Interesting article: “Smile! You’ve got cancer”

Positive thinking can come much more easily to people who have. a comparatively easy time! I had no nausea, no fatigue, no aches and joint pain from AIs. I had really sore feet but only for a brief time and my lasting side effects are all manageable and have not altered my life or abilities. It’s not so much that being cheerful and positive makes recovery easier or better (as the article states, there’s no proof of that at all) it just makes being around you easier for others! It’s promoted for that reason. Up to the individual as to what’s in it for them - sometimes very little! 

I am not sure why I chose the name "Keeping positive", perhaps it is a reminder to myself to keep positive and many days I fall short of that!   It just makes it easier for others to be around people who have a positive attitude.  

@Keeping_positive1 It makes it easier to be around ourselves if we are positive too! Even if we don't feel like it.

I found the article quite provocative in that way @Blossom1961 - because I agree that sometimes we must coach ourselves to be positive. It’s a marathon not a sprint, right? I think that her critique is less about whether you personally feel like a positive thinker, and more about whether there is a dominant “positive thinking” message that silences some people from exploring other emotions like rage.

@RiotAtMidnight
Feelings are intensely personal and vary accordingly but while rage can be a temporary release (and a normal reaction), I’ve never found it a sustainable way of dealing with anything. Even when directed against other sentient beings who might possibly change, improve, apologise! Certainly not against rogue cells. In the end, it can cause even more harm to the one already hurt. Explore by all means but maybe not stay there. 

Thanks @RiotAtMidnight,
an eloquently posed reality-check.

Interesting but i could only get through half of it.

Why bother raging against things which try to help even if the well meaning isnt always helpful? If you dont want to buy a pink shirt dont.

Of course its not a good thing to happen to anyone but ive tried to make the best of it and move forward which is not the same as having an epiphany that life is so much better now.

Ive had every emotion. Emotions can't really hurt you its what you do with them. 

I could only get through half of it too. I’m not sure there’s right or wrong. If I had it my way, I never would’ve chosen to get bc. But I did, and it’s pointless dwelling on it. I might never know why, so I’d rather make the most of now and enjoy myself in ways I didn’t before. That means self care and treatment, and spending money on nurturing myself without feeling guilty. These changes didn’t happen overnight after diagnosis. It’s taking time, but I’m doing better than before. 

@RiotAtMidnight  succinctly summarised Ehrenreich's main point with, "there is a dominant “positive thinking” message (dogma) that silences some people from exploring other emotions...", in relation to everything from losing your job, heartbreak, disability, disease ...with an undercurrent of blame surrounding attitude.

"...rather than providing emotional sustenance, the sugar-coating of cancer can exact a dreadful cost. First, it requires the denial of understandable feelings of anger and fear, all of which must be buried under a cosmetic layer of cheer. This is a great convenience for health workers and even friends of the afflicted, who might prefer fake cheer to complaining, but it is not so easy on the afflicted. "

"Whether repressed feelings are themselves harmful, as many psychologists claim, I'm not so sure, but without question there is a problem when positive thinking "fails" and the cancer spreads or eludes treatment. Then the patient can only blame herself: she is not being positive enough; possibly it was her negative attitude that brought on the disease in the first place".

I certainly share Ehrenreich's "sense of outrage over the disease and the available treatments (see all of out threads on side effects!). What causes it and why is it so common, especially in industrialised societies? Why don't we have treatments that distinguish between different forms of breast cancer or between cancer cells and normal dividing cells? In the mainstream of breast cancer culture, there is very little anger, no mention of possible environmental causes, and few comments about the fact that, in all but the more advanced, metastasised cases, it is the "treatments", not the disease, that cause the immediate illness and pain."

Penelope Schofield, wrote: "We should question whether it is valuable to encourage optimism if it results in the patient concealing his or her distress in the misguided belief that this will afford survival benefits... If a patient feels generally pessimistic... it is important to acknowledge these feelings as valid and acceptable."

You’re right @Dory65. I agree that cancer is not something which should be sugar coated, and we should be able to express our emotions without fearing we will make people uncomfortable. I’m not sure how it was 10 years ago when this article was written, but I don’t think it’s like that now though. I don’t feel like there is fake cheer and that we are not encouraged to complain. In all the pages I’m part of, women share all the difficulties they are going through and are encouraged to vent and feel anger when they need to. I think that pretending to be positive all the time and suppressing our feelings is a lot more damaging. And women being made to feel that it returned bc they weren’t positive is just cruel. It just seems that people like putting the blame on the woman herself, since an actual reason for it hasn’t been found. Easy that way. She got it, or it returned, and it’s her own fault. Not the fact that as the article also suggests, treatment isn’t how it should be, and that it’s the main thing making women sick. The fact that chemo and radiation damage the immune system and cause long term damage to the body, which then weaken it considerably. Of course after that the body can’t function as well as it used to, and is susceptible to all sorts of ailments and diseases. But let’s not blame the slow progress of research. Let’s blame her. It’s easier that way. And yes, I do think research is progressing too slowly. It’s a lot better than it used to be, but not as it should. And the most ridiculous thing is, that a vaccine for covid seems to have been manufactured in months, yet better treatment for cancer is taking years and years 🤔. Please. I don’t believe in the efficacy of this vaccine, and I don’t believe better treatment couldn’t have been found by now. Too much profit from it all for big ph. But as I said, until then, we cry when we need to, laugh when we feel like it. And fake it til we make it.