Amusing article (second below) written by a cancer patient who's smart enough to know that superstitious practices on his part aren't going to impact his cancer treatments in any way, but who at the same time gets a kind of satisfaction out of pretending that they do.
He tell us:
"Although believing in superstitions can have negative effects — you don’t try as hard to win a soccer game because you couldn’t find your lucky socks, for example — it provides an odd and satisfying bit of comfort in the stressful situations faced by cancer patients."
"Mind tricks like my insistence on wearing the same things is understandable; we want to have an effect on an uncontrollable situation."
"I’m not advocating treatment based on sock choices. It is just that sometimes our brains need a rest from fighting to find ways to control the cancer anxiety. Rationally, I know that my striped socks are not going to influence how my body responds to anything; I know that CT scanner is going to find what it finds regardless of what I have on underneath the gown. But that irrational part of my brain finds a way to let go of a little piece of the fear when I follow a ritual that has “worked” in the past."
"I want the illusion of control, even knowing it is just an illusion. So I’ve got my superstitions."No harm done, I guess, in taking such an attitude. For some it may even provide a useful psychological tool for managing one's treatment stress.
And that's not even getting into the superstitions that even some medical people sometimes may have, something we might not readily realize:
https://lifeofamedstudent.com/2017/06/30/superstition-in-medicine/An article which, among other things, tells us:
"Nothing can make a medical staff gasp quicker than the famous “it sure is quiet in here tonight” line… Medical students are known for their crazy pre-exam rituals… Surgeons have the lucky skull-cap…. ER docs swear by the full moon… Certain residents are known as “black clouds” on the service…. And Friday the 13th isn’t good for anyone!" (BTW, The reference to the "full moon" in the above quote is an excellent example of a superstitious conclusion resulting from observing a recurring event. Namely that, supposedly, an influx of patients into hospitals will occur during a full moon. But it is one that has an extraordinarily simple, and not even medical, explanation. Namely, what happens on a night when there is
not a full moon? Well, it's dark outside. And people tend to stay home. And what happens on a night when there
is a full moon? Well, there's a lot more light out there. And that increase in light means that more people are likely to be out and about
, doing things. But just by more of them being out on a better-lit full moon night, they are thus more likely to get into accidents, injure themselves and so forth, so that hospitals do indeed see an increase in patient count on full moon nights, simply because more people are out due to all that extra light).
It's also true, as one psychology site I visited remarked, that a person's
strong belief that a superstition is true can, of itself, cause it to appear to be so. That is because that strong believe can result in the release of hormones and such within the person that then produce physical effects consistent with what the superstition is supposed to cause. It's as if the person subconsciously
wills the superstition to become true, and that his force of will seems to make it so.
So it's complicated. But even if they're fantasy, maybe superstitions still really do perform a little good for some in that they make it possible to, as a quote above mentions, "let go of a little piece of the fear "
So, as irrational as it is, do you yourself have any superstitions, even petty ones, that you have found to be helpful along the cancer journey? Even if only for the slight amusement that they may provide? If so, have some fun and post about
them below, as well as checking one of the boxes in the above survey.
Who knows? Maybe someone who learns of your superstitions may decide to adopt one or more of them as his own!
https://www.curetoday.com/view/superstitious-behavior-in-the-face-of-cancer