Hypnotherapy and Cancer Care: Tending the Fear That Comes with the Illness

One patient with cancer once said that the hardest part was not the chemotherapy itself. It was the night before every session — lying awake, heart racing, feeling nauseated before any drug had been given at all.

Symptoms of this kind are very common among people with cancer. The body responds before the treatment has even begun, because the brain has learned to associate a place, a smell, or even the thought of treatment with suffering it has already been through.

Let us be as clear as possible at the outset: hypnotherapy is not used to treat cancer. It cannot destroy cancer cells, and it cannot replace any medical treatment whatsoever.

What it can do is tend to the part that medical treatment often cannot fully reach — the suffering that comes with having cancer, in the body and in the mind alike.

Fear is a burden too

A diagnosis of cancer changes a life in an instant. The fear, the anxiety, and the stress that follow weigh no less heavily than the physical symptoms. And importantly, they do not resolve on their own as treatment proceeds. Sometimes they accumulate.

One of the most common difficulties is anticipatory nausea before chemotherapy — a reaction the brain has learned from previous experience. The body begins to feel sick before the needle is even in sight; simply walking into the hospital, or catching a familiar smell, is enough to bring the taste of it into the throat. It is a particularly clear example of how tightly mind and body are bound together.

So what can hypnotherapy help with?

The evidence here is reasonably substantial. Research has found that hypnosis can help reduce nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy in both adults and children — particularly anticipatory nausea, which is difficult to treat with standard anti-emetic medication.

On pain, a study in patients with advanced cancer with bone metastases — a severely painful condition — found that the group receiving hypnotherapy had clearly lower pain levels than the group receiving usual care.

Fatigue during radiotherapy is another common difficulty. Research in breast cancer patients undergoing radiation found that the group receiving hypnosis combined with CBT showed no increase in fatigue across the course of treatment, while the group receiving no therapy showed a significant increase.

And in the pre-operative period, a study using brief hypnosis sessions before breast cancer surgery found that hypnotherapy helped reduce pain, nausea, fatigue, and discomfort afterward, as well as reducing the quantity of anesthetic required.

On the available evidence, hypnotherapy is therefore used as supportive care at several points along the cancer treatment path: easing anxiety and distress before procedures, managing pain both acute and chronic, reducing chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting, supporting better sleep, and helping a person feel more involved in — and more in control of — their own experience of treatment.

Respected medical bodies including the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recognize hypnotherapy as an evidence-supported complementary approach for people with cancer.

Hope can be practiced too

Beyond managing physical symptoms, one thing hypnotherapy works well with is tending the psychological state over the long course of treatment. Cancer is not something faced once. It is a long journey, and hopelessness, exhaustion, or discouragement arise naturally along the way.

One study followed cancer patients who took part in continuous supportive-expressive group therapy over a year. That group experienced days on which positive emotion outweighed negative on 85% of days, compared with around 43% in the group who did not take part. It reflects something real: that sustained care for the mind can change the quality of each day a person has to meet.

Hypnotherapy does not tell a patient to think positively in any superficial sense. It helps the mind reach a genuine steadiness and a genuine hope — and research has found that a patient's positive expectations before treatment are directly associated with reduced pain and reduced fatigue afterward.

When health requires changing habits the heart does not want to change

A great many people with cancer are advised to change how they eat and how they live, in order to support their treatment and reduce the risk of recurrence — reducing sugar, reducing red meat, or adjusting other aspects of daily life. But knowing what one should do and actually doing it are different things, particularly when the mind is already exhausted from coping with illness.

Hypnotherapy is therefore used in helping people change these behaviors. Rather than relying on forcing oneself, or on the pressure of fear — which rarely lasts long before things return to how they were — working with the subconscious can adjust how a person feels about those foods and behaviors directly: easing a craving for sweet things that had been strong, increasing genuine satisfaction in food that is good for them, or building a sense of attachment to caring for their own body that does not require force.

When change does not come from compelling oneself but from the mind genuinely beginning to feel differently, people tend to maintain the new behavior for longer — and to do so without feeling punished, or deprived of something.

To emphasize once more: hypnotherapy is not a treatment for cancer. It is not an alternative to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, or any treatment a specialist recommends. It is what is called supportive care — working alongside primary treatment, to help a person through a difficult path with better quality of life.

Psychological suffering during cancer treatment is not a small matter to be endured. It is another part of care that deserves attention no less than treatment of the body.

If the harder part is pain rather than fear, “Can Hypnosis Genuinely Reduce Pain” covers what can and cannot be helped. And when treatment is no longer aimed at a cure, “Palliative Care: When Treatment Does Not Mean a Cure” speaks to that stage.