As most of you know, it has been a very busy time for me and to demonstrate that I practice what I preach, I took some time off from this project, so I could be fully present as I prepared for my TEDx talk and care for my mom during her cancer journey.
I'm excited to announce that I’ll be resuming The Born To Heal Podcast.
There is yet so much to share in this world.
I will be kicking off my return with Episode 28 - TED Talk - Behind the Scenes.
The title of the talk is "How to Talk to Someone With Cancer". This is my first TEDx talk and I have to say it was a harrowing experience. I’ll be sharing with you the behind the scenes on today’s returning episode.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO WATCH MY FULL TEDX TALK!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZef13BSpU
Send us a text with your question (include your phone number)
MORE FROM KATIE DEMING M.D.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
You're listening to the Warren Hill podcast with Dr.
(00:02):
Katie Demming. On today'sepisode, I am taking you behind
the scenes with my recent TEDTalk. So stay tuned.
Welcome back. Thank you so muchfor your patience. As I took a
(00:22):
couple months away from thispodcast, it's been a really busy
time for me. And to demonstratethat I practice what I preach, I
took some time off from thisproject, the podcast, so I could
be fully present as I preparedfor my TEDx talk. And as I cared
for my mom, many of you don'trealize this, but this podcast
(00:46):
is not something I get paid todo. It's simply a way for me to
serve and to share what I knowwith those of you who are
looking for information abouthealing. And even though some
people say it's risky to taketime off from a podcast, because
I could lose listeners, I knowthat I must take care of myself
(01:07):
and make decisions like this inorder to continue to serve over
the long term. Through my 20year long career in a service
profession, like medicine, I'velearned that I must take care of
myself and set boundaries firstin order to be able to give to
others. And this is actually animportant point for anyone
(01:27):
listening to this podcast, youtoo, must set boundaries to make
sure you don't deplete yourself,otherwise, you will have nothing
to give. And on this note, oneof my mentors shared this with
me. And I think it's reallyvaluable. And I'm going to share
it with you because I think thatit's a helpful analogy to think
about. But he said that youcannot give 50 cents to someone
(01:51):
if you don't first have $1yourself. And this is true, not
just for money, but in energy aswell. And what we give in terms
of service, we all have a finiteamount of time and energy. And
if we run ourselves into theground, doing things without
remembering to take care ofourselves, first, we'll end up
(02:13):
depleted and worse off than thepeople we're trying to help. So
it's taken me a long time toactually practice this principle
of taking care of myself first.
But it's now part of who I am.
And though, although I've wantedto be here with you, and
continue sharing on the podcast,I knew I needed to take a little
(02:34):
break. And I hope you too willremember this principle, the
next time you realize you mayhave just a little too much on
your plate, you need to rememberthat you are always in charge of
your life. And you can choose totake something off your plate,
even when people tell you it'snot a good idea. And with that,
I want to say thank you forbeing patient and for hanging
(02:56):
around. Even when I disappearedfor a little bit. I don't
anticipate that happening again.
But it was kind of a combinationof multiple things happening in
my life all at the same time.
And I knew I couldn't do justiceto everything if I continued
going at that rate.
But the most exciting news thatI want to share with you is that
(03:18):
my TEDx talk was recentlypublished on YouTube. And we'll
have a link to the talk in theshow notes. But you can find it
on YouTube by shirting bysearching. Katie Deming TED
talk, the title of the talk ishow to talk to someone with
cancer. And this was my veryfirst TEDx talk. And I have to
(03:41):
say that it was a harrowingexperience. I love speaking. But
most of my experience has beengiving medical lectures that are
anywhere from 45 to 60 minuteslong. And a TED talk is a very
short format. It was only 12minutes my TEDx talk. And it's
(04:04):
more storyteller, storytellingthan lecture and I had no idea
how challenging it was going tobe to prepare this talk to write
the talk to give it and when youonly have 12 minutes to speak on
a complicated topic. Literally,every word matters on that
(04:24):
matters. every word matters,excuse me. And on top of that,
the entire talk needs to bememorized, but come off as if
it's conversational. And so thepreparation for this talk was
literally the most rigorousprocess I have ever been through
in my life. And I've done a lotof rigorous things.
But I think the kicker was thatI got COVID 12 days before my
(04:48):
talk and literally could notstand sit up or speak to
practice the talk. I was reallysick. And literally all I could
do is visualize the words inI heard and I imagined myself
giving the talk on stage.
Fortunately, two days before thetalk, I was finally able to
stand and give the talk in anupright position and tested
(05:12):
negative on that day so that Iwas able to fly and travel to
the event. Butit was insane. The whole process
was so just rigorous. And thento have this happen at the end
was very interesting experience.
But in some ways, I actuallythink that it helped me number
(05:34):
one, I teach here visualizationof what you want, right? So
imagining the outcome that youwant. And literally the only
thing that I could do for those10 days that I was facedown in
bed, was imagine myself givingthe talk. And so I again, got to
(05:55):
practice what I preach. Andbecause I had done all the prep
work before, and then just bysheerly imagining myself, and
memorizing the words, in myhead, I was able to give that
talk, which 12 minutes ofmemorized information or
content.
It's a lot. And sofortunately, all of that came
(06:17):
off without a hitch. And I'mhappy with the way the video has
turned out. And I, you know, Iwasn't sure how this talk would
go over with audiences. It's atopic that I feel passionate
about the language that we useto speak to someone who is
healing, but I wasn't sure if itwould resonate with the
(06:39):
audience. But I have to say thatthe response to the talk both
from the live audience of 1000people in Reno and now that has
put in posted online has beenincredible. I've had so many
people reach out to me and saythat they appreciate me standing
up to say that the status quo ofthe language in cancer is not
(07:01):
working.
And what is interesting is thatbefore I had a patient bring up
the fact that she hated the wordsurvivor. And actually, that is
kind of the the starting pointof this talk is that I was in a
leadership position. So I wasrunning the cancer service line
(07:23):
for Kaiser Permanente, and wasmeeting with my cancer specific
patient advisory council. Andthese, this was a group of
patients and their familymembers or caregivers who
advised me on how torevamp the cancer program. And I
was meeting with them one day,and we were talking about
(07:45):
survivorship and survivorship isthe title that is given to
programs that care for peoplewith cancer after they've
finished active treatment. Andone of the patients told me how
much she disliked the wordsurvivor. And I've really had no
idea. And and then it turned outthat she wasn't the only one who
felt that way that many peopleon this advisory council also
(08:08):
felt that way and led me intoresearching the term survivor.
And then ultimately taking adeeper look at language in
general in the cancer space andhow we speak to
our patients, and how we speakto each other and is the
(08:28):
language that we're usinghealing. So if you haven't
watched the talk, I encourageyou to go watch it because it
really is giving a differentperspective on the language that
we use in cancer. And I've beenso pleasantly surprised by the
response. And both from mycolleagues in medicine, nurses,
(08:49):
physicians,people who are working in the
cancer space, serving peoplewith cancer, as well as people
with cancer themselves. And Iwasn't sure because sometimes
when yougo against the grain and you
bring up a topic in a new anddifferent way, there can be
(09:11):
pushback, and I'm open to thatbecause you know what, I think
when we start to talk aboutthings in a different way, I
expect people to disagree withme and I welcome that. But I've
been surprised that so manypeople
agree with or resonate with themessage that was shared in this
(09:34):
talk. And really, my goal withthis talk was to stop us and
say, okay, is the language thatwe are using in the cancer space
productive, helpful and healthy.
So that's the first thing islike just having people bring
(09:54):
awareness to the language thatwe're using.
And then what people do with itis 100% up to them. But I wanted
to stop people, and to have themthink about it. Okay, we're
using these words, these wordshave just been given to us, I
don't think that the language isbeen
(10:18):
developed maliciously, or thatthere was any mal intent. And in
fact, the term survivor thatstarted this whole,
you know, conversation and thenstudy that ultimately led to my
TED Talk. Theperson who came up with that
word, I'm blanking on his nameright now, but he's a physician
who actually had cancer himself.
(10:40):
And he was recognizing a need,that in the cancer space, we
needed to address all of theaspects of someone's life after
cancer, so that there's seasonsthe way he described it was that
there were seasons ofsurvivorship. And then
ultimately, the word survivorand survivorship were adopted,
(11:01):
you know, kind ofwidely, to say widely is like an
understatement. It basically iseverywhere in cancer care, we've
adopted these words that now,unfortunately, have unintended
consequences. And I know thatthe intention behind the initial
development of the word survivorand survivorship was not with
(11:23):
Mal intent. It was with goodintent. But I think whenever we
start using a single label todescribe millions of people with
so many different conditions, socancer, even one type of breast
cancer, one type of breastcancer is not the same as
another type of breast cancer insomeone's stage is different.
(11:45):
And when you lump everyone withcancer, every stage curable, non
curable, you know, all of thattogether, you're asking for
problems, right? We can't labelsuch a diverse group of people
with one term. And you know, oneof the things that people ask
is, well, then what do you useinstead? And in the talk, I
talked about this, but I don'trecommend that we choose one
(12:06):
label, or, you know, adopt a setof words to talk about this, I
think that people get to choosetheir own label, right. And the
way that I think about it is, ifI'm seeing a patient, I use the
labels that are meaningful forthem. If someone wants to be
called a survivor, and that ismeaningful for them, I will use
(12:30):
that term, but otherwise, Idon't use it. And I think, you
know,we get into this like, well, how
are we going to categorizepeople? Well, the truth is, we
don't need to put people inthese nice little boxes that we
want to make things look prettyand
(12:52):
have it fit, you know, in somelittle package that that makes
sense. I think people arecomplex. And also cancer is an
experience that some people wantto move through and not have a
title attached to that. And Ithink that that makes sense. So
I'm excited that the talk is outthere. I also talk about battle
(13:12):
language. So terms like fight,win or lose, these are all
things that have become verycommon in the cancer space. And
you know, it's commoneverywhere, because this kind of
language sells. So politiciansuse it right when they want to
get people behind them. They saylike the war on drugs or the war
(13:34):
on terror. And like when you usethese more wet war metaphors
that can get people all likeworked up and
motivated and vigilant. But theproblem is, when you're healing,
you want the opposite of thatyou don't want people amped up
and in fight or flight, you wantthem calm and in a state of
(13:54):
peace. And so this is what Italk about on the TED talk as
well is that we're when we'reusing these language, when we're
using these words,it can have detrimental
physiologic effects on us thatwe are not intending. And for
some people actually it can bereally, really helpful. So in
(14:16):
Jeffery read injures book cured,he talks about one man who
battle metaphors actually reallymotivated him and for him, it
didn't incite fear and, and heused him and that was great for
him. So great. You know, this isthe other thing, the message
that I want to share is that I'mnot saying any of these words
(14:36):
are bad. I'm just saying, thinkabout it. And and think about
what it's doing for you. Whenyou use these words when you use
battle metaphors. Is it ampingyou up? Or is it getting you
into fear that may be harmingyour ability to heal? And so I'm
excited to be back. I'm excitedthat Ted
(15:00):
Talk is out and I am making somebig shifts in my career that I
will share on the next episode,but I'm really excited for
what's coming and how I will beable to serve you in an even
bigger and more robust way. Sotake care of yourself and I look
(15:20):
forward to speaking with you onthe next episode. Okay, take
careHey, this is Dr. Katie damming
and thank you for listening tothe body heal podcast. If you've
gotten value from today'sepisode, I'd love for you to
share it with your friends andloved ones helped me create more
impact around the world. Don'tforget to follow me on Instagram
(15:45):
or Facebook and visit Katydeming.com For more information
on how to work with me
You're listening to the Warren Hill podcast with Dr.
(00:02):
Katie Demming. On today'sepisode, I am taking you behind
the scenes with my recent TEDTalk. So stay tuned.
Welcome back. Thank you so muchfor your patience. As I took a
(00:22):
couple months away from thispodcast, it's been a really busy
time for me. And to demonstratethat I practice what I preach, I
took some time off from thisproject, the podcast, so I could
be fully present as I preparedfor my TEDx talk. And as I cared
for my mom, many of you don'trealize this, but this podcast
(00:46):
is not something I get paid todo. It's simply a way for me to
serve and to share what I knowwith those of you who are
looking for information abouthealing. And even though some
people say it's risky to taketime off from a podcast, because
I could lose listeners, I knowthat I must take care of myself
(01:07):
and make decisions like this inorder to continue to serve over
the long term. Through my 20year long career in a service
profession, like medicine, I'velearned that I must take care of
myself and set boundaries firstin order to be able to give to
others. And this is actually animportant point for anyone
(01:27):
listening to this podcast, youtoo, must set boundaries to make
sure you don't deplete yourself,otherwise, you will have nothing
to give. And on this note, oneof my mentors shared this with
me. And I think it's reallyvaluable. And I'm going to share
it with you because I think thatit's a helpful analogy to think
about. But he said that youcannot give 50 cents to someone
(01:51):
if you don't first have $1yourself. And this is true, not
just for money, but in energy aswell. And what we give in terms
of service, we all have a finiteamount of time and energy. And
if we run ourselves into theground, doing things without
remembering to take care ofourselves, first, we'll end up
(02:13):
depleted and worse off than thepeople we're trying to help. So
it's taken me a long time toactually practice this principle
of taking care of myself first.
But it's now part of who I am.
And though, although I've wantedto be here with you, and
continue sharing on the podcast,I knew I needed to take a little
(02:34):
break. And I hope you too willremember this principle, the
next time you realize you mayhave just a little too much on
your plate, you need to rememberthat you are always in charge of
your life. And you can choose totake something off your plate,
even when people tell you it'snot a good idea. And with that,
I want to say thank you forbeing patient and for hanging
(02:56):
around. Even when I disappearedfor a little bit. I don't
anticipate that happening again.
But it was kind of a combinationof multiple things happening in
my life all at the same time.
And I knew I couldn't do justiceto everything if I continued
going at that rate.
But the most exciting news thatI want to share with you is that
(03:18):
my TEDx talk was recentlypublished on YouTube. And we'll
have a link to the talk in theshow notes. But you can find it
on YouTube by shirting bysearching. Katie Deming TED
talk, the title of the talk ishow to talk to someone with
cancer. And this was my veryfirst TEDx talk. And I have to
(03:41):
say that it was a harrowingexperience. I love speaking. But
most of my experience has beengiving medical lectures that are
anywhere from 45 to 60 minuteslong. And a TED talk is a very
short format. It was only 12minutes my TEDx talk. And it's
(04:04):
more storyteller, storytellingthan lecture and I had no idea
how challenging it was going tobe to prepare this talk to write
the talk to give it and when youonly have 12 minutes to speak on
a complicated topic. Literally,every word matters on that
(04:24):
matters. every word matters,excuse me. And on top of that,
the entire talk needs to bememorized, but come off as if
it's conversational. And so thepreparation for this talk was
literally the most rigorousprocess I have ever been through
in my life. And I've done a lotof rigorous things.
But I think the kicker was thatI got COVID 12 days before my
(04:48):
talk and literally could notstand sit up or speak to
practice the talk. I was reallysick. And literally all I could
do is visualize the words inI heard and I imagined myself
giving the talk on stage.
Fortunately, two days before thetalk, I was finally able to
stand and give the talk in anupright position and tested
(05:12):
negative on that day so that Iwas able to fly and travel to
the event. Butit was insane. The whole process
was so just rigorous. And thento have this happen at the end
was very interesting experience.
But in some ways, I actuallythink that it helped me number
(05:34):
one, I teach here visualizationof what you want, right? So
imagining the outcome that youwant. And literally the only
thing that I could do for those10 days that I was facedown in
bed, was imagine myself givingthe talk. And so I again, got to
(05:55):
practice what I preach. Andbecause I had done all the prep
work before, and then just bysheerly imagining myself, and
memorizing the words, in myhead, I was able to give that
talk, which 12 minutes ofmemorized information or
content.
It's a lot. And sofortunately, all of that came
(06:17):
off without a hitch. And I'mhappy with the way the video has
turned out. And I, you know, Iwasn't sure how this talk would
go over with audiences. It's atopic that I feel passionate
about the language that we useto speak to someone who is
healing, but I wasn't sure if itwould resonate with the
(06:39):
audience. But I have to say thatthe response to the talk both
from the live audience of 1000people in Reno and now that has
put in posted online has beenincredible. I've had so many
people reach out to me and saythat they appreciate me standing
up to say that the status quo ofthe language in cancer is not
(07:01):
working.
And what is interesting is thatbefore I had a patient bring up
the fact that she hated the wordsurvivor. And actually, that is
kind of the the starting pointof this talk is that I was in a
leadership position. So I wasrunning the cancer service line
(07:23):
for Kaiser Permanente, and wasmeeting with my cancer specific
patient advisory council. Andthese, this was a group of
patients and their familymembers or caregivers who
advised me on how torevamp the cancer program. And I
was meeting with them one day,and we were talking about
(07:45):
survivorship and survivorship isthe title that is given to
programs that care for peoplewith cancer after they've
finished active treatment. Andone of the patients told me how
much she disliked the wordsurvivor. And I've really had no
idea. And and then it turned outthat she wasn't the only one who
felt that way that many peopleon this advisory council also
(08:08):
felt that way and led me intoresearching the term survivor.
And then ultimately taking adeeper look at language in
general in the cancer space andhow we speak to
our patients, and how we speakto each other and is the
(08:28):
language that we're usinghealing. So if you haven't
watched the talk, I encourageyou to go watch it because it
really is giving a differentperspective on the language that
we use in cancer. And I've beenso pleasantly surprised by the
response. And both from mycolleagues in medicine, nurses,
(08:49):
physicians,people who are working in the
cancer space, serving peoplewith cancer, as well as people
with cancer themselves. And Iwasn't sure because sometimes
when yougo against the grain and you
bring up a topic in a new anddifferent way, there can be
(09:11):
pushback, and I'm open to thatbecause you know what, I think
when we start to talk aboutthings in a different way, I
expect people to disagree withme and I welcome that. But I've
been surprised that so manypeople
agree with or resonate with themessage that was shared in this
(09:34):
talk. And really, my goal withthis talk was to stop us and
say, okay, is the language thatwe are using in the cancer space
productive, helpful and healthy.
So that's the first thing islike just having people bring
(09:54):
awareness to the language thatwe're using.
And then what people do with itis 100% up to them. But I wanted
to stop people, and to have themthink about it. Okay, we're
using these words, these wordshave just been given to us, I
don't think that the language isbeen
(10:18):
developed maliciously, or thatthere was any mal intent. And in
fact, the term survivor thatstarted this whole,
you know, conversation and thenstudy that ultimately led to my
TED Talk. Theperson who came up with that
word, I'm blanking on his nameright now, but he's a physician
who actually had cancer himself.
(10:40):
And he was recognizing a need,that in the cancer space, we
needed to address all of theaspects of someone's life after
cancer, so that there's seasonsthe way he described it was that
there were seasons ofsurvivorship. And then
ultimately, the word survivorand survivorship were adopted,
(11:01):
you know, kind ofwidely, to say widely is like an
understatement. It basically iseverywhere in cancer care, we've
adopted these words that now,unfortunately, have unintended
consequences. And I know thatthe intention behind the initial
development of the word survivorand survivorship was not with
(11:23):
Mal intent. It was with goodintent. But I think whenever we
start using a single label todescribe millions of people with
so many different conditions, socancer, even one type of breast
cancer, one type of breastcancer is not the same as
another type of breast cancer insomeone's stage is different.
(11:45):
And when you lump everyone withcancer, every stage curable, non
curable, you know, all of thattogether, you're asking for
problems, right? We can't labelsuch a diverse group of people
with one term. And you know, oneof the things that people ask
is, well, then what do you useinstead? And in the talk, I
talked about this, but I don'trecommend that we choose one
(12:06):
label, or, you know, adopt a setof words to talk about this, I
think that people get to choosetheir own label, right. And the
way that I think about it is, ifI'm seeing a patient, I use the
labels that are meaningful forthem. If someone wants to be
called a survivor, and that ismeaningful for them, I will use
(12:30):
that term, but otherwise, Idon't use it. And I think, you
know,we get into this like, well, how
are we going to categorizepeople? Well, the truth is, we
don't need to put people inthese nice little boxes that we
want to make things look prettyand
(12:52):
have it fit, you know, in somelittle package that that makes
sense. I think people arecomplex. And also cancer is an
experience that some people wantto move through and not have a
title attached to that. And Ithink that that makes sense. So
I'm excited that the talk is outthere. I also talk about battle
(13:12):
language. So terms like fight,win or lose, these are all
things that have become verycommon in the cancer space. And
you know, it's commoneverywhere, because this kind of
language sells. So politiciansuse it right when they want to
get people behind them. They saylike the war on drugs or the war
(13:34):
on terror. And like when you usethese more wet war metaphors
that can get people all likeworked up and
motivated and vigilant. But theproblem is, when you're healing,
you want the opposite of thatyou don't want people amped up
and in fight or flight, you wantthem calm and in a state of
(13:54):
peace. And so this is what Italk about on the TED talk as
well is that we're when we'reusing these language, when we're
using these words,it can have detrimental
physiologic effects on us thatwe are not intending. And for
some people actually it can bereally, really helpful. So in
(14:16):
Jeffery read injures book cured,he talks about one man who
battle metaphors actually reallymotivated him and for him, it
didn't incite fear and, and heused him and that was great for
him. So great. You know, this isthe other thing, the message
that I want to share is that I'mnot saying any of these words
(14:36):
are bad. I'm just saying, thinkabout it. And and think about
what it's doing for you. Whenyou use these words when you use
battle metaphors. Is it ampingyou up? Or is it getting you
into fear that may be harmingyour ability to heal? And so I'm
excited to be back. I'm excitedthat Ted
(15:00):
Talk is out and I am making somebig shifts in my career that I
will share on the next episode,but I'm really excited for
what's coming and how I will beable to serve you in an even
bigger and more robust way. Sotake care of yourself and I look
(15:20):
forward to speaking with you onthe next episode. Okay, take
careHey, this is Dr. Katie damming
and thank you for listening tothe body heal podcast. If you've
gotten value from today'sepisode, I'd love for you to
share it with your friends andloved ones helped me create more
impact around the world. Don'tforget to follow me on Instagram
(15:45):
or Facebook and visit Katydeming.com For more information
on how to work with me
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.