“You need to degrade before cancer – it does not come unexpectedly”

Note: the opinion of the Psychologies editors does not coincide with the opinion of the hero.

Psychologies: What psychological causes can cause cancer?

Ekaterina Minaeva, psychologist: Before cancer, you need to degrade. When clients come and say: “I was doing well, but then they suddenly discovered cancer” – this does not happen. In working with outwardly prosperous clients, serious points are revealed, which served as the cause of oncology. People often bring life to hell – as it happened to me at 27 years old.

What happened then in your life?

My husband and I registered our relationship during my pregnancy and began to live on Taganka in the apartment that was left after my grandfather. The apartment is terrible, old, with windows on a multi-lane highway. The rumble from the trucks was such that it was impossible to be inside.

Before that, I lived in quiet Lyubertsy, and the windows looked out into the field, there was silence around. Here from the street there was not only noise, but also a smell, as if you live in a garbage heap. I started to have a neurosis, no earplugs saved me. Instead of talking to my mother, exchanging an apartment, moving, or at least installing double-glazed windows, we did nothing.

And all this against the background of pregnancy?

Yes, and after all, I could say: “I am not satisfied with this housing, I will go to my parents, where I like everything.” Here also the husband reacted badly to the pregnancy, he was not ready for fatherhood, he drank. As a result, I am pregnant, in an unbearable atmosphere, with a drinking man!

Has anything changed since giving birth?

I calmed down a bit. She began to take care of the environment and tried to fight her husband’s drunkenness. But then the mother-in-law showed up: she tried to control, came when she liked, rummaged through the refrigerator, called and insulted. She told me how bad I was, and that she did not want such a wife for her son. The husband did not interfere.

Why didn’t it prompt you to take drastic measures at that moment?

I think it was the so-called “boiling frog” syndrome. If you put a frog in warm, comfortable water for her and gradually warm it up, she will swim, twitch, but not jump out. He boils in all this and reaches the degree of his nightmare, while he can no longer get out.

So am I. But instead of changing something in the situation, I decided to take care of myself, the body and establish weight control. I lost weight, cleansed my body, got carried away with a healthy diet, practiced “therapeutic” multi-day fasting. But she did it thoughtlessly, as a result, she seriously spoiled the gastrointestinal tract.

When I started to faint on the street, I went to the doctors. I passed the tests, and I was sent first to the consultation center, and then to the hospital for examination.

How did you feel when everything started spinning?

Didn’t feel anything. I didn’t care what happened to me. I wanted to die so that everything would stop.

Did a small child not stop?

In this state, it was not up to the child. She gave her son to her mother, and she herself was determined to “leave quickly.” I went to the hospital with relief – at least this, but the way out. They announced the diagnosis: acute myeloblastic leukemia, blood cancer, a prognosis with high mortality, and left this information alone to digest.

What happened inside?

Complete shock. I sat on the bed and couldn’t move. Calmly, without any tears, she looked out the window. I had no idea that I would die. I thought, either to say goodbye to loved ones, or to pray to God. I remember that I wanted to go somewhere out of the building, out of the room. Just don’t stay under the roof!

She went to the doctor and asked: “Irina Yakovlevna, will you let me go to the chapel?” She did not let go due to fainting, and the next day she prescribed chemotherapy.

Another doctor came to me and said: “Let’s talk?” I had only one question for her: can I eventually become a bedridden invalid? She laughed and reassured: “Don’t worry: you will either die or you will recover and walk normally!” After that, I was released, and I began to find out what and how.

Among other things, the doctor told me a very important thing: “You and I in the hospital can only do 10% of the work, no more! With such a diagnosis, people must do 90% themselves in order to survive. To show will, to change thinking, at least something. If you do nothing, they will take you to the intensive care unit and you will never return. So get moving!”

Are you moving?

At that moment, I remembered that I actually have a child. And she admitted that she really wanted to die!

Can you now formulate why?

I brought myself down, I was so exhausted in the nervous and physical terms that it was easier to finish everything, reset it, get another body, in the end (I then believed in reincarnations). In the hospital, I began to think: well, suppose I die and everything will end? And a child! Who else needs it? To my husband, who for three years did not notice what was happening to me and where everything was going?

And the parents did not respond. I lived before the hospital in a complete “vacuum”. I later asked my mother how she did not notice what was happening in my life? No one asked me what’s wrong with you? Where are you going?

The most important thing for a person is when they give feedback. The absence of this connection is very bad for life. It is necessary to give feedback to a loved one, especially one who has fallen into a psychological impasse and is stewing in all this!

If then the relatives said: “Wake up, you are not yourself, what are you doing with yourself?” – would you be able to respond appropriately?

I’m not sure, but it would leave an imprint anyway! After a while, it would definitely come up. After all, later I was able to understand the reason, which means that I could have done it earlier if someone from the side saw and suggested it.

If a person is dear to you – you need to knock on him, pick up different words, do not back down! Ask him: how do you feel now? Why are you really saying this? People often live formally and superficially with each other, they don’t notice much, so you need to ask, go into the problems of a loved one.

Once the problem has been identified, what do you do next?

Everything was resolved for me simply – circumstances changed. I left one space and entered another, a hospital one. The transition itself automatically works. Not without reason, when a person is confused in life, psychologists advise to leave.

Changing the environment and environment is the first thing I suggest doing to clients with oncology. Change anything! Cancer patients go in cycles on many topics, go in circles. When you leave, you can exhale and look at your life from the outside.

It works for any psychological problems. Tell yourself “stop” in time, get out of the usual space, look at everything from the outside. Then come back, because the problem needs to be solved.

But first, a person must see the essence of the problem?

Yes, and this is easier if you separate from it for a while. This happened to me in the hospital. There was no mother-in-law, no husband, no rumbling trucks. I began to think about what happened and what to do next. I had enough of my own resources to raise and resolve the necessary questions.

How did you get on with the disease?

The disease is recurrent, and it allegedly had to be repeated. I decided that this would not happen to me and life would make an exception for me. And so it happened. On November 11, 2003, I was finally discharged from the hospital, where I spent a total of 3 months. In the hospital, the people are interesting, it was fun to communicate.

They didn’t let us go for a walk, the only entertainment was a mug of coffee that accompanies watching the series “Kamenskaya”, despite the grumblings and protests of the grandmothers. She told them: “Let the mortally ill Kamenskaya see.” They answered: “Yes, we all came here to die …” And I retorted, they say, it won’t work like that, I’m young, I didn’t have time to live, even though I’ll watch the series!

She returned from the hospital a different person and a month later she moved from her husband to her parents. The disease never returned.

Today you are a practicing psychologist. How do you feel when you can’t help a client?

This is not my area of ​​responsibility. A person has a certain resource. And he is either able or unable to help himself. The task of the psychologist is to determine this at the first meeting. If a person’s resource support is low, he is simply not able to solve the problem.

What exactly should a psychologist see?

For example, that a person is in the deepest position of a victim. Anyone who comes to the first class with complaints will not work either, because he is in a childish position – everyone owes him.

A person must obediently transfer to the psychologist the right to behave. It is strange to wait for results if you have come to a fitness trainer, but do not complete his tasks!

How to help people see internal conflicts?

It makes no sense to look for conflicts, you need to find that part of the personality that creates problems. The problem, as a rule, is one – lack of resources. When there are many resources, all problems are solvable tasks.

But, if a person, for example, has convinced himself that he is a beggar, you need to understand where and why he is a beggar, and not discuss with him the issue of the difficulty of buying an apartment. It is necessary to explore the space about which he says: “I can’t do this!”

Why was a person formed with the conviction that she is a beggar? What was the resource spent on? There is a concept of blocking, when a person for some reason forbids himself to earn money.

There are still those who are simply afraid to go on such “great” things!

Any human problem begins with “I can’t”, and then comes its mental processing. From “what” can’t he? Where does he have such installations hidden that he cannot? In fact, all of us in life refuse to be able to do something, to realize something, to see something.

Feedback helps us keep track of what program a person is running in their head. You need to show him that now he is not normal, not in “consciousness”.

For example, can he be comfortable with being pitied?

It doesn’t matter if he likes it or not. The person chooses the position: “I can’t do anything, I’m a helpless victim.” And only then he creates for himself an additional structure, a program: “It’s convenient to feel sorry for me.”

But now they got to the bottom of the fact that you are a victim. On what mental set do you perceive yourself as a victim? Why do you forbid yourself to act? For example, they decided that you are weak and therefore will not do anything. Like, I’m afraid to jump with a parachute, I won’t succeed.

If you forbid yourself to be capable of something, then you will not even try. Most people sit in the “victim” and do nothing, complain to others, begin to revel in this state. “I’m so unhappy, no one loves me!” And this turns the attention of relatives to themselves.

How to help a person get out of the state of the victim?

A person cannot “go out” or “enter” from there. There are no boxes in the head from which you can get out and go into others. There are neural connections, the head is filled with ideas and attitudes, various processes are going on in it.

But these processes can be positive or destructive, right?

The fact of the matter is that any process running in the mind is destructive! Some psychologists firmly believe that supposedly there are positive mental processes. The only positive process is a pure brain, its pure consciousness. When there is a vision of the situation and you know how to act!

Any additional mental processes form new attitudes, new programs that lead a person to waste. The task of the psychologist is only to purify.

Purify the mind from any processes to pure consciousness?

Yes, we remove both negative and destructive processes, any paths and established attitudes, we look at the world through consciousness. We do not touch those processes that operate automatically at the level of reflexes (breathe, eat). The rest must be recognized in the mind. To see what is happening and what it leads to, to find a hundred exits in reality.

If my mother-in-law were to get into the refrigerator now, I would open the door and send her out, change the lock and phone number.

Can a person himself see the essence of what is happening?

Maybe, but adequate feedback from loved ones is required.

With what problems do people usually come to a psychologist?

With completely different requests: family life does not add up, they cannot earn money, they feel uncomfortable. There are those who come without asking. Resource people have this approach: “I have everything, but something is wrong with it.”

Oddly enough, but most of the problems of people are not at all connected with hopeless tasks, but with the fact that a person’s sensitivity has fallen, perception has fallen, and because of this, the quality of life has decreased. In which area you entered into automatic reactions, there you stop feeling. Coffee not good? Do not drink for a week, you will get out of automatism. Once again, everything will go like clockwork!

If you had three days to live, what would you do?

Absolutely nothing! I would stay at home, use this time to realize what is happening to me. I said goodbye to loved ones. We’re all going to die, and there’s no getting around it. Death can come at any moment. Be okay with this.