Hello, and welcome to The Own Your Health Podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
Now, today we're going to talk about
owning your narrative or controlling the narrative.
That's a catchphrase that's in the media a lot lately.
And we aren't going to worry about the whole
scope of the world narrative. Just the narrative, just
the story around your health and the choices that
you have when you own that story.
So last episode we talked about the first way
to really start to step up and own your
own health was through your language, and that was
how you talked about your health.
An extension of this is owning the story
or owning the narrative in the way that
you share your health information with others.
Now, here's a little bit of disappointing news, and that is
that when you start to own your health, when you start
to make any changes in your life, there are going to
be people who are very uncomfortable with that.
People who are uncomfortable with you making changes for
the better because they may not want to
they may not feel they have the power to
they may not want to be left behind.
But I applaud you for stepping up and making changes,
and I think you'll be excited about it as well.
Probably the best thing is to get very
comfortable and have a plan of communication first
before you start moving into your larger circle,
making any changes in your life.
Now, this is true if you've been recently diagnosed, as many
of my clients have been, or if you're simply making changes
to the way you eat or the way you exercise or
the places you go, the hours you keep.
All of those things can be very
disconcerting to those people around us.
And by having a plan for how you want to
communicate those things, not only will they be more comfortable,
which is somewhat of a goal, but you'll be more
confident in the changes in the way that you're owning
your life and owning your health.
So we're going to talk about three tips
for communication, the first of which is to
determine what you want to share.
Now, sometimes when we make changes in our
lives, we just make it and nobody notices.
It can be something very personal.
It can be the way we do our morning routine, it
can be the way we do an evening routine, or how
we communicate other aspects of our life in the workplace.
But when it gets to be our health,
sometimes it's a little bit more obvious to
others when we change the way we eat.
If we've had a medical diagnosis that's going
to change us and change our appearance.
If we do something like stop drinking, that will
be very obvious to the people around us.
So you can decide ahead of time what you
want to say, how much you want to say,
if you want to say anything at all.
So the assumption here is that you have an absolute
right to privacy and if you want to move comfortably
in the world, you may want to do some communicating.
So in terms of deciding who you want to communicate
with, it's very tied to the second tip, and that
is how much and what you want to communicate.
And those two things interact because who the person
is in our life may determine how much information
they get about the changes that we're making or
the ways that we're owning our health.
If we have family members that like to go to
the doctor for everything and we make a different choice,
that may be a point of contention and it may
be something that you want to share your reasons for
the choices that you're making, or it may simply be
that you want to share, you know what?
I'm choosing to manage more of my
health on my own at home.
I'll seek medical care if I want.
There's obviously more information you're going to
share with a spouse than there is
with the general public, usually.
And it's also important and that's the third tip
is to communicate with the loved ones, those in
your inner circle, what your communication plans are.
So for example, if you're not ready to communicate
treatment you've chosen or you're not ready to communicate
a diagnosis that you've gotten until it's really something
that you've been able to wrap your mind around
and settle in with, then you'll want to maybe
let your spouse know, hey, you know what?
I'm not going to share this
until I have more information.
And I'd appreciate if you not share it either.
So you want to also communicate your expectations of
privacy and expectations that you will be the one
controlling who gets what information and when.
Now all of this does sound very heavy.
It sounds like this controlling aspect, but
really part of owning your health is
controlling that because when you don't control
that communication, miscommunication happens.
Odd information gets out.
Information that you may either not want to share or
you may not want to share at a particular time.
And I think that's part of what's been such
a challenge the last couple of years is that
medical information, HIPAA laws seem to have just disappeared.
Everyone wants your medical information on a public card
that you have to show at a door.
And that's just not how life is meant to be.
And so if you feel like that, if you feel
the same way I do, and that you know what,
my medical information is my information, and I'll decide when
and where I want to share it.
So there's a couple of approaches to this in terms of
the who you want to share with and there's ways that
you can prepare and think about that ahead of time.
And that's what I'm all about, is being
prepared, thinking about ahead of time, so that
you can be intentional when you share information.
And this is really there's two parts to that.
One is if you take time to stop and think about
the message that you want to share with others, it gives
you time also to think about why am I doing this?
What's the motivation?
What do I hope to gain from this?
And when you think it through yourself, not that you
have to share any or all of that, but when
you think through that process on your own, we tend
to be much more comfortable with the place we arrive
with the conclusion and the decision we arrive at.
So there is a little bit of a trick
to this process, and that is that in order
to effectively manage your story, your health story that
you're owning to the rest of the world, you
need to do some thinking about it yourself.
You need to be intentional with your decisions.
And that's something that I always recommend.
If it's a health decision, if it's a
business decision, if it's a work decision, whatever
decisions you make to be intentional about them.
But health can be challenging because so
often we've outsourced it and we've let
someone else control the story.
I've had a very good client of mine who
became ill very quickly, ended up in the hospital.
And before she even could be in a situation, in
a room that she could make a phone call or
in a room that she could think about what was
going on and create a plan, her family had already
shared, not only with extended family, but on social media,
that she was sick and in the hospital.
And that was very alarming for her.
And it felt you are ready if you're sitting
in a hospital, chances are in a gown with
the back flapping open that you feel pretty vulnerable.
And to have your information shared about your health far
and wide before you even have a chance to think
about what's happened to you, to process the information and
to create a message, is pretty alarming.
And nobody was ill intended there.
I mean, her husband was distraught.
He had asked for prayers for her.
He wanted to let people know what was going on.
Everyone who responded cared about her very much.
But her health crisis was a very personal one,
and she wasn't ready to share that information yet.
Like I said, she needed time just to digest it.
So by the time she came to work with me, she
was in the process of regaining control over her message.
And what I mean by that is she came home from
the hospital to a whole group of people in her home,
several of them staying there, some relatives, some not.
She came home to all kinds of food that had
been lovingly prepared for her, but was completely inconsistent with
the way that she needed to eat to heal.
She had people coming and going all
shifts because they truly believed that they
could best help her around the clock.
And all of these things were out of her control.
And by the time she came to me, by
the time she called me and set up an
appointment, she was just at wits end.
She said, and her opening line was something to the effect
of, I don't even have control over who knows
what's going on in my uterus right now.
That's pretty personal.
So even though everyone was very well meaning,
she was not happy with the situation, she
was not healing during that time.
She had tremendous anxiety, she had no privacy, and
she was a very private person, even physically.
So it was a huge lesson for me in
terms of letting my wishes be known, letting those
around me know what I'd like if anything ever
happens, and then setting that stage for how I
communicate any kind of health situation proactively.
So I'll give you a real good
example that was huge in my family.
So I married into big Italian family.
Pasta is an absolute highlight.
I learned to make many homemade
pasta dishes from my husband's mother.
And it was great until I discovered
that I didn't tolerate gluten at all.
And this was quite a number of years ago. So, when
I had to stop eating gluten and at that point there
was and frankly, for pasta, there still is very few good
options in my opinion, that even make it worthwhile.
But it was kind of a big loss and it was
a big shift in the eating patterns of our household.
And it was an even bigger shift when
we went to visit my in laws.
And it was just this total lack of understanding.
Well, what do you mean?
Well, you can't eat spaghetti.
Well, how about rotini?
And people were really wanting to
troubleshoot the situation for me.
But I had done all of that.
I knew what the situation was and I knew
what I needed to do for my health.
So retrospectively, I realized that communicating this
the way I did didn't help them
to understand and it didn't make the
situation any smoother or more comfortable.
And at that point, I started thinking about
how I communicated other sorts of situations.
How I let people know at the office if I was
going to be gone a few days. Who I let know
how much information if I thought I was going to be
gone for more than a few days. What was actually required
to be shared in the workplace and what is actually "required"
and I say that with quotations required to be
shared in the context of your normal family practices.
Because when you make a change to these things,
it's going to cause a little friction and it's
going to take people a little while to adapt.
And that's okay.
And if they don't want to adapt, that's okay.
That's all up to them.
But what's within your power when you own your
health is to decide ahead of time how I
want to communicate what I'm doing, or why I'm
doing, or why I'm making a change and what
my expectations are from that communication.
Because it's up to me to manage my own expectations.
Like I said, some people are going to say, oh,
great, that sounds like a really good idea, or oh,
I hope that treatment goes well for you, or let
me know if there's anything I can do to help.
But there may be people
who say, well, that's ridiculous.
Well, there's nothing really.
No, gluten isn't really a problem for anybody.
That's just a new trend.
Or she just wants attention, or she just wants to
cook something different, or she thinks pasta makes her fat,
or like any one of these things that I heard,
none of it really mattered, except that I'd have preferred
to have a smooth visit with my in laws, and
how I handled it could have made a difference.
So again, this is how we want to
live our lives, how we want to own
our health, and how we want to communicate.
I have and I'll leave a link in the
show notes before or below rather, a book, an
ebook called Managing Your PR After the Diagnosis.
And I created this for my professional corporate
women and in PR is public relations.
So this is kind of a catch all term
for all of the information about you and surrounding
you and how to do it after a diagnosis.
The same tips, the same rules, all of it
apply for really any health change you're making, including
the change of stepping up and owning your health.
So I'd be happy to have
you download that absolutely free.
The link will be down below.
If you have any questions, certainly reach out.
Or if there's other topics that you would like
to talk about, I would be more than happy
to do that and I just want to say
it's great to be here with you
and I wish you all the luck
in your communications regarding owning your health.
So until next time, let's go out there and own it.
