Breast cancer: Supporting treatment with hypnosis

Breast cancer is a well-known disease in the Netherlands. This is because as many as 1 in 7 women will suffer from breast cancer. Generally, you get breast cancer after menopause, but 20% of people with breast cancer do get it before the age of 50[1]. It is a disease that is fortunately treatable, but fun is different. That's why in this blog I discuss breast cancer, breast cancer treatment, and how hypnosis can help you while you undergo treatment

Breast Cancer Symptoms

Breast cancer occurs in men and women. It does occur much more often in women than in men. The symptoms are also not quite the same.

Breast cancer symptoms for women

• Your chest has a different shape than normal.
• Your breasts are partially or completely swollen.
• Your nipples are tight on your chest.
• You have a lump on your chest, armpit or approach to your breast[2].
• You have chest irritations.
• Your nipples are sore.
• Your skin looks different than normal.
• Your breasts feel harder or softer than normal.
• Your nipple goes in instead of out[3].

Breast cancer symptoms for men

• A wound that won't heal.
• Dents or dimples in the skin.
• Your nipple or areola are not what they used to be.
• Fluid coming from the nipple.
• Your chest feels warm.
• Your chest looks red.
• Your skin is thicker and with dots, looks like an orange peel.

Breast Cancer Treatment

When you receive breast cancer treatment, it is focused on 2 things. Getting rid of the cancer as quickly as possible and preventing it from ever coming back.

There are multiple types of treatment available, which depend on the type of cancer you have, the age you are, other health problems and which treatment you prefer.

Thereby, the treatment also depends on how much cancer you have, how far it has penetrated your body and whether the cancer cells have the so-called receptors for the HER2 protein, estrogen and progesterone.

Treatments may include:

• A surgical procedure
• Radiotherapy
• Chemotherapy
• Hormone Therapy
• Targeted Therapy.

You can get surgical, radiological, chemo and hormone therapy at the same time.

Surgery and radiotherapy target cancers in parts of your body. Surgery often involves removing the entire breast or just the tumor. So in the latter case, you keep the breast.

Radiotherapy involves radio waves that stop cancer cells.

The other therapies actually destroy or control cancer cells all over your body.

Chemotherapy involves the use of medications that kill cancer cells. It does have potential side effects such as nausea, vomiting, hair loss, hot flashes, and early menopause.

In hormone therapy, drugs are used to prevent hormones from allowing cancer to grow, particularly estrogen is blocked. Possible side effects include hot flashes and vaginal dryness. Usually you get injections, sometimes this also involves surgical intervention on the ovaries.

Targeted therapy aims for the immune system to attack and clear cancer cells. This targets cancer cells that are high in a protein called HER2. It also contains substances that keep the cancer from being fed to grow further.

Mentally support treatment

Getting breast cancer is tough. Even though the disease is treatable and you have more than an 80% chance of survival, many women die from this disease. You may suffer from mental problems due to stress, anxiety and worry because of this.

Research shows that receiving a diagnosis is often a traumatic event, and feelings of uncertainty contribute to the trauma. Anxiety and depressive symptoms also occur in approximately 30 to 40% of women with breast cancer.

Psychological help is also widely sought by women in the early stages of treatment[4].

Therefore, there are multiple ways medics want to help women mentally during and after treatment.

There are a number of things you can do, such as:

• Yoga
• Exercise/Sports
• Mindfulness
• Hypnosis

Yoga and breast cancer

Yoga is more than just the physical training involved. Behind yoga is also a philosophy for an ethical lifestyle, spirituality, breathing exercises and meditation. Yoga can help improve physical and mental health in multiple cancers.

Research shows that yoga helps improve mental health during breast cancer treatment, reduce fatigue and reduce short-term disturbed sleep[5].

Exercise/sports and breast cancer

Fatigue is a symptom that can be prevented or reduced through exercise when you are diagnosed with breast cancer. In a study examining the benefits of exercise, women began exercising within 6 weeks of their diagnosis, participating in a program consisting of aerobic and strength training exercises for 18 weeks—or 4 months.

Because chemotherapy can make you weaker, exercising also helps you stay stronger than when you don't exercise, but it doesn't do much else for mental health[6].

Mindfulness and breast cancer

A mindfulness program to reduce stress is also often offered to those undergoing breast cancer treatment. This is intended to reduce stress, feelings of depression, and anxiety.

Research shows this works marginally significantly against these symptoms. Mindfulness involves living in the here and now. In fact, anxiety and stress usually come from thoughts about your past and future. Things about the past involve things you did that you may regret or be ashamed of now. This is something that can cause you stress.

When thinking about the future, it can be about the expectation that you might die from the disease or fears you have about the chemotherapy you are receiving.

By being precisely in the here and now with your attention, you will be less bothered by these types of thoughts and therefore less affected by stress, anxiety and depressive feelings.

Hypnosis and breast cancer

Hypnosis is already widely used in medical settings. For example, hypnosis can help reduce anxiety about surgery and speed up the healing process after surgery.

With chemotherapy, hypnosis can make you feel less nausea, making the chemo less severe.

For women with breast cancer, hypnosis also helps combat the worsening of fatigue symptoms when receiving radiotherapy[7].

In the late 1980s, self-hypnosis was also found to help with the pain of breast cancer treatment. Research then showed that self-hypnosis combined with a support group increased survival rates[8].

Fatigue, pain and nausea are 3 subjective feelings. Especially on issues that are subjective, hypnosis has great effect because hypnosis affects your unconscious and conscious beliefs.

Beliefs are about how you see the world and how you function in it. This is also about the extent to which you function more or less or suffer from nausea, pain and fatigue.

Regression is an important technique when it comes to changing beliefs. If you suffer from anxiety, regression helps you experience the very first moment you felt that anxiety in a different way, allowing you to experience the anxiety very differently after the regression.

Self-hypnosis also helps you deal with breast cancer pain. You do this by visualizing things that improve your sense of control over the pain. Initially, you practice this with your hypnosis expert.

Generally, you visualize some sort of volume knob or slider that allows you to "soften" the pain.

To have less stress, self-confidence and trust in your body is also important. It is understandable that if you have been diagnosed with cancer you may not have much confidence in your body for a while, but that only brings more stress which of course doesn't help either. Hypnotic suggestions are repeated while you are under hypnosis or while you are under self-hypnosis. Because you do this while you are in that state the suggestions penetrate you more deeply and become part of your being more quickly.

Relaxation is also an important part of self-hypnosis. This is something you begin with during a self-hypnosis session. You find a comfortable quiet place in your home and put on clothes that are comfortable. Then you bring yourself into hypnosis by first breathing calmly, relaxing your muscles and closing your eyes. You practice this first with your hypnosis expert.

To reinforce relaxation, you often get an mp3 to help you during self-hypnosis with a guided visualization, for example.

Hypnosis can thus help support breast cancer treatment through additional relaxation, reduction of pain, nausea and stress. This is more than what can be achieved with yoga and mindfulness.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and whether you can put people under hypnosis to help them? Then come to the hypnosis workshop or sign up for a course at the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. Ask about online options if that suits you better.

[1] https://www.pinkribbon.nl/over-borstkanker/cijfers-en-feiten.html

[2] https://www.thuisarts.nl/borstkanker/ik-wil-zelf-mijn-borsten-onderzoeken

[3] https://www.cancercenter.com/cancer-types/breast-cancer/symptoms

[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pon.1057

[5] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD010802.pub2/abstract

[6] https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0362-z

[7] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-06704-007

[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673689915511