Medical Advice Two

Being Duped: Don’t Abdicate Your Agency 

I watched (last year I think) the dramatization of the Australian influencer who faked cancer and proceeded to sell a diet that she said had cured her. I think the show runners did a good job of humanizing the many individuals who were actually fighting cancer and were drawn to her approach (fictional characters based off of real people).

The in-real-life people were disproportionately women who had been traumatized in standard healthcare settings. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries are torturous experiences. The healthcare system largely minimizes and ignores the violence, pain, misery and permanent disability that its curative protocols wreak upon patients because the vicarious trauma that practitioners experience regarding the impacts of these treatments, usually results in dehumanizing the victims (patients) over time. Added to that, women are heavily discriminated against and are widely undermedicated for pain compared to their male counterparts in healthcare settings, thereby greatly increasing the rates of trauma for female patients.

It’s understandable to want healing to be, well, healing—to be a space filled with kindness, gentleness and compassion. However, despite the fact that I have very few good things to say about the healthcare system that I have worked in and occasionally had to navigate as a patient or as a family member of a patient, it’s important to recognize both its value as well as its limitations and risks.

The bottom line for those with cancer today is that nothing works like chemo and radiation. That sucks, but it’s true. There is no magical path of positive thinking that will get around that.

The tragedy of the Australian influencer’s impact was not that people with cancer chose to go with diet and alternative care options while eschewing possibly life-saving chemo and radiation; it is that many did so not having made the choice.

Being duped involves abdicating agency and being drawn to something that aligns with inner hopes and wishes. That isn’t actually making a choice or decision, rather it’s a cognitive gap that we can all experience for different reasons at different times in our lives.

Duping usually involves two people at least: the one who is deceiving another and the one who is deceived. In fact, a dupe or con cannot happen in the absence of the one who is deceived.

It’s even possible to be deceived in the absence of anyone having attempted to deceive you: self-deception.

How to Close the Cognitive Gap

When you choose a path, how can you be sure you have actually chosen it as opposed to being sucked in because you are a victim of deception or self-deception?

You can use this heavily advised approach: you ask yourself whether the path is one that seems too good to be true. If it seems too good, then it likely is. 

But that’s the push, the thing you really have to look at is: what is the pull? Where is the internal cognitive gap that draws you to the path in the first place?

Remember, we can all be deceived and self-deceived. We all have gaps in our internal cognitive and emotional makeup that suck us in if we happen to stumble on that gap.

Disease is a gap for so many of us because it’s the big existential threat: death. Contemplating our own finiteness is uncomfortable for us all.

The way to circumvent the existential dread is to answer the following question: if both paths lead to my assured death and there is no cure to be had no matter what I do or don’t do, then would I still choose this path over that path?

Another big gap for so many is trauma. This one is tougher to navigate. If medical care has been traumatizing for you, then avoiding re-traumatization is an understandable, and completely sane, choice.

Unfortunately, avoidance is not decision-making. The way to uncover the possibility that trauma is driving you to avoid one path over another, is to ask yourself:

“If my pain, my fear, my symptoms and my experience were completely attended to and I was always listened to and believed no matter which path I chose, then would that change the path I am choosing?”

If you find that you would choose standard medical treatment were they able to care for you without re-traumatizing you, then go with standard medical treatment as your decision. I encourage trauma treatment with an accredited therapist as well as distracting yourself with humour. Yeah, humour. If you don’t happen to have a posse of people around you to keep things upbeat, then use the internet. Watch stand-up, comedies, read fluffy stuff, watch cute dog and cat videos, etc. I go into some detail on trauma-informed care in this article as well. None of that will necessarily avoid re-traumatization, but you will have made a decision that was a true choice and not avoidance of one path over another. You will live more comfortably with the choice and outcomes when you go that route.

It’s also possible you choose something when no conviction or trauma avoidance is involved, yet it can still be driven by deception. This usually happens when you are trying to please others or wanting to fit in.

Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we fail to recognize that we have been duped, or have duped ourselves, until we face consequences that we hadn’t anticipated at the outset.

There is a 30-something YouTube influencer who was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. She underwent all the standard treatment and was subsequently diagnosed with stage IV less than a year after that first round, if memory serves me correctly. At that point she chose to pursue “healthy living” and wanted to avoid further medical treatment. However, recently she has chosen ongoing oral chemo to manage a flare in symptoms.

Belle Gibson, the Australian influencer, actively duped others although what the motivations for that were may or may not have been pure grift. Nonetheless she lied about having cancer and curing herself of it.

But many more influencers, like Rebecca Moroney, are probably more simply revealing the messiness and joys of their own lives, choices, maybe even traumas and self-deceptions, and changes of heart as they go.

Then there’s a site like this one. I’m not someone who has experienced an eating disorder let alone recovery from an eating disorder so I’m not a lifestyle influencer and this site is not a first-person exposition my own recovery journey. I do earn, albeit tiny amounts, from a book I’ve synthesized on the research surrounding the ways to recover from an eating disorder and a second book is underway. And yes, I want to be paid for the labour I put into these projects as much as the next person. I do also fervently want people considering recovery, or trying to navigate harm reduction, to treat everything on this site and anything that I synthesize from the research, as material that must be evaluated and not merely accepted at face value.

Take time to consider the cognitive gaps that might pull you down and preclude you from making a decision that is truly your decision. Whether someone is actively selling you something, or you are drawn to someone’s first-person journey as being something that everyone could apply (peer-pressure/fitting-in thing), you only have agency over your own agency.

Part Three March 20