Survivor Story: Child Abuse, Terminal Cancer & My Son's Suicide
In this episode of The Breaking Point Podcast, I am joined by Andy Campbell, an individual with a highly challenging yet profoundly impactful past. During the episode, he shares his emotional journey of overcoming childhood trauma, familial loss and existential strife, using what he calls his '15 core beliefs'.
In this powerful interview, Andy opens up about surviving childhood abuse, stage four pancreatic cancer, and the tragic loss of his son to suicide. He reveals the 15 core beliefs that guided him through life’s darkest moments, alongside the transformative power of EMDR therapy and the six words tattooed on his arms—honour, courage, determination, perseverance, wisdom, and success. This story is a testament to the human spirit’s strength and the transformative power of healing.
Learn how Andy turned pain into purpose, confronted trauma, and found hope amidst adversity. A must-watch for anyone seeking inspiration, mental health tools, and stories of triumph over hardship!
Transcript
I was born into a relatively poor family in a very poor area of the Southern United States.
Speaker A:My parents worked very hard to get out of poverty as they.
Speaker A:They both worked constantly through their lives.
Speaker A:That left me pretty much alone to grow up, for the most part by myself.
Speaker A:Along the way, I dealt with, sadly, what a lot of children deal with, which is abuse at the hands of friends and family, friends and neighbors.
Speaker A:Grew up a relatively normal life other than, you know, bringing along some of those things.
Speaker A:Had a few episodes of difficulties in childhood as I got older.
Speaker A:I got married relatively young, thought life would improve from there, and it did, dramatically.
Speaker A:But there were additional challenges that would come from just being alive and probably carrying a lot of the, I guess you'd say, trauma.
Speaker A:Those experiences along the way and how I dealt with life as kind of a survival mechanism.
Speaker A:With each challenge, you know, as I turned.
Speaker A:We had children, we had four children.
Speaker A:As they got older, we had our last child.
Speaker A:Our youngest child told us at the age of nine that he wanted to commit suicide.
Speaker A:We didn't know.
Speaker A:We were unfamiliar with 9 year olds being aware of suicide as an option, but we took it seriously and we dealt with that for nine years until he took his life when he was 18.
Speaker A:Two years before he took his life, I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Speaker A:It had spread to my liver.
Speaker A:Didn't have a lot of good options, and there wasn't a great prognosis.
Speaker A:But that was almost seven years ago, and I'm here today with no visible signs of disease.
Speaker A:So I've had.
Speaker A:I have CAT scans every four months, and for the last four years, they haven't been able to see the disease.
Speaker A:So I'm very blessed.
Speaker A:Then we lost our son.
Speaker A:And through all of those challenges, I would look back and think, how, how did I survive that one?
Speaker A:What, what tool did I use to get through that one?
Speaker A:As the next.
Speaker A:The next setback would show up.
Speaker A:And so I kind of collected along the way.
Speaker A:At some point, I have three tattoos on each of my arms, and there are three words or two tattoo.
Speaker A:One tattoo on each arm, three words each.
Speaker A:The words are honor, courage, determination.
Speaker A:On the left arm, it is perseverance, wisdom, and success.
Speaker A:And at some point in my 20s and 30s, I thought back to, must not have it as bad as the people who came before me.
Speaker A:Like, they didn't have toilet paper, right?
Speaker A:So they, they didn't have.
Speaker A:They didn't have bathrooms.
Speaker A:And somehow they survived and built generation upon generation.
Speaker A:So I thought, well, what were the aspects that they or the Types of mindset that they implemented.
Speaker A:And those were the six words I came up with that they started with honor.
Speaker A:They honor gave them courage.
Speaker A:Courage led to determination.
Speaker A:Determination gave them perseverance.
Speaker A:Perseverance.
Speaker A:They lasted long enough to become a little more wise than the previous generation, and that gave them a level of success.
Speaker A:As I started thinking through that, I started thinking, well, there must be other things that I've experienced and, you know, techniques that inadvertently I used and could I go back and start collecting some of those so that I could apply them the next time a setback came along?
Speaker A:And one by one, the 15 core beliefs just kind of came to be.
Speaker A:They came as thoughts, and I would write them down and edit them back and forth, but always kept the list so that when a setback showed up, I could at least refer to the list and remind myself that I had been through it before.
Speaker A:Maybe not the exact circumstance I was facing, but I'd been through difficulties and there was techniques that I had used before, so maybe I could use those techniques again.
Speaker A:And that's how I came up with the 15 core beliefs.
Speaker B:And how.
Speaker B:When did you, like, finalize the 15 core beliefs, so to speak?
Speaker A:I think I determined that 15 was as far as I was going to go probably three or four years ago.
Speaker A:You know, it's like, I'm sure there are other, you know, things that I could turn into a cliche that I've learned.
Speaker A:But, you know, after a while, 15 seemed like a good list.
Speaker A:It started out with 5, and then it became 10.
Speaker A:And when I got to 15, I was like, you know, I think that should encompass Life.
Speaker A:You know, 15 is enough, much more than that, and it becomes, you know, too granular for me.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:And I suppose the hope would be that any other beliefs that cropped up would hopefully be able to be, like, subsumed into an existing belief.
Speaker A:I think that that's kind of what I found.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that's the main thing.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I mean, it's a very like, people have hard lives, but I mean, there's having a hard life and then there's everything that you just laid out.
Speaker B:So I suppose maybe starting with the abuse, how long did it take you to.
Speaker B:How did you navigate that?
Speaker B:When did you.
Speaker B:Did you speak to someone about it?
Speaker B:What was the.
Speaker B:Maybe not as a child, but as like as you.
Speaker B:As you grew up.
Speaker B:What was conception of what occurred back then?
Speaker A:You know, it is.
Speaker A:I think it influenced a lot that I never realized even growing up.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:For me, I ended up carrying a lot of shame, a lot of uncertainty.
Speaker A:You know, did I bring this on?
Speaker A:You know, did I contribute to it?
Speaker A:Probably.
Speaker A:I mean, I have read enough to have read statements by others that they kind of go through that same line of thinking.
Speaker A:You know, what did I contribute to this?
Speaker A:But what really, I think what really affected me was in ways that I never.
Speaker A:I did not uncover until much later.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:It, it affects how you think about yourself, your self esteem in ways that you don't, are not readily visible.
Speaker A:It affects your emotions, whether you're, whether you are understanding or not understanding or whether you are angry or happy.
Speaker A:It was probably in my, in my 30s or so that I realized that I was really never happy.
Speaker A:You know, I remember my wife asking me, she was telling me about some enjoyment.
Speaker A:She's had some real difficulties in her life, but she was able to very easily recount positive events from her childhood.
Speaker A:You know, things that happened, the smell of grass after it had been cut.
Speaker A:You know, all these things.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And for a very long time, I could not think of a single thing that was a positive aspect of growing up.
Speaker A:And I know that there were many.
Speaker A:And that's probably when I realized that what it had done was clouded a lot.
Speaker A:In shutting off that part and shutting off those memories, I had shut out a lot of other things.
Speaker A:And so eventually after my son died, I did a process called emdr.
Speaker A:And you'll have to look up emdr because I can't remember what that abbreviation stands for.
Speaker A:But that process, as I went through it with the therapist, we started out with dealing with the suicide of my son.
Speaker A:That led to, you know, comments or conversations during the process that led to dealing with going through cancer treatments.
Speaker A:And that led to, you know, it's kind of, it was kind of a Google search.
Speaker A:You know, every time you clicked on one thing, you ended up clicking on others.
Speaker A:Until I ended up processing the sexual abuse.
Speaker A:And that was really when the lights went off that, wow, this is just.
Speaker A:It has, it has formed much of the way you look at the world and not in a positive way.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:It made me suspicious of everyone.
Speaker D:It.
Speaker A:It broke down trust in many ways with people that they were not untrustworthy people.
Speaker A:But I came from a place where risk management was the most important aspect of life.
Speaker A:And so, yeah, I think it affected.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker A:It affects a human in ways that I don't think we understand and I don't still fully understand.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's the ultimate betrayal of trust, isn't it?
Speaker B:And it's especially even more malevolent because as A child, you have no concept of the outside world.
Speaker B:So it's not even your default.
Speaker B:It's all you're really capable of doing is assuming and presuming that it's direct impact on you as an entity.
Speaker B:And because you don't have any conception of anything other than you, because your brain.
Speaker B:There's a thing called theory of mind which children develop, which is like at a certain age, and they then can start seeing that there's entities outside of them.
Speaker B:But there's like, in my opinion, there's a whole scale of theory of mind and we probably never truly achieve the upper echelons of what theory of mind can understand the idea of like a.
Speaker B:Maybe it reaches like the point of union or entire union or a collective.
Speaker B:But the point is that as a child you even as like, like a teenager or a young.
Speaker B:A young.
Speaker B:I don't know what the age ranges are, but even I'm not just talking like a 4 year old, like a 10 year old, someone who you can speak to and have a conversation with, even their theory of mind is still exceptionally limited.
Speaker B:So, you know, as I just said, that the default or the only possibility or the most common possibility is to reflect everything back on you.
Speaker B:And that's extremely hard.
Speaker B:Do you relate to that?
Speaker B:Does that ring any bells, ring true?
Speaker A:Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:No, it does.
Speaker A:And I think I will need to explore the topic.
Speaker A:So if I speak incorrectly to it, you'll forgive me.
Speaker A:But when I hear what you say, what I interpret it is, you know, you do.
Speaker A:When I think of reflect it back on myself, I think of all the things that I must have done to bring this on myself, that, you know, that there's not.
Speaker A:And that was one of the things through.
Speaker A:I am, I am a proponent of active therapy.
Speaker A:I'm not a proponent of talk therapy for the sake of just going and rehashing the things that you've talked about, you know, enough.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:I mean, there comes a time when you need to, when you need to either act or just stop talking about it.
Speaker A:But one of those very helpful sessions was a group of sessions was really around coming to the place where.
Speaker A:And it does feel, you know, interesting the way you put it, because it does feel like I became aware that there were these other people and that they were actually responsible.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, that I wasn't responsible.
Speaker A:And in my thinking they didn't really play a part.
Speaker A:It was me.
Speaker A:And so that certainly was a time in therapy where it was extremely helpful and it actively changed my thinking, gave me an alternative Way to think about the problem.
Speaker A:And that opened up the door.
Speaker A:You know, for one thing, I was, you know, look, I was very sexually active in my teenage years.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, very.
Speaker A:And I never understood really why, you know, I mean, but then you go through life and you think and you come to these terms and you're like, well, there are.
Speaker A:There are things that you're exposed to that you don't understand when you're a child.
Speaker A:You don't have context for how they should occur or when they should occur or what their purpose is.
Speaker A:And I think when you are sexually abused, that's a very deep place where misunderstanding can, you know, can lead to a real unraveling of oneself.
Speaker A:And I think you see that with people who eventually tell you that that's what they've dealt with.
Speaker A:They have had a lot of experiences that they would not have engaged in had they.
Speaker A:Had they not been exposed to that kind of interaction.
Speaker A:You know, a child just doesn't have the ability to make a decision, yes or no.
Speaker A:They are not of an age to make a decision, yes or no.
Speaker A:But you live with the notion that you did say yes or no, right?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, yes.
Speaker A:It's a complex topic.
Speaker A:I feel a lot of compassion for anyone who has had.
Speaker A:Had those experiences.
Speaker B:God, absolutely.
Speaker B:And I think what's even more, just as you were talking and I was thinking about the whole theory of mind, the logic would be for an underdeveloped mind to presume that any affliction that happens to them is a result of an external forces.
Speaker B:Because you'd almost.
Speaker B:There's a way of thinking where it would make more sense that the brain develops externally inwards as opposed to internally outwards.
Speaker B:And therefore you would be able to brush something off because it would be.
Speaker B:It would.
Speaker B:You would put the emphasis on other people, not on you at a younger age.
Speaker B:But for some reason, it's.
Speaker B:The brain works in a way that it's actually a higher order functioning to be able to see external forces.
Speaker B:Do you understand what I mean?
Speaker A:I think so.
Speaker A:Let me see if this example aligns to what you're saying.
Speaker A:Because of the way I viewed my responsibilities, I came to realize that it had led to codependent behavior where I felt responsible for everything that was going on.
Speaker A:And so I sacrificed myself and everything that I may want or that I might need to prevent to meet everyone else's needs and prevent anything bad from happening.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Instead of.
Speaker A:Instead of taking, you know, the position that, well, I've done my part, you're responsible for you, if you make a bad decision, that's on you.
Speaker A:I would take on that responsibility for somebody else's bad decision.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:So I don't know if that aligns directly to what you're working to communicate, but that's what came.
Speaker A:That's what came to my mind.
Speaker B:It creates a hyper vigilance and a sense of ultimate control because of.
Speaker B:There was a part of you that was betrayed and left like a wound that was, you know, ebbing and throbbing and therefore you felt you needed to protect that wound.
Speaker B:And that manifested through.
Speaker B:Manifested itself through overly.
Speaker B:Is it overly controlling?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Is it sort of.
Speaker A:Well, I think that is true.
Speaker A:I mean, I was, I think, hyper vigilance.
Speaker A:And I did not think of myself as controlling.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:But, you know, once I got some space from it.
Speaker A:No, I think it's the right word because I was.
Speaker A:Once I got some space from it, I realized how much I was working to control outcomes.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:And then that led.
Speaker A:If you control outcomes, then you've got to kind of control the way people interact or engage or what happens to them.
Speaker A:And if you're going to do that, you're not really trying to control the people, but you will manipulate situations so that they do things in.
Speaker A:Look, I believe that the hypervigilance and the attempt to control outcomes that led from those experiences absolutely contributed to my pancreatic cancer.
Speaker A:And directly, I was going through emdr and one session, the therapist asked me to describe where I was feeling.
Speaker A:Did I have any feelings in my body as we.
Speaker A:As I was going through some memories.
Speaker A:And I did.
Speaker A:And when I pointed to it, I pointed to where my pancreas is.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker A:And I kind of looked down and I looked up at the therapist.
Speaker A:The therapist looked at me and said, like, do you get it?
Speaker A:And I said, yeah, I think I get it.
Speaker A:You know, like, I think.
Speaker A:And so, you know, his perspective was.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:And I tend to agree with him that all of that anxiety, depression, hyper vigilance, control, the fear of the terrible things that could occur, I didn't intentionally externally share that or think that I was putting out that energy, but internally I pushed it down.
Speaker A:And where.
Speaker A:At least when I was doing EMDR and, you know, pointed to the place, maybe I pushed it down into my organs.
Speaker A:And one of those organs was the pancreas.
Speaker A:And one of the responses of the pancreas was, you know, defective cells that became cancer.
Speaker B:I mean, I.
Speaker B:Obviously we're sort of alluding to the whole idea of disease and mental disease and how they're related.
Speaker B:And how psychological sickness can cause physiological sickness.
Speaker B:And that's a whole.
Speaker B:That's obviously a huge realm in science.
Speaker B:It's not something that I know much about, and it's not something that I particularly can comment on.
Speaker B:But I think it's perfectly plausible that there was some.
Speaker B:Well, perfectly plausible.
Speaker B:I think there's definitely potential for that, deserves more research.
Speaker B:And I'm sure it is getting research, at least in certain fields of medicine.
Speaker A:But, you know, Ali, whether it's accurate or not, it gave me a focus to work on those issues and remove that possibility.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:Having been through pancreatic cancer, I did not want to be in a situation where another problem showed up because I was still internalizing these things.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So it gave me real encouragement to deal with some of these things that I really didn't talk about for a long time.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So was it with this therapist that you brought up the abuse as a child, the first time you'd ever mentioned it to anyone?
Speaker A:I wouldn't know.
Speaker A:I had told my father some years later about it.
Speaker A:I never told my mother.
Speaker A:She passed away.
Speaker A:And later I told my father, I told my wife about it.
Speaker A:Not, you know, not in any real detail.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:Just that this had occurred.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And other than that, until I went to therapy, I don't think I really ever talked about it that I remember.
Speaker A:And it really came out of.
Speaker A:It came out of these, like I said, these EMDR sessions where you're processing one thing and another thing comes up.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I highly recommend EMDR is a. I think it's.
Speaker A:It can be a difficult process, but I think it's tremendously beneficial.
Speaker B:Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And there is.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, you are.
Speaker A:You know, I had headsets on.
Speaker A:I had these little buzzers in my.
Speaker A:That I would hold between my fingers.
Speaker A:And, you know, I mean, I get the concept, you know, as you remember things because of the sounds and the sensations, your brain forms a different neural pathway to think about that memory, which is not the same pathway that was associated with all the emotions of that memory.
Speaker A:And so then you're able to think through it without the emotions, or at least, you know, you process it until you can think about it without, you know, a tremendous amount of an immediate physical, emotional response.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Growing up, I had a lot.
Speaker B:I had a lot of therapy for sort of severe anxiety.
Speaker B:Obviously, you know, there was nothing to the extent that you've experienced speaking about just a very inherently anxious child.
Speaker B:And as I got Older.
Speaker B:And I sort of reflected on the therapy.
Speaker B:I always thought the thing that something like CBT is missing is sort of an acceptance and an involvement of the more subconscious and unconscious aspects of our brain and the way we think.
Speaker B:And I think to some degree you do get that with CBT over a repeated period of time.
Speaker B:It's like you have to let the bubbles sort of drift down to the bottom very, very slowly.
Speaker B:But it takes time and it can be very surface level cbt.
Speaker B:And I think that's maybe one of its biggest flaws.
Speaker B:Some people swear by it, obviously.
Speaker B:And I think if you, like, if you just have an issue that just cropped up recently and you can't quite configure it in your head correctly and you just need someone to help you sort of unpick it.
Speaker B:CBT is a great tool, but when things are deep, deep rooted, subconsciously programmed and underpinned, you need something that's got a little bit more.
Speaker B:So have you heard of like, eft?
Speaker B:Do you know what EFT is?
Speaker B:Emotional Free.
Speaker A:I've heard about it, but please describe it.
Speaker B:Well, it's basically, it's like acupuncture, but instead of needles, you just use pressure points.
Speaker B:So I. I used to do that.
Speaker B:And it's the idea that there are like meridian pathways of energy flowing through the body and these pathways get trapped.
Speaker B:And the only.
Speaker B:Well, the only way, one way that you unblock them is by putting pressure and releasing pressure on these things.
Speaker B:And I actually did it.
Speaker B:I had it done.
Speaker B:What would you say?
Speaker B:I was a patient as a child, and then I went.
Speaker B:As I got a bit older, during lockdown, I got bored and I trained.
Speaker B:Trained.
Speaker B:I became a therapist in EFT so that I could.
Speaker B:Because I was working at a special needs school at the time, so that I could potentially go and teach some of the.
Speaker B:Do it with some of the kids there.
Speaker B:I did for a little bit, but it was hard because I was still a ta.
Speaker B:I mean, I'll send you some.
Speaker B:Some after this.
Speaker B:I'll send you some little.
Speaker B:Like there's like five or six you can just do when you get anxious.
Speaker B:Like, there's some, like, key points, like either side of the eyebrow.
Speaker A:Yes, I've seen this.
Speaker B:The collarbone, there's loads of them, but there's like five big main ones that probably do 80% of the.
Speaker B:Of the work.
Speaker B:And the idea is that you would create.
Speaker B:You would create a state of feeling anxious.
Speaker B:So you're anxious of a.
Speaker B:It's probably what's quite.
Speaker B:Well with phobias.
Speaker B:Some's got a phobia of spas spiders.
Speaker B:See, the practitioner would get the person to think of a spider to try and elicit the feelings of them being in the presence of a spider to about a three or four out of ten.
Speaker B:And then they would say, right, you've got that.
Speaker B:Let's take it to a five or six eventually.
Speaker B:And then you would.
Speaker B:The idea is that you have to do the tapping with the emotional state in mind, because that's when the work is done.
Speaker B:Which makes logical sense, to be fair.
Speaker B:But, yeah, emdr.
Speaker B:I'll do more research in it.
Speaker B:That sounds really interesting, but what's your opinion on what I just said about how a sort of CBT talking therapy may lack more of a bodily somatic aspect and.
Speaker B:Yeah, like, what's your.
Speaker B:What was therapy like for you?
Speaker A:My experience with cbt.
Speaker A:So I tend to think that each of these methodologies have their place.
Speaker A:And so I agree with you there.
Speaker A:You know, if one looks at CBT as the way, then it is missing elements that are needed to move through.
Speaker A:So, you know, in kind of simplistic terms, okay, fine.
Speaker A:I'm supposed to give myself the option to think something different.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:Don't just think of the worst outcome.
Speaker A:Give yourself an option.
Speaker A:What if it's not the worst outcome?
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:That's great, but I'm still stuck every moment of my life starting from that point.
Speaker A:What if I don't want to start there anymore?
Speaker A:Now what do I do?
Speaker A:And I found that cbt.
Speaker A:So in process and the grief of losing our son, I absolutely use CBT techniques to not get stuck in a grief cycle.
Speaker A:You know, I would think.
Speaker A:I would think so.
Speaker A:If I thought maybe I could have done this thing and that would have prevented it, then I would, you know, I would use CBT techniques to think, well, you assumed that that would have worked out that way.
Speaker A:But, you know, I would have this conversation with myself.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:What if it didn't work out?
Speaker A:That, you know, what if it worked out worse?
Speaker A:What if it, you know, and one could say, well, how could it work out worse?
Speaker D:But there are.
Speaker A:There are always worse ways.
Speaker A:Something can, of course, can happen.
Speaker A:And so I would use that.
Speaker A:But I don't think that CBT would have ever gotten me through processing and finding a way.
Speaker A:So in any of these setbacks, in any of these, you know, traumatic events, it's difficult to think about their real impact if you can't think about them without a visceral bodily reaction.
Speaker B:Yes, exactly.
Speaker A:So then I couldn't really implement cbt.
Speaker A:To think about the problem and look at myself and other.
Speaker A:And kind of go through that stage of work.
Speaker A:If every time I thought about an event, I had a visceral emotional reaction that really prevented me from thinking clearly about the event.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:And so that's what emdr.
Speaker A:And there was another one.
Speaker A:I can't remember the abbreviation.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:It was a technique that was a little less intense.
Speaker A:I think it was called, like, ifs something like that.
Speaker B:That's the purpose of medication, by the way.
Speaker B:The reason why they often.
Speaker B:You often get people therapists and psycho psychiatrists.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:Psychiatrists recommending therapy and medication is because medication just takes the.
Speaker A:Yes off.
Speaker B:I suppose maybe that's contradictory.
Speaker B:It's an interesting one because.
Speaker A:No, no, I combine medication too.
Speaker A:Don't.
Speaker A:Don't get me wrong.
Speaker A:I use medication.
Speaker A:I've used medication.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, because when I was diagnosed with cancer, my doctor put me on, I think, two or three mental health meds.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And his whole point there was, I'm putting you there so you can think clearly about the problem and don't give up.
Speaker A:If you don't give up, I think we have a shot.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:And so I agree with you completely.
Speaker A:I mean, to me, all of those mechanisms, techniques are useful.
Speaker A:You know, you have to.
Speaker A:I don't believe in just trying one thing at a time, per se.
Speaker A:I mean, there are times when you make changes and you don't want to make more than one change at a time.
Speaker A:But, you know, if somebody said, what all have you done?
Speaker A:I would say, well, let's see, I did acupuncture.
Speaker A:I still do acupuncture regularly do guided imagery, hypnosis, medication, supplements, therapy.
Speaker A:You know, it's like.
Speaker A:And different forms of therapy that I've done over time.
Speaker A:It's like, you know, part of it is giving yourself a chance to overcome.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:Like that's.
Speaker A:That's one of the biggest.
Speaker A:I think, most difficult decisions is that I will do what I have to do to remove this pain.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:To deal.
Speaker A:I will confront this pain and deal with it so I can work to lessen it or eventually remove it.
Speaker A:Because I think that's what happened to my son.
Speaker A:He thought that if he killed himself, the pain would go away.
Speaker A:But the pain didn't go away.
Speaker A:It stayed with us, with his entire family, with people who knew him.
Speaker A:It actually spread.
Speaker A:It stayed and spread.
Speaker A:And my counsel to people who are having suicidal ideations and are thinking about ending their life because they want the pain to end, I assure you that Pain will not end.
Speaker A:When you end your life, that pain will still remain.
Speaker A:And if there's something you really want to do, then do what you have to do to remove or lessen the pain, because then you can stay and the pain will be gone.
Speaker A:But if you leave, that pain will stay.
Speaker A:And so I think you have to.
Speaker A:You have to decide that you want to confront or that you are not.
Speaker A:That you want.
Speaker A:That's a poor way of phrasing, that.
Speaker A:You are willing to confront the problem, and then you will put around you all the techniques and mechanisms to help you overcome that obstacle.
Speaker A:If that makes sense.
Speaker B:That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:God, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:What was the first step for you in understanding the situation across.
Speaker B:I mean, any of.
Speaker B:Any of them?
Speaker B:Just.
Speaker B:Just as you were speaking there, I thought, yes, you have to sort of take a step forward into.
Speaker B:I don't know, what would you say?
Speaker B:I don't want to say receiving help or getting help.
Speaker B:I hate that.
Speaker B:It's not the right terminology.
Speaker B:But how did you.
Speaker B:Was it acceptance?
Speaker B:Humility?
Speaker B:Was it courage?
Speaker B:Was it.
Speaker B:What was the first sensation that brought you to a point of I can seek help or I can step forward?
Speaker B:Do you understand what I mean?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:One of the first steps for me was thinking, you can't quit.
Speaker A:People before, you have been through worse.
Speaker A:They have been through much worse than what you've been.
Speaker A:Whatever circumstance I was in at that time, and somehow they survived.
Speaker A:So I. I actually felt an obligation to find a way.
Speaker A:And with my family, I was.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I am committed to my family, and I didn't want to be in the mindset.
Speaker A:And it's not like I'm completely out of that mindset because you.
Speaker A:I mean, I think you have it for so long, you'll struggle with it forever.
Speaker A:But I. I wanted to have success.
Speaker A:I wanted to have success.
Speaker A:And at some point along the way, I realized that money wasn't solving the problem.
Speaker A:You know, nothing that I thought.
Speaker A:Drinking wasn't sol.
Speaker A:Solving the problem, partying wasn't solving the problem.
Speaker A:Somewhere along the way, I just decided, you know, the pain of trying to solve.
Speaker A:Trying to deaden the pain.
Speaker A:Like, I can't deal with both of these, you know, I can't deal with the pain from deadening the pain, and I can't deal with the pain.
Speaker A:So at some point, I don't know, I was in with the therapist and, you know, I had this one in particular that said, you just.
Speaker A:You're not going to be able to avoid it.
Speaker A:And I said, well, I don't really want to go through this.
Speaker A:I don't want to deal with this.
Speaker A:And she said, you can deal with this for a few hours, or you can continue to deal with it every moment for the rest of your life.
Speaker A:So what do you want to do?
Speaker A:You want to trade a few hours and live a better life, or you just want to ignore the pain for a few hours?
Speaker A:And I chose, you know, and to me, that was a pretty straightforward decision.
Speaker A:It was, it was difficult.
Speaker A:I mean, yeah, that's actually not to get ahead of the story, but one of my core beliefs is there are no hard decisions, there's only hard consequences.
Speaker A:And so, like, when she, when she positioned that to me, one of the things I thought of was, I know what I need to do, but the consequences of doing that are going to be very painful, right?
Speaker A:It's going to be very emotional, it's going to be very painful.
Speaker A:It's going to kind of upend maybe my view of the world or the way, you know, the way I see myself in the world.
Speaker A:But the decision was really clear to me that I needed to confront it.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker A:And that I needed to own responsibility.
Speaker A:Not for all the things that had happened to me, wasn't wholly, that wasn't my responsibility.
Speaker A:Childhood sexual abuse was not my responsibility, but it was my responsibility to confront it so that I did not pass on emotional traits to my children.
Speaker A:I did not interact with my wife poorly.
Speaker A:I did not have struggles at work.
Speaker A:I did not, you know, in just my day to day life, that was my responsibility.
Speaker A:And so that's where I put my effort.
Speaker C:When you.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's really, that's a really good way of putting it, putting the effort.
Speaker B:When you say deaden the pain, do you mean like, hide the traumas and the experience under the rug, so to speak, Try and keep them out of sight, out of mind?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, exactly, out of my mind.
Speaker A:But I think, you know, when, when, when this therapist told me, she said, like, you have, you are thinking about it every moment of every day.
Speaker A:You just don't.
Speaker A:I say, well, I don't think about it that often.
Speaker A:I don't, you know, something will happen and I'll think about the childhood sexual abuse or I'll think about this problem or I'll think about that problem.
Speaker A:But she says, no, you're thinking about it every moment of every day.
Speaker A:And that's why you behave like you do your behavior kind of to the CBT model, right?
Speaker A:Your behavior is coming out of your thinking.
Speaker A:The challenge that you're having, Andy, is you don't realize you're thinking it, and so you can't explain your behaviors, but they are because of the way you're thinking.
