Practical Wise Mind Skills for Coping With Cancer Anxiety
- Juliette Closson
- Mar 30, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 12
It's normal to have a broad and deep range of emotions during diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing management of a cancer diagnosis. Emotions such as anger, rage, despair, anxiety, helplessness and depression and all part of a normal healthy personal reaction.
To help slow runaway anxiety and depression, it's important to find ways to allow yourself to feel and process your emotions, and to keep practicing self-love, no matter what.
If you’re already familiar with the Wise Mind framework, these exercises are designed to help you apply it during moments of medical stress.
Emotional Health Is About Balance
Healthy emotional management involves a balance between:
Feeling, identifying, and naming emotions, and
Understanding the needs and values beneath those emotions
After sitting with your feelings—rather than pushing them away—you may be able to develop a small, gentle plan that helps you move forward.
The most effective decisions are informed by both emotion and reason—by intuition and analytical thinking.
The WISE MIND Model
A helpful framework for emotional health is WISE MIND, developed by Marsha Linehan.
This model describes three states of mind:
Emotional Mind – Feelings are intense and decisions are driven primarily by emotion.
Logical Mind – Decisions are based on facts and logic, while emotions may be minimized or ignored.
Wise Mind – Emotion and logic work together, guided by intuition and awareness.
Wise Mind allows us to respond—not react.
And of course, none of us live in Wise Mind all the time.
We naturally weave in and out of Emotional Mind, Logical Mind, and Wise Mind throughout the day. Most of us, for example, drive in Wise Mind most of the time—despite stress—otherwise the roads would be chaos.
A useful model of emotional health is WISE MIND, developed by Marsha Linehan, Ph.D.
Finding Wise Mind During Cancer Treatment
Cancer can pull us strongly into Emotional Mind—especially fear-based thinking. One way to gently return toward Wise Mind is to become aware of the background mental loops that fuel anxiety.
Those repetitive thoughts can be interrupted and replaced with compassionate counter-statements and affirmations.
Research shows that our thoughts influence our emotions and behaviors. Changing mental habits takes practice—often about 30 days of repetition.
Try working with one or two counterstatements daily for a month. This is not about denial—it’s about support.
Counterstatements
This is unbearable.
Try: I am learning how to cope better with this.
What if this goes on without letting up?
Try: I’ll deal with this one day at a time. I live in the present.
Why do I have to deal with this?
Try: For whatever reasons, at least for now, I’ve been given a steeper path- a tougher curriculum. In fact, adversity develops my qualities of strength & compassion.
I shouldn’t be angry!!
Try: Anger is an appropriate response to a situation when a real threat exists; I acknowledge and work through the emotion and let the anger become a positive force to help me care for myself.
Affirmations
I love and accept my uniqueness.
I am willing to forgive.
It is safe to look within.
I am calm and capable.
I am strong and able to cope.
I get the help I need when I need it, from various sources.
My support system is strong and loving.
I trust my intuition. I am willing to listen to that still voice within.
I enjoy the foods that are best for my body.
I love every cell of my body.
All is well, all is well and all manner of thing is well.
A Short Grounding Exercise: Coming Back to the Present
You can do this anywhere—sitting, lying down, or even during treatment.
Pause and breathe
Gently inhale through your nose for a count of 4.
Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of 6.
Do this 3 times.
Name what is real right now
Silently say to yourself:“Right now, in this moment, I am safe enough.”
Orient to your body
Notice where your body is supported—the chair, the bed, the floor, or the surface beneath you.Let your weight rest there.
Engage your senses
Name 3 things you can see
Mind-body practices such as grounding and Wise Mind skills can support emotional balance during cancer treatment.
Sources
Linehan, M. M., (1993). Cognitive behavioral therapy of borderline personality disorder. New York: The Guilford Press.
Marra, T. (2004). Depressed & anxious: The dialectical behavior therapy workbook for overcoming depression and anxiety. Oakland, California: New Harbinger Publications.
Peurifoy, R.Z. (2005). Anxiety, phobias, & panic. New York: Warner Books.
Rossman, M. L. (2001). Fighting cancer from within. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Seligman, M.E.P., & Peterson, C. (2003). Positive clinical psychology. In L.G. Aspinwall & U.M.
Staudinger (Eds.). A psychology of human strengths: Fundamental questions and future directions for a positive psychology. (pp. 305-317) Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
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