#142 Moving Beyond the Cancer Victim Mentality

When plunged into the unfamiliar realm of breast cancer, with its daunting jargon and grim projections, it's natural to feel adrift.

Navigating the turbulent waters of breast cancer treatments unquestionably alters one's life. Yet, perceiving oneself as cornered, devoid of options, can make recuperation even more challenging.

The remnants of this sense of powerlessness can overshadow our spirits long after the treatments conclude, fostering lingering anger and resentment.

What's the antidote?

Begin by embracing and taking ownership of the difficult decisions you were compelled to make.

Tune into this episode as we delve into the significance of acknowledging our choices and how it paves the way for healing and the pursuit of a contented life.

Referred to in this show:

Join the FREE Plant Based Bingo Challenge

Listen to the Conquer The Day Podcast

Breaking Free from the Cancer 'Victim' Mentality

Read full transcript below:

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This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

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I love Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. And I'm gonna start off the show by sharing some very exciting news with you. So this is actually pretty cool story, I'm gonna share the whole story with you. So I don't know, a couple of months ago, I received an email. And this email was from a trainer. And this trainer told me that she had a client who was a young breast cancer survivor. And in this woman's treatment, she had gained weight, and her body had changed, she had gone into menopause. And she was now working really, really hard. Eating well and training her body and following the routine and having zero results with zero results accomplishing the expectations she had set out for. And obviously, there's results in being healthy, right, but she wasn't getting the physical results that she wanted to see. And so her trainer, which in my opinion, I have so much respect for her to reach out to someone else because her client had heard this podcast and had mentioned to the trainer that some of the things I talked about in the podcast resonated with her. So her trainer, reached out to me and asked me for some insights. And she gave me a little background on what her client was experiencing what she had been through and asked for my thoughts on it. So we exchanged a couple of emails. And I just again thought it was so great of her to really listen. And I know you know what I mean, right? When we go through this, and especially with weight gain and changes in our bodies, so many times we don't feel hurt, we feel like our concerns are dismissed. I know, in my personal experience, I felt like the professionals I talked to didn't believe I was doing all the things I said I was doing. Right and so it's very, very frustrating. And so for this trainer to pay attention, and to listen, and then to reach out to get help for her client I thought was just amazing and wonderful. So this trainers name is Lindsay rego. And her partner's name is Brian pika wicks. And they have a podcast called conquer the day. And so after exchanging a few emails, Lindsay invited me to come and be a guest on The Conquer the day podcast. And so that podcast is live now. And I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Because especially if you're new to listening to this podcast, I know we're not when I find a podcast I like sometimes I'll go back to the very beginning and kind of hear the story of how it started. But oftentimes, I'll come across one because someone sent me a great episode. And I just start listening from that point on. So the podcast came out great. And I just shared with them a lot of insights on my own experience with my original diagnosis in 2012. And a lot that we go through as breast cancer survivors that other people outside of us would never know or understand. So I want to share that with you. Because I think it'd be a great podcast for you to listen to. I hope you really enjoyed the interview. I think it came out great. The podcast is called conquer the day. It's on Apple podcast. And I will put a link to it in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 142. So I just wanted to share that with you. I was very excited to be able to get that message out there for more survivors, helping more people to understand what we go through what our needs are the best way to support us. And I was just thrilled with Brian and Lindsey and their excitement and their willingness to listen and understand. So check it out, conquer the day podcast. And I'll put a link in the show notes for this episode. So I hope you check it out. And one more announcement before we jump right into the show. And that is that I have a really exciting challenge to offer you. So this is a free challenge. And I did this a couple of months ago in my Empower group and everyone had so much fun with it. And so I want to invite you all to join me in plant based bingo. This is actually a bingo challenge. There's a prize. It's pretty exciting. And in this challenge, you will Get a bingo card beginning on June 20, I kind of set this up, because while I'm going on vacation, I want everybody to be able to have some fun with it. And then I can play along from a different country trying to find some of these plant based foods to incorporate into my diet as well. So you can go to my website, the breast cancer recovery, coach.com forward slash plants, sign up and role in the plant based bingo challenge. And of course, we're gonna have winners, and like I said, prizes. So the grand prize is going to be this lovely Cook's Illustrated, vegetable illustrated cookbook. It is over 700, plant based recipes. There's other there's animal proteins in there on some of them, I think. But it's just all kinds of great ways to cook plants and incorporate plants into your diet. Now when we say plant based, a lot of people think that means I have to eat vegan. And that's not what I'm promoting here. It's just a really fun challenge to introduce yourself to new fruits and vegetables, two different ways to cook them two different ways to incorporate them into whatever your eating style and preference is. So it's going to be a lot of fun. And the grand prize is going to be that cookbook and a free month in the revived membership. And then two other lucky winners will also win a free month in the revived membership experience. So I'm super excited about it, come and join me, we're gonna have a lot of fun. That is the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash plants. All right, so let's go ahead and jump into the show. Now. This is a little bit of it might be, it might be a sensitive topic for some of you, depending on where you're at, in your recovery from treatment or in your treatment. Because it's a hard topic, you know, it's a hard topic. So if you find yourself feeling a little sensitive to it, I just want to kind of lay the ground rules with a couple of things. One is that know that I only come at this in every topic from a place of compassion and understanding from a place of seeing sticking points in my own experience and my own journey. And of those that I women that I coach and work with. And so I bring these things up sometimes are a little tough. But if you can move past them, I know from my own experience, that it's really freeing, and that's why I talk about it. So kind of keep an open mind and and see if it resonates with you see if see if you get where I'm coming from. Okay, so this has been coming up a lot lately in coaching calls that I've had. And not just lately, it's a common thing. But I guess that lately, it's just been something that I'm more aware of. And I was thinking about this topic. And the other night, I was laying in bed, actually, I was laying in bed, and I was just fall getting ready to fall asleep. And I started thinking about this topic. And I thought, Okay, this is this is really, really interesting, because I'm in a position where I can see so clearly how I could make a obviously dramatic change in my life right now. And so I'm gonna go into that and tell you about it. So I want to talk about owning very difficult choices when it comes to breast cancer treatment. And what I mean by that is that when we have the diagnosis of breast cancer, we're faced with some very difficult decisions, decisions that can be surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, hormone therapies, all different medications that we have to take, and for how long we take them, right. It can affect obviously, it affects our body, it affects our life, it affects our loved ones, and it can have a long term effect on our life as well. But here's a sticking point. If we aren't careful to realize that even in that position, where we're faced with very difficult choices, the decision is ours. We are empowered to make a decision. They may be a couple of really crappy decisions and a couple of really crappy choices. You know, a crappy choice is saying to someone, hey, you have cancer. You could choose to die or have your breasts cut off and go through chemotherapy. Now there are other choices. I'm being dramatic and you know, giving that as an example. You can choose alternative treatments. Some people do some people find that to be a place of too much risk too high of a risk. I know that's how I felt as much as I love natural therapies. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I wanted complementary therapies right I wanted the traditional scientific, scientifically proven treatments, as well as As the complementary treatments that I do for myself with verbal support, and meditation, and food and lifestyle, and all of that, okay, so we have those choices. But they're not always great choices, right? But the problem comes in, where we tell ourselves, we don't have a choice. Or we use the phrase, and you may hear yourself use this phrase, cancer did this to me, or this is what happened to my life because of cancer. And so I want to dig into that a little more, because it's a really powerful, subtle, but important shift to make in the way we think about whether or not we are empowered or have any kind of control over our lives and breast cancer treatment. So this is what happened to me the other night, I'm laying in bed, I'm falling asleep. And I was a little achy that day in particular, and really tired, right, which one of the side effects from the medications that I take. And who knows if it's from the I brands, or it's from the letrozole or the combination, but Sunday's I'm just really tired. And I'm sure a lot of you can identify with that. So I'm in bed and laying there. And I'm just kind of noticing how my body feels. And I don't know why this thought pops into my head. But the thought is, you know what, I could choose never to take that medication again. Like I could literally stop taking that medication tomorrow. And it's not that the fatigue is that severe was just like I was kind of contemplating everything that was going on and the choices that I make, right, because I choose every day to take i brands and to take letrozole and I will continue today to make that choice every day. But I do have the choice not to. And I was thinking about that. And I thought I could stop tomorrow, I could go to alternative cancer treatment centers and say I only want natural therapies, I could choose no treatment at all. And let cancer take its course or go with my way that I'm thinking about it or lifestyle and believe a healthy lifestyle is going to heal it. I do have choices. And like I said a minute ago, those are great choices from where I sit. Those are not great choices. I'm happy with where I'm at my treatment is working, I'm doing well. But I was just thinking about, you know, it's interesting, because there are always choices. And when I realized that, which was some time ago, and I'm just contemplating again in that moment. But when we realize that we are empowered to make choices, it really helps in my opinion, helps us to move out of the cancer victim mentality. And a lot of times, even if it's just in very subtle ways, the victim mentality can sneak in on us because of everything we've been through. And because when we find ourselves in that role of a patient, with the feeling of I have to do whatever this medical professional tells me to do. Because the truth is the logical rational truth is you don't have to write, but we choose to. And now sometimes I'll be having coaching with someone, and I'll say to them, Well, you know, you chose to have that treatment, and they get a little bit upset. And I'm like, I didn't choose that. I don't feel like I had a choice. And I get that. And I know why that is that. And I have said that myself. So I want to clarify. We don't feel like we have a choice because we don't want to die. And when someone says you have breast cancer, here's how we treat it. It's very easy to see why we would say I don't have a choice, I have to do treatment. But the truth is we don't have to right. But the other choice is definitely not the best one. So we choose treatment. And so many times after treatment, there is just it's so hard to move past anger and frustration. Because we're telling ourselves, cancer did this to me. Treatment did this to me. Doctors did this to me and I didn't have a choice. Now, am I saying Hey, you made a choice and that's why your pain and that's why you have lymphedema. That's why I heard suck it up buttercup. Hell no, I'm not saying that. I'm absolutely not saying that. I'm saying we made very difficult choices as cancer survivors to go into very difficult treatments. But when we can look at it that way, and we can accept the fact that we made these hard choices in order to spare our lives.

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It really does help to move past the feeling of someone else did this to me. I didn't have a chance and I'm not saying that that means suddenly you have to be happy. Eat with the side effects, or you have to be happy with the outcomes. I'm not saying that either. It's just that very small parts, that shift from being the victim of things being imposed on you to realizing you made a choice, a very tough choice. And you're happy with that choice, you're happy with the choice to live, right? You're happy you chose whatever treatment you have if that treatment works, because you're still here because of it. And even just hearing me say, really think about that, isn't it a little bit of a different feeling. And it's a little bit of a tough pill to swallow, right? Even when I think about and I hear myself say it, when I first had to start working through that I thought, Ah, just it's not a good feeling. It doesn't feel good to say I made the choice. But it is the truth. And as I went through it, I started to feel like okay, you know what, I feel myself now moving out of the victim patient role into the still a patient, but the advocate patient role, advocating for myself, getting all of the information, making informed decisions, and then realizing there may be some consequences I'm not happy with as a result of those decisions. And I'm gonna have to figure out how to manage those also. So I started looking into this, and I found a really interesting article, and I'll post a link to this article in the show notes for this page. Also, it's called breaking free from the cancer victim mentality. And it was posted in cure today.com. It was written in August of 2019, by Bonnie nice, who is a cancer survivor. And she tells her story. And she tells her story of feeling like she was a victim and what she went through, it's a really great article, I hope you read it. But I want to quote a part of what she wrote here that says, let's take a moment to look at the victim mentality. How did victims think? And what do they feel? And I can totally identify with some of these statements, I had to work through these in the past. So one statement is the victim usually feels powerless over their situation. So when we go into breast cancer treatment, and we say to ourselves, the doctor said all these things, I have to do them. That's a very powerless feeling. And that lingers. Okay, that lingered for me, and it lingers for so many women, I work with the feeling of powerlessness, I didn't have a choice. So we didn't have a choice whether or not we got cancer, right, cancer was there. And the choice comes in, how are we going to manage it? So it does help a little bit with that feeling of I do get to make choices? I do get to say yes. Or I do get to say no, I do get to decide if I'm going to have an herbal treatment. And here's a perfect example. I am taking a trip to Iceland at the end of this month with my sisters and my daughter and my niece. And when I sat with my oncologist, and I said, so because I have some fluid around my lungs, I have cancer in that fluid that is around my lungs. And so I said to my oncologist, so I'm going to Iceland at the end of the month, and I just wanted to make sure you know that so we could talk about any precautions I might have to take to manage my care in this long flight. And well, I'm in another country. And my oncologist says, you're going to Iceland, as in Iceland, Iceland said, Yeah, I'm going to Iceland, right. And my sisters had said to me before, well, before we buy these tickets, check with your oncologist to see if you can come. And I said, this is my life. And this is a dream vacation. It's not an option that I'm not going to go. But I'll check with my oncologist to see what this trusted professional tells me I should do to travel as safely as possible. Right? So it's my choice, what I'm going to do in my life and what I'm going to do for my treatment, and how I'm going to weigh out what I want to do. You know, if the doctor had said to me, which when I was first diagnosed in October, I had tickets to go to Colorado to see my son who had just purchased a new home and I was so excited for that trip. And I said to him, Well, I'm going on this trip and I can start treatment I get back. And again, I love this doctor. He's an incredible oncologist and very trusted. And he said to me, I don't think you understand the seriousness of the situation you're in. And so I said, Okay, laid out for me, because maybe I don't it's laid out for me. And so he did, and he told me all the reasons why he felt it was not safe for me to make that trip. And when he did, I agreed. And I said, Okay, you're right. I didn't realize the seriousness. I didn't realize what could happen. And I do understand why I need to delay this trip and choose this treatment instead. But it's still my choice. Voice right? My doctor didn't tell me I couldn't go. My doctor gave me information and I made a choice. That's a much better feeling. It wasn't great to miss my trip. But it was a great feeling. Because I knew from past experience from a previous experience with breast cancer, it's always going to be my choice. So I'm, let's look at another statement here. And victim may feel helpless to change or solve their issue. Well, yeah, that definitely is something that can resonate with us as cancer survivors, right? We feel helpless to change or solve this, we can't just not have cancer, right? We can't just say, I have cancer Go away. Stop it, you know, we have to understand what is available to us as treatments. But again, even here, we have the choice in the way we want to do those treatments, we can advocate for ourselves, and we can listen to what the offers are, we can investigate what other options there might be. And we can participate in the treatment plan. So that's a little better, little more powerful. It's still a sucky choice, right? It doesn't make everything better. But it just helps a little bit so that when you move through it, there's not so much anger and powerlessness and resentment on the other side. This next statement says a victim sees their problem as traumatic or catastrophic. I'm not even going to argue with that one. Breast cancer is traumatic and catastrophic. So yes, we're all going to take that one, right. A victim may feel they have been treated unfairly. And this also is something that I commonly see, there's this sense of and let me say I had it as well. Life isn't fair. This isn't fair. Why did this happen to me? I'm a good person, I did all the right things. This isn't fair. Right? And if you're a regular listener, you know, I've talked on the show about it before life isn't fair. We know that. Right? So looking at things from a point of is it fair? Like who would any traumatic awful thing in life who who would it be fair to if that thing happened? It's never fair. So really understanding why you think about fairness, what you think about fairness, and why you would put yourself in that role, I think, helps to move past that victim mentality a little bit. And then finally, she says, a victim has a hard time letting go of the past, ding, ding, ding, this is huge, and cancer recovery. Huge. It's so hard to let go of our pre cancer self, it's so hard to accept many of the things that have changed in our body. And many of the ways that we have to change our life going forward, right? I had used to love to run I cannot run. One day I was walking across the street and the little green man who tells you to walk went away, and the red hand came up. And I was like, oh, so I jogged six, eight steps across the street. And I was in pain for three days, right? Because my hip is so fragile from having had cancer in it and from having had radiation in it. And so there are certain things I can't do. Now I can acknowledge that. And I can say to myself, Okay, note to self don't jog across the street again. Or I can sit here and say, This is bullshit. This is unfair. Why did this happen? To me? I love to run, this is not right. Those are my choices. How do I want to think about it. And I'm sure you can hear and know and feel the difference in the way you shift that thinking. It's a much better, calmer, happier place for me to live. When I look at the choices that I made, I made a choice to have radiation, and I'm glad I did my god, radiation changed my life, it Healed my body so much. Did it also cause fragility in my bones and a lot of fatigue and changes in my muscles? Yep, it did. And I'll take it. Can I do some of the yoga stuff I could do before? Nope, I can't. But that's okay. I work around it and modify. And if I were in the same position, again, I would do radiation again. But there are other choices that I noticed that and think about from my past experience that if those choices were presented again, I would not take them. Because I know that that's an option for me now. So I think the bottom line, and the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because this is

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almost like when we talk about being angry. And I say to you, you know, you could say I'm angry about what happened to me and everyone is gonna say to you, like, yeah, you have a right to be angry. Right? Everyone's gonna say that to you. I'm gonna say that to you. I have a right to be angry. But then I'm gonna say to you, but do you want to feel angry? This being an angry person serve you help you change your life, support your wellness move you into that happy place of living that I know you want to be in that I want you to be in? It doesn't it? And neither does the idea that cancer did something to you that you were powerless over, right? I mean, it did it to you in the sense that you had the disease, there's nothing you can do. But as far as the anger and holding on to the idea that the choices that we made to manage this disease and to save our lives, that you were a victim of, they just don't help. It's really kind of like being stuck in that angle. And making that shift to understanding that, and accepting those very difficult choices in saying, Yeah, I made those choices. And it was not easy. And it sucks. And I have some long term damage because of them. But I'm happy I made those choices, because I'm alive. So how can we manage this long term damage that was done? How can we manage these long term changes? How can I move into a more empowered role of being a person who participated in the management of their health in the management of a disease to continue to live my life as best as I possibly can? All right, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And I really would. So if you're not already in the breast cancer recovery group, I hope you come and join the breast cancer recovery group. It's a free Facebook group. We've got hundreds and hundreds of survivors, women in treatment, women out of treatment, women long out of treatment, women living with cancer with breast cancer, it's a group where we really come together to you know, ask questions, but get supportive, constructive support moving forward to live our best lives. And I'd love to hear what you think about it. It's a little bit it's a could be kind of a, I don't know, a tough, a tough thing to talk about, to understand to absorb and to accept, right. Yeah. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And I hope that you go and read that article, I think is a great article. Again, the link will be at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 142 It is on cure today.com and the article is titled breaking free from the cancer victim mentality. And I also hope you go and check out that link and listen to the conquer the day podcast episode. I think you really enjoy it. Alright friends, I will talk to you again next week. And until then, be very very good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care.

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You've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts. Your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more. Your futures Give it all you know has you been waiting on