Control what you can

Nadia Booysen tackles a tough subject: living with control versus lack of control.

You can listen to this article below, or by using your favourite podcast player at pod.link/buddiesforlife

During your lifetime, you can become so accustomed to having certain levels of control that when you lose that ability to control things, you realise how much that control is needed by you.

Certain people strive for more control than others and certain personality types need more control. Trauma often also increases your need to build your life in ways that make you feel safe with different mechanisms in place to ensure control.

Irrespective of where you are in life or what your needs are, as humans we all want and need a level of control. Entering the world of cancer, you are immediately faced with a loss of control over a multitude of things. This can refer to physical privacy, personal information, and often just choices.

It affects both the tangible and the impalpable which is important to understand when considering the psychological impact and implications when it feels like you are faced with your mortality.

As much as this poses a juxtaposition of note, it’s important to state that these losses of control might be reality or only perceived, as every experience is so precisely and individually subjective to the receiver that every person’s reality should be taken for truth.

There is always one desired outcome in oncology and that is life. You want to live, you want to get to the other side, and you will give up as much control as is required to get there (whether it’s real or perceived).

Control in the context of oncology is almost metaphoric to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: untouchable.

The great pretenders

Money, power, and time – these are what I would like to call the great pretenders, the things you hide behind, focus on, or dream of during life. The period when you live and aren’t faced with immediate threats. Many think that life is easier when you have these things, and for the most part it truly is easier. Until you lose your health, and in desperation you call on these pretenders who have always kept you safe, in control, and unharmed.

However, when you lose your health, no money in the world is enough. Even the most powerful person will end up powerless when faced with severe illness, and lastly the most universal thing amongst all, is the prayer for time to rather run out before the suffering starts.

The brutal truth: choice

Regardless of how much control you have in life, you always want a little bit more, and it’s that little bit more that is always out of reach, but it motivates you to keep on trying to do more and be more. Control is also narrowly intertwined with power, money, and choice. Everything most humans wouldn’t necessarily mind having.

But what happens to the human spirit when you realise that you have lost control in respect of your health, not only in terms of a disease but potentially a life-threatening illness? This is where control takes on a whole new life of its own.

When the great pretenders have shown their true colours, you would still like to believe that you inherently have choices in life. And yes, you do. They are sometimes the lesser of two evils and not the rose-coloured ones you were told about in fairy tales, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s the long-term side effects you live with daily, those nagging pains or the neuropathy in your feet, the stupid cough or shortness of breath that make you wonder.

The silent question you face daily is: it was my choice, right? I had control. I could have said no? Could I really have said no? Did I give away my control?

Amidst all the rose-coloured fairy tales, brutal truths, and great pretenders, the reality is that you do have choices, and mostly the choices either lie within your perceptions of reality or unfortunately others lived experiences.

You chose to live, even though you are unable to fully grasp exactly what that will look like in the end, but you had a choice. You control how you approach each day: if you choose to live fully, make a difference, and be inspired by the small things in life.

I always motivate patients to take time to redesign their lives, to create a new normal, to adapt to a new body and mind.

Life is never the same on the other side. You won’t be either. It’s in your hands to create and control what the rest of your life will look like. Make it sparkly and beautiful, keep the clouds with silver linings and rainbows with pots of gold. You always have a choice and that is where your control lies.

MEET THE EXPERT

Nadia Booysen is a cancer survivor and an oncology counsellor (BSW Hons (Social Work) (UP), BA Hons (Psychology) (Unisa), PGDip (PallMed) (UCT)). She consults at the DMO practices: Sandton Oncology and the West Rand Oncology Centres. Serving in oncology is not a profession to her, but rather a way of life. Nadia has a keen interest in mental health and believes that it’s an underestimated and stigmatised topic.