Nancy White


Nancy White		Medicine
	History
Nancy White, Daddy's perfect girl, married at 19 and had four children before reaching her middle twenties. But a series of unfortunate events left her twice widowed and with lethal lymphatic cancer at 43. But Nancy's not your usual woman. Already familiar with the standard medical approach to cancer she rejected surgery and chemotherapy and cured herself. She then finished college and, at the age of 50, started work on her Ph.D. She now runs a clinic in Houston and is a sought after speaker as neurofeedback psychotherapy's Grand Dame, though she hardly looks it. I met Nancy at the WinterBrain conference in January, 2007 in Palm Springs, California. We were strangers up until the moment we met, but in the 90 minutes that followed she laid her life out in detail.
Interview Excerpts	Read the full interview :
"I went through school thinking that since I was different, and since my father had taught me to think that I was so smart… there was something wrong with everybody else. Of course in today’s world people would say that something was wrong with me and it was everybody else who was OK. I was very fortunate that I missed that… …my father was dying… at the same time as my husband was dying. So here the two men that had taken care of me most of my life were leaving. That left me alone. For about a year after I graduated… I worked toward getting some sanity back into my life. I come from a very addictive family so I had four teenagers on drugs and alcohol… Then two years later I was having lunch with a friend and he said, “Oh, I’m going to go start a doctoral program next Wednesday.” I said, “That sounds interesting… I think I’ll go too!… "People come to me and say, “I don’t have any goals!” And I say, “Uhh, I’ve never had any goals either!” If I had goals they would have acted like blinders and I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on. I just notice what’s happening around me and if it interests me I go after it, and if doesn’t I walk on past. That’s kind of the way I’ve handled life… "Chuck Strobel … came up to me (at the Applied Psychiatry and Biofeedback conference) and said, 'You know Nancy, you and I … we’re really the pioneers of the field. We are the foundation. That’s a big responsibility.' And I’m thinking, 'Who, me? I don’t even have a clue what I’m doing!'… "I always am on the forefront of something (laughs); it’s not unusual. I’ve often said that I feel like I’m going across the country in my covered wagon, and the Indians are shooting arrows at my back, and I get to California and I discover that everybody’s in the pool at the Hyatt Regency! …"
Links
The Enhancement Insititute Neurofeedback, Wikipedia The Menniger Clinic

"I went through school thinking that since I was different, and since my father had taught me to think that I was so smart… there was something wrong with everybody else. Of course in today’s world people would say that something was wrong with me and it was everybody else who was OK. I was very fortunate that I missed that…

…my father was dying… at the same time as my husband was dying. So here the two men that had taken care of me most of my life were leaving. That left me alone. For about a year after I graduated… I worked toward getting some sanity back into my life. I come from a very addictive family so I had four teenagers on drugs and alcohol… Then two years later I was having lunch with a friend and he said, “Oh, I’m going to go start a doctoral program next Wednesday.” I said, “That sounds interesting… I think I’ll go too!…

"People come to me and say, “I don’t have any goals!” And I say, “Uhh, I’ve never had any goals either!” If I had goals they would have acted like blinders and I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on. I just notice what’s happening around me and if it interests me I go after it, and if doesn’t I walk on past. That’s kind of the way I’ve handled life…

"Chuck Strobel … came up to me (at the Applied Psychiatry and Biofeedback conference) and said, 'You know Nancy, you and I … we’re really the pioneers of the field. We are the foundation. That’s a big responsibility.' And I’m thinking, 'Who, me? I don’t even have a clue what I’m doing!'…

"I always am on the forefront of something (laughs); it’s not unusual. I’ve often said that I feel like I’m going across the country in my covered wagon, and the Indians are shooting arrows at my back, and I get to California and I discover that everybody’s in the pool at the Hyatt Regency! …"