Dr. Stegall interviews Elizabeth Cohn Stuntz -author of Coping With Cancer. Podcast 55

Dr. Stegall interviews Elizabeth Cohn Stuntz -author of Coping With Cancer to help cancer patients develop skills to manage their emotions and balance uncertainty with hope.

55 Elizabeth Cohn Stuntz Coping with Cancer.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

55 Elizabeth Cohn Stuntz Coping with Cancer.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
Hi and welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I am your host and guide, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. Cancer is like a thief who has come to steal, kill and destroy. I have personally seen it wreak havoc on patients, friends and even my own family. But I am on a mission to change the cancer paradigm. Who? The practice of integrative oncology cancer treatment that integrates the best of conventional medicine with the best of alternative therapies backed by science and personalized to each patient. You need a positive voice you can trust. This podcast will share valuable information to give you practical hope for a better outcome. So I invite you to join me on this journey as we seek to change the cancer paradigm together. Hello and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. This is season four and episode number 55. In today's episode, I have a very special guest for us, Elizabeth Cohen Stunts. We'll be talking today about cancer related stress and anxiety and how we can better cope with these side effects, if you will. As always, I encourage you to listen with a loved one or a friend. We found that that these episodes are our best utilized when you can listen with someone else who perhaps is on this journey with you. I'd love to introduce our guests now. Elizabeth Cohen Stuntz is a psychotherapist, teacher and author who also happens to be a cancer survivor. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Cornell University and her master's in social work from Smith College. She holds certifications in psychoanalysis and has received extensive education in a wide variety of areas, including Zen, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness training and breath training, among others. She is on the faculty at the Westchester Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and is the author of the book Coping with Cancer, which focuses on healthy ways to address cancer. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker2:
Thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here with you.

Speaker1:
Well, Elizabeth and I were talking before we got on the episode. I was just saying that I think this is probably the most important episode that we've done so far, and that's certainly not to minimize the other wonderful episodes we've done in the wonderful guest we've had. But I can just tell you from my practice that the mental and emotional side of of a cancer diagnosis for patients, as well as that side of it for spouses and children of patients, is just so significant. So Elizabeth is really excited to have you here today. So, Elizabeth, let's go ahead and jump in. I'd love to know how you how your background influenced your idea to write a book.

Speaker2:
Sure. Happy to share that. Actually, it speaks very much to the first point you said about having a loved one with you. And my first exposure to cancer came when my mother had cancer and sadly, I lost her at a young age for her and for me, and then lost a number of really close friends to cancer. I am a psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst and so was always interested in the psychological impact of cancer. Having lived it and seeing it up close and realized that one of the things as a clinician, I was able to sit with patients difficult feelings, to stay with the person, but that that's sometimes a very hard thing for loved ones to do and sometimes for therapists and other providers to do. So I began focusing on support services for people with cancer and their loved ones and was part of founding of a community facility for loved ones and cancer patients. And then I read a study that experts say that coping affects both quality of life and may even impact survival. And the Institute of Medicine actually said that effective ways to deal with the social and emotional parts of cancer were not keeping pace with the amazing progress on the medical side. So my co-author and I wanted patients and their loved ones to know that when one is feeling so overwhelmed with cancer, there are still possible ways to cope and to be hopeful. So that was our initial motivation.

Speaker1:
Excellent. I love that. Now your approach is based on dialectical behavior therapy or DVT. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Speaker2:
Absolutely. Dvt was developed by my co-author, whose name is Marsha Linehan. Marsha is actually named by Time magazine as one of the geniuses and visionaries whose work has transformed our world. And what's amazing is almost everybody else in that edition of Time magazine is now alive. It's Freud, Copernicus, Galileo and Linehan. And the reason Linehan is there is that she has created effective coping mechanisms that have been very carefully researched. To help people become more resilient and create a meaningful life. Linehan is a Zen master. She's actually my Zen teacher, and her skills are practical translations of the age old wisdom of Zen that she has developed into clear coping skills. And what's wonderful is that many of these skills are now validated by neuroscience. So our approach is based on her cognitive behavioral therapy background, the wisdom of Zen neuroscience and informed by my psychoanalytic background. Linehan has developed concrete skills. The four basic ones are mindfulness, which helps people pay full attention to what's happening and their reactions. And that's crucial for making decisions of what they're going to do and how they're going to manage things. Concrete skills that we'll get into about ways to manage emotions, how to deal with important relationships. And we talk about ways to communicate with your loved ones. But we also have sections in the book about how to communicate with your health care providers and colleagues in the workplace or in the community that you're working with.

Speaker2:
And lastly, there there are skills about finding meaning. And what we have found is that when people feel overwhelmed and helpless, knowing actual concrete ways to handle those feelings can really be very helpful. I must say a little more about the about DVT, because the DD of DVT stands for dialectics. So dialectics is really 57 world word. That means that two things that seem to be opposite can both be true, that it's possible to feel or act in more than just one way. And with cancer, it can be easy to oversimplify life and one's view of yourself and reduce things as one way or the other. It's either good or bad. It's either a total disaster or no big deal. People are either in control of what's happening and how they're coping or totally powerless. And like with cancer and actually all life is more complex than that. When people are diagnosed, they're rarely completely healthy. They're not or dying immediately. It's not black and white that it's possible to be unhappy about cancer and still remember that there are parts of life that do bring you joy, that it's possible to be terrified and have hope at the same way so that the dialectical part is a huge underpinning of what makes this work.

Speaker1:
Excellent explanation. So is it fair to say then that that sense, since most things aren't black and white, that we live most of our lives in the gray? Is that is that a fair way to think about it?

Speaker2:
Yes. I talk a lot about being on a seesaw and remembering both ends of the seesaw exist. And the curriculum is really a coping is really about balancing and remembering both sides of of the seesaw and kind of going back and forth and that we help people rebalance themselves and give them ways to rebalance when they're feeling out of balance in coping with cancer. Does that make some sense?

Speaker1:
Excellent. Absolutely. Definitely. So let's let's use an example of someone that's just diagnosed with cancer. Emotions like stress and fear and anxiety, all those things are naturally going to be at the forefront. We know that that some of that is healthy and normal, but too much of that is is not. And it can be damaging. So so how can our listeners best understand the normal, healthy level of some of those emotions and and a problematic level of those?

Speaker2:
Okay. So one of the things that is important that we like to communicate to patients and their loved ones is that we all cope uniquely. Some of us are more stressed, some of us are less stressed, some of us are more emotional, some of us are more restrained. But any reaction is really understandable. And fear and anxiety is a natural response to cancer that people that feel frightened and anxious if they feel like there's a threat to their life, that makes sense. And the way we think about. That is that stress is there for a useful reason if you think about the caveman. He his heart rate increased. He saw a lion in front of him. His heart rate increased. He thought, Whoa, I'm in danger. His emotions were, I'm frightened. And what does he do? He runs. Okay. And so that stress cycle of where those things impact each other are very effective. But what happens with cancer is we're dealing with uncertainty. And the difference between fear and anxiety are important to understand here with fear. You see the lion in front of you about how stress cycle works and you run. But with anxiety, anxiety has the same physiological response. But it's about something that might happen or that will happen in the future. And when anxiety happens, it's there's a sense of uncertainty. And that's what we have when we're living with cancer. What's going to happen here? So there what started out as a healthy stress cycle, cycle remains happen and it goes around and around. So once a heartbeat increases, we have thoughts of, oh, my gosh, am I going to die? Those emotions stir up more emotions. And it's a whole vicious cycle that doesn't stop.

Speaker2:
It's almost like a gas pedal being stuck down. And then the the the stress cycle that worked at well in the beginning where the fear what happened and then we reset to normal it keeps going that's where the gas is still going on and that's not so useful. So what the way we the way the whole curriculum works here is that we get people to pay attention to the things that are causing their stress, what's happening in their body. We teach them to pay attention to that, to deal with the emotions and deal with the thoughts. Because what happens that keeps that stress going is that people have all kinds of ideas about their health, about the effect on the relationship, about themselves that keep that going. And those ideas are often based on not based on fact. They may be assumptions about what's going to happen in the future that we can't know. They we may have all kinds of ideas of, oh, I'm going to be alone or people are going to start hitting me or I'm doing this wrong, or I should be more positive or less stressed. Those things all keep that cycle of stress going. So we teach people to look and pay attention to break down that whole coping circuit. And we talk about it like an electrical circuit. What when when you're overwhelmed by the electrical circuit doesn't work, the fuse goes. And we have to look at the electrical circuit box. What we do here is that we teach people to look at their own coping circuit, what are the things that are keeping that stress going? And then we teach them ways to rebalance those things that were keeping the stress going. Excellent.

Speaker1:
It does. It does. And as you were as you were answering that question, it sort of made me made me think about the fact that most of us probably were never taught healthy ways to cope with those situations, especially something like a cancer diagnosis. I mean, we've probably modeled what we've seen other people do in our lives or or for some people, maybe it's turning to unhealthy ways to try to try to cope or or self medicate. But but training in this is not part of what we're taught growing up, is it?

Speaker2:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And these skills, actually and the reason she Linehan is so acclaimed is that they're used in all other kinds of and have been researched not yet with cancer, but that have been researched in all kinds of challenging situations and proven to be effective. And they're now being taught to young kids in schools, I mean, all kinds of places to people with drug problems in all ways, because they've been shown to be effective to help people cope.

Speaker1:
Excellent.

Speaker2:
Adapted them to cancer.

Speaker1:
Excellent. And we know they work. Yes. So in your book, you talk a lot about the power of our thoughts and how they can distort a full and accurate view of reality. Let's talk a little bit more about that.

Speaker2:
So people have all kinds of ideas they may have, and many of those ideas are not based on fact. And people make assumptions that may not be based on facts. So they may say, I'm doing this wrong. I should be more positive, I shouldn't feel stressed. What's the matter with me? I should be more positive. You know, there's something the matter that I feel, this stress. We just said how normal it is to first have that reaction. And people can have all kinds of ideas and make all kinds of assumptions about their health. And I'm going to die. This is going to it's going to be this way. It's going to be I'm not going to be able to work my families. Then people make assumptions about their relationships. My family's going to be resent me. I'm going to be a burden. I'm going to be alone, I'll be needy, I'll be happy with. And we go on and on and on without knowing them. And particularly with cancer, we make a ton of assumptions about the future and we get way ahead of ourselves so those thoughts can really get in our way. So we teach people ways. We have a couple of ways that we teach people to rebalance their thoughts.

Speaker2:
And one of the strategies we talk to people about is check the facts. Check the facts. Certainly with your medical provider. Are you having adequate information? Are you having all kinds of false assumptions about what's going to happen with your relationships or about yourself that are hijacking your feelings? Are you making scary ideas about the future that may or may not be true? And then we teach people to balance those thoughts by all. By taking a larger perspective. We talk about it as a helicopter view, almost getting above and thinking about what ideas are we not considering? That would give us a more balanced perspective. And that's where we bring in the whole dialectical thinking, because the dialectical thinking adds the kernel of truth of ideas that may seem to be at odds. For example, it's possible that we are very frightened, but that we can also be hopeful at the same time that it doesn't have to be one way or the other, and that this is not just an approach. I want to be very clear about this, of telling people, Oh, just look at the bright side. That's not what we're doing. Yes, we want them to look at the bright side. But before we do that, we want to validate their understandable feelings, their fear, their anxiety, their anger, their sadness.

Speaker2:
Those feelings are there for understandable and natural reasons. So we're not saying just avoid those feelings. We're saying balance them, we're saying accept them and then balance them out. And I go back to that business of talking about the seesaw, really life and our reactions to change constantly. Think about it. The sunrises in the morning. Maybe we're happy that clouds appear, maybe we're upset. Then the storm comes. We're really upset. At the end of the day, the sun goes down. We may forget the sun even exists, but it always rises the next morning. So life is constantly changing. That's that moving seesaw that we're constantly on. So we teach people how to go back and forth between the opposite ends that seem like they're contradiction, but to include both the light and the dark side. Desmond Tutu says hope comes from keeping the opposite side light in mind so that we talk to people about both validating their dark thoughts and that they're there for understandable reasons, but also remembering the light side, and that that's how we balance the thoughts. And we have a bunch of very clear techniques of how we teach people to do that.

Speaker1:
Excellent. Well, let's just take that a step further. And let's let's assume we're in the middle of a challenging situation. You have a multistep process for dealing with it in a healthy and productive way. Can you tell us more about this?

Speaker2:
Sure. Actually, you can think about it with the acronym of Stop. So the essence of stop is slow down to first thing. And the first thing we have to do is fully face what's happening and our responses. That's not so easy because we don't really want to. I mean, a lot about what's coping with cancer and how we're feeling about it is not something we want to face. But the truth is that. Avoiding it and even avoiding our emotional reactions makes things harder. The research on emotions is the more we try and avoid our own emotions and reactions, that actually intensifies them. So it works the opposite way. So the first thing is to slow down and to begin to face what's happening. We teach people the T is to take a step back and to take a breath to just pause. And we teach people to literally take a breath because they're they can regulate their body. And if somebody takes a pause and takes a longer exhale and slows down their rate of breathing, that already calms the central nervous system. So literally taking a breath and taking a step back helps people to come themselves down. Next, the O is about observing and that's about looking at that circuit breaker, that circuit board that I talked about. And so we teach people how to observe the parts, the parts of their coping circuits, to observe their body, to observe their emotions, to observe their thoughts and then their actions. And then the key is about proceeding to rebalance them. And so we give them ways that they can use their body, their thoughts, their emotions and their actions to rebalance their feelings. So I don't know if you want me to go further into some of the ways we do that or.

Speaker1:
Sure. I think that'd be great.

Speaker2:
So some of the ways that we balance with our body. I already said the part about taking a longer exhale, but also we teach people to do a body scan. And again, for some people that's agitated. So one of the things we say with all of these approaches is that they're options and people should use their own kind of wise mind. We talk about their own wisdom, about what works for them, and if something doesn't work for you, that just means it's not suited for you and not that something is wrong with you. So these are suggestions, but one of the ways is going through the body from head to toe, tightening our muscles and then relaxing them. Another is physical touch. I love the research that a 22nd hug actually lowers people's stress and anxiety and getting your loved ones to hold your hand, give you a hug, really does physiologically calm the nervous system.

Speaker1:
That's great. I'm a hugger. I hug my patients all the time. So there's science behind it. Now.

Speaker2:
There's research that says that that actually works. That's great. But there then we teach people to balance their emotions and to take a moment to understa, to notice those strong emotions and identify how they're feeling. That's easier said than done, because as I said before, we have many of us want to avoid powerful emotions, but trying to avoid them actually makes things worse. It actually intensifies the feeling when you say, I'm going to try not to be scared. It's like, think if I said to you, try and ignore that pink elephant. You don't think about the pink out, which it just intensifies. And when you try and avoid those emotions, you can miss that valuable messages for them. For example, our fear and anxiety can be a signal that we need help. Our anger can sometimes motivate us to speak up for what we need. Our sadness may encourage us to reach out for support. So those those emotions initially give very valuable messages and actually, physiologically, they last for 90 seconds physiologically. Now you'll say to me, well, wait a minute, but I feel like it stays longer. It only stays longer when your body is cueing it with a rapid heartbeat or tight muscles or those emotions or those thoughts are revving you up. That's what keeps that cycle going and keeps those emotions going so that we teach people that it's possible to both allow those feelings and have ways to dial them down when they're stronger than is useful.

Speaker2:
So the neuroscience research about how we can regulate our emotions is called name it Titan, and it name it to tame. It comes from neuroscience and it reflects the research that. Enabling emotions actually quiets the nervous system. And there have been studies with cancer patients that have been found that cancer patients who could understand and label their feelings not only cope better, but also show health benefits. So that's very important. Then we go into ways to balance the thoughts. And I've talked a little bit about that, teaching people to check the facts and look about whether their thoughts are accurate and to use that dialectical thinking and take a broader view and balance the other side of what we're thinking. And lastly, we teach people about how to balance their actions. So we teach people about distractions and how distractions can be very helpful to manage physical and emotional agitation. We teach people to use soothing sensations that can calm them down, but also pleasurable. Funny events can balance sadness. There's a reason for the saying laughter's the best medicine because humor has been shown to boost mood, diminish pain, strengthen the immune system and protect against the damaging effects of stress. Other ways people can balance their actions are about doing things that will give them mastery. You don't have to learn a new language.

Speaker2:
You might clean out a drawer or try a new recipe. And those things can help balance the other side of the feeling helpless and out of control. We have something that we call compassionate self-talk that rebalances the doubt and the criticism, and we teach people to talk to themselves with the same understanding and encouragement they give to a beloved friend and remind themselves. Others are stressed just like me. Others are scared just like me. I'm not doing something so different. And there's been a ton of research on compassion that has been shown to strengthen resilience in the face of stress. And some studies say it can effect an immune response. Another balancing action is gratitude. Now, gratitude may seem like too much to ask for when you feel like you've lost so much and life is not feeling so wonderful, yet it may be worth your while. Because again, the research shows that patients who made a weekly list of five things of which they were grateful for were significantly happier and reported fewer health problems than groups that focused on hassles or only wrote about ordinary events. So again, with these balancing actions, I want to stress what I said before, that I'm not just saying to people, look on the bright side and positive sense. This makes sense. Anxiety can make sense and shouldn't be ignored. But we want to see both sides of that balance.

Speaker1:
Excellent. I love that. That makes so much sense. I'd like to talk next about how cancer affects relationships. Can you talk some about that?

Speaker2:
For sure for many people. Again, everybody's unique. So I will say some of the reactions some people have and everybody does it differently. But for some people, the increased need to rely on others makes them worry about a change in relationship dynamics and changes in roles. And it can be very hard for some people to ask for the physical and emotional responsiveness that they want and need. And I'll talk to you in a minute. We have part of Linehan skills, and her brilliance is that there are actual clear communication strategies that help people ask for what they want and need. And we concretely tell people the steps of how they can do it. People can worry about the degree of connection that they have with others. Some worry that will bring more distance between them and other people. And for some people it brings much more intimacy. Some people in those assumptions say, Oh, people aren't going to want to be with me if I can't do the same things I did before or be the same places or act differently. People have very different coping styles. Some of us are very emotional and some of us are very restrained. The motion person may focus more on the feelings and want to talk about those things all the time. And the restrained person may focus on the facts and the logic. And when a loved one doesn't have the same coping style, that can be difficult.

Speaker2:
And how to talk to somebody about that. Some people have a big wish to protect other people, certainly their children, but other family members and can hold themselves unfairly responsible for the stress of a cancer diagnosis because it does impact the whole family or have a hard time to say no to things when it's more than they feel like they can or should do. There are also concerns about being having valid concerns understood, and people can feel at times isolated when there are mis attuned attempts at responsiveness. Often incredibly well intentioned people may say you're going to be fine. And for some people, that's the support and encouragement they want. For other people that can feel like they're minimizing what the cancer patient is going through and how frightened they can be. So that kind of invalidation and cancer patients talk a lot about how society's talking about the strong, healthy cancer patient can be very validating when a patient is not feeling that way and send a message about how they should feel. Right. Well, so people self respect how they're feeling about themselves, about how their body is working, how competent they are, whether they still have something to contribute is also an important part so that the skills in communicating to help people are concrete ways to help people ask what they want and need while still protecting a relationship and how they feel about themselves.

Speaker1:
Excellent. I love that because, you know, I, I certainly notice it in my practice. You know, it's it's easy is the doctor to get focused on just the patient and what they're dealing with. But, you know, it really does affect the entire family, as you said. I mean, we we have plenty of patients who have extremely supportive spouses and siblings and children. And I think I think their role in this is so important to thank you for for talking about that.

Speaker2:
We actually have a section in the part of relationships about how to talk to your health care provider. Lots of patients can talk about how difficult it is to ask for second opinions, more time, more explanation. They're going to alienate the doctor and how to do that in a sensitive way, especially when they're feeling so reliant on the doctor and how to do that in a way as be fair to themselves and fair to their doctor. So we talk a lot about that.

Speaker1:
Excellent. That's great. Because, I mean, I think certainly in our health care system today, you know, so many, so many patients and doctors alike feel so rushed during that encounter and that doctor patient relationship gets strained. And so, you know, whether it's a patient feeling like they can't ask a question or the doctor feels like they don't have time to answer it, I think certainly improving that communication is going to be so important.

Speaker2:
Absolutely. Um.

Speaker1:
Well, next, I'd like to talk about really how to talk to a cancer patient. You know, for for those listening maybe who don't have cancer, they're listening for to support someone else going through cancer or maybe just because they're interested in the topic. But, you know, people who don't have cancer themselves, what kind of tips would you have for them on on how to how to talk to a cancer patient?

Speaker2:
I guess the main thing I would say is that often listening is way more important than advice that, um. For some people, as I mentioned, that well-intentioned reassurance comes across just what they want, but it sometimes can come across as minimizing or invalidating. And if that happens, the person can feel more misunderstood and alone. I also with suggestions we, all of us around people with cancer, feel so helpless and we want to feel like we can do something and help. So we give a million suggestions of what should be. Use this diet, use this doctor. Go here, go there. And often that can be incredibly helpful and just what the patient wants. Sometimes it can come across inadvertently as critical of what they are doing. So any advice? I always say ask them if they want it. Don't just give unsolicited advice. And, uh, and when, when you're wanting to do something to help the person, concrete offers are much more useful than I'm there for you. It's Tuesday at that time to bring dinner. And, um, because often we as people around people with cancer are dealing with our own helplessness.

Speaker2:
And when somebody says, no thanks, I don't want dinner, it may be because they want to feel competent and to make their own dinner and they feel well enough to do that. And so it's very important for loved ones and people around them not to take that personally, that often the response, we can take it as it's about us. And to think that it may be about what the cancer patient needs and often what a patient needs is. I'm thinking about you some you know, they may not want to talk on the phone. They may want to, but you ask it. But maybe a text is thinking about, you know, need to reply is more helpful and also thinking when one's listening. I love this description that somebody said listening is about willing to be changed by what the other person says. So really being open to hearing that and not taking it as there's something wrong with you. If what you want to do is doesn't exactly fit what they may want need at this moment. Hmm.

Speaker1:
Excellent. Thank you for that. My next question is, is more of a philosophical question in quite simply, it's how can we live meaningfully?

Speaker2:
So that's a really important one. And it's not just an esoteric question. What we find is that for any people facing the threat of not living, as long as one has hoped or imagined and sometimes bring a moment of clarity of who or what is most meaningful to them, and some patients are able to and we work on we actually have steps to try and help connect people to what matters most to them. And that's very important because that sometimes helps people deeply cherish the people that are most important to them and has been found for some patients makes them less likely to miss the value of a physical and emotional connection when they can't relate in the same way or be willing to receive the care and know that allowing a patient and a child to do something for them serves, let's see, is a favor to the other person so that they're not feeling helpless. And to look at the other side of that, for many people, they renew or find a new personal, spiritual or communal connection. At this time. Actually, issues of faith and spirituality can become more central at this time as people search for something larger that can help them guide them to their truth or help them feel less separate and alone. So some people deepen their connection to their own values and ideals. For some people they are. Their spirituality means being more religious, but for other people that need to mean connecting to nature or science, others find that religious readings are helpful to them. Others find secular readings or expressing what's in. Their own heart is important and research has been done on helping patients find meaning. And it is found that spirituality has been now said to be an essential component in optimal supportive care for patients with advanced cancer. Because putting spirituality in has been linked to better immune functioning, lower risks of developing cancer, greater physical and emotional health, pain tolerance, and in some cases, survival.

Speaker1:
Well, that's excellent.

Speaker2:
I like that. So it's not just a nice afterthought, right?

Speaker1:
Exactly. Exactly. So, Elizabeth, I want to talk more about your book, Coping with Cancer. I've got a copy. It's it's excellent. But I'd like to I know you've touched on some topics in your book, but but tell our listeners a little bit more about that and how they can get it.

Speaker2:
So it's on all the Amazon, Barnes Noble's, any of the major sites. It's published by Guildford Ecom, maybe Wilfred's website, maybe cheaper. I'm not sure about that. But any, you know, any of the online booksellers have had that.

Speaker1:
Excellent. Yep. And again, for our listeners, that's coping with cancer, the skills to manage your emotions and balance uncertainty with hope. So highly recommended. Please, please check that out.

Speaker2:
I will also say we are in the process of developing a curriculum where this can be taught to train providers to to do this and that. It can be taught in various cancer centres. And so I have a website, DC students, ecom and anyone who's interested in that curriculum either for providing it training or research can reach me there.

Speaker1:
Excellent. And again, that's easy, students. Excellent. Well, I encourage our listeners to to connect with you, because I obviously I love your book and I love what you're doing. And I found our I found our time today to be just so beneficial. And so I hope our listeners will will take the time to to dig deeper. This is such an important topic.

Speaker2:
Well, thanks so much.

Speaker1:
Well, thank you for being here. And. Was there anything else that we didn't cover that that you had wanted our listeners to know?

Speaker2:
I think we've got it.

Speaker1:
Okay. Well, great. Well, well, thank you again, Elizabeth. Really appreciate your time and your expertise. Thank you so much.

Speaker2:
Well, appreciate all that you do and understand the complexity of the whole person and thinking about all the parts that would make a difference for somebody. So thank you so much for your work.

Speaker1:
Well, thank you for saying that. And for our listeners, if you're enjoying these podcasts, please take a minute and provide a review on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts and please subscribe to the Cancer Secrets podcast, you'll be notified whenever a new episode is released. And as always, please share this podcast with your family and friends. And as you know, all previous episodes are available for download for free at Cancer Secrets dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time. Bye bye. Thank you again, Elizabeth.

Speaker2:
Bye. He.

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