What Kind of Role Do Emotions Play in Cancer?
In this episode Dr Kevin Conners talks with Megan Von Zyl, PhD Hon, MA, NTP of Cancer Peace University about one of the most important, and often missed, areas to address in sickness and disease: understanding emotions and core beliefs.
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Transcript
Dr. Conners
Hello everybody. This is Dr. Kevin Conners today. Conners Clinic live. We have a great guest. Megan Van Zyl is her name. She’s not a doctor. She has several degrees in nutrition, nutritional counseling, spiritual counseling. She’s been a friend of our clinic for about a decade I think now. She works on the nutritional side of dealing with people with cancer and serious disease, but even more so, the spiritual, emotional side. And that is so critical. If you’re not dealing with that spiritual peace, I think you’re missing a major piece if not the major piece of life right there. So you’re going to really love this episode with Megan. And again, I hope you enjoy this interview. Please make sure you hit like, but if you’re on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and hit that little alert button so you don’t miss any further episodes. Join me right now with Megan.
Hello everybody. This is Dr. Conners again, and I’m here with a good friend of mine that I’ve known for, gosh, Meg, how many years do we go back? Seven, eight, nine?
Megan Van Zyl
Yeah, at least seven, 2012. I think.
Dr. Conners
Megan Van Zyl, she is a nutritionist, really specializes in helping people with cancer nutritionally and spiritually. And that’s really what we want to talk about today. And Meg, give us first before we get started, kind of give a plug for your website.
Megan Van Zyl
Sure. So I’m the owner and CEO of Cancer Peace University. And our goal at Cancer Peace University is to set people free from the fear of cancer. And our website is CancerPeaceUniversity.com
Dr. Conners
Yeah, you’ve helped many of our patients just deal with that emotional side. So let’s jump into it with some questions about that. What’s really the role of beliefs, thoughts, emotions, if somebody has this grave diagnosis, if it’s cancer or some other disease?
Megan Van Zyl
Yes, there’s so many layers to emotions, thought patterns and beliefs when someone is diagnosed. First of all, you have the diagnosis itself, can trigger a lot of fear. It can actually trigger the five stages of grieving with denial, anger, sadness and depression. And it’s hard to accept a diagnosis itself. But then you also have the thought patterns and emotional patterns that are coming out of something called core beliefs. And the core beliefs really are the underlying process of why someone has the same emotional patterns and thought patterns over and over again in their daily life.
Dr. Conners
So explain what a core belief would be.
Megan Van Zyl
Sure. So some of you Pixar fans, people that watch Pixar movies might be familiar with Inside Out and there’s a character,
Dr. Conners
Core memories, right?
Megan Van Zyl
Yeah, the core memories, but then they start falling when she has a trauma. So the Inside Out movie is pretty accurate because those core memories are the places where core beliefs are stored. So your subconscious mind will actually store your core beliefs that are developed from the womb to seven years of age. And essentially those core beliefs are your worldview of how you view the world and its conclusions that you’ve come to based on your experiences. So it’s subjective. So someone can have a very small incident occur and they can come to a major conclusion because of this memory, because of how they process the situation. And this can cause a, I call it a maladaptive core belief that is stored in your subconscious mind. That will basically be how you interpret your reality and how you process everything that happens in your life. In present day.
Dr. Conners
You’ll process circumstances differently based upon, okay, if I was abused as a three year old, you know, so my trust for adults, trusting any situation is not there. So give me some examples that you’d have or you’d see.
Megan Van Zyl
Yeah. And so that’s a great example because, of course, any major trauma will be processed as a maladaptive core belief from childhood. And it is a protective mechanism too because a child can’t process emotionally a trauma and many times the body will store that memory in the trauma, in the subconscious mind, so that when you’re an adult, you can process the trauma. However, with cancer, these maladaptive core beliefs can be a major trauma that is, it’s obvious, but it can be something very subtle. And I’ll share an example of a recent client. A recent client of mine was going through, one of my modules on “stress is an opinion core beliefs and cancer,” which is part of the curriculum of Cancer Peace University. And as he was going through it, he remembered a memory when he was in third grade and this memory was just a small memory of trying to connect with a girl in his third grade class that he had a crush on. And he was trying to impress her and like be all smooth and funny. But she totally rejected him and didn’t think he was funny and, and he felt so bad. He was so sad about it for, he said he remembers being sad about it for weeks and he remembers just internalizing that and that core belief of being misunderstood or feeling rejected caused him to change how he interacted with people. And he became very careful to not be rejected again. So he started to be a people pleaser. He started to change how he would respond and he tried to avoid conflict and relationships because he didn’t ever want to feel that way again.
Dr. Conners
Wow. You could probably put a lot of people into that, almost the exact same category right there. So what happens from the physical standpoint and as far as disease of someone who is living their life as a people pleaser, afraid to offend anybody or afraid, very afraid to get rejected again, that fear of rejection is a huge thing for a lot of people. What can come out as a disease process with that? How does that relate to cancer?
Megan Van Zyl
Exactly. That’s a great question. And so a new area of research is epigenetics. So epigenetics means upon the genes. So our thought patterns, our emotions, nutrition, our beliefs can all trigger an epigenetic response in the body, which simply means that it can cause oncogenes to express or to silence or mutate health protective DNA like P 53 and when that occurs, that can cause a disease process by itself. But the emotions coming from the core beliefs, such as fear, fear actually can cause over 30 different changes to hormones and neurotransmitter and over 1400 different changes in the stress response system and changes on the biological level that actually cause a very toxic internal environment that causes cells to change and really leads to a cascade of effects that can actually damage your mitochondria.
Dr. Conners
So one could probably say, I mean, I’ve said for years that emotions are at least a piece of every disease. And so how do you go about changing them? So it’s like with this client that you had, he recognized this incident in third grade that it created a cascade of the way he has dealt with, you know, people since then. How does he go about making changes in that to help his current disease process?
Megan Van Zyl
Sure. So that’s a great question. And a lot of addressing these core beliefs requires deep thinking, introspection, and really connecting with an understanding of your own emotional patterns, thought patterns. Your brain actually has something called the default mode network. Your default mode network is actually when you’re engaged in deep thinking, it changes the structure of your brain. But when you engage the default mode network enough through meditation, journaling, deep thinking about your life and about events or memories or emotional patterns, this can actually cause a subconscious brain to give your conscious brain memories that you may not be aware of. And I have an example from my own life that might help. When I was in college, I just noticed a trend where I could cry and become vulnerable with my guy friends. But with women, I just could never be vulnerable and I couldn’t cry. And I just started with a question. Sometimes we have to ask our subconscious mind, what is it that allowed cancer to develop in my body and why is my body having this disease process on the emotional, spiritual side? And a lot of times the subconscious mind wants to give us the answer. So for me with action, why can I be vulnerable with my guy friends, but not women? I was engaging in a process of introspection where I would journal, I would journal all my thoughts, I would write down all my thoughts and my emotions. I actually would sit in Starbucks listening to Enya in one of the chairs and I’d be like crying in the corner of Starbucks. And I would write down all of everything without judgment, all my thoughts and emotions. And eventually I would hit a critical point where I would pinpoint exactly how I felt and why I felt that way. And that type of deep thinking connects us to our subconscious brain. And through that process of deep thinking, there I gained access to a memory that I wasn’t aware of. And in that memory, I was in second grade and I was crying and vulnerable in front of an adult, a woman in my life. And I ended up shutting down. And because I didn’t feel validated, I didn’t feel, in that moment, the acceptance and the love I needed. So I stopped, I shut down and I decided never to cry in front of women ever again. And that has impacted me for 12 plus years.
Dr. Conners
Oh boy. Well, and I’m sure so many people have very similar situations like that that impact them. But you, I think you touched on a very important thing with anybody with any disease is that the ability to do, you call deep thinking being introspective enough, ask the question. It’s easy when we get a serious diagnosis that we want to be a victim because that’s what the world tells us to be. Oh, you have cancer. Oh my gosh, I have cancer. I the victim of this disease. Instead of saying, okay, this is what it is, is there something in my life that has maybe not been the sole cause, but has participated in, me expressing this disease right now? And when we’re afraid to ask those deep questions, I think we miss a lot and I think you’d agree with that because we’re not dealing with that emotional piece.
Megan Van Zyl
Yes.
Dr. Conners
So, you help people kind of bring that out. And I think your Cancer Peace University really helps uncover it like it did for that gentleman going through that, is that right?
Megan Van Zyl
Yes. So that’s one of our goals because Japanese research has shown and discovered that spontaneous remission from cancer occurs within 24 hours of a profound internal transformation. And our goal with our clients at Cancer Peace University is profound internal transformation. Because talk therapy, you can talk about a trauma all day, every day and nothing changes because you’re just reliving it over and over again and you’re not engaging in a process that will allow for profound internal transformation, which is necessary for spontaneous remission. And you can also do positive thinking. You can think of positive things all day, every day, and never impact your core beliefs.
Dr. Conners
Yeah. All right, we need to talk more about this. Don’t we? Because impacting the core beliefs, you know, that’s what people want is that profound transformation. And that’s what you could go to a freudian psychologist and talk about your problems and your childhood for, you know, endless hours. But, there are some key roots to that profound inner transformation. Your core belief change. And I want to get at the roots of that. So could I have you back again? Let’s go over that and kind of lay out a dialogue and maybe put up some charts so people could follow us. Thanks so much Meg. Our time is up for this session, but let’s schedule another one soon, and let’s get at some details of how to make those changes. I appreciate you. Let’s talk about your website one more time for us.
Megan Van Zyl
Yes, the website is CancerPeaceUniversity.com and my email is cancerpeaceuniversity@gmail.com.
Dr. Conners
Thanks again Meg.
Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.
