© University of Rochester 1996-2012
My professor’s trick was as old as the hills. He instructed, “Imagine slicing through a lemon. Bring the cut surface to your lips and inhale the citrus aroma. Now imagine biting down and sucking the sour juices.” With my parotids pulsating, his lesson was ingrained forever: The mind affects the body.
Beginning in those freshman days of medical school, I thought about the mind-body connection while learning how to evaluate and treat patients. By the time I opened my internal medicine practice, I routinely addressed the emotions causing or exacerbating my patients’ symptoms, instead of dismissing them with a diagnosis of psychosomatic. And I wasn’t the only one paying attention to the mind-body connection.
In the mid-1980s a revolution was reverberating in cancer survivor communities. Self-help books trumpeted the untapped healing power of the mind. Mega-selling authors were convincing patients to “Visualize your immune system destroying your cancer cells.”
I scoffed. Sure, I occasionally prescribed biofeedback or counseling for my tensed-up patients who could benefit from visualization techniques. But ridding the body of cancer cells is as different from relaxing muscles as regenerating a new limb is different from repairing a paper cut.
My stance was unshaken after my own cancer diagnosis. Throughout my chemotherapy, the only visualizing I did was that of my patients’ records leaving my office and my future disappearing. I had better uses for my time and energy than conjuring images of chemo-assisted healthy leukocytes ambushing my lymphoma cells.
Only 19 months after beginning my first course of treatment, I began a second course, this time for a local recurrence. Like a damsel tied to train tracks, I was frightened by the threat of advancing cancer and worried about radiation’s long-term risks. But with regard to my imminent first radiation session, I had no concerns. Radiation would feel like having my photograph taken. Right?
Not always. The technician immobilized my head and neck in a custom-made mask tethered to the table. Then she left the room. The thick door closed. Click. A square of light radiated onto me from the linear accelerator’s overhanging gantry, accompanied by a strangely familiar buzz. After 30 seconds or so, the skin of my neck got warm. I thought, “Hey, what’s this? I’m not supposed to feel anything.” So I focused. “Yes, my skin is definitely warm. And getting warmer.”
The treatment ended. On my way out of the Rad-Onc department, I saw my radiation oncologist. “How’d it go?” he asked.
“Fine, but I was shocked my skin got warm. I expected to feel nothing.”
His response was immediate and matter-of-fact: “Your skin wasn’t warm, Wendy. You just imagined it because you were scared.”
I walked away thinking, “What? Imagined it? Whew, they hadn’t goofed and zapped me with too much radiation! But I imagined that? No way. That warmth was real.”
Over the next few hours, my unconscious search for the fodder feeding my supposed fear turned up a variety of images. Hiding under my desk in elementary school during nuclear air raid drills. Feeling the weight of the lead apron on my budding breasts while listening to the distinctive buzz of my dentist’s “Panorex camera.” “Hmm. Could I have a long-standing fear of radiation expressing itself in physical symptoms during chosen exposure to high-dose radiation?”
The next day, the technicians strapped me down and the door clicked closed. Once again, I watched the square of light and listened to the buzz. And I waited, wondering what I would feel. After 30 seconds, nothing happened. Before I knew it, the buzz stopped. Still nothing.
I was amazed, not that my fear had caused physical symptoms the day before, but that I’d undervalued the power of my mind and had been thumbing my nose at an opportunity to channel it toward my healing. If my mind could make me feel warmth, then my mind could help me feel hungry after chemo and help me diminish my leg pain. For the rest of my sessions, I responded to the buzz by visualizing the x-rays killing my lymphoma cells.
My dramatic mind-body experience opened my eyes to the broad range of people who can benefit from visualization, not just the occasional patient with extreme anxiety-induced symptoms. And it highlighted a danger: Patients experiencing the ability of the mind to relieve psychosomatic symptoms can too easily make the leap to believing their mind has the power to heal their cancer. In extreme cases, patients may abandon conventional or investigational therapies.
Did my visualization help kill my cancer cells? No, the radiation did that. But visualizing did calm me and nourish my hope by transforming radiation from a source of fear to one of confidence.
Researchers today are exploring scientifically how the mind affects the body, such as how stress depresses the immune system. In the meantime, many patients who are feeling stressed—and trust me, illness is stressful—are also feeling pressure from books and well-wishers to think themselves well. Sadly, for those whose illness progresses despite concerted efforts to visualize, many feel guilty or ashamed that they failed to control their disease.
Health care professionals can relieve these unnecessary burdens by explaining that we have no objective evidence that visualization kills cancer cells or restores myelin or replaces irreversibly damaged heart muscle. But it does help patients—psychologically and emotionally—get through effective treatments. Whether by bringing comfort or improving compliance, guided imagery can help patients use the power of the mind in healing ways.
Wendy Schlessel Harpham ’80M (MD) is a doctor of internal medicine, author, and cancer survivor. This essay is adapted from her latest book, Only 10 Seconds to Care: Help and Hope for Busy Clinicians, published by the American College of Physicians Press. © 2009 by Wendy Schlessel Harpham. Reprinted with permission.
© University of Rochester 1996-2012