A third related concept, self-empowerment, is most closely related to self-advocacy and
includes the survivor’s process of gaining power and control over aspects of his or her
cancer experience (Mok 2001, Rafael 1995). While self-empowerment is included in the
defining attributes of self-advocacy, it is not sufficient to encompass the entirety of this
phenomenon, primarily because self-advocacy has an action-orientation where the process of self-advocating leads the survivor acting on his or her own behalf in the face of a
challenge or threat.