Transcript

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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 on the insides 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.

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Hey, friends, welcome to episode 423

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of better than before breast cancer. With me. Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, today, I'm so glad that you're tuning in and listening to the show, because I want to share a story with you, a story. I think there's been a it's been on my mind, it's been on my heart. I'm going to share the story and then kind of reflect back on some conversations that I've had recently. But I think it's really meaningful for anyone who's in this space of having had a cancer diagnosis. So there is a client of mine who has become much more than that to me. She's someone that I care about very deeply, and I have watched her over the past. Oh gosh, I think it's been a year or so that we've been working together. Really deal with so much, walk through a lot of uncertainty, wrestle with fear, reframe her beliefs, take back her power, and deal with lots of different circumstances in which some people just wouldn't be able to face and and in the past, maybe she wouldn't have been able to with the grace that she does. So recently, in the last week or so, she's been in that space, that waiting period that I'm sure, if you're listening the show you're familiar with, that space between the changes that you've made, the belief in your wellness, and then waiting to hear what the evidence has, waiting for the scan results. And it's never just a scan, right? It's like when people say, Oh, it's just hair, no, it's not just hair. Oh, it's just a scan. No, it's not just a scan. It's your whole heart, your whole future, your hope, everything feels like it's hanging in the balance when we're waiting for these test results, if we let it right. But what she's chosen to do is to step into her power, her remarkable self, and put a tremendous amount of energy and attention, into managing her mind, into centering herself into what she knows to be true, rather than what she's afraid might be true. And I'm so very proud of her. Every single day, she is making the choice to do something that I heard on a recent group call of mine. So I'm going to tell you what that is in just a sec. So second story, but they both align this month in my better than before, breast cancer, metabolic health and mindset membership, we are working on anchoring ourselves in strength, and what that means is being strong for ourself, being solid with ourself, grounding ourself. And I don't mean walking around barefoot, just that, of course, that's a grounding practice, but I mean grounding ourself in our understanding that we can show up for us, that we can have our own back, right? So we're having this discussion at kind of every week, we introduce a little different topic that's that's bringing us some mindset skills and some journaling prompts and some things to work on to help us just really build our strength and empowerment. So we're having this discussion on one of our group calls, and I'm asking these amazing women who I learn so much from all the time. How do you manage your mind to keep yourself from sliding into fear when you're in that space of waiting, or when you're in that space of having weird pain or something else, or, you know, the mind goes back to the trauma. How do you support yourself? What are some practices? What are some skills, and what comes up for you when you think about, you know, the thoughts that you have to manage. And one of my clients, she's so remarkable, and she clearly has a really good oncologist, because she said that her oncologist told her that she needed to give herself permission to live as if she's cured. I

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just want you to let that land for a moment, live cured, and to give herself that permission, because no one else can give you that permission. Permission. Your doctor can't give it to you, your labs can't give it to you. Your loved ones can't give it to you. I see people who get scans. I see people have labs. I see people whose people other people around them, and they're including their doctor, say, Don't worry about it. But unless we give ourselves permission to live cured, it's not going to happen, and it's super easy, super easy to slide back. And I'll tell you, this comes back to my client that I think is handling this with so much grace, and she's just so so shown so much growth, because she's choosing to live cured while she's waiting for data that will give her information on whether or not she needs to make any kind of changes in her treatment plan, right? She's choosing to live cured because that's what she wants. The future version of her is someone who lives cured. And I just love that story that my client shared, because what she did is had two bracelets made that kind of stack, and they say, live cured, and she wears them all the time. How cool is that? And I want to be really clear that this is not about being in denial. It's about being present and choosing how you want to live today, even in the if the future is uncertain, which the future is always uncertain for everyone, absolutely no human being, unless they're like the Long Island psychic knows what's coming. And from what I hear, psychics don't even know what's coming for themselves. They only see it for other people. So nobody knows what's coming in one minute from now. But with all of that being said, you might be asking yourself, How do I do that? How do I live as if I'm cured, even though I have evidence showing me, right? But my brain is full of fear, and fear is constantly whispering to me, so how do I do this? How do I decide to live cured? Well, there is a tool I love, and one that I use personally, and I think that it helps a lot, because what I work with so many times, well, all the time with my clients is to tell them write things down. And if you're a listener of the show, you've heard me say it a bazillion times, but have you done it? And no matter how much I work with my clients, and I'll say, write it down. Did you write it down? Even in every week when my action guides come out with whatever topic we're working on, and I emphasize, write it down, but then I'll be talking to somebody, and I'll say, Have you written it down? And they'll say, Well, no, I mean, I but I thought about it. You know, I'm thinking about it. And we don't solve our problems with the same organ that's creating the problem, which is our brain. We solve it in a different way, which means we take out a piece of paper and we write stuff down. And here's an exercise that's very valuable, so that you can show your brain is what we're doing. We're rewiring our brain. We're re wiring those neural pathways by writing something down, and on one side, draw a line down the center. On one side, write what is true now, and on the other side what I'm afraid of, right? Then we can see what's really true. And this is why it matters, because the brain is amazing, I mean, amazing, right? And it loves to protect us, but it protects us by projecting fear into the future and then getting us all caught up in future and in fear, and then that makes us sick, right when we're waiting for scan results. How many times does your brain automatically go to, oh my god, I'm so excited. I just know this is going to be amazing. Never, never have I heard anybody say that it's always fear of it being bad. We get a random ache, some weird pain, it doesn't we don't just say, oh, that's nothing. It's probably just arthritis or old age. We think, Oh, my God. Is it cancer? Or if we already have disease, is it spreading? Right? This is where our brain goes. But those are not facts. Just because you have a thought, does it mean it's true? These are fear driven stories. And the beautiful thing about that is they are optional. And when you write them out and you show your brain that this is fact, right, what's true now is fact, and this is fear over here, which isn't true, which there's no evidence for this. This is made up when we show our brain that we interrupt the spin right, and then we come back and we anchor ourselves in the present moment. So this is the only place in this moment where healing happens, where life happens right in this moment, it's all we've got. Yeah, so is it denial? No, because the stories are projecting into future, fears aren't true. So how you can't be in denial about something that isn't true? Right? We have to have awareness, and we're, we're increasing our awareness by looking at what is true and grounding ourself in that. And because, you know, I love science, and I want to show you that this is not just me being woo, woo. There's science behind belief and healing, and it really does matter if you decide to choose to live cured. So let me share some studies with you. There was a study in health psychology where researchers found that breast cancer patients who believed, and I want to emphasize that who believed they had a good chance of survival, had fewer physical symptoms, better emotional health and faster recovery times. But get this independent of what their actual clinical prognosis was. And when I read that, that really resonated with me, because I feel like my life kind of aligns with that, right? My oncologist did not think I would still be here today, almost five years later, after the diagnosis I had when I walked in with widespread stage four cancer, and he shared that with me. So I don't think this is magical thinking, and it's not magical thinking, which is why I share studies with you. It is actually the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, and they are all responding to your thoughts, to your belief, because belief impacts our stress hormones. Stress hormones impact inflammation, and inflammation impacts healing. So there was another study in the Journal of psychosocial oncology, and they found that breast cancer survivors who felt a sense of control over their health and could find meaning in their journey. Had higher quality of life and lower levels of distress. So making this decision to decide to live cured isn't denial, but it's biologically meaningful. And one final study, for those of you who live? What is the state, or the show me state, Missouri? Is it Missouri? For those of you are saying, I don't know. That's just two little studies. Here's another one, women who took an active role in decision making about their treatment and healing, not just followed orders. Let's Be really clear, they reported less depression, more peace and greater satisfaction with life. And this was published in patient education and counseling, and this is why I believe so deeply in teaching women and showing women how to reclaim their agency, right? It's not about pretending and saying I'm cured and pretending that nothing has happened, or being in denial, but about saying, This is a story I am choosing to live now, right? It's about watching your body and your mind begin to align with that truth as you believe it and you live into it, right? We live into it. This is an important piece. I am a person who's healed from widespread metastatic breast cancer. When I decided to believe that, when I decided, and I consciously decided to heal, I sat at a table across from my husband, and I said, I'm not going to die people heal, and I'm going to figure out how they do it, and that's what I started to do. I lived into becoming that person, right? So let's talk about the alternative of that, if we don't make a decision to live cured, to live healed, even in the presence of data showing we have no evidence of disease, here's what happens. We constantly stay on the edge. We're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, reading every twinge, every ache, every scan, everything has potential doom. And that kind of vigilance is a form of stress. So what does long term stress do? It suppresses your immune system. It disrupts your sleep. It inflames your gut, and it keeps you locked in survival mode. But I think even worse than that, it steals the joy that you deserve to feel today, right, living cured, letting go of the belief that constant fear protects you somehow, right? It doesn't protect you, it exhausts you, and it can make you sick, right? So the one thing that we want to avoid getting sick again we're bringing on ourselves if we allow ourselves to constantly choose fear, rather than to do the really tough work of choosing to live. Of cured and doing the work that makes that happen. So let's talk about some ways that you can step out of that, because it doesn't happen overnight. And as I've talked about many times on the show, you got to believe. Like when I say, believe, I don't mean pretend. I mean when you say, I believe this for myself, you got to check in with yourself and and be honest and say,

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I want to believe it, but I'm not there yet. Or you know what? I do believe it. So what do you have to do to get to the point of belief? Well, it's going to be different for everybody, but it really requires reprogramming our brain. So we must look at what's coming up in our mind and ask what works for you. So the example I gave you of my amazing client had a bracelet made that reminds her, every single day, all the time, every moment she looks at it, that she lives cured. You could put a note on your mirror that says that you can get a necklace made of it, right? Let it remind you who you are. This is how we start to rewire the brain. Maybe you come up with a grounding thought, right? It's a thought that maybe is something like my body is healing and I trust myself right or right now in this moment, I'm alive and I'm safe. Write it, repeat it. Repeat something you believe, and then let it become a new neural pathway for you connect to your body. We do so many things to distract us from our body, constantly listening to things or taking in things, but how many times do we listen to our body by taking gentle walks, by doing yoga, by just expressing ourselves, dancing in your kitchen, right? Doing something that isn't goal oriented, like, I'm not doing this because I need to lose weight. I'm not doing this because I need to build muscle. I'm just doing this to connect to my body and feel it and feel alive in it, and feel how good it feels to be in my body, right? One thing I love spin classes. Because when I'm in spin classes, I just I'm so connected to my body, and I I'm not there because I want to lose weight. I'm not there because I have some goal to hit. I'm there because between the music and the choreography and the energy in the room, I feel so alive, and I'm always giving kudos to my body. Going, Oh, my God, I'm so proud of you. Like, look what my body can do here, right? So do something that helps you feel alive, center yourself and figure out what that is. And, you know, be really mindful of what you allow into your mind, scrolling, Doom, scrolling, you know, looking at fearful things, Googling symptoms and horrible things, they might mean spiraling into forums where everybody's just bitching about how they don't feel good about things, or what's wrong with the medical system. You gotta protect your energy, right? Because you've gotta protect your energy like it is your medicine, because it is spending time in nature is, you know, coming back to this feeling alive. There's this ancient stabilizing thing about the sound of wind and trees, about the sensation of bare feet on the grass, just going there when your mind has space to then share with you, to speak to you, to listen to your body and to give you the story of what it needs. That's what being in nature can do for us. So I want to leave you with this. The way that you speak to yourself about your story is medicine. Your story is medicine. If your story is filled with fear, uncertainty and disempowerment, your body hears that. And if your story is rooted in hope and in strength and in living cured, your body hears that too. So when you find yourself slipping into doubt, ask yourself, what story am I choosing right now? What is the story you're telling yourself? And if you don't like the answer, rewrite the story. It is your choice. It's within your power. Because remember, anything outside of this moment, any story from this moment forward is all make believe, won't you? Don't you want to write the hero story, right? The best version of the story. It will change this moment now for you All right, so when that uncertainty creeps in, remind yourself we're all living in uncertainty at all times. So let's try to just be here in the moment and ask yourself what thought brings you peace and reminds you of who you really are, which is a very powerful being with choices of what you want to believe, right? So try it on. Try on a new thought for you. Let it, let it really sit with you. Let it just kind of sink into your heart. Let it become this seed of a story that you could believe in if peace was your guide instead of fear. All right, friends, and if you need help with that, you know you can find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com you can join my better than before, breast cancer, metabolic health and mindset membership with this is the work we do. It's like gym. It's gym time for the brain, but it's more than just the brain, because if we want to incorporate all of the best metabolic practices, if we want to look at our lives, we want to look at our genetic steps, we want to look at our food, we want to look at our exercise, we have to think about it differently, so that we find joy in it and simplicity in it, and then we can move away from fear, and we can support ourselves in moving closer to peace and love and connection between ourselves and our bodies all right. So thank you for being here, may you will all live cured until I talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself.

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You've put your courage to the test, laid all your doubts to rest.

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Your mind is clearer than before, your heart is full and wanting more. Your Future's at the door.

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Give it all you got no hesitating.

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You've been waiting all your

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life. This is your moment.