Do you keep your emotions bottled up inside you? Are you afraid to voice your opposition for fear of a confrontation? Do you try to keep the peace in your household while sweeping your emotional problems under the carpet? You could be a defensive-repressor.
The relationship between cancer and withheld emotion has been documented in numerous studies. Dr. Bernie Siegel spoke about the effect of this quiet desperation in his book, Love, Medicine & Miracles. He writes that when “working with breast-cancer patients, Mogens Jensen of the Yale psychology department showed that defensive-repressors die faster than with patients who have a more realistic outlook. These are the smiling ones who don’t acknowledge their desperation, who say, “I’m fine,” even though you know they have cancer, their spouses have run off, their children are drug addicts, and the house just burned down. Jensen believed this behavior ‘disregulates’ and exhausts the immune system because it is confused by the mixed messages.”
According to Lawrence E. Nielsen and J. Roland Fleck, “Repressors tend to use avoidance, denial and repression of potential threat and conflict as a primary mode of adaptation.” Whereas, “Non-defensive repressors tend to be free from physical and psychological symptoms and admit their anxiety and fears.”
Relationship between cancer and repression
Happy people don’t get sick
Dr. Siegel explains that, “Both men and women are subject to hopelessness, but because of their often divergent roles, the situations that trigger it are often different. Men are generally better able to express anger, while women tend to hold it in and become depressed.” He continues by stating “to some extent, then, cancer is not a primary disease. It is partly a reaction to a set of circumstances that weaken the body’s defenses.”
So how do we let go of our emotional repression? We can accomplish this by adopting the attitude of a happy person. Dr. Siegel writes, “The simple truth is, happy people generally don’t get sick. One’s attitude toward oneself is the single most important factor in healing or staying well. Those who are at peace with themselves and their immediate surroundings have far fewer serious illnesses than those who are not.”
