What It Takes To Heal with Andy Campbell

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host, Jen Ginty and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones, when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins. Each episode will explore stories of resilience,

moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change. From personal experiences to expert insights, we'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach. Because sometimes,

The hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (01:10)
Warning, this episode contains discussions about suicide and sexual abuse, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care while listening and reach out for support if needed. If you or someone you know is in crisis, you can contact the 988-SUICIDE-IN-CRISIS lifeline for free and confidential help, available 24-7.

Jen (01:34)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today's guest is Andy Campbell, a resilient survivor and inspirational author who has faced and overcome some of life's toughest challenges. From childhood trauma, bullying and the loss of his mother, to battling stage four pancreatic cancer and enduring the heartbreaking loss of his youngest son to suicide, Andy's journey is one of profound strength and perseverance. Through his book, Overcoming Life's Toughest Setbacks,

He shares the core beliefs that have guided him through unimaginable adversity, offering hope and inspiration to others. Welcome, Andy.

Andy Campbell (02:13)
⁓ thanks Jen. It's great to be here.

Jen (02:16)
and it's great to have you here. Let's get into it. What is your origin story?

Andy Campbell (02:22)
Well, I...

I guess I grew up a lot on my own. ⁓ my parents came from very poor backgrounds, ⁓ very poor backgrounds and they determined that they wanted to have a better life. And so that meant they worked a lot and they both worked a lot. And I ended up kind of growing up on my own. had an older brother, but he was nine years older than me, eight, depending on the time of the year. And.

I found that, you know, growing up alone, one can become vulnerable to different challenges. ⁓ and I was, ⁓ you know, I was a sexually abused as a child, bullied, probably stemming from kind of a low self esteem and the way one views oneself after having gone through, ⁓ several instances of that kind of, ⁓ that I guess you'd that kind of event, the kind of trauma, but that kind of event.

And then, you know, I think I struggled with some physical challenges growing up, ⁓ had a number of things that happened that, you know, I won't bore you with here, but they were other events that the therapist thought were significant. And, ⁓ eventually, you know, I ended up getting married and thought I could move on with life and be a productive participant in our society. And I think I have been, but I brought a lot of baggage with me and.

You know, eventually I think that baggage caught up with me when I was 53 and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. then about two and a half years into that, I found the body of my youngest son after he took his own life. And so since then, it has been a lot of coming to terms with a lot of events that have happened in my life. And I decided along the way with a lot of prompting.

to put something down on paper, that would be hopefully an encouragement to others. The net of it is, don't give up. Don't give up.

Jen (04:29)
Yeah, yeah, and I think that that's an important message because sometimes when you feel really hopeless, it doesn't seem to feel that way. And in those moments, I like to say this too shall pass. But yeah, don't give it up.

Andy Campbell (04:46)
It doesn't feel that way at the moment. You know, it's overwhelming. I've certainly been one of those people who's been desperate, who's been overwhelmed, who has...

felt that there were no answers in the moment and questioned why this existence was for me. But I've had good examples and I've had some mentors intentionally or unintentionally that I could look to and have an example of people who either survived

or who ultimately didn't survive, but they taught me how to live. And so I drew on inspiration from them and I hope to do that for some others.

Jen (05:38)
Yeah, with us having similar backgrounds of the trauma, the bullying as a child, it's very hard sometimes to find those people that you can see as a positive role model in your life when you weren't given that when you were younger.

Andy Campbell (05:58)
Yeah, it is. ⁓ Well, and how many people truly understand what you're going through, right? Especially as a child, there's, you know, people are busy and there certainly was a time, I don't know if it's still the case, but there was a time where every other adult was basically trusted and there wasn't a lot of questioning as to whether their intentions were good or noble or honorable. And

Yeah, think it was just, at least when I was growing up, it was more of a time of, I guess one could say kind of self-reliance or certainly.

Yeah. Self-reliance, I guess is what, you know, and I don't mean that in necessarily the best way, right? You were just kind of expected to survive and, ⁓ somehow I did. So I think there's other people that are kind of in, in similar situations. I never put myself to say I'm in somebody else's situation, but I think it's similar enough that, you know, you can survive the moment, the

Jen (06:48)
Yes.

Yeah, and I think...

Andy Campbell (07:11)
day, the week, the year, even when it doesn't feel like you can.

Jen (07:16)
Yeah. And I think, I mean, I know my generation Gen X, we were those self-reliant children that learned that if we didn't do for ourselves, then ⁓ we were exposed and we were unable to live in general. know, it's interesting, you talk about the adults that were around that they were supposed to be or they were

being trusted by others. And I think there's a series of betrayals that happen for children who have been abused or are being abused. And I think the betrayals are other adults that are around us. I know when I was in school, I went to Catholic school, and I would be showing many signs of not only abuse, but also I would be

badly bullied at school because I was different in some way. at the end of the day, they'd leave me sitting outside. They'd walk away and say goodbye, or the nuns would go to their convent or wherever they needed to be. And it's so different from now where your child, if your child is not picked up at school, you're called, you're, like there was nobody looking out for me.

Andy Campbell (08:18)
Yeah.

Jen (08:43)
And I don't know if that's how it felt to you.

Andy Campbell (08:46)
Yeah, I think a hundred percent. ⁓ You know, there were a lot of things that were like, think sometimes, you my perspective now is in hindsight, right? So it's like you look back and you think, the generation who is, is raising children is really a historical generation. It, it, sees the whole world through its lens and

It's really difficult not to, that is your experience with the world. And it takes a lot to shift that experience. The same way it's taken a lot for me to shift from catastrophizing, from not trusting people, from having a real distrust of authority, ⁓ from having to live in a state of fear.

You know, even at a low burn of fear where you don't realize that you're really living in fear, but you're constantly assuming the shoe is going to, the next shoe is going to drop. So how do you mitigate that risk? Things that a lot of people don't think about, I don't think, but maybe they do and they just don't share it. But, um, so I think each generation you live with those things that you came up with. So my parents would have thought of sexual abuse as something that was, um, very uncommon.

Almost all adults that they knew were trustworthy. ⁓ they were Catholic or Protestant. They went to church, they had a respect, they believed in the 10 commandments. So certainly that would like, that was an aberration, right? Like that was it. It was not unheard of. It was just not common. Right. And so their experience would be, why would I think this is common?

Right. And so, you know, and they, and they tended to have larger families. So if there was a bully, it was probably your brother's sister. And that was dealt within the family, but certainly people outside the family, they knew the family would show up. Well, I didn't grow up with a family, you know, so people would think, well, you know, it's like, it's just, just me, you know, it's just, it's just a little me. And so I, you know, I've worked over time to not hold against.

a past generation things that they did or did not do. Because I think in many ways, not at all, but most people, were genuinely, you know, they were looking at like they were doing the best they could and, and they were doing what they thought was right. My parents did what they thought was right. I had a lot of animosity for years, but I finally came to a place where it's like, you know, they were genuinely good people. They just didn't understand the world the way it was. And it's kind of like with my children.

Jen (11:33)
Yeah.

Andy Campbell (11:35)
I work to stay aware, but I can't really understand exactly what they're going through because it's a different thing than what I went through. So, you know, I don't hold as much animosity as I once did, you know.

Jen (11:44)
Yeah, the generations.

Yeah, we could look at it as generational trauma. Their traumas, they only knew what, like you said, what they were taught as we were the same way. It's interesting because

Andy Campbell (11:53)
Yeah.

And they knew,

you know, like for instance, my parents knew poverty and I mean, poverty, like they grew up on dirt poor farms where they were the first generation to have indoor plumbing, you know, a, a room with an air conditioner unheard of. Okay. And this is like South Alabama heat all day, every day, you know, they, so for them, poverty was the trauma.

Now that there were other things that came along with that, but you know, they're like, well, we fixed that. I said, yeah, but we created some other things. Yeah.

Jen (12:41)
Yeah, you know that poverty is complex PTSD. Growing up in poverty is a major stress on a life and that sits in our bodies. It changes our body chemistry, it changes the neurons in our brain so that we are in constant hypervigilance, as you had said earlier, where we ⁓ were taught to always be on guard for fear.

Andy Campbell (12:45)
Yeah.

Jen (13:11)
you know, for something bad to happen to us, and that lives within us. So it's very difficult to come out of that. And if you're not given the chance to, as your parents weren't, they are not going to know what to do next for their children to make it easier for them.

Andy Campbell (13:33)
Well, and they did what they thought would make it easy. They, they cured that ill, right? Like they, what could you possibly complain about? You know, you're not starving today. I mean, okay. So there were times when I had a ketchup sandwich. Okay. Like I know as crazy as that sounds, you know, nobody's around, nobody's home. You eat what you can find. Right. And so, ⁓ but

Jen (13:38)
Yes.

Andy Campbell (13:57)
I knew there would eventually be food. There were times when they didn't know if there would be food. Right. And so my father had this thing. He could barely get past any gift giving event, birthday, Christmas, whatever it was without giving people coats. That was his thing because he had grown up cold. Like it had been cold, you know, like he was poor. didn't have, so that was just like his case. He's really struggled to get away from. And so he might give you a different gift, but you were getting a coat.

But it's July and he's like, you're going to need it soon. Trust me.

Jen (14:27)
Yeah, you know what?

Yeah, it's interesting. My mother does

the same thing. My mother gives blankets every time there's a Christmas or any kind of holiday. We have probably a dozen of them in each room because she just... Right, exactly. My son just went to college and we bought all the things that he needed and she said he needed more blankets.

Andy Campbell (14:36)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And you don't have enough, Jin. You never know. ⁓

Jen (14:59)
My son was like, it's boiling in my room. I have to get more fans and she's throwing more at me. But that's true. It's something that maybe she felt as a child, she was never warm enough. And that's that.

Andy Campbell (15:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's just

the visible thing, right? That's just a visible, but there's so many other things that happen that aren't quite as visible as coats and blankets. And they responded that way. then, you know, and I, and I've realized that I have my own responses to things that way. really had to deal with, like I said, fear, ⁓ constant suspicions, you know, trust no one.

You know, I'm probably even for a long time, I was past trust, but verify, was like, trust, but verify and then don't trust. So it's like, and yeah. Yeah. So I'm very thankful to have been through EMDR and, know, to have had a chance to, ⁓ cause it helped, ⁓ know, I think one of the things I know what kind of probably kind of taken a divergent path here, but, ⁓ one of the,

Jen (15:46)
Mm-hmm. I feel you there. Yep, I do the same thing. Yeah.

me too.

No, no, no, that's where the conversation is at.

Andy Campbell (16:08)
One of the unintended consequences of EMDR for me was I had thought I'd forgiven people, you know, whether it was those who had sexually abused me, those who had bullied me. Um, when I was, I think it was 11 years old, a 13 year old, uh, you know, took me off on this, to this construction site where I thought we were just going to go ride bicycles. And it turns out he was a sociopath, but, um, he thought that.

There was a girl in the neighborhood that was like an older sister to me. She knew I was alone and she would, she would check in on me. She would look after me. I would go by her house and sit outside in the driveway and talk to her. know, it like, she was like an older sister. was alone, but he had decided in his mind that I was taking his girlfriend from.

So he lured me off into this place and then took a two inch galvanized pipe and struck me across the face, caved in the left side of my face, almost broke my nose off my face. Like I've had numerous reconstructive surgeries to put it all back together. had to wire my face together. And so, you know, that drives kind of a, a behavior of not trusting people, you know, like, Hey, let's go and meet me over here. Well, let's think about that for a moment. Right. And so you, but.

But as I worked through these things, you know, I'm, faith is as a Christian. so, you know, it's like, forgive and keep forgiving. Right. And so I want to forgive. And I thought I had until I went through EMDR and EMDR really didn't have anything to do with forgiveness per se. But I realized that every time I had attempted to forgive someone who had hurt me in my life.

What accompanied that forgiveness was the memory of what had happened. And with the memory came the emotion and that visceral kind of reaction. I would say the words, but deep inside, I was still reliving that memory. And one of the unintended consequences was that when I was able through EMDR to kind of separate the emotion from the memory, I was actually able to forgive people.

Which really wasn't for them because they don't know I've forgiven them, but was for me to kind of like unload the weight, unload the burden. ⁓ and so I would, I guess I'm saying that to encourage any listeners who have either struggled with forgiveness or they think they have, but it keeps haunting them.

to consider a therapy like EMDR because it will have unintended consequences and might help you not just separate from the emotion, but actually help leave the baggage behind.

Jen (18:51)
I agree. I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I am someone who has a lot of trouble with forgiveness. And you're right. It's not necessarily for the other person. It's for yourself so that you can, you know, you can move forward. And that is difficult for me. And it is something that I try to work on. And hopefully someday I will get to that point. I find it very difficult to forgive my abuser.

and for people who have broken, seriously broken my trust. And so I agree. Yeah, exactly. Right, right. 100%. And you know what? I want to go to my therapist now and say, let's work through this because she knows I have a big problem with forgiveness. So hearing that.

Andy Campbell (19:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Reasonable, by the way, a reasonable response, right? People will say, because it's reasonable. That's why. Yeah.

Jen (19:46)
really brings that back to me so that I can work with my therapist on that. So thank you.

Andy Campbell (19:53)
Yeah. And look, I'm not saying like I'm like I've solved that puzzle. I just, but I, dawned on me one day. was like, why don't I, why don't I hate would be the right word, right? Like, why don't I hate them? And it's like, I don't know what's different. What's different. And the only thing that I could put my finger on was I had never considered that every time I

Jen (19:57)
Right, right, no, absolutely.

Andy Campbell (20:19)
to forgive and work to relieve myself of that lug, that weight, I had to relive the experience during the forgiving process. Right? Like I never, I never thought about that before. And then I thought, what's different? If that is true, what's different? And the only thing that I could think of that was different was the EMDR had helped me separate the emotion.

Jen (20:42)
Yes.

Andy Campbell (20:42)
So that

I could think about the experience without having that vis, like that, that hatred, that animosity, that, know, that unjust, you know, feeling of having been treated unjustly, you know, ⁓ yeah, all that stuff. And then I thought, wow, maybe, maybe that was the point of it. thought it was this other reason, but maybe. Yeah. It's a, it was an interesting, for me, an interesting experience. still work on it.

You know, there are things that I realized I haven't forgiven. again, it's not, know, forgiveness really has nothing to do with those people because I never went back to them. I'll never see them again, hopefully. Or maybe I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't even recognize them. ⁓ But in my mind, it's nice to let go.

Jen (21:23)
All right. ⁓

Yeah. Did you discover EMDR after you went through the cancer, through the diagnosis? Okay.

Andy Campbell (21:34)
Yeah, it was after my son's suicide. Yeah,

it was after my son's suicide. And, know, we, we, my wife and I went to a grief counselor and I have three remaining children. Everyone was, you know, we had dealt with the reality that that was a likely scenario for about nine years. He told us when he was nine years old, that he didn't think he wanted to live. didn't really see the purpose. It was a very, very logical person.

⁓ high IQ. So, to him, it was like born, suffer, die.

Why we just cut out that middle part? know, and frankly, there's some logic to that, you know, it doesn't play all the way out appropriately, but you know, if you just contain it to that one short thought, you know, there's some logic to that. And we debated that strongly for nine years, but one day he decided, I realized that over those nine years, I thought that I and my wife had been keeping him alive.

And at best we gave him an environment in which he could make a decision not to kill himself, but the decision was always his. ⁓ You know, which was helpful to me, honestly, to come to that place because after his death, was obviously a lot of questions. Could I have done something different? Could we have done something? We put everything we had into it. But is there anything you could do differently? Is there anything, you you spend hours thinking about it, wondering?

And then one day it came to me, there was nothing that could have been done differently because it was always his decision until the day he was every day for nine years. He had decided not to kill himself until the day he did. It was never me preventing him from that. I had simply given him, I'd worked to give, I thought it was preventing him, but the best I could ever do was give him the conditions under which he decided not to do it that day. Right. And so.

Jen (23:28)
Yeah, yeah, and as parents, it's so difficult to see that and I'm so glad that you were able to.

Andy Campbell (23:41)
After I found him and we, you know, we found a grief counselor right away. And, then that's, know, every, as we do in everyone else's lives, people play a seasonal role, you know, as you go through things. And I'd heard about this thing called the MDR and I thought, maybe, maybe that will help us. I didn't understand it, but I thought maybe that would help us. So we found a local therapist, which she was just. ⁓

still is a wonderful woman, a wonderful human being. And, ⁓ she, she helped us all, you know, kind of deal first with Heston's passing. His name was Heston Walker Campbell. We dealt with his passing and what we had lived through. ⁓ but then we started, you know, EMDR, one of those things where it starts unraveling a lot of stuff and, ⁓

I remember sitting in front of her and she was taking notes on a legal pad of the, you know, traumatic things that we would need to work through. And she turned the page and she kept writing, you know, and she said, well, no, no, no, tell me what happened before that. happened before that? And when she got to the bottom of the third page, I was like, you know, I don't think I want to talk to you anymore. I think I'm like, what, what are you, what are your notes? And she said, Oh, well, each line is a thing that we need to work on. And I was like, that's.

That's a lot of things. And she's like, well, you've had a, you know, you've had a different life. And, ⁓ so we, we did that. And like I said, it was after my son's suicide.

Jen (25:21)
And I myself also had a son who was very suicidal throughout his childhood and adolescence. And there is that not being able to understand why they're there. And you had said that it makes sense to you by his thinking, by his thought process. I was always on alert.

for that, he actually spent many times in hospitals because of that. And how I would blame myself for it, that I had put him through that, that he was in depression because he got it from me. He was suicidal because he got it from me. And I can't help him through that. So I felt hopelessness many times.

Andy Campbell (25:58)
Mm-hmm

Jen (26:20)
when it came to that, but you are right. It is their decision. As humans.

Andy Campbell (26:26)
Well, you know, it's, your,

yeah. I mean, just like it was your decision, you decided to do all that you were capable of doing. And you did all that you were capable of doing ultimately to create an environment. That could at best from my point of view, and I know there's exceptions to every rule, so I don't speak in absolutes, but in my case, what I think I've observed is that the best any of us can do no matter

what we have done. The best we can do is to create an environment.

that that might make them want to not take their life. But even then, my father went through some horrible things in his life, horrible things. I don't think he ever thought about killing himself. Like it just wasn't a thing. You know, ⁓ I didn't really think about killing myself except one time during, ⁓

during cancer, you know, I wondered because I wondered, you know, maybe it'd be better for everybody, you know, life insurance and all this stuff, you know, if I'm going to die, you know, maybe now instead of later, you know, but, ⁓ but it wasn't like a thing to consider where Heston Heston's default position was.

I would kill myself today, but I've decided not to. Right. Like, and I think part of it was my wife explained to me because after my son's passing, uh, my wife almost lost her to suicide. Uh, she became very despondent, very depressed, hopeless, uh, just a complete state of despair. He had promised her that he would never take his life without coming and talking to her and giving her a chance to talk him out of it. And he didn't follow through on that commitment. So when you talk about being betrayed.

abandoned all those things. ⁓ and it finally got to her one day and I could feel it. Like it's just a feeling in the air. You know, she wasn't, had gone out someplace and I called her and she was honest at that point and told me that she was on the verge. Like she was on the verge. had pretty much decided that today.

Jen (28:23)
Mm.

Thank

Andy Campbell (28:44)
And we called, I called our family physician who had been with me through the cancer and has done suicide and all these things. And he, got her into the office the same day and put her on a weekly program to talk to him and helped her with medication. And she, and she was able to pull through it. But what she told me was that she better understood what Heston was thinking about. And the way she described it to me.

was that it was like a dark tunnel. And you were standing, she was standing outside the tunnel where it was light, but the dark tunnel was very seductive. And it told her how much better things would be and how much better off the pain that she felt would go away.

And that everyone would get over it. Like everyone would get past it and they would, know, her children would be fine. Her husband would be fine. Like it was like, she said it was like this conversation with the seductive voice that just said, everything will be better if you just walk inside. It just come inside the darkness. It's cool in here. It's quiet. It's all these, it was, ⁓ and she didn't follow through, but I've often thought, you know,

That would be a hard thing to resist every day of your life. It would be a hard thing to resist every day of your life. So I have a new respect for it, a new respect for those who struggle with it and don't, and don't end their life.

Jen (30:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I have been there. I have been in the same ⁓ space as your wife. And I think the way that she did describe it is true. There is this seductive feeling to, OK, well, the hopelessness is taking over now, and all I want is to be wrapped in nothing.

Andy Campbell (30:37)
Yeah.

Yeah. Just, what, what I, what I, you know, and, it's one of those things that you say with an understanding that for people in that moment, like my voice will not be as seductive as that voice, right? Cause I can't, all I can tell somebody is a story that they may not believe or tell them, you know, hang on, don't give in. ⁓ that's a strong voice.

But when it comes to the pain, what I, what I, what I observed with my son's passing, he, because he told me, so, then listening to my wife tell the story, he told me that he believed that when he killed himself, the pain would end. right. Like that, the pain would just end. And in that moment, he didn't care about anything else. He wasn't worried about us. He wasn't worried about his siblings. Not that he didn't love people, but he just, what mattered in that moment was the pain ending.

And then what I observed afterwards was the pain doesn't actually end for that person just can't feel it anymore, but the pain doesn't end. so the pain now detached from the person is free to infect everyone. Those people who love that person, the people who knew that person.

The people who never knew that person, but hear the story. It's like that pain just travels. It like metastasizes like a cancer and it latches on, you know, wherever it can get a foothold. And so my encouragement to people is don't, it's kind of a paradox, right? It's like, it's counterintuitive. Don't free the pain. Make it stay with you.

and diminish it or remove it from the earth, right? Do the work to remove it from the earth so that when your life naturally comes to an end, that pain will not separate and spread to other people, right? I think that's kind of a responsibility we have is to, you know, it's almost like wrestling with the devil, you know, it's like I, almost like you have to hold onto it to

force it back into the box. But it doesn't actually go away. It doesn't go away.

Jen (33:00)
I think that...

No, I think it's that overwhelm of it. It feels more than anything else. And we are not taught how to emotionally regulate that. We're not taught that this too shall pass. We have to kind of learn that on our own. And I say that to myself all the time is, I have to sit with this terrible feeling so that I can

Like you said, release it because it will stop. It will end. It's not going to go on forever. But in that moment, it feels like it might.

Andy Campbell (33:44)
It was, and to a certain extent it, you know, I guess it only kind of diminishes, right? And I, and I'm not comparing my situation with yours or anyone else's, but like with cancer, the fear, it's like the cancer is always with me. There are days when I don't think about it as much, right?

Jen (33:57)
No, no.

Andy Campbell (34:08)
there are days, but I always have to go for blood work every four weeks. Now I have to go for scans on regular basis. I have to go back to the University of Pennsylvania where the trial is at that I've been in for six years.

And so it's always there, like this weight on my shoulder. Some days it's just not as prevalent. Some days it feels like it overwhelms me, you know, like it's so this is your life. This is the way you're going to live. Really? You know, there's an easier way out, you know, is this really how you want to live? this. And it, like you said, it does, it does pass. ⁓ I would, I would love for there to be a way that it would go away without me going away.

But I think my lot is for me to figure out how to live with it because it's not, it's not going away. You know, so I have to figure out how to live with it.

Jen (35:06)
something long-term like this kind cancer, yes, does it feel kind of like an identity?

Andy Campbell (35:15)
Yeah, you know, it's like I work, I work, I think diligently for it not to be. I don't, I don't want people to think of me as someone, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm very blessed. am, I was diagnosed stage four pancreatic cancer seven years ago. ⁓ they're just, you know, 30 days ago was my seventh year anniversary from diagnosis.

I will always be a stage four pancreatic cancer patient. They know I produce defective cells and they know I've had it before. So I won't ever go on remission. There's not enough of us who have lived this long to be considered in remission. But my scans are, as far as they can see on the scans, I'm clear. I have no visible sign of disease left. So I'm in a sub 1 % of people.

Now, mentally though, what I've been through in all those years of the treatments, the chemotherapies, the immunotherapies, you know, feeling like I was going to die multiple times from it, the struggle to not die from it. That doesn't really leave, you know, processed a lot of it in EMDR, but it's still.

You know, it's like this, have this pinch nerve in your neck and you can move on, but it's always like, just feels like it's there. You know, like it's, it's got a hold of you on the nap of your neck and it's just not going to let go. Um, but so I'll work for it and not. Yeah. Go ahead.

Jen (36:41)
Mmm.

there's identities that, no, there

are identities that we have that we want to keep. And then there are identities that we want to shed. And, you know, when the ones that we want to shed are sitting there so prevalent in our faces, it feels kind of like mockingly.

Andy Campbell (36:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, ⁓ I think that's a great way to say it. Actually, it does. It's just like, you know, hey, you went a day without thinking about me. Just thought I'd let you know I'm still here. You know, you are still a stage four cancer patient. Just wanted to remind you. ⁓ And so, yeah, I mean, I work to not identify it like.

Jen (37:20)
Right.

Andy Campbell (37:32)
People who know probably think sometimes, hopefully not always, but sometimes like they think about that. Um, probably my children do more than anybody else, you know, especially one of my daughters is I'm like, well, I'm actually not an invalid. Okay. And she's like, be careful where you step, walk with, know, I'm actually not in that condition yet. Wait until I get there, you know? Um, but, know, so she kind of sees me that way, uh, which I appreciate, but, um,

It is there subconsciously that identity is there, ⁓ no matter how much I don't want it to be. I don't, I don't know how to shake that one, you know, because you, cause it's, it's like what I was talking about with forgiveness. Like I can't, the most I can go is three weeks without knowing that next week I'm going back for blood work and it could be different. And that's why they check you all the time. So it could be different.

And so it's always like, hey, just reminding you, you're still with me and I'm still with you. Yes, it's a struggle. I haven't figured out how to overcome that yet.

Jen (38:44)
Yeah, and I don't think that there's an answer to it, especially not for each individual person in this world, since we're all so different.

Andy Campbell (38:51)
Yeah, yeah, you know.

We are so different. ⁓

I think that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book was, ⁓ some people, some people I knew wanted me to write a book about surviving cancer. And I was like, I don't want to relive that. I don't want to. So there's some really good books on cancer, you know, people who talk about the things they've done and how they approached it. And I had a strategy and executed against that strategy, but.

I mean, I couldn't tell you today and neither could any physician if everything that I did contributed to being here. If it didn't, I mean, I think it did. Uh, but I didn't want to write about that. And then people were like, we're right about, you know, surviving, you know, child suicide. I was like, who the hell wants to write about that? Like, that's not a very, you know, and I'm sure there's books out there about people who have done that. I don't want to, I don't really want to think about it that much, but I did think, well, you know what?

If I write about cancer, people, it's really for people who have had cancer or might have cancer or going through cancer. If I write about suicide or child suicide, then that's going to be about, know, at the largest scope of population that that would impact would probably be people who have lost a child. But, know, like it wouldn't be, you know, it wouldn't be like wide in scope. But then I thought, oh man, I've got these.

15, you know, what I call core beliefs, but there's kind of these 15 principles there. What they really are is like metaphors. ⁓ I don't know, maybe like some people, when they hear words, they hear words. Right. But I hear pictures. I don't hear words. I hear pictures. And so one reason why I have trouble staring straight ahead, because as we talk, I'm thinking like, look up, I look away. I'm, you know, like a picture is forming in my brain to me. We're still.

To me, we're still looking straight at each other, but you know, but I know I've been told that I don't. So now I noticed that, but, um, but they were metaphors because I would see these pictures. would think I observed things and after, and after observing them several times, I'd say, that's probably like a principle. That's something you should remember. Uh, it, you know, it helps you this time. It's been repeatable. So you should write that down. That would be a good thing to remember.

And I ended up writing down like 15 of them. exactly 15 of them. And I thought, well, I could, that would be something that would be wide enough in scope because principles apply to pretty much anything you go through. You know, it doesn't have to be, I mean, yeah, I've got a few things we could talk about. could talk about, you know, illness as a child. We could talk about being, you know, assaulted. We could talk about sexual abuse. We could talk about cancer. We could talk about a lot of stuff.

But if you focus on any one of those things, you know, I would only be speaking to the people who've had that thing. But these principles gave me a way to say broadly, generally, you know, there are some things that might help people get from the point of impact.

the time when they can start kind of making headway again. You know, like to me, that was always the hardest place. It was like that no man's land in World War I, you know, it's like you were between, you know, the ditches and, you know, there was just no one to kind of help you there. You didn't want to get stuck in that place between the moment of impact and when you felt like you could start making headway again. And so that's what the core beliefs kind of became that way to talk about

And say, well, it doesn't matter if you're dealing with suicidal thoughts or if you're dealing with, you know, an eating disorder or if you're dealing with childhood sexual abuse or if you're dealing with these things, the objective is to not quit. So what are some principles that might help us not quit? Cause that's what people say. It's like, how did you not quit? I don't know. I just applied these things.

Jen (42:54)
Yeah.

So there's 15, right? And I'm not sure we can get through the 15, but what are, let's say, like the top five that you feel are, ⁓ that are most used and that people tell you are very helpful?

Andy Campbell (43:04)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

⁓ I think, well, the first one is no one outruns the universe. A lot, almost all of them, if not all of them have something to do with personal responsibility. My personal, I don't mean like I'm responsible for having been sexually abused as a child. Right. I mean that I'm responsible at some point in confronting what that left me with and changing.

taking action to change, right? Like that's my responsibility. ⁓ and so no one outruns the universe originally started out as just observing that, you know, in my worldview, the universe has rules. was designed a certain way and no matter what our challenges are, it kind of has guardrails.

And you kind of know you're bumping up against like the principles of the universe. You feel it, you know, like you, you know, like if you were in a car and you were sliding up against the guard rail, you're like, well, that doesn't feel right. ⁓ and then sometimes we kind of go through the guard rail and everything kind of comes apart. And I've done that too. But I think the universe is constantly, I think it was created to constantly kind of draw you back in and help you. Right. It was kind of, it's kind of designed to do that.

And so no one that runs the universe ⁓ is a reminder to me to have some humility. You're not smarter than the universe. You were created in it. You don't create it. You were created in it. So maybe you should take advantage of your resources and go see that therapist. Maybe you should do that EMDR when you really don't want to. Right. Maybe you should do that because

You're not, my therapist told me one time with EMDR after she had the three pages of notes, said, well, what's, what's next step? And she said, well, I think usually I work with somebody, ⁓ and it's usually like eight sessions, you know, like that's, know, but, know, EMDR is designed that it's not forever. Like you work through it and then you move on and do other things. But for you, I think it's probably going to be around 24 sessions. And I said, wow.

That's like one a week. That's like half a year. Uh, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to spend half a year dealing with all these things. I've got them put away. I've dealt with them. Not, I'm not doing this. First of all, even if I didn't have them, that's really painful to think about, right? Reliving things for half a year. And she said, well, that's one way to think of it. The other way to think of it is there's 24 hours in a day. So what I'm really asking you to do is spend one day changing your life.

So you can either spend one day confronting your life, or you can spend every moment of every day reliving your life. And I thought, wow, that's just simply unfair. You shouldn't, you know, like that's an unfair way to say it. Cause now I don't really have a way out. And so, you know, so that was kind of like a no one outruns universe. Like, you know, I think it kind of put her in my way.

Jen (46:23)
No!

Andy Campbell (46:31)
to confront me with that. Now I could have ignored it. I could have found a way around it. you know, like I think the creator kind of moved the universe to have her right there to confront me and give me an opportunity. that's one, one. Another one is no one. Let's see. There are no hard decisions. There's only hard consequences. I think what I've observed is, and I've done this my whole life. And you hear people say, you know, I don't know if that's a hard decision, right?

But it's really not a hard decision. Even if I look back at the EMDR and they're like, well, we're to take half a year and go through this. It wasn't really a hard decision to decide to do it. There were, I thought there would be hard consequences to doing it. The decision was actually easy. There was this still small voice that was saying you need to do this.

Right. But then there was this loud voice. It's like, Oh, that's going to be painful. That's going to be awful. That's going to last forever. Like, you sure you want to do this? Are we really going to dig all this stuff up? And then there's like this little quiet voice going, trust me, say yes. You know? And so I kind of thought, well, I think we do that all the time. People will say, I don't know. That's a hard decision. And so it's a reminder to me to question if I'm thinking, is it really a hard decision?

Jen (47:36)
Yeah.

Andy Campbell (47:50)
Have you gotten your mind quiet? Have you listened for that still small voice to tell you what you should do? And is the loud voice just, is it just habitually trying to protect you?

Jen (48:02)
I look at it as my therapist wants to work more on parts. parts that, yes, yes, exactly. She actually has me reading this dissociation book that's been incredible. you're saying that that louder voice is this one part of you that may be stuck in that fear, in the past, in specific.

Andy Campbell (48:09)
⁓ integration, reintegration.

Mm-hmm.

Jen (48:31)
places in the past that are situations that we had to deal with. And then that small voice is just trying to help to heal, right?

Andy Campbell (48:33)
Yes.

Yeah. And that love was served a purpose at the time. You know, it's just like, Hey, we're not, we're not there now, you know, and yeah.

Jen (48:45)
Exactly.

All our parts want to help us. They want to defend

us, to keep us safe. And so that's not a wrong voice. It's ⁓ a voice that's based in fear.

Andy Campbell (49:03)
And we have to make a decision.

to be responsible for when we listen to that voice. You know, if, if, if you're in the Alaskan wilderness and there's a really big brown bear on the other side of the creek, probably a good time to listen to the loud voice. You know, like if the small voice is telling you, I think we can negotiate with it. That's probably a bad piece of advice. Right. But how many times are you really in that situation? Which kind of leads to another one that, that I'm fond of and people have told me they're fond. They, people ask me about it all the time is, ⁓

be religious only about religion, you know, which, kind of goes to that, you know, that, there's a time and a place, there's a season for everything, you know, is arguing with your spouse over how much oregano should be or not be in the pasta sauce.

Is that really the same level of commitment to the argument you need to make as if you were defending your faith? Or you're presented with a challenging situation that tests your faith on maybe helping someone that you really don't want to, but you feel that not like that religious conviction, that conviction is down. It's like, no, I feel like I have to go do that. That's a different level of commitment. Right?

I didn't really know the difference. I would argue with you over oregano and a pasta sauce. I, as they would say on the Godfather, we would go to the mattresses over that. And then one day I thought, that's kind of stupid. know, like everything's not this, everything is not a bear attack. You know? And so it just, you know, it reminded me that there are those places in life where you need to have conviction. You know, you need to have conviction.

Jen (51:00)
Yes, absolutely.

Andy Campbell (51:01)
And then there's places

where you should have conviction, but not that much. know, it's like, not that much conviction, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And it's so it's not, don't throw away all your conviction, just know when to apply it, you know? And so like in that one, it's about questioning myself in an argument, which I'm not great at. None of the, these are aspirational, you know? Yeah, it's just, it's, it's aspirational, but it's.

Jen (51:07)
Yeah, it's tempering, right? Kind of tempering that feeling.

That's the hard thing.

Andy Campbell (51:29)
It's there to remind me it's like, this, is this really the hill to die on? You know, cause it's like, should we sign in blue ink or black ink? You know, it's like, is that really the hill? Is that, is that one though? He'll probably not, you know. ⁓

history doesn't repeat itself. Humans repeat history, you know, yeah. Like stop, stop blaming history. it's history repeated. No, it's not. No, it's not. Yes. The equations of the universe are constant, but the very, that's another actual, ⁓ core belief is the equations are constant. Variables are constantly changing and you know, kind of the way that plays out as history.

Jen (51:51)
Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah.

Andy Campbell (52:13)
You know, I think there are three themes that run through history and it gives us all a chance to make a different decision. You know, like I carry my father's traits, my mother's traits, but I don't have to repeat their mistakes. You know, I can move on to my own mistakes. You know, it's like, you know, but you know, it's like, can, I will repeat history if I make their mistakes. At least my mistakes will be new history. Right. Like I'll be making my own. So.

Jen (52:30)
Right.

Andy Campbell (52:41)
I don't think anyone is locked into a historical outcome. think it really comes down to, you know, do we make decisions that generate different outcomes? If we just make the same decisions as the people before us made, ⁓ then we're probably going to get the same output.

Jen (53:03)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a reason to look back at history so that we can change those variables, right?

Andy Campbell (53:04)
So, yeah.

Right? Yeah. mean, and, and yeah, we should, ⁓ you know, think, you know, and in our daily lives, Jen, it's like.

It's almost like you were saying about this too shall pass, you know, but in that moment, it's like, ⁓ this is never going to end. Like this is just going to go on forever. then make a different decision, you know, like make a decision instead of, you know, like one of the things I've realized is that a lot of times when I'm very anxious, ⁓ it's, know, I'm ruminating, but if I give my mind something to do,

Like my, my mind, nobody really multitask people just fast switch between things. Right. Like there's, there's a great book called your brain at work. And it goes to these scenarios and the guy explains, he's like, actually nobody multitask. You can only task one thing at a time. Your brain can deal with one thing at a time. What it does is some people are better at fast switching. And so you switch between tasks. You don't actually multitask. You're just switching between tasks.

And whatever happens in that switching, in that timeframe of that switching, you lose in attention, right? Like you lose that. So you're fast switching.

we have these. ⁓

If we occupy like one of the things when we're anxious or we're depressed or we start to feel hopeless, you know, we can make a decision to go for a walk. can make a decision to, I don't know, go into prayer, you know, take our minds off it. I mean, as strange as it sounds, do a math problem.

Jen (54:55)
take our minds off of it, right? Right.

Andy Campbell (55:03)
You know, like to do something that forces your mind to think about that thing, a different thing. And sometimes we can break that cycle. it just, like, we don't even go like immediately back to the anxiety or the depression, right? It's just, so I think we can't, we don't have to repeat history where last time I had these thoughts, they really wore me down. It took me three days to get out from mud room, you know, well, so it's going to happen again. Well, we.

we could make a different decision, you know, we could, take a different action, you know? And so it's just a reminder, you know, things don't have to be the way they were.

Jen (55:45)
Yes, yes, I think that's really important to remember. So, Andy, where can we find you?

Andy Campbell (55:54)
⁓ And this, name of it comes because when I didn't die immediately from cancer, people would say, well, how's Andy alive? And my family would say, ask Andy. And so the name of the website is askandycambell.com. So, yeah, so you can go to askandycambell.com. I've got information about my cancer journey. I've got some things about Heston there. I've got, you know, a list of kind of a bookshelf of books that I've read that, you know, I recommend or that at least

Jen (56:07)
I love that.

Andy Campbell (56:24)
know, if people haven't seen them, maybe it's something new that somebody hasn't thought about before. And you can find a link to the book there.

Jen (56:34)
Yeah, because I think there are going to be a lot of my listeners who are very interested in learning more about those values, those tenets that you write about. Well, Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Andy Campbell (56:49)
Yeah, it's been a real pleasure. I'm very grateful. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Jen (56:54)
Well, I'm grateful that you came on and you shared your story. And I think it's going to be very valuable for my listeners.

Andy Campbell (57:03)
Excellent. I hope so. Thank you.

Jen (57:05)
Thank you.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (57:09)
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. This show is produced by Phoenix Freed LLC and I'm your producer, Jen Ginty. We hope you found today's conversation inspiring. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. This show is produced by Phoenix Freed LLC and I'm your producer, Jen Ginty. We hope you found today's conversation insightful and inspiring. If you have a story of your own about when a not yet moment came right now,

We encourage you to reach out and share it. You can find more information about being a guest on our show at whennotyetbecomesrightnow.com. Remember, you are not alone on your journey, whether it's a journey of healing, growth, or transformation. Every story matters. Thank you for listening, and we'll catch you next time with another inspiring episode.