Kasie
Kasie
Tell your story, unashamed
For as long as she can remember, Kasie has experienced feelings of depression, fear of abandonment, and trauma. She has had trouble concentrating, and she sometimes “checks out,” or disassociates, from others. At times, Kasie was manic, which caused her to make poor decisions, especially when not medicated. This, along with a chaotic home life, led to sexual exploitation and substance use.
You feel like you’re laying underwater, and people are standing all around but all you can hear is mumbles and arms come to lift you out but never fully reach you.
At a young age, Kasie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, ADHD, and depression. Over the years, she has received many diagnoses and tried many treatments to get her symptoms under control. Not long ago, Kasie was re-diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and borderline personality disorder.
I feel as though I just had labels slapped on me and medications thrown at me. The labels were negative and made me believe I was crazy.
I learned that finding a provider that understands trauma and has worked with it before is so important, as well as telling the truth and letting people know where my mind is at so they can help guide me.
Telling the truth about her feelings and symptoms—and rejecting the negative labels associated with her mental health—have been crucial to Kasie as she pursues her treatment.
“Secrets keep you sicker. Tell your story, unashamed, and free yourself from your prison.”
I believe it is so important to find the right help—that understands and can come alongside you on your journey, not just meet once a month.
It’s important to find someone or something like a group or peer support that can help guide you to the light. It becomes too dark for us sometimes and we just need others to come alongside us and speak life into us till we can hold our heads up.
At the same time Kasie is relying on others for support, she is providing support to others. She is a peer support specialist in a prison, works for her local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), mentors human trafficking survivors, works for a women’s house, and goes to school part-time to study mental health and human services. She credits the lessons she learned through treatment with enabling her to move forward.
Treatment has helped me in many ways. I have learned tools to guide me through to the other side of the lies I speak to myself and the fear of being left, as well as the fear of losing someone dear to me.
It has taught me how to retrain my thoughts and direct them to positives, and it has taught me to speak my truth and tell people my story.
Kasie wants others with mental health issues to confront their fears, reject labels, and tell their stories.
Secrets keep you sicker. Tell your story, unashamed, and free yourself from your prison.
