Chapter 04 · Foundation
Who Gets Cancer — and Why
An excerpt from The Success of Mind-Body Therapy by Susan Silberstein, with reflections on how lifelong emotional patterns shape susceptibility.
“Researchers are beginning to recognize that emotional stress plays an enormous role in susceptibility to malignancy. The following characteristics of the ‘cancering person’ are often manifest throughout lifelong patterns.”
The seven patterns
Susan's observations, summarized — not as a verdict, but as a mirror to gently inquire of yourself.
- 1
Despair after significant loss
Often the loss of a person, role, or possession central to life — typically 6 to 18 months before diagnosis.
- 2
Selflessness
Continual catering to others' needs, guilt around one's own. Sometimes called Pathological Niceness Syndrome.
- 3
Suppressed negative emotion
Anger, resentment, rage, hostility — held inside as inappropriate to express.
- 4
Difficulty with deep relationships
Or a preponderance of negative, toxic relationships, especially within the family.
- 5
Inability to change one's conditions
A felt sense of no options, no control, no way out. Frustration that hardens into depression.
- 6
Feeling undeserving
Conscious or unconscious sense that one does not deserve happiness, success — or even life itself.
- 7
Illness as an avenue for attention
An unconscious holding of disease as a way to receive what could not otherwise be asked for.
Where the pattern shows up in the body
Emotional themes & their somatic echoes
Susan's informal observations after counseling thousands of patients — offered for reflection, not diagnosis.
Breast
Patterns of inadequate nurturing, often involving a male partner. Self-nurturing was usually missing in childhood and is repeated later in adult relationships.
Prostate
Mirrors breast cancer — lifelong patterns of unmet nurturing, often involving women, with suppressed anger or hurt around intimacy.
Colon
Suppressed anger and resentment — usually since childhood — and an inability to let go.
Kidney
Deep patterns of worry, anxiety, and fear of failure; child-like shame in the face of criticism.
Cervical / Uterine
Negative feelings about sexual experiences — guilt around assault, prostitution, unwanted pregnancies, or abortion.
Throat
Stifled self-expression and an inability to speak up for oneself.
Ovarian
Suppressed creativity throughout life, or unresolved mothering wounds.
Lung
Repressed grief and self-expression issues, often paired with frustration over inability to control circumstances.
Lymphoma
Almost always present in extremely stressful living or working situations — environments people long to escape.
Multiple Myeloma
Cancer of the bone marrow — the deepest place in the body. Tied to unresolved grief at the level of identity.
Reflection
What did you notice while reading this?
Use the lined space below in your printed workbook, or jot your response in a journal.