Liat
The Emotional Roots of Melanoma: Guilt, Victimhood, and Responsibility
Liat, 36, is a sharp, fiery, and beautiful woman with long golden curls. She came to me before a biopsy, concerned about recurring melanoma. She felt the illness had an emotional origin she hadn’t yet resolved. Her story clearly illustrates the therapeutic process of working with guilt, victimhood, and responsibility, which is why I will describe it here.
Liat: “I want to work on quitting smoking. I’ve felt for a while that I need to stop. When I got divorced, I decided I would remove everything that wasn’t good for me from my life. I promised myself I’d quit smoking, but I haven’t done it. Besides that, I want to work on the melanoma on my nose. Nine years ago, I had the most severe type of melanoma.
I went into surgery without knowing what my face would look like when I came out. Luckily, it hadn’t spread, and I got through it. But about a year ago, just before I got divorced, I had another melanoma on my leg and they removed it.
A month ago, during my annual check-up, the doctor again saw two suspicious spots on my nose and recommended removing them. I had a biopsy scheduled, but I postponed it because I’m afraid. I am really afraid they will discover it’s melanoma. I feel it’s connected to the cigarettes too. The fact that I smoke doesn’t help. It’s poison I’m putting into my body.”
I suggested we do an inner exercise. I guided her: “Close your eyes. Take a deep breath into your heart. Imagine that you surrender into the depth of your heart, until everything is light. Ask the light in your heart to show you the source of your choices to harm yourself.”
Liat: “Lack of self-love came up for me. And my father. I started smoking as a way to rebel against my father.”
Me: “Why did you need to rebel?”
Liat: “Because I was angry for many years that he cheated on my mother.”
Me: “So smoking was your way of hurting him?”
Liat: “Yes. His father died of lung cancer. So I decided to smoke.”
Me: “Do you still feel the need to get back at him?”
Liat: “No.”
Me: “Then why do you continue?”
Liat: “I’m just addicted.”
Me: “I don’t think you’re as addicted to nicotine as you are to the experience of harming yourself".
Liat: “I agree. Everyone harms themselves in their own way. I think I gave up. I forgave him, I don’t judge him anymore. I know he had a hard life. He was depressed. And I just accepted it. I don’t feel I can communicate with him.”
Me: “It sounds like self-harm is your way of communicating with him, even if he doesn’t know it. Sometimes we stay stuck in adolescence with our parents.”
I guided her again into a visualization.
Me: “Connect to your heart. Ask to see yourself before you chose to harm yourself to get back at your father. Before this pattern began. What do you see?”
Liat: “I see a healthy, sporty, vital, innocent girl. The innocence was lost. I know my father loves me, but he doesn’t know how to show it. Once he threw me out of the house because he found out I smoked. I was 20. He said I was no longer his daughter and shouldn’t come home.”
Me: “Why did he say that?”
Liat: “Because his own father died from smoking.”
I felt that these wounds didn’t need more analysis; they needed healing.
Me: “You already understand everything. What is needed now is healing. You have worked through the story. Now it needs to be released. Cigarettes are your last symbol of that wound.”
Liat: “This is the last thing I promised myself I would release from my life.”
Me: “The cigarettes allow you to stay in victimhood.”
Liat: “That’s true.”
Me: “So let’s turn victimhood into responsibility. Connect to the light in your heart and ask: What will allow me to move from being a victim to being responsible?”
Liat: “Compassion comes up.”
Me: “And what will help you feel compassion?”
Liat: “I’m not sure—for whom?”
Me: “Compassion doesn’t choose. It includes. It is for yourself and everyone.”
Liat: “I feel heaviness in my heart.”
Me: “Your heart holds the old hurt, but it also holds the healing.”
I guided her to imagine compassion entering every cell of her body like a light. Her heart softened.
Me: “Ask your calm heart: What would allow the melanoma to stop returning?”
Liat: “To see myself.”
Me: “Yes. To truly see yourself. Not through the wound, but through the heart.”
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Later, I asked, “What would allow you to release the need to smoke?”
Liat: “The feeling that I lack love comes up.”
Me: “So let’s allow the heart to send love to you—even as someone who smokes. You deserve love regardless. When you stop smoking, it will be an act of self-love, and it will change other patterns in your life—automatically, unconsciously.”
Liat: “I feel that.”
A few weeks later, she returned. The doctor ultimately said there was no need to biopsy—the spots looked perfectly fine.
Liat has not yet fully stopped smoking, but the melanoma has not returned. The healing has already begun.
