Does personality affect your outcome if you get cancer?

No, it doesn't.

There is a widespread belief in our society that people get, or, fail to recover from, cancer because of unresolved psychological issues or faulty approaches to handling thoughts and emotions.
Extensive research has shown no relationship between personality and likelihood of getting or recovering from cancer. But there is some contradictory research on the broader topic of emotions and illness:

1. Having a mental illness, like depression or anxiety, has been associated with increased physical illness and earlier death in a number of studies
2. Having 'trait positive affect' i.e. having a tendency to experience a lot of 'positive' emotions in your life - like joy, happiness, enthusiasm - is associated with longer life in some populations (e.g. community based older people) but not in others (e.g. people who were 'gifted' as children and had high levels of positive emotion were actually more likely to die before 65 than less happy gifted children)
3. Minimization of emotions has been found to be associated with longer survival in breast cancer patients but denial is associated with shorter survival.  The differences between these two approaches are important but subtle.
4. Emotions seem to pay a larger role in illnesses where inflammation is an important factor (e.g Heart Attacks, Diabetes, Infections) than in illness where inflammation isn't central (e.g.many cancers)
5. Research findings about one subset of an illness are sometimes different to another subset e.g. 'In breast cancer patients with a hormone (estrogen and/or progesterone) receptor positive status (biological factor), life events were related to recurrence of breast cancer, while such a relationship did not occur in women with hormone receptor negative breast cancer.' 
6. Some factors e.g.depression, perceived social support, anger/hostility, denial/avoidance) have shown both positive and negative relationships with survival from breast cancer.

So what are we to do in response to all this contradiction and uncertainty?  Here is my advice (for what it is worth!)

1. There is a consistent finding that social support is associated with emotional and physical health - so put effort into broadening and building important relationships.
2. Get clear about what a rich and meaningful life looks like to you and who you want to be in the world. Then behave in ways that move you towards living that life in each moment.  If you do develop a serious illness (we all will some day) you can look back on a life well-lived.
3. If you have a loved one with a serious illness and feel an urge to tell them how they should be handling their emotions
• Accept that different people have different ways of coping with challenges - something that works for you may not be right for them.
• Know that the messages our society gives about how 'unresolved psychological issues' cause illness, create feelings of guilt in people living with serious illness - do you want to add to that burden of guilt?
• Be aware that your urge may be more about dealing with your own distress than genuinely helping them.
• Remember the link between social support and health - the most important help you can give your loved one is to show them that you care about them.

Dating Over 40

I need to preface this post with

1. A clear statement that I am not advocating that all single people over 40 should be looking for a partner, and, 

 2. An apology for the title of the book I am going to draw on - 'Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others'- the premise behind this book and it's title are just awful - however it does contain some really interesting ideas that I haven't come across elsewhere.
3. A request that you hold the information in this post lightly.  This information is based on extensive market research by John Molloy - which is different to peer reviewed research.

Molloy and his colleagues interviewed couples as they left the Marriage Registry Office.  Some of his findings in the chapter on 'Dating over 40' are particularly interesting.  I think they may apply equally to women and men - so I have adapted it accordingly. 

Molloy states:

The more  potential partners you meet, the more likely you are to meet someone who suits you. (Okay, so that one isn't exactly rocket science!)

Men and women over 40 are more interested in a partner who ‘looks after themselves’ than physical attractiveness.

Being congenial, easy to get on with, relaxed, kind and showing you care about your partner are highly valued. 

The over 40's aren't interested in subtle, hard to read messages from potential partners, they like people to express their feelings clearly.
People over 40 are often ‘gun shy’ because they have been hurt in previous relationships. So, they may be wary, perhaps even cynical.  If you really like someone, you need to clearly tell them and be prepared to repeat the message over and over. (However, don't stalk them! If they tell you clearly they aren't interested, accept it!)

Previous experiences of rejection and disappointment mean that people are often very stressed during dates - they will need a few dates before they relax and are able to be themselves – so it is wise to take a little longer before making a decision about someone than you would have done when you were 20.

Clubs and activities can be a great place to meet other singles but don't keep moving from one activity to another – once you find a group/activity you like, try to go regularly – it takes months to build relationships.

Have single friends of the opposite gender.

Although it is true that older men do tend to date younger women, they actually tend to marry women close to them in age, who have similar values and interests.


I would be really interested in hearing your comments on this - does this fit with your experience?

If married people are healthier, should single people be desperately looking for a partner?

Not necessarily.


A recent lab study measuring hormonal responses to stress found that "single and unpaired individuals are more responsive to psychological stress than married individuals, a finding consistent with a growing body of evidence showing that marriage and social support can buffer against stress"

Which is all well and good and aligns with a lot of research that shows that, on average, married people are healthier than single people.


The problem with this type of finding is that it can lead people who are currently single to feel helpless.  Getting married isn't really in our control, so being told that you would be happier, less stressed and healthier if you were married can feel a bit like being told that you would be happier if you were a best selling author - possibly true but not really helpful advice, especially if you don't like writing or going on speaking tours.


Another approach is to dig a little deeper. Another study quoted in New York Magazine found, 'married people were indeed healthier—if they weren’t lonely in their marriages. If they were, the health benefits were so negligible the researchers considered them statistically insignificant.' 

The New York Magazine  article goes on to quote Harvard epidemiologist, Lisa Berkman: “friends substitute perfectly well for family...Any one connection doesn’t really protect you. You need relationships that provide love and intimacy and you need relationships that help you feel like you’re participating in society in some way.”

Now this is more helpful - developing meaningful friendships, participating in your community - this is much more in our control.

Mindful Listening

‘to be quiet and still for each other, to regard each other with attention, patience and openness...to provide moments of full attention, engagement and connection’

Building Confidence Through Doing Rather Than Thinking

My 18 year old son, Patrick, just sent me this email:

Best way to combat feelings of lack of confidence/anxiety? - Get Stuff Done

He had been feeling anxious about achieving his goal of being an amazing (and commercially viable) portrait photographer and then decided to take some actions to move bit by bit towards his goal - and he noticed that as he took each action he felt a little more confident.

Many of us respond to anxiety by avoiding the anxiety provoking situation.  We can get caught into waiting until we feel confident before we take action. That is fine if the situation that scares us is bungy jumping - but what if it is the situation is actually important to us? It could be that we need to take a risk in order to develop our career; ask someone on a date; or build a new friendship.

Research on self-efficacy suggests that Patrick is right.  We build confidence through experiences of being successful (either at that task or something similar).

So if you want to build your confidence - focus less on controlling what you think and feel and more on structuring the task so that you are likely to be successful.  Breaking the task into manageable steps that are each a little harder than the last but not so hard that you are unlikely to succeed.

Now I want to stress here that even when you have done something successfully in the past, you will have times when your mind seems intent on knocking your confidence.  'It was a fluke last time, this time you will stuff it up'.   Unfortunately this is a natural human tendency - hold these thoughts lightly and:

Get Stuff Done

Emotion Differentiation as Resilience Against Excessive Alcohol Use — Psychological Science

Emotion Differentiation as Resilience Against Excessive Alcohol Use — Psychological Science

'Some people are adept at using discrete emotion categories (anxious, angry, sad) to capture their felt experience; other people merely communicate how good or bad they feel. We theorized that people who are better at describing their emotions might be less likely to self-medicate with alcohol. During a 3-week period, 106 underage social drinkers used handheld computers to self-monitor alcohol intake. From participants’ reported experiences during random prompts, we created an individual difference measure of emotion differentiation. Results from a 30-day timeline follow-back revealed that people with intense negative emotions consumed less alcohol if they were better at describing emotions and less reliant on global descriptions.'

Todd Kashdan is doing some fantastic research.  This study suggests that if we don't want our kids to binge drink in response to painful emotions then we need to teach them to be able to accurately name what they are feeling. 

Digging into that  - what exactly do we need to teach them?

1. To be good at getting present with themselves - dropping in on themselves and noticing their thoughts and feelings
2. To have a diverse emotion vocabulary - not just angry but also frustrated, irritated, bored, furious, resentful, bitter, exasperated, indignant, offended - and to know the subtle differences between these feelings

And how do we teach it:

1. Be open and curious and present with them - ask them about how they are feeling and help them tease it out, so they get good at being open and curious about their emotions
2. Model appropriate expression of painful emotions. Don't just pretend that everything is OK.  When you feel painful emotions talk it through with them - what you feel and what triggered the feeling
3. Model appropriate responses to painful emotions - show them that we don't have to act out or suppress painful emotions. We can feel the emotion, be compassionate to ourselves and  pause before we choose actions based on what is important to us.

Love and Pain

As Seen on DB drew my attention to this heart wrenching video of US soldiers surprising their loved ones.



Watching it is bitter sweet - so happy for them to be reunited with their loved ones and share their joy but in so many faces you can also see the pain of having worried so much about a loved one in danger.

It made me sad - when will we humans be able to put away our battle-dress and live in peace?

The Benefits of Self-compassion - from wonderful Wikipedia

Self-compassion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main components - self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.^[1]

• Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
• Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.
• Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one's negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.^[2] Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be "over-identified" with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reactions.^[3] This latter type of response involves narrowly focusing and ruminating on one's negative emotions.^[4]

Much of the research conducted on self-compassion so far has used the Self-Compassion Scale^[1], which measures the degree to which individuals display self-kindness against self-judgment, common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness versus over-identification. Research indicates that self-compassionate individuals experience greater psychological health than those who lack self-compassion. For example, self-compassion is positively associated with life-satisfaction, wisdom, happiness, optimism, curiosity, learning goals, social connectedness, personal responsibility, and emotional resilience. At the same time, it is negatively associated with self-criticism, depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression, perfectionism, and disordered eating attitudes ^{[1][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Although psychologists extolled the benefits of self-esteem for many years, recent research has exposed costs associated with the pursuit of high self-esteem^[11], including narcissism^[12], distorted self-perceptions^[13], contingent and/or unstable self-worth^[14], as well as anger and violence toward those who threaten the ego.^[15]

It appears that self-compassion offers the same mental health benefits as self-esteem, but with fewer of its drawbacks such as narcissism, ego-defensive anger, inaccurate self-perceptions, self-worth contingency, or social comparison.^[7][16]'

References

1. ^ ^a b c Neff, K. D. (2003a). The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2, 223-250.
2. ^ Brown, K. W. & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822-848.
3. ^ Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., Segal, Z. V. Abbey, S., Speca, M., Velting, D. Devins, G. (2004). Mindfulness: A Proposed Operational Definition.Clinical Psychology Science and Practice, 11, 191-206.
4. ^ Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100, 569-582.
5. ^ Adams, C. E., & Leary, M. R. (in press). Promoting Self-compassionate Attitudes toward Eating Among Restrictive and Guilty Eaters. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
6. ^ Gilbert, & Irons, 2005
7. ^ ^a b Leary, M. R., Tate, E. B., Adams, C. E., Allen, A. B., & Hancock, J. (2007). Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: The implications of treating oneself kindly.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 887-904.
8. ^ Neff, K. D., Hseih, Y., & Dejitthirat, K. (2005). Self-compassion, achievement goals, and coping with academic failure. Self and Identity, 4, 263-287.
9. ^ Neff, K. D., Kirkpatrick, K. & Rude, S. S. (2007). Self-compassion and its link to adaptive psychological functioning. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 139-154.
10. ^ Neff, K. D., & Rude, S. S., & Kirkpatrick, K. (2007). An examination of self-compassion in relation to positive psychological functioning and personality traits. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 908-916
11. ^ Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 392-414.
12. ^ Bushman, B. J. & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 219-229.
13. ^ Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.
14. ^ Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108, 593-623.
15. ^ Baumeister, R. F., Smart, L., & Boden, J. M. (1996). Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review. 103, 5-33.
16. ^ Neff, K. D & Vonk, R. (submitted). Self-compassion versus self-esteem: Two different ways of relating to oneself. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Being Single

When you are single, you get a lot of well meaning people telling you what you should do.  A common piece of advice is – 'You need to get comfortable being alone before you start dating again'.   

When I am single, I completely ignore this advice. I do a lot of dating. I fall in and out of lust and love. I am on an emotional roller coaster.  I love the opportunity to test drive lots of different potential partners. And I know that, for some people, that approach would be neither helpful nor healthy.

What I have come to is this – you can do the same activity for completely different reasons. Rather than relying on others to tell you if it is right or wrong (assuming it is legal!) instead ask yourself the question:

Is doing this moving me towards the life I want, a life that is rich and meaningful, or, am I running away from painful thoughts and feelings?

On 22 August I am running a workshop (with the wonderful Joan Wilson-Jones) at The Relaxation Centre of Queensland titled 'Life, Love and Laughter when Single and Over 40'. If you are interested in coming along, call them on 07 3856 3733.  

Trying Not to Think About Smoking Leads to Increased Smoking

Unbound MEDLINE | I Suppress, Therefore I Smoke: Effects of Thought Suppression on Smoking Behavior. Journal article abstract

We know that trying not to think about something actually makes us think about it more.  Try not to think about a pink elephant.....how are you going?  You might notice that it takes effort to not think about something and that, in order to check how you are going in not thinking about the pink elephant, you have to keep asking yourself the question 'Have I thought about a pink elephant recently - D'oh!'


This study explored this concept of thought suppression with a group of smokers - some were asked to try to suppress thoughts of smoking and others were asked to express thoughts about smoking.  The thought suppression group initially smoked less but after a week they ended up smoking more. It is this initial success that leads us to believe that suppressing thoughts works in controlling our behaviour.


Even more importantly the more a smoker has a general tendency to suppress thoughts, the more times they have unsuccessfully tried to quit smoking.


Trying to control our thoughts takes emotional energy that could be better used to direct our behaviour towards our valued goals.   If we are able to let go of the idea that our thoughts are in charge of our actions, then we can let our thoughts do what they want.  We can choose which thoughts we are going to respond to with actions that will, step by step, create the life we truly want. Other thoughts we can just notice with compassion.

More on Choosing a Suitable Partner

I am teaching recruitment and selection at Uni this semester.  My students are learning that unstructured interviews are a very bad way to assess whether someone will do well in a job.  Work sample tests (where the candidate does tasks similar to those required in the role) are much better at predicting success.  This is useful information when selecting a potential partner!

When you are deciding whether you will date someone, pay careful attention to what they do rather than what they say they do. Don't get too caught up 'interviewing' them -some people are really good at telling the right story but turn out to be disappointing partners and others interview poorly but are loving and kind.  For example, don't accept that your potential partner is a good listener because he tells you he is - notice if he is actually listening!

Are You Willing to Pay the Price of Admission for Your Life?

In order to live a life that is drenched in passion and purpose you have to be willing to feel pain.

If you love deeply, at some point you will be hurt.
If you open up enough to be vulnerable, at some point you will feel anxious.
If you try to make a positive difference to the lives of the people around you, at some point you will get it wrong and feel guilty or embarrassed or disappointed in yourself.
If you try to do something new, at some point it won't work out the way you hoped it would.
If you try to communicate honestly, at some point someone won't like what you say and will get hurt or angry.

If we let the fear of pain make our choices, we end up frightened and lonely or bored and dessicated.
Are you willing to pay the price of admission for your life?

More Benefits of Journalling

King (2001) The health benefits of writing about life goals - GenerallyThinking Psychology Research Database

In this study, undergraduate students were asked to write for 20 minutes a day, for 4 days, on either:  

• their most traumatic life event
• their best possible future self
• both of the above
• a neutral topic (the control group)

Writing about trauma was initially upsetting whereas writing about their 'best possible self' lifted feelings of well being.  The researchers collected health centre data for the students for 5 months.  The authors found that:

'writing about trauma, one’s best possible self, or both were associated with decreased illness compared with controls.'

I am a big fan of journalling.  This study suggests that it has significant health benefits.  There is a growing body of research suggesting that identifying our values (who we want to be in the world, what we want our life to stand for or, in this case, exploring what our 'best possible future self' would be like) is good for our emotional and physical well being.


This study also suggests that although writing about a traumatic memory is painful, it is also good for our health.    Writing about a trauma helps us to look at the memory from a distance, it helps us to see when we are caught in grinding the same thoughts over and over without moving forward, it can help us to create a coherent story of the event with a sense of meaning.  It can also help us make peace with those memories so they have less power to 'hook' us.

Three Questions That Could Change Your Life

Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, teaches his clients to repeatedly check in with themselves using three questions.

Am I:

1. Moving towards my values or away from my values (doing what matters – or not?)

2. Allowing private experience (thoughts, memories, emotions) or avoiding private experience (opening up – or not?)

3. Connected with the ‘here and now’ or disconnected from the ‘here and now’ (being present – or not?)

These questions are based on ACT, an evidence based approach that helps people to build rich and meaningful lives.

Research has found that: 

• Identifying and living by our values has a whole host of benefits
• Trying to control our thoughts and emotions is often counter-productive and can lessen meaning and joy
• Being present and 'mindful' builds well being

Russ's three questions are a simple and helpful way to check in on ourselves throughout the day - if you did it regularly every day, it might just change your life!

People Assume It’s You, Not The Situation

The 'fundamental attribution error' is a psychology term used to describe how we often make mistakes in interpreting why people have done something.

'People have a tendency to give personality based explanations for other peoples behavior more weight than situational factors. ....(But) people tend to explain their OWN behavior to situational factors more than personality factors.'

An example of this is, if I see you shout at your 4 year old in the shopping centre I am likely to conclude that you are mean, angry and impatient but if I shout at my four year old I know that it is because I am sleep-deprived, running late and at the end of my tether because he keeps wandering off and then hiding from me.




Susan Weinschenk says that knowing about the fundamental attribution error doesn't seem to stop us from continuing to make it. Which is sort of reassuring to me because I repeatedly notice myself doing it!  She suggests we:

'try and build in ways to cross-check your own biases. If your work requires you to make a lot of decisions about why people are doing what they are doing, you might want to stop before acting on your decisions and ask yourself, “Am I making a Fundamental Attribution Error?”

My approach is to build some flexibility into my interpretation of the event by brainstorming as many different explanations as I can for why the person might act that way.