Is Cancer Caused By Your Suppressed Emotions?

Some psychotherapists, have the idea that people who have been sexually abused in childhood, bury these traumatic events so deeply in their subconscious that memories of what occurred by a series of intense therapy sessions.

Is It The Suppressed Memory Of It?

People who thought they had had a happy, or perhaps at least unexceptional childhood, have been urged to recover the most painful memories of abuse. Not surprisingly, this has been a most controversial issue.

The problem about these subconscious urges, is that they are unconscious. Who is to say to what degree they are present, or to what extent they are responsible a person's emotional and physical well-being?

Why Bother With Emotions:

Our thinking controls our emotions, behavior and actions. Emotions affect our physical bodies as much as our bodies affect our feelings and thinking. People who dismiss, repress, ignore or just don't vent their emotions, actually set themselves up for serious physical illness.

Emotions that are not acknowledged and released but are buried within the body are the cause of various illnesses, including cancer, arthritis,liver disease and many other types of chronic illness. Negative emotions like fear, anxiety, negativity, frustration and depression cause chemical reactions in our bodies that are vastly different from the chemicals released when we feel positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, love and acceptance.

German cancer surgeon Dr. Ryke-Geerd Hamer who had examined thousands of cancer patients with all types of cancer, had noticed that all these patients seemed to have one significant thing in common: there had been some kind of psycho-emotional conflict prior to the onset of their cancer – often a few years before - a conflict that had never been fully resolved.

Dr. Hamer included psychotherapy as a key component of the healing process and found that when the specific conflict was finally resolved, the cancer immediately stopped growing at a cellular level. He believes that cancer-prone individuals are unable to adequately share their thoughts, emotions, fears and joys with other people and calls this "psycho-emotional isolation".

These people tend to hide their sadness and grief behind a brave face, appear pleasant, and avoid any form of open conflict. According to Dr. Hamer, some people are not even aware of their emotions, and are therefore not only isolated from other people, but also from themselves.

"Chronic unforgiveness causes stress. Every time people think of their transgressor, their body responds severely. Decreasing your unforgiveness cuts down your health risk. Now, if you can forgive, that actually starts to strengthen your immune system". [Dr. Everett Worthington, Jr., Psychology Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University]
"The program's preliminary work suggests that forgiveness lowered the stress hormone cortisol that in turn affects the immune system, but only when the patients forgave the ones they blamed".

[University of Maryland - Institute of Human Virology]

"Forgiveness could boost the immune system by reducing the production of the stress hormone cortisol" [Endocrinologist Dr. Bruce McEwen, Rockefeller University - New York]

"When you hold onto the bitterness for years, it stops you from living your life fully. As it turns out, it wears out your immune system and hurts your heart" [Stanford University Center for Research in Disease Prevention]

Research Links Cancer With Repressed, Unresolved Emotions

A group of researchers at Stanford University in California recently found that women who repressed their emotions were more likely to show disruptions in the normal balance of the stress hormone, cortisol, compared with those who did not. Several studies have shown that the unbalanced cortisol fluctuations can actually predict early death in women with breast cancer that has spread to other areas of the body.

"People who have repressive styles are more prone to illness, particularly [immune-system related] diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, liver disease, infections, and cancers. The concept is of unexpressed anger. If one doesn't let it out, that could have adverse consequences." [Dr. George Solomon, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at University of California Los Angeles]

"Extreme suppression of anger was the most commonly identified characteristic of 160 breast cancer patients who were given a detailed psychological interview and self-administered questionnaire. Repressing anger magnified exposure to physiological stress, thereby increasing the risk of cancer" [Journal of Psychosomatic Research]

"Extremely low anger scores have been noted in numerous studies of patients with cancer. Such low scores suggest suppression, repression, or restraint of anger. There is evidence to show that suppressed anger can be a precursor to the development of cancer, and also a factor in its progression after diagnosis." [Cancer Nursing - International Journal]

"When you hold onto the bitterness for years, it stops you from living your life fully. As it turns out, it wears out your immune system and hurts your heart" [Stanford University Center for Research in Disease Prevention]

"Those who received forgiveness training showed improvements in the blood flow to their hearts" [University of Wisconsin - Research Dept.]

So, how do we set the healing process in motion?

These videos are dedicated to just that issue, In my following posts I will offer further functional information which you can readily apply in your own life directly.