This is the second in our blog series featuring talks from the 2025 Symington Public Forum on Healing with Integrative Cancer Care, co-sponsored by CancerChoices. Each post offers a glimpse into one speaker’s insights, but we hope you’ll take the time to watch the entire talks, as they are powerful.
In her insightful and deeply personal presentation, Managing Mindsets with Cancer, Dr. Jen Green invites you to explore one of the most underappreciated yet impactful tools in the cancer journey: mindset.
A naturopathic oncologist and Research Director of KNOW Oncology, Dr. Green has spent her career guiding patients in the informed use of natural products and integrative strategies. But after being diagnosed with head and neck cancer herself and completing treatment in late 2024, she turned her focus inward—and found that mindset was among the most powerful medicine she had.
Mindset as medicine
Mindsets, Dr. Green explains, are more than thoughts. They’re deeply held beliefs that shape how we make sense of the world and how we face adversity. They’re interwoven with our identity and, unlike many aspects of cancer care, they are changeable. For Dr. Green, that makes them profoundly empowering.
Rather than toxic positivity, her approach acknowledges complexity. She emphasizes that we can “try on” different mindsets depending on what we need in the moment. From the steadiness of a Stoic Mindset to the clarity of an Emergency Room Doctor Mindset, or the spiritual anchoring of a Mindfulness or Spiritual Growth Mindset, each perspective offers tools to navigate uncertainty with strength and grace.
Evidence-based and transformative
Drawing on the EMBRACE trial from Stanford,1Zion SR, Schapira L, Berek JS, Spiegel D, Dweck CS, Crum AJ. Changing cancer mindsets: A randomized controlled feasibility and efficacy trial. Psychooncology. 2023;32(9):1433-1442. doi:10.1002/pon.6194 a randomized controlled study that delivered a seven-session online program, Dr. Green highlights compelling evidence: when people intentionally work with mindset and coping strategies, they experience lasting improvements in physical distress, emotional resilience, and quality of life.
Coping that heals
Dr. Green shares a range of adaptive coping strategies that supported her, including gratitude, humor, self-compassion, and both/and thinking. She also explores reframing, mindfulness, and the therapeutic use of creativity, like art, poetry, and guided imagery, to tap into the unconscious mind’s healing potential.
or seeing radiation as healing light.
The power of connection and growth
Another cornerstone of healing, she notes, is the therapeutic relationship, and the importance of finding a care team that sees and supports you as a whole person.
Dr. Green closes her talk with a reflection on post-traumatic growth, the profound inner transformation that can arise from life’s hardest challenges. It’s not about returning to who you were before cancer, she says. It’s about becoming someone new.
“There is no going back. And in many ways… I wouldn’t want to.”
—Dr. Jen Green
Watch Dr. Jen Green’s full talk from the 2025 Symington Conference on Healing, and other talks from the inspiring conference.
Explore Dr. Green’s guided imagery recordings for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, sleep, inner healing and more.
Read Dr Green’s full article on Managing Mindsets.
Listen to a podcast interview with Dr. Jen Green.
References