treating cancer, (but is heavily biased and the author of the site never identifies themselves, nor provides contact info – a big, big no no).
There was one thing on one page that soured the entire site for me – and, yes, it was the guilt thing again. The author discusses the idea that cancer cells feed off sugar, and suggests (as do many others) that you eliminate all refined sugars from your diet: “Cut out all sugars, cookies, chips, etc. Now of course, you may not want to change your habits. That’s okay, you have every right to live or die as you like.”
Bloody hell. What a patronizing bastard (or bitch – as they don’t identify themselves I can’t decide which way to go). I eat a pretty sensible diet. I don’t ‘do’ chocolate or crisps or cookies, or very, very rarely. I eat lots of organic veggies. I cook from scratch from whole, healthy foods. But my single love is a cup of milky, sweet tea. Now even that is denied me, because some ghostly voice will be echoing inside, You know you’re killing yourself with this cup of tea, don’t you? (And, of course, the animal protein in the milk will do me in, too, as so many happily advise.)
I have to feel guilty about a single bloody cup of tea with milk and sugar. You may think this a small, insignificant thing – but it isn’t. Multiply this a thousand times by all the things the alternative practitioners tell you not to do (because if you do them you are feeding your cancer and are, quite simply, responsible for killing yourself) and your life becomes a nightmare of guilt and fear.
There are so many sites like this on the web. They each have an agenda to push, and they don’t hold back on using the guilt trip to get you onto their particular hobbyhorse. Everywhere you go there is someone laying further guilt on you. Very quietly. Very subtly. Any pleasure is denied, even a decent sob, because it will likely kill you … and it is most certainly your fault you have cancer in the first place.
A word also about what happens to someone who suddenly announces she or he has cancer. Every single one of us, I am certain, gets inundated by well-meaning people about alternative approaches to treating cancer. We are referred to countless websites, articles and books about miraculous waters, minerals, enzymes, juices, diets, meditations, teas, amazing berries from the foothills of the Himalayas, courses, healing hands/back supports/magical dusters, and the amazing power of dancing naked under the moon at midnight. Amid countless others.
Personally, I have been referred (completely unasked) to well over one hundred different web sites and/or approaches. Can I just point out, very politely (and without screaming, which is what I really want to do), what this does to someone? All of you well-meaning people are now forcing me to choose between over one hundred conflicting bits of advice about which route to go down. Can’t you understand that I now sit on my sofa and shake in fear about choosing the wrong one? Do I really need this kind of incredible stress?
It is the same as if all these people have taken me to one hundred different conventional doctors, all with different approaches, and then sat me back and said, Make sure you pick the right approach, or else you’ll die. (Need I point out the guilt issue again.) From talking to other people with cancer, as others with serious diseases, this is a pet hate of many – that they are inundated with unasked-for advice by the well-meaning who simply worsen an already incredibly stressful time.
If someone asks for the information, then by all means hand it over. If someone doesn’t ask for it, then please stop ladling out the advice. It does not help. It makes it much, much worse. Please credit whoever it is with cancer (or whatever serious disease) that they have enough intelligence to know who Mr Google is, and that they know what Mr Google can do, and that if they want to avail themselves of Mr Google then they bloody well will all on their own. And if they don’t want to avail themselves of Mr Google, then please accept that this is their right, too.
I know that if I keel over one day, then many of these people who push this or that bit of advice are going to suck their teeth and scratch their arses and say (or think), “If only she’d done what I’d suggested …”. And, yes, conventional practitioners will say it too, if their advice has been ignored.
Anyone with cancer knows that at their death there are going to be countless multitudes lining up to say, “Oh, if only she/he had taken my advice …”.
All the guilt people with cancer are forced to bear …
A single issue keeps coming up with alternative medicine sites and spokespeople. If all these alternative approaches were so bloody wonderful, why don’t conventional doctors push them? Well, the alternative medicine practitioners and their fans mutter, that’s because the conventional medical practitioners won’t make any money this way so they’re hardly going to tell you about them are they?
Oh God, that makes me so fucking angry. It always has to be a conspiracy, doesn’t it? The fact that the alternative medical practitioners are going to make money from their alternative medicines and treatments is never mentioned! There is an entire industry out there feeding off the terror (and the guilt) of the hopeless, and I find that vile.
Why are there so any people ‘out there’ who insist, and insist on telling me (or by insinuating it by suggesting this, that, or ninety-eight other alternatives), that I have taken the wrong route? Do you really think you are doing me a kindness? Where in God’s name is your humanity?
I can only speak of my own personal experience here, but none of the surgeons, doctors, oncologists and nurses who have seen me throughout my (conventional) treatment have proved to be black-hearted money grabbers who have intentionally withheld information from me because it won’t make them a penny. They have all been genuinely caring individuals who have done their very best for me.*
Not one of them has sat back and moralized about thinking positive and seeking a higher spiritual plane by eating an alkaline diet (or via whatever means) when I’ve been sitting sobbing in front of them. They have simply held my hand, or hugged me, and told me they understand, and asked what they could do for me. They have been brilliant. They have never once made me feel guilty. They have never once pointed the finger at me and said, “It’s your fault”, nor have they once insinuated it, and yet alternative medicine and all those platitudes offered by the well-meaning does this over and over and over in a myriad of subtle, horrid ways.
Well, I am past the guilt. I am angered by all those who ladle out the guilt, but I am now past it.
So now I am going to have a cup of tea with some sugar in it, and think some glum thoughts, just because I damn well can.
*There was one extraordinary doctor who gave me some expensive treatment one day. When I fronted at reception to pay, the doctor poked her head into the reception area and said to the receptionist, “There is no charge. She has been through enough already.” That, my friends, is conventional medicine. And that, my friends, was such humanity and compassion that it even now, months later, leaves me in tears.