A case study explores how a specific therapy has impacted someone’s life through real experiences and results. In this case study, “Overcoming Cancer-Related Anxiety with Hypnotherapy and ACT by Clare Longstaffe” you’ll learn how a combination of hypnotherapy and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) helped Sofia address and overcome fear, trauma, and a sense of being stuck following her cancer diagnosis.
Sofia came to me as she was struggling to cope with a fear of the unknown related to a diagnosis of cancer. She was post-treatment and waiting for scans and their results to see whether the cancer had been successfully removed. The themes we worked with are relevant to all humans. In essence: How to live with uncertainty and the inevitable discomfort of such, whilst living a meaningful life.
As we talked in our initial assessment, it became clear that receiving her diagnosis had been very traumatic and she was feeling fear and panic at the thought of going back to hospital. Part of her knew that she needed to go to this forthcoming appointment, but another part of her was screaming ‘Danger! Stay away’. She was feeling scared, stuck and helpless. Now, I can’t speak for everyone but haven’t many of us felt some of those things at times?
I have worked part time as a therapist for a cancer charity for over nine years and Sofia’s experience is so common after a diagnosis. How to live with uncertainty and be faced directly with our mortality. These are themes we will all face at some point, no matter how much we try to avoid them.
As I assessed Sofia’s situation, I could see the trauma of diagnosis was leaving her stuck in the past, unable to imagine a future and this was preventing her from taking important action.
One of the things that starts to shift that upset, from helplessness to hope is learning about how our nervous system and brain function. If we can understand how we work as humans, we can begin to see our distress, less as there being something wrong with us and more about how we have evolved to survive. It’s literally like a light bulb going off! If I had a quid for every time someone said, ‘You mean it’s not just me, I’m not mad’!
Now we were seeing things start to change for Sofia, she began to have more compassion for herself and this meant that she could put down the burden of guilt and self-blame that had been weighing her down and keeping her stuck.
We then worked with the ACT model (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to learn a mindfulness technique. Instead of fighting with what she was thinking and feeling, she was able to acknowledge and provide room for difficult thoughts and feelings. They were still there but they weren’t pushing her around and neither was she trying to push them away which can be exhausting.
We worked with the traumatic diagnosis using hypnotherapy so that she could still talk about it, but it wasn’t upsetting her in the same way. As she said, ‘it’s part of my journey’. She had integrated this memory into a different part of her brain so it no longer felt like it was still happening, it was in the past where it belonged. We then used a future pacing technique to visualise being calm and in control for her upcoming appointment.
Sofia was able to attend her medical appointment calmly and thankfully the news was good, she would be monitored but she now had the confidence that she could cope. “Whatever happens, I know I can manage.”
She was no longer stuck, her confidence was increasing and this had begun to pay off in other areas. Sofia’s chronic fatigue had flared up since the diagnosis, she was exhausted all the time. We used another strand of ACT, ‘do what matters’, to get clear on Sofia’s values, what was really important. We looked at where she was moving towards these values and where she was moving away from them. Through practising grounding, breathing, compassion and listening to the bespoke recordings I made for her, she had begun to change a long-held pattern. Instead of cycling through boom and bust, overdoing it and then being depleted for days, she was able to pace herself and work within her energy levels. As a result, she no longer had to deal with the negative self-talk she had experienced on those days where she was too exhausted to move after overdoing it.
After five sessions, I asked Sofia to rate how much of a concern dealing with the fear of the unknown was now and it had reduced by 5 points (on a scale of 0-6). Her general sense of wellbeing had also improved by 4 points.
The benefits of our sessions were beautifully summarised by Sofia: “The therapy has made me feel more confident in myself, to do things for myself. Instead of overdoing it, I do my grounding technique and the frustration reduces and I’m learning to take one day at a time. Life is for living! Before the therapy I was just sat in the bungalow feeling lost, alone and sorry for myself.”
