MILAN (ITALPRESS) – The diagnosis of cancer causes intense, often disruptive emotions: fear, anxiety and despair impact the patient’s mental and physical condition. According to psychoncology, in fact, mental and physical well-being are closely related. Improving the patient’s emotional and psychological balance can therefore positively influence the effectiveness of medical treatment and quality of life. For this, it is first of all necessary to become aware of one’s emotions and accept them, thus initiating an elaboration process that involves the patient and the people around him, increasing resilience, flexibility and the possibility of conceiving new perspectives and new meanings. These are some of the topics discussed by Elena Canavese, a counselor specializing in the treatment of cancer patients, particularly with the Simonton psycho-oncology method, interviewed by Marco Klinger, for Medicina Top, a TV format of the Italpress news agency. “Psychoncology is the set of those tools that serve the person to be supported in the path of care, healing and clinical treatments,” he began, “It is an additional support at the psychological and emotional level. When a person receives an inauspicious diagnosis, the first thing that comes is fear and then bewilderment. Our goal is to help the person be aware that they are experiencing a stressful situation, then to invite the person to draw up a list of things that produce stress, which can be people, situations, places,” Canavese explained. “And next to these things is the joy list, with which we help the person identify those things that produce satisfaction, we help them find those things perhaps already present in their life and meaningful to them. At the basis of these techniques is the Simonton method: “It was born as a program to help all those people who are living with oncological or chronic illness, and who want to actively participate in their course of treatment,” he pointed out. “It was developed by the American oncologist Simonton, who starting in the 1960s began observing patients and realized that people who had developed confidence, good reasons to live and cultivated hope, had different prognosis and survival outcomes from others. It’s difficult but simple, he understood that the cancer patient needs to have easy tools at his disposal, which give him the real perception that he can make a change in his life and in the shortest possible time,” Canavese reiterated. “Simonton wondered how he could help those who independently do not have that sense of confidence and hope inside, so that they can develop and affect their own course of treatment and healing. He started by investigating and experimenting, relying on psychology, relaxation techniques, stress reduction.” And on so-called “unhealthy, limiting beliefs”: “It’s one of the tools we use to help the person get out of that cage,” he recounted, “For example, the phrase ‘I won’t heal butì we help turn it not into a positive thought, but into a healthy thought. Positive thinking would be ‘I will heal for sure,’ but we certainly cannot know that; healthy thinking, on the other hand, is ‘I can heal,’ regardless of how one feels at that particular moment, and ‘I can also not heal,’ and in any case being able to live life fully every day.” “By practicing a thought for a long time, if it is a healthy, ingrained condition, it becomes a new habit. We are like coaches,” he acknowledged on the role of psycho-oncology therapists, “We urge the person to create a ritual, and to integrate it: only when it is integrated can these thoughts become new and healthy habits and attitudes. Finally, on the importance of taking care of oneself, even with the simplest gestures: “There’s a game we practice with people who come to us, which is to make a dot on one’s hand,” Canavese concluded, “Every time the eye falls there, we need to slow down and ask ourselves ‘how am I feeling right now?’ and ‘what can I do for me to feel better?’ Meeting a need, such as just drinking a glass of water, is a small way to take care of ourselves.
– photo taken from Top Medicine video -(ITALPRESS).
