When you're sick, it's no fun, and then when you have to undergo chemotherapy, the courage can sink in. You hear many stories of people who experience chemotherapy as a horror. Who can no longer eat and have to vomit when they do. Chemotherapy makes your body weaker with the goal of also making the cancer weaker so that it can be cleared more easily by your immune system. The only question is who wins the race to the bottom your body or the cancer?
Still, chemotherapy is better than no chemotherapy and is often used to overcome cancer. Hypnosis can help you if you are looking forward to chemo so that you start with more courage and so that you can keep yourself strong in difficult moments.
When undergoing therapy, you may experience vomiting and nausea. One fear you may have when you suffer from this is that when you report it, doctors will change the amount of medication, when in fact you have something on your hands that could cure you.
Improve sense of control
Fortunately, there is something that can be done other than just changing the amount of medication. Vomiting is something that can happen and then that's what it is. However, nausea is something that everyone experiences subjectively[1]. For example, one person is more prone to car sickness because they are more sensitive to the nauseous feeling.
Hypnosis can help you reduce the feeling of nausea. This is because your subjective feeling about how you experience something depends on the beliefs you have about how the world works and how you function in it. These beliefs are also about what chemotherapy does and how you react to it. When you change these beliefs and view therapy differently, this can already reduce your feelings of nausea.
Changing beliefs is often done initially with regression therapy. This is because previous events in your life have given you these unhelpful beliefs. With regression therapy, you go from the last moment you suffered from the fear to the first moment. At this first moment, something is done with it that makes you suffer less from chemotherapy anxiety. This is all done while you are under hypnosis.
In addition, you can use hypnosis to gain the belief that you can control your nausea. This is usually done with a visualization of a button, or several buttons, that you can control and with which you control your feelings. For example, you can visualize a volume knob, a temperature knob or the buttons in an elevator.
Because you do this while under hypnosis, the sense of control comes in stronger and you truly believe you can do this. This makes it a reality for you, allowing you to interpret your feelings of nausea in a different way at difficult moments during your chemotherapy.
This knowledge can already reduce your anxiety about chemotherapy.
Scientific research also shows that hypnosis works better against the expectation of nausea and the feeling of nausea during chemotherapy than cognitive behavioral therapy. In any case, it works at least as well, if not even better[2].
Music to reduce anxiety
While undergoing chemotherapy, say the moment you are on the drip, familiar music also helps you suffer less anxiety. Researchers were even able to find this in people's blood pressure and heart rate while undergoing chemotherapy. The questions that people had to answer also showed that this improved quality of life compared to people who did not listen to music during chemotherapy.
This came through a reduction in anxiety, worry and fatigue[3].
Live music even works best. So if you have a friend who can sing a song, bring them along!
Overcoming fear of falling through chemotherapy
In addition to fear of nausea and vomiting, chemotherapy can also weaken you, making you anxious about falling[4]. This is very unfortunate, because if this causes you to unnecessarily lock yourself up to be in a safe "soft" environment it doesn't really make the disease more enjoyable.
Researchers indicate that continuing to exercise even during chemotherapy is important to stay strong to reduce the risk of falls. Of course, this can be done in consultation with your doctor.
Hypnosis can also help you overcome the fear of moving, by overcoming the fear of falling.
Research on hypnotherapy for children undergoing chemotherapy shows that it not only helps with nausea and the fear of it. It also reduced or at least kept stable other symptoms you can get from chemotherapy. These children suffered less stress and reduced functioning over time than those who had not received hypnosis. Hypnosis can therefore prevent worsening of symptoms[5].
Making yourself stronger for chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is an exciting time in life when you could use some self-confidence. One way hypnosis can help reduce your fears is by making yourself mentally stronger.
This can be done in multiple ways. One way often used for making yourself stronger is by repeating hypnotic suggestions. Because you do this while you are under hypnosis, this also enters you more deeply and more quickly becomes part of your identity and the basic feeling you have about yourself.
These may include suggestions such as:
"I am strong."
"I can do anything."
"My body does everything it can to protect me."
"My body is doing everything it can to make the chemo work."
These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs and fears about chemotherapy, you may receive other suggestions from your hypnosis expert.
Making yourself relax during chemotherapy
Relaxation exercises are also very important to suffer less from chemotherapy. At times when you get anxious or experience a lot of stress from chemotherapy, a relaxation exercise can do a lot to get that tense feeling out of your body.
One way hypnosis can help with this is through guided visualization. Before you get this visualization, the hypnosis expert will ask you questions about places where you have enjoyed relaxing or where you can imagine yourself totally relaxing. For example, this could be a place you imagined in a book or a location from a movie.
Next, you get the guided visualization. This can take the following form, for example:
"You walk up to the place where you had ultimate relaxation on your vacation. You feel how the ground or floor there feels at your feet. It's a nice feeling and each step helps you relax further. You look for that place where you can sit or lie down to relax your whole body for a while. You feel how the sun shines on you (possibly through the window) and the warmth warms your body. A ray of the sun gently passes over your body like a scan and the warmth of that ray relaxes every muscle. The tension is removed from your feet, your upper back can relax again, and you don't even press your tongue against your palate anymore. You feel a blanket of relaxation come over you and you can lie or sit there and enjoy the sounds that are in your place of relaxation. You completely relax."
This is just an example of a guided visualization. Depending on your relaxing spot and whether you find heat or cold relaxing, this can be varied.
Hypnosis is a tool that has been used for an incredibly long time and is also increasingly used to support people going through cancer treatment. This can also be done if you actually have to undergo surgery instead of chemo.
Want to know what hypnosis feels like and if you can hypnotize other people too? Then come to a hypnosis playshop and learn hypnosis in 1 day.
Specifically, do you want to help people with problems or chemotherapy relax with hypnosis? If so, you can also enroll right away in a training from the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands. Ask about online options if this suits you better.
Or check out the other opportunities and events we give.
[1] https://www.ons.org/sites/default/files/hawkins.pdf
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2354.2006.00736.x
[3] https://academic.oup.com/jmt/article-abstract/44/3/242/955004
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966636213006863
[5] https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/88/1/34.short
