May 10, 20179 yr so given what happened when i fell into the board like Alice in Wonderland last time, and i had expected some temporary 'emergency' posts had been deleted... I would ask in advance this time, it is not an emergency by any means but rather an invitation... so i am going to start a thread on "the shame of smoking and lung cacer" on our support communities website, which is in my profile here.. so i have to ask wordpress how to implement a thread on a blog, but in the mean time i will write this here. i write in the private room so as not to make a lot of noise, well the march goes on folks i am hoping to get some of bassman's songs and posts up soon but i have no access to the site on which it is posted... and seem to have temporarily lost contact with john... i hope john is well we are both cancer people who quit smoking.
May 10, 20179 yr Author To anyone going through this experience: it's important to confront negative self-beliefs, particularly core beliefs. I found this kind of work quite helpful in just coping with all the stress of nicotine late withdrawal and a lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. https://drpatrickkeelan.com/addictions/identify-negative-core-beliefs/ i also want to say how appalling personally i find it when people are shamed on any kind of forum for smoking, particurly cancer patients... trust me the shame is already there and doing anything to create more of it, or to express public outrage, or public judgement.. well how harmful it is to that person after all the stenchiest place for stale cigarette smoke in canada now is literally the cancer ward at foothills hospital where people wait to receive chemotherapy. think about the puzzle and what it takes to really help people who are in dire straits and think about all the shame they face every day from other people in their lives.
May 11, 20179 yr Hello, On the mark, Your thread caught my eye. I had lost a great friend and mentor in 2015 to lung cancer (she never smoked) when she went to Sloan for treatment she ran into a few of the staff that looked at her with indignation assuming she was a smoker.Which is terrible, alcoholics and drug addicts get more sympathy as do many others with medical issues. My mother has been fighting 2 years with different types of lung cancer and yes (she was a smoker). I remember how sad she was when the second diagnosis was made she kept saying I should have quit. There is more than enough guilt when we know we did something to our self that is bad for us. ( I am a recovered drug addict) So we don't need anyone else to judge. We our own worst judges when it comes to these things in life. But we are human and have to forgive and move on. No one has the right to condemn or look down upon someone for something they do or for an illness they have. We are here to love one another (isn't that what we are taught) and to be kind to each other. Human beings suck sometimes but there are many good loving caring people out there. Sorry just needed to vent because what you say is true and sometimes we need to be reminded not to EVER condemn or judge as we are all in this world together.
May 11, 20179 yr ^^^ Couldn't agree more. I have enough problems steering my own life in a good direction. I'm certainly not in any position to judge what others do or don't do. Particularly passing judgement on someone who is in a position I have never been in before. We all think we know what we would do or how we would react in any given situation but do we really? It's been my experience that we don't until we have actually traveled down that road ourselves. Even then, the choices I make may not be the same choices you make so why would either of us judge one another?
May 11, 20179 yr No one has the right to condemn or look down upon someone for something they do Bull$hit. We all *absolutely* have that right and we ALL do it. The difference being: some of us are honest about it. Do something stupid? Sarge BOTH condemns AND looks down upon. “Judge, and be prepared to be judged ..." - there's more accountability that way. Easy Peasy
May 11, 20179 yr Author The point I was making was that public outrage, ridicule, public judgement and shaming is not going to help people with smoking related cancers that keep smoking. Whether one has the 'right' to do that depends on the place. It's also the case that the research funding per death for lung cancer is about 1/10 or so of that for breast cancer; this is one reason (the other being screening), that survival rates have increased for breast cancer in the last decades while almost no improvement has been seen for lung cancer, until very, very recently... but the lag is still there. it's because of the shame go into incognito mood and google images for "lung cancer people" and then google images for "breast cancer people" CREATIVE COMMONS LIC Quit Smoking and Cancer by quitsmokingsupportcommunity (qssc) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. my point is that everything i post as onthemark world wide has this license.
May 11, 20179 yr The point I was making was that public outrage, ridicule, public judgement and shaming is not going to help people with smoking related cancers that keep smoking. It's not about helping them, now is it? No one thinks they're helping with that. Easy Peasy
May 11, 20179 yr Author It's not about helping them, now is it? No one thinks they're helping with that. Easy Peasy it doesn't help, agreed. can't say what people always think when they do what they do. I've heard the phrase 'tough love' for this abusive blaming and shaming behavior aimed at cancer people struggling with their quits, I also don't take it for granted that forums to achieve a goal necessarily help those who use them. Also when the profit motive is involved, anything that generates clicks or traffic is good but that doesn't mean it helps the people who are making all the traffic happen...
May 12, 20179 yr Blaming and shaming is not "abusive". Blame is merely assigning responsibility appropriately. Shame is voluntary. It is easily dismissed with a simple "I am not ashamed and your opinion doesn't matter". Shame only happens if you let it. Easy Peasy
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