#354 Building Confidence After Breast Cancer by Learning to Trust Yourself

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A breast cancer diagnosis can knock the wind out of your confidence.

It’s impossible to know how this type of diagnosis will impact you mentally and emotionally until you’re in it.

As you try to figure out what you need, what you want, and what makes sense, other people’s thoughts and opinions can weigh heavily on your choices for your health and life.

In this episode, I’ll share something that happened to me recently and brought my mind back to how often I see women struggle with the ability to believe and trust in themselves ( which is a critical part of the healing process)

We’ll talk about why we give so much power to other people’s words and how we can return to building our self-confidence and trusting our intuition.

 

Referred to in this episode:

Work with Laura

#136 The Sick Role…What it is and How to Get Out of it.

Cancer Patients vs. Cancer Survivors – Jubilee Media

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Read the full transcript:

 

0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.

0:33
You are listening to Episode 354. Of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And I'm excited to dig into today's topic. So recently, I did a show with Jubilee media have talked about it here on the podcast, it came out at the end of May. And the other day I went to look at it, doing what you're always told not to do, you know, look at the comments. But there's nothing but kind comments. And so I went and I looked at the comments, because a few people have asked questions, and I want to make sure I responded if someone had a question about the show and what we talked about. And I see this one comment, and it says it's tagging this doctor. And it's asking the doctor to react to the show. And I had never heard of this doctor. So I looked him up. I clicked on the tag. And he's this doctor who basically has a YouTube channel where he debunks what people say about medical conditions and treatments and things like that. So I thought that was really interesting. And I've thought to myself, Well, why would someone ask this doctor to react as if those of us or eight of us on this panel on the show, as if what we had to share, which was our own personal experience could be debunked. Right? So no one was recommending a treatment. Everyone was just sharing their story, all eight of us had had cancer, some of us are still in treatment. And we were sharing what that meant to us and what our personal thoughts were on our own experience. So regardless, if you believe my experience, I guess, or disagree with my experience or my choices, doesn't really matter, because it's my experience, right. So there's nothing that can be debunked about it. But what happened is, I started thinking, and this reminded me, so many times of women that I deal with that get really, really upset, because their own experience and people's reactions or questions or statements about their experience. They feel invalidates them. I work with a lot of clients who struggle, because their life doesn't feel aligned with what they need anymore. But because of other people's opinions, they feel guilty or wrong or alone, or weird or something like that for wanting something that other people might question, or judge or debunk, for lack of a better word, right. So I started thinking about that, and I wanted to talk about it today. Because it is a very important aspects of recovery. It truly is. There was a podcast I did some time ago. I'll link to it in the show notes here. And it was called the sick role. And there's a powerful thing that happens to us. When we come through treatment, we've been diagnosed with breast cancer, we've had to face our own mortality. And we evaluate our life and we think something's off. Right, something doesn't feel good. And maybe we start to realize that it was off before treatment, but it didn't feel off. Because we go through this cycle of life and we can easily become very mechanical in life. We can easily fall into whatever the path or the routine might be. graduate from high school, go to college, get a job, work your way up the corporate ladder, get married, have a family, or whatever else the path is right? Don't go to college, get a job, work your butt off, get two jobs, who knows buy a house. We have kind of these norms that people fall into in society that we fall into. And they tend to make life busier and busier. And we condition ourselves to have specific thoughts like I have to do this. I can't do anything differently. This is the way it has to be. There is is no time for me, there is no other option. And then we believe it. And then something happens like a breast cancer diagnosis, and it doesn't feel good anymore. I call it the jacket that doesn't fit, right. It's like the jacket that doesn't fit. But we try to put the jacket on anyway. And now it's really uncomfortable. Because before we just thought it was normal, that it felt stressful, and that we gave more of ourselves than we had to give and that we didn't have any healthy boundaries. And we thought, Well, everybody's like that. So it must be just normal. And even though something inside of you may be saying, like, I need something different, I need something to change, we overlook it. And now you're on the other side of the diagnosis on the other side of considering your own mortality. And Jack is still doesn't fit. But now it's super uncomfortable. Now you're like, I could die. And I don't like this. But I'm afraid that if I change, people will judge me. And what's worse is that there's something that goes on with us. And it's almost like, we have this feeling as if, well, I have cancer, or I had cancer. And I need to change my life. There's things I want to do. There's things I want to experience, there's ways I want to change my relationships, whatever the things are, that are standing out to you, but you know them in your heart of hearts. And you want to do the things to make your life become the life you want it to be. But you feel bad, you feel guilty, you feel like because you're not in that flow of what you thought was normalcy anymore, that you can't step back into it. So it's like, okay, this was life before breast cancer. Now I'm done with treatment. Now everybody wants me to go back to the before breast cancer life. And I don't know how to get out of this, I don't want to go back, I see that things have to change. But I don't know what to do here. And so then we try to show people that we're still not the same, that something's changed. And a lot of times people don't understand it many times, the person who's going through it doesn't really even understand the change or the need or the calling that they're feeling. But you just know, this doesn't feel right anymore. And then, because we don't want to go back into what people think we should step back into, we feel like we have to prove we're still not 100%. Right, we and that's where the sick role comes in. Right? Like, the only way I can get out of that is to still not be 100%. But then at the same time, we want to heal. We want a big, beautiful, fulfilling, joyful life and a healed body. And we can't get to that part. We can't get to the healing and the joy and the fulfillment, and the different life you want to create while you're trying to prove yourself sick, because there's two very different mentalities. Right. So how do we get to this place where we look at people's reactions to what is true for us? Our true story, your own truth? Why do you need external validation? To put energy into that for yourself? This is a really important question. Why is it so difficult to trust ourselves? You know, in radical remission, one of the 10 factors of healing is to trust your intuition. And I think this is a super powerful example. Now, I've been through a lot since I first diagnosis in 2011, a lot meaning a lot of reading a lot of study a lot of work on emotional, mental, physical healing. So I'm very confident in my approach to my life and my health. I'm very confident with my healthy boundaries and very comfortable with them. So when I see a comment like that, asking some random doctor who has no idea who I am, to react to my own personal story, I don't give a shit. I couldn't care less, right? It does not affect me. Because I trust myself. I'm 100% Confident in believing that that still small voice inside of me and the intellect that I have, that those things come together, and I make the choices that are best for me. I get it. I feel it. I know it. So I'm okay. But you may not be and you may catch yourself knowing

9:46
something feels off. But still being afraid to trust yourself. To allow yourself to know that you are the expert on you. I think we get conditioned this way. And it's not intentional, I don't think anybody means to say, you don't know who you are, you don't know yourself well enough. I don't think that's what's happening. We see this outside world. And we're taught things. And so we're taught doctors are the ultimate authority. And doctors are absolutely experts on medicine. They absolutely are experts when it comes to treating disease and using the diagnostics they've been trained in to understand how to treat disease and other things. But you are a very unique bio individual human being. And you know, yourself, you may not know medicine, but you know, yourself. So, I think this is a really important thing to be able to distinguish. It's not saying medicine is wrong, whether that standard of care or naturopathic medicine, it's just saying that something isn't right for you, and it's okay to trust yourself. So, this month, the month of June in a better than before breast cancer membership. We've been working on celebrating ourselves, celebrating life, celebrating our successes in life. And the reason that I have my members doing that this month, is because in order to trust ourselves more, we have to remind ourselves of how many times we've shown up to make good decisions for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, how many times we've gotten through difficult things, and really reflecting on past experiences. And instances where your twin intuition where you're feeling your gut was correct. And looking at those feelings. And the thoughts that came with those moments really helps to recognize future intuitive signals. It helps you remember, like, I did this before, I've been here before I felt this before I can trust myself. It helps us to develop a sense of self awareness. And developing self awareness is crucial when we're talking about developing confidence in ourselves, belief in ourselves, and trust in ourselves. And if there's any situation in which those things are important, it most certainly is, when you're deciding what you want your life to look like, and how you're going to take care of yourself and your health. Because you have to make a lot of really tough choices. So we have to pay attention to our bodily sensations, our thoughts, our feelings. And then we have to really practice this decision making process. We have to practice trusting our intuition, we remind ourselves, hey, I trusted my intuition then. And this went well. And if something didn't go, Well, what did you learn from it? Right? Most of the times, if we're trusting our intuition, it goes, okay, is when we go against our intuition that it doesn't. But we can learn to trust ourselves more by remembering those things that worked out well. But we made good choices and showed up for ourselves. And we can also look at the small decisions we make every day, we can look at ways that we make decisions and tune into our intuition for small things. And as we observe these small things, and we learn from them, even just upholding a boundary, right? Somebody asks you to do something and you feel too tired and your guts like, Oh, I really don't want to do that today, you really need to rest and take care of yourself. And you go with your gut, even if it's tough to say no. And then you realize that worked out well. You know, you change your schedule around so many times, we say I can't do it, I can't do it, I I can't make time for myself, I have to do all the things that are on my calendar. And then at one point your guys like you got to step back. You got to create more space for yourself. And so you say no to a little thing, and it creates a little space, and then you go, wow, the world didn't fall apart. Interesting. Maybe I can take another hour for myself somewhere. And we start to build confidence in our intuitive abilities. And sometimes, oftentimes, most of the time, that means that we got to learn not only to trust ourself, but trust the process, to be in the process and know that we can't have control over everything that happens in life. And we can't have control over the outcomes. But we can decide to embrace that uncertainty, and to have trust and faith in our own inner wisdom. And in all honesty, I think sometimes when we're second guessing ourselves, we're not sure we're not ready to move forward. That it's my belief that there'll be coaching things of that nature talking to this unbiased source and talking through your thoughts. And helping someone work through your thoughts not telling you what to do. It's never my job to tell anybody what to do. But it's only my job to help them pull their thoughts out of themselves, right? To look at the things that they're thinking, look at why they question themselves, look at why they give someone else, maybe more energy may be more credibility than they give to themselves. Like, why would I look at some internet doctor and say, Gosh, I hope he doesn't react badly to my life experience. Maybe I've made the wrong decisions in my life based on the observation of someone who doesn't know me, or know my experience. Sometimes that will happen, right? But when we practice this tuning and target intuition, trusting ourselves and deciding to support ourselves, and we build confidence, even if we're not happy with an outcome, we can still trust ourselves enough to say, you did the best you could Good job. And if Dr. Internet's opinion is different than mine, okay. And we can move on, right? Because we want to reduce the amount of self judgment and beating ourselves up and suffering and giving more energy to other people's thoughts, more energy to the void that's out there that wants to be filled with external validation. And put that energy into us. This is the foundation right of stepping into creating a life you want a life you deserve. Creating the life you dream about supporting your ability to heal, supporting your ability to love and trust yourself is the absolute foundation of that. Because that is where we get the confidence to say, I'm ready to take a step forward. I'm going to take another step forward. I'm willing to take a leap of faith, I'm willing to believe in myself. And let's see what happens. So I just wanted to share that with you all today. Because, well, one, that comment just in just inspired me to talk about this. And I do see and understand this lack of confidence. I understand the questioning, especially when we're in a world of cancer. And that doesn't just mean a new diagnosis, and you're in treatment, because it never really goes away. Right? We're managing cancer for the rest of our lives. We're thinking about aromatase inhibitors, May, many of us have many future surgeries that are as a result of things that we did earlier in cancer treatment. And then there's all the follow up tests and things and the thoughts about recurrence and what am I doing in my life to reduce my risk of recurrence. So it's an ongoing thing and building your confidence in yourself. It's important for each one of those stages, to feel good about the life that you're living, and to feel good about believing in yourself. I really, really want that for you. Because it's been my experience, that when I'm working with someone who can tune into that, and start little by little to believe in that, and trust in that, that their outcomes have been pretty dang phenomenal. And that's what I want to see for everybody. All right, you want to help with that you won't coach you with that and you can always find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com You can join my better than before breast cancer membership, where we do all the coaching, group coaching, there's private coaching, there's quick check in sessions, and there's years worth of lessons and content inside the membership where you can access pretty much anything that's on your mind. All right, you can check out all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com Just click on coaching and programs and I'll talk to you soon take care

 

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