Gabby's Blog

Is positive thinking enough to get you through a cancer diagnosis and through the treatment afterwards?

How is it possible to be positive when you feel bad?

When you've had that diagnosis that tells you that you've had cancer and quite possibly you may be going to die, how can you be really positive about that? I think it's a lot more than positive mental attitude that is going to get you through this.

The sad fact is we're all going to die sooner or later. Something we don’t like to think …

Stress

Why does stress make us ill? Is it true that stress causes cancer?

How can we manage stress?

Is it possible to avoid it altogether or can we make it manageable in our lives rather than letting it take over everything?

It seems to many people that stress is everywhere. It seems for a lot of people that stress is just ‘part of life’. We've almost become to expect that there's nothing that you can do about it. But is that true? I'd like to think about why we get stressed and what that …

Happy New Year!

I wanted to share a New Year ritual that I have that helps me to ‘draw a line’ under the old year just passed. I like to take down my old wall calendar and look at my paper planner (I am old school, I like to have a diary that I can write on!) However this works equally well with digital planners.

I like to take some time, over a cup of tea, and reflect on all the things that happened, good and bad, in the year just gone.

There are two things that always surprise me.

1. How mu…

1 Remember it's OK to feel down sometimes

Sad days happen to us all. It is temporary and is part of life. As someone who has suffered with depression in the past, I know how it feels to be down, but sometimes I just allow myself to feel a bit sad, I just don't stay in that place for too long. 

“Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.” -Elizabeth Gilbert

2 Look in the Mirror and Smile

Smiling releases neuropeptides, which help fight stress. Other feel-good hormo…

I had an interesting day today, I went to a hair loss clinic, my hair has never grown back properly since chemotherapy, it's grown back, but so fine and sparse.

And so I recounted to the consultant today everything that I have tried over the years, nothing really worked. And as always I got emotional when telling him how I felt, and how my oncologist had sent me to a psychiatrist when I cried in his office. My anguish was so painful, I may have felt like I was going crazy, I wasn't, I just want…

I believe that you cannot be fearful and grateful simultaneously. Gratitude is the antidote to fear.

As a breast cancer survivor, I don’t want to live in fear every day, When my treatment ended, for a long time I lived in fear or a recurrence. I had Inflammatory Breast Cancer, very rare and aggressive, with a high recurrence rate.

I trained as a therapist, using NLP and coaching, and time after time I heard that gratitude and fear cannot be felt at the same time. So I have trained myself to st…