Why war cancer language might be harming us - Rethinking cancer language: a mini-series, Part 2

What if we let go of war metaphors and began speaking about cancer in ways that invite restoration and balance?

‘She beat cancer.’ ‘The fight against cancer.’ ‘Volunteers help beat cancer.’ ‘He is determined to fight.’ ‘Conquering the disease.’ ‘He lost the battle.’ ‘She is a cancer warrior.’

The medical establishment has turned cancer into a war zone, with patients cast as soldiers fighting and battling a disease. This language is not accidental: it stems from President Nixon’s 1971 declaration of the war on cancer, which framed our approach as a campaign to be won through aggressive intervention.

But this framework also created something deeply problematic: a mindset that sees the body as a battlefield rather than an intelligent system seeking balance.

From fundraising campaigns to the words of well-meaning friends, charities and cancer ambassadors, the war metaphor has become so embedded in our cancer discourse that we rarely pause to ask: does it actually serve healing?

What if this framework is not just misleading, but actively harmful?

When fighting feels empowering

I understand why battle language resonates with many when facing cancer. A cancer diagnosis can feel like an attack on everything we thought we knew about our bodies and our futures. The language of fighting back, of not surrendering, of battling for our lives, can feel empowering when everything else feels out of control.

There is something deeply human about wanting to fight when we feel threatened. The warrior mentality can provide structure and purpose during a time that otherwise feels chaotic and frightening. It is no wonder that both patients and the medical establishment have embraced this framework.

How the war mentality works against healing

Researchers are beginning to uncover the hidden costs of this war framing. At the University of Southern California (USC), Dr. Sunita Puri’s team found that battle language can leave patients reluctant to discuss palliative care, because choosing comfort feels like surrender.

At the University of Michigan, studies showed that exposure to combat metaphors actually reduced people’s willingness to engage in prevention behaviours like eating less red meat or cutting back on alcohol. And research from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, revealed a more troubling pattern: people primed with battle metaphors were more likely to adopt fatalistic beliefs, such as ‘If someone is meant to get cancer, they’ll get it no matter what.’

Meanwhile, linguist Elena Semino has shown how this language can turn unsuccessful treatment into a personal failure. Patients who ‘lose the battle’ often carry guilt, as though they did not fight hard enough, when in reality outcomes depend on countless factors beyond anyone’s control.

Why conflict isn’t the path to healing

These findings are valuable, but they largely remain within the domains of communication and patient psychology. My own experience revealed something deeper: war language does not just shape how we talk about cancer, it actively undermines the body’s natural capacity to heal.

When we frame cancer as an enemy, we cast our bodies as battlefields instead of as intelligent systems striving for balance. The fight becomes about destruction rather than restoration. We stop asking essential questions: What is my body trying to communicate? What patterns in my life are contributing to illness? And instead, we rush into combat with ourselves.

Language matters for recovery

Recognising these problems, many healthcare professionals and organisations are now suggesting alternatives. Instead of war language, they recommend metaphors of a journey, language that research shows is less likely to lead to guilt or feelings of failure, and is more empowering for patients.

But I came to see an even more fundamental issue. When we treat cancer as an enemy, we miss the body’s deeper message. Illness may arise from unresolved emotional patterns, toxic relationships, or chronic stress. War language keeps us from listening to those signals. It conditions us to attack, when healing often requires paying attention, creating balance, and supporting restoration.

When the medical establishment frames the body as a battlefield, we inherit a relationship of conflict with the very system we are trying to heal. The focus becomes cutting, burning, and poisoning, rather than working with the body to restore the conditions where natural healing can occur.

Cancer, in this view, is not the enemy at all. It is the messenger.

Listening to the body’s message

In my own experience, the most profound healing began not when I was fighting my body, but when I started listening to what it was trying to communicate.

Cancer did not feel like an external enemy attacking me. It felt more like my body’s way of saying that something in my life needed urgent attention. The chronic stress from toxic relationships, the emotional trauma I had been ignoring, the patterns that kept me in survival mode, these seemed far more relevant to my healing than any battle strategy.

When I shifted from fighting cancer to supporting my body’s natural healing capacity, everything changed. Instead of warfare, I focused on creating conditions for restoration: resolving emotional patterns that kept my nervous system in overdrive, ending relationships that were literally making me sick, and supporting my immune system’s ability to function optimally.

This did not mean avoiding medical treatment. But it meant approaching my body as an ally in healing, rather than a battlefield to be conquered.

The medical establishment focuses heavily on treating symptoms while often overlooking root causes. The link between emotional trauma, chronic stress, toxic environments, and physical illness remains largely ignored. We live in a culture where people pour their life force into draining relationships, unsustainable work, and patterns that keep them in permanent survival mode. Then we wonder why our bodies break down.

Alternative ways to think about healing

What if instead of fighting cancer, we focused on:

· Listening rather than battling: what might our bodies be trying to tell us about stress, relationships, and choices?

· Supporting restoration rather than destruction: how can we create the conditions where natural healing mechanisms work optimally?

· Collaborating with treatment rather than defeating disease: how can medical interventions and inner work complement each other?

· Transforming conditions rather than just eliminating symptoms: what in our lives might need to change for health to flourish?

· Embracing complexity rather than chasing victory: how can we accept that healing isn’t always linear or absolute, and make space for both medical treatment and personal transformation?

Shaping our healing through words

This is not about being overly sensitive to words. Language shapes our relationship with illness and with ourselves. Warfare metaphors condition us to see our bodies as enemies, to generate internal conflict when what we need is cooperation.

More collaborative language can help us approach cancer as a complex health challenge that requires both medical care and inner attention. The goal is not to eliminate determination or hope; it is to channel those qualities into approaches that support restoration, not just destruction.

In part 3 of this mini-series, we'll examine whether people are really fighting cancer itself — or enduring the toxicity of treatments meant to cure it.