Written by Jill Fraser
How does a woman recover from being bashed and raped in front of her children and then diagnosed with cancer?
Elizabeth Gould did and has learnt some unique survival strategies.
Less than 18 months after an intruder broke into her home in Melbourne's south-east and as her two small children looked on, bashed, raped and threatened to kill her, Elizabeth Gould was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Radical surgery and chemotherapy followed and six months later full remission.The two confronting life and death struggles occurring so close together stirred in Gould a fascination with the notion of survival, in particular the twists and turns of her recovery from cancer.
She embarked on a series of interviews with other cancer survivors and the results astounded her. Her research clearly defined common behavior patterns and attitudes, giving credence to her theory that beating the odds is not just random coincidence.She identified five stand-alone traits inherent in all the survivors and while she stresses that adopting them will not guarantee survival she remarks that coincidentally or not the same blueprint was present in all those she interviewed who had defeated the disease.
"Undergoing two major traumas so close together made me quite analytical about the survival process but I didn't have a fixed view. What I now refer to as the five secrets(five common factors) only emerged once I started talking to people," she says.
Over and above these five secrets, Gould notes that although coping mechanisms varied enormously (one person chose to keep her condition to herself until she was given the all clear, another kept detailed information from loved ones who were not dealing well with the situation, another tried to educate friends and family that talking positively all the time was unrealistic, while Gould became incredibly busy, working full-time, throwing regular dinner parties, painting the front fence and digging massive garden beds) all survivors were single-minded, independent thinkers and disciplined.
"Cancer is really such a mental battle as it is a physical one," she says. "You become very clear about what works for you and what doesn't, to the extent that, as one survivor said, you are quite selfish in your pursuit of what you need."
Gould acknowledges that describing the five common factors as secrets sounds clichéd. She opted to do so because prior to the interviews the survivors had not spoken in depth about their experiences and thoughts as all had been caught up in the cancer patient culture of "remaining positive".
Secret 1: Controlling Information
Following diagnosis "the first thing you want to do is jump on the internet, which is the world’s scariest place for a cancer patient", says Gould, who is a big believer in "what you tell your brain to expect will become a reality". Maintaining that monitoring what information is taken in and passed onto others is the most significant secret of cancer survivors, she says. While being realistic about the situation is strongly advised, the survivors agree that allowing negative beliefs or assumptions to creep in can be the difference between surviving or not.
Secret 2: Choosing Supporters
Referring to people as "heaters or drainers", Gould laughs. "They are either nice and warm and you want to get close to them or they suck your energy," she says. All the survivors that Gould surveyed spoke of friends and family members who would not allow them to express their fears and confessed that they had very little to do these people because often it felt like they were carrying them.
"You become quite clinical about who you spend time with and adopt the view, I don't know how long my life is going to be so I am going to live it the way I really want to. If someone that you associate with doesn’t add to your life, you stop seeing them," she says. Choosing a medical team "that you trust and whose advice you are willing to follow" is paramount, she says.
Secret 3: Doing It Your Way
Gould discovered that the resolve to "do it my way" along with a refusal to accept blindly any dogma or practice – conventional or alternative – came through strongly in every survival story. "Everyone does things completely differently, but there is a single mindedness that comes through in all survival," she says. The survivors each came up with their own plan and most were not particularly onsultative.
Offers of self-help books, meditation courses, macrobiotic diets and the suggestion to stop work (all Gould’s interviewees continued working throughout their treatment) were politely acknowledged but ignored. "Many people, even supporters, may not understand the decisions you make but they also don't understand what it's like to have cancer," says Gould. You need to 'do it your way' to give you the confidence that you can survive."
Secret 4: Creating a Thinking Pattern
Gould used a coping mechanism that came out of the attack as a foundation to work through coping with cancer. “When grappling with the after effects of the attack I became aware of how quickly thoughts can spiral out of control and I noticed that if I had three of four thoughts in a row of a certain pattern, then I very quickly became incredibly distraught and depressed. So I developed a saying, don’t go there,” she says.
Other survivors embraced similar coping strategies and learned to focus only on what would enhance the healing of their minds and bodies. Every newly diagnosed cancer patient has dark thoughts and their thinking pattern reflects this. Based on her research, Gould believes that the speed at which the patient snaps out of the ‘Why me?’, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’, What if I die’, thinking is a key factor in their survival.
Secret 5: Finding the Meaning of Life
Surviving cancer does not mean that those who have come through it have unlocked the door to what life is about, says Gould. Nor does it mean that they found God – while some did, others went in the opposite direction.
“What the cancer journey gives you is the ability to decide to follow through and choose to live the life you want to live, not the life you think you should live,” Gould declares. The survivors all found that values changed and social conventions lost their importance, as just being alive became their top priority. One issue that they were very clear about was that the opinion of others mattered very little and that they had liberated themselves from worrying about what others thought.
