Episode 12: There Is No Normal: Christy Barongan on Depression, Self-Compassion & Healing

In this powerful episode of The Resilience Files: Unlocked, host Carrie Bernans sits down with Christy Barongan to discuss a lifetime spent helping others while quietly battling her own struggles with depression, anxiety, trauma, and self-doubt.



Growing up in a family deeply affected by mental illness, Christy became the caretaker, the listener, and the helper. Yet beneath the surface, she carried her own pain for decades. Through therapy, difficult seasons of depression, questions around diagnosis, medication, and ultimately radical self-compassion, Christy began a journey toward healing and authenticity.



What started as a personal mental health blog became a lifeline—not only for herself, but for countless others who finally felt seen, understood, and less alone.



In this episode, Christy shares:



✨ What it was like growing up as “the helper” in a family struggling with mental illness
✨ Her experience navigating depression, anxiety, and shame
✨ The role therapy played in her healing journey
✨ How vulnerability transformed her life and relationships
✨ Why self-compassion is one of the most powerful tools for resilience
✨ The truth behind her message: there is no normal



This conversation is a reminder that healing isn’t about becoming someone else—it’s about giving yourself permission to be fully, authentically you.



If you’ve ever felt broken, different, or like you’re carrying struggles no one can see, this episode is for you.



#TheResilienceFiles #MentalHealth #SelfCompassion #DepressionAwareness #HealingJourney #Resilience #PersonalGrowth #TraumaRecovery #MentalWellness #Podcast #CarrieBernans #ChristyBarongan #ThereIsNoNormal

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When you feel like life has dealt you a hand of unfair cards, instead of voting, you double down and you're stuck in the game. You face battles, you felt broken. But hey, do us a favor. Put your hand on your heart. You feel that? You're still here. Welcome to the Resilience Files Unlock, where survival meets transformation. Hey, welcome back everybody. This is Carrie Bernance with the Resilience Files. This is a space where we talk about moments that shape us, the things we hide, and the practices that help us come back to ourselves. We're so excited today because we have such a lovely, amazing guest. She is very deeply personal and she has a lot to share with her own battles with mental health, but also she has amazing clients that she's working with in order to help change their lives. Today's episode is with our guest, Christy Baraggan. Our guest, Christy Barraggan, has generously shared parts of her mental health journey with us. So before we begin this conversation, I want to read a few experts from her story, as we do always here on the Resilient Spouse. Not the entire piece, because I want her to share some of it for herself as well. Just enough so you understand where she's coming from. And then I'll let Christy, like I said, share her own story. Christy comes from a family deeply impacted by mental illness and trauma. From a young age, she took on the role of the helper, often putting others before her own needs. That role followed into her adulthood and eventually into her profession. But beneath that strength, she was quietly struggling. Christy wrote an essay for us and here it goes. I first became depressed in high school. It's hard to separate the angst of adolescence and clinical depression, but I had thought of suicide by the age of 15. So I'll say it from the start. The intensity of my depression waxed and waned throughout my life. With short periods of being free from depression, I've never been free from anxiety, but it has become more manageable since 2023. At age 19, I had my first session with a psychiatrist who confirmed my diagnosis of major depressive disorder. At the time, that was enough to make me feel better. To have someone tell me what I was really going through was real. I started a trial of antidepressants in my late 20s, and it did help. But after a year and a half, I stopped taking them because I didn't want to have to rely on them, the meds, to feel normal. Now I accept that it's easier for me to regulate my emotions if I'm on them. I'm okay with being on them for life if that's what it takes. I have never shared this detailed account of my mental health history with anyone before starting a blog because I was ashamed of my depression. It felt like a failure. I was supposed to have everything under control. I was the one everyone looked up to for help. I decided to start with the mental health blog as a form of exposure therapy, not only letting people read my writing, but being honest about the things I usually try to hide. The biggest gift of the blog gave me me was realizing that in sharing my vulnerability, I was articulating other people's pains too. People reached out and told me they finally felt seen and less alone. With self-compassion, there's an emphasis on common humanity, the ideal that we're all stumbling along, doing the best we can. You think you're learning how to be normal, but really you're giving yourself permission to be yourself because there is no normal. Wow. Wow. Christy, Christy, Christy, thank you so much for trusting us with that.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Our pleasure. And before we go forward, I would like to know like, how are you doing today? How do you feel with hearing this right out loud?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

You know, I'm working a lot with that blog. I'm trying to turn it into a podcast. And I've started a second blog that's called Neurospicy and Flying.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Ooh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yes, because once you learn how to self-regulate by doing the skills that I teach in normal and training, then initially you'll be, you'll feel emotionally stable, but then you'll start to thrive. And then when you thrive, you can start to fly. And so the two examples I always like to use are Neo from The Matrix, when he can read the code. Right. And then he literally starts to fly.

unknown 4:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

And they make fun of him and call Superman, right? And then the other one is when Alphabet in Wicked can realizes that she can read from the spell book and she uses it to do a chant on a broom. Right. And then she too can fly and understands her power.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Wow. Understanding your power, harnesses.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

And then you can fly.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

And then you can thrive.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

First, you're stable. Well, first you're not stable. Yeah. And we're being honest, you're not stable for a very long period of time. Stability also takes a very long period of time because I started this vlog. Actually, it was I remember I see I recently looked up the exact date and it was September 2013. Yeah. So over 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And then I started the new one about flying on J January 1st, 2026, like a month ago.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Congratulations. I'm so proud of you.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

That's so beautiful. Learning how to fly, and now you're flying and you're helping others find their wings. And realizing it's right behind them. But sometimes they can't see it because so much in front of you, so much chaos or noise or distractions or exactly external and internal. Yes. I love that. Thank you so much for that. You talked about becoming a helper early on. So what we love to do on the podcast is hear about before people learn to fly and then their steps of being on the training wheels and then taking off. So early on in life in your early years, you were saying by the age of 15, you were still the helper and you were the people that your family relied on. Can we talk a little bit about that? When did you realize that you were the helper? And then when did you realize that the role was costing you something in your own growth of understanding who you are?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Actually, there is a memory that stands out. So I am the oldest and I am the only girl. Well and the females are the caretakers. Right. I have three younger brothers. And I remember we had gone out and done something, and I can't remember what it was. It wasn't anything too wild and crazy, but my brother is seven years younger than me. And so let's say that it happened at 15, that would make him what eight, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And my parents got upset with me because they said that I should know, I should have known that that was too late for him to be out of the house doing something at night. Again, that wasn't, I don't know what we were doing, but it wasn't shooting up drugs, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Drinking or anything, because we were all pretty straight laced kids who, you know, didn't get into trouble.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

But it's like I should have known. Like I didn't realize that was my job. That's my job to make sure that all of my brothers that are okay, that I make the decisions that a parent is supposed to make. Is that what you're saying to me? Right. Because this is news to me. That was not in my contract upon being born. I don't remember signing any documents indicating that that's what I was supposed to be doing, but apparently it was. And that was an unspoken rule that um I just discovered after they got upset with me.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's always the oldest. We are the most responsible ones. I'm the oldest too. So yeah, you have to be the one. Your parents are like, no, if I taught you, you know you were supposed to teach them.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

It'd be you were supposed to, you're supposed to know an eight-year-old kid can't be outside, I don't know, watching fireworks or something. It was something like that, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Yeah. When did you realize being in that role costed you your own like childhood or when you felt like you lost something because you were dealing with a lot, battling a lot yourself? Because you were also mentioning you were suicidal at a young age.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah. You know, I didn't realize it back then because I just accepted it. The things that used to make me suicidal back then were kind of similar. They all had to do with, and you know, my dad was really narcissistic, I mentioned he has bipolar disorder, and he has trauma as well. And he also had an abusive father who, from what I can tell, was far worse, and he really felt like, okay, I'm not going to treat my children that way.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

But, you know, don't fall too far from the tree if you don't take the worms out of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

And especially if you're not in therapy, you're not on medication, you're not reading any self-help books, you're not talking to other people about how do I not be this abusive man that my father was to my own children, right? And so I can tell you this will this will probably help you to understand. I remember the first time that my dad disowned me. I was six years old. And I had just I had been taking piano lessons for a year. They let me skip having to do the recital the first year because I was so close to having just started, right? And so this was going to be my first recital at six years old, because I started at five. And we were at a small gathering of his friends at his friend's house, and my recital was the next day, and they were like, Hey, why don't you play your piece for us? And this was like, ooh, like this, and this relates to the neurodivergent piece, which I talk about, which maybe is too much to go into. But it's like, you can't, I mean, and and if you try to do this with most kids, most people understand they're not gr that great at performing on the spot. Yeah, not like for you, because I didn't even want to play it at the recital. But here he was, and they were like, and I sat at the piano, and I remember looking at the keys and really so wanting to be able to do it, you know?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

And I couldn't. And I couldn't do it. I remember staring at it, and then when we drove home before I got out of the car, my dad told me never to ask him for anything again. And for him, that's the way I was saying to telling you, I don't love you because you didn't perform for me. And so I went into my room and I hid under the bed. And that was just the first time that he did it. He's done it two other times, I think, since then. And that was just with me. He's done it with all my brothers too. I'm so sorry that you but not over something so trivial.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah, you were six years old, and that's a lot of pressure to ask a six-year-old and uh to perform on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

That was the message. When I say perform, you better perform.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

I'm sorry, and it seems like you're still carrying that weight of you. What is your relationship with your father right now?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

You know, now he's 85 years old, and I'm trying really hard to have a relationship with him. It has a lot of boundaries around it. He's not allowed in my space, you know, he's not allowed to call me. But we do make an effort to make sure that around his birthday and around the holidays, we go and we made up at a restaurant. I've only recently uh allowed him to follow me on social media because I have been I didn't mean to be doing it for him, but I was just I was just posting these positive messages about Christianity as a way to protest the way that Christianity is being depicted in our country to show examples of what Jesus actually wanted us to do and how to live our lives. And for some reason this has really resonated for him. And I thought, oh my gosh, I finally found a way. I finally have found a way to get through hit to him. And he's remembering that at one point he told me, I remember when I was 17 that he was a servant of God. He's a physician, he was a physician, and he said his purpose on earth was to be a servant of God. And I thought, thank you, God, for because this is the way that you manifest things. You say, Tell me what the first step is, and without knowing what it is, you commit to taking it. And that's what has changed my life in this past six months. And so I started doing it, and then the last time I saw him was the weekend after Christmas, and he said, I love your blog, and that's actually not my blog. Those are actually just posts, those are actually just posts from these meditations that I read every day. But it's reminding him of right, if we have an angel and a devil inside of us, it's reminding him of the angel. It's allowing him to listen to the angel to whisper in his ear and remember the part of him that believed that he was here to be a servant of God.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

That's so beautiful, Christy. I'm happy that your like Instagram or blog, as your dad may call it, is sowing seeds in him and it's ordering the growth inside of him that is there and the love of Christ. I I think that's so beautiful. And and he's 85, and I'm happy that you've learned to set boundaries in you all's relationship in order for you to be able to grow and to fly. You know, I think so often so many people limit themselves because they're afraid. And even the people that are closest to you sometimes you have to set boundaries on like that. And because they mean uh the most to you, but you allow yourself sometimes, especially when it's a toxic relationship, to stay there and it's sticky. It's like standing in sticky sand or mud, and you're trying to grow and you're trying to reach for them, and then you're pulling yourself down. And I think there's definitely some listeners that can also relate to that. Yes. I want to know during that time of your life, you were six and you saw it happen to your brothers, and it happened to yourself again, and you were struggling during that time, and a lot was happening internally during that season. Maybe you could take us from six until I think you were 15 when you got your diagnosis, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

No, I didn't get my diagnosis officially until my second year of college.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

So I was maybe 19.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

19. Okay. So maybe you can um help some of the listeners today. And some people are on here as parents, they're listening for their own child, and sometimes it's hard as people work and to recognize behaviors or how to support their child during that moment. What what was going on internally in you to say that there has to be something else happening, or what were you feeling at the moment? Like, what were your thoughts if you can re remember?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah. Actually, yeah, one thing, just to first go back to what you were saying about the boundaries. It's hard because obviously you have been conditioned all of your life to not have boundaries. Right. Now, I'm Filipino, which is why it's hard to pronounce my name, right? And so there's this other layer of that where culturally, you know, as someone who is Asian, you are supposed to listen to your parents and do whatever it is that they say. Now, it gets that's one of the difficulties of growing up in the US where you had parents who lived in the standard. My both of my parents became doctors because their parents told them to, and that's not what they wanted to do, right? So, so not only are you having difficulty, even if someone is giving you permission and saying yes, set boundaries, set boundaries, set boundaries. There are people in your community who are saying no, no, that's disrespectable. Don't say how can you do that? They're your parents. They care, they care about you. You know, honor thy mother and father and all of these things. And so it's a actually a very, very difficult task to do when the environment that you're in is also advocating against your mental health.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

So then that's a good question because you're uh you're a hundred percent right there. What age or when did you decide enough was enough and boundaries would need it to be set?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Very late in life. I mean, this is kind of another crazy story, but my brother was let's see, maybe I was 50, six years ago. No, it was more than that. I was in my late 40s, and my brother had gotten depressed because, like I said in that part that you read, he decided, okay, I don't want to be on medication all my life, and he stopped taking them. And then the same thing happened to him that happened, and this is always what happens. He got depressed, and then he had just received this award at work for his job stability for five years, and he got so depressed that he couldn't function. And they were so understanding and didn't want to lose him, but he was so ashamed that he ended up quitting and he ended up moving back to my parents' house. You know, with just with the little I told you. You can understand how disastrous that was, right? And so while he was living with them and they were not respecting his boundaries and putting all of these insane demands on him to regulate their emotions and to regulate their interactions, their conflict with one another, he had a heart attack at 40. No. And so uh the night before I finally got to talk to him and I was like, when you when you get out of the hospital, don't go back home. Don't ever, don't ever go back home again. And so then he was like, What? I gotta do this surgery soap and this and that, and I can't think about this right now. And I'm like, they are the reason that you have are having a heart attack and you are not to go back home. And so it's like, be careful what you wish for, right? He did it, and he came in to move in with me. And so then for five years, that became an additional burden on me. But that was when I first had to start setting boundaries because they felt so guilty because they're both doctors, and so they're well aware of the symptoms of when someone is having a heart attack, but because they're so caught up in themselves and their own narcissism that they don't realize that their son is having a heart attack. And he's been having symptoms for a heart attack for a month, and so he ends up having quadruple bypass heart surgery at 40, and they have to take an artery out of his arm because he's too young to just have a vein taken out of your leg because it's not gonna last long enough. And even now they said, Yeah, 70, that's a pretty long life. That's probably how long you can expect to live. So after that, I was like, you know what? Neither of you are coming into my house ever again. You're not coming into my space, I'm not talking to you, I'm not listening to this, I'm not coming to your 50th anniversary. You can tell them all I'm a horrible child. I don't care what you do, but I couldn't do it for me. Right. But in order to protect my baby brother, the one who was eight, and they said, You need to look out for your brother. I guess I must have learned how to do it because in order to protect my baby brother, you're not coming anywhere near him. You're not coming anywhere near him. And then eventually, because my brother has the same mental illnesses, he lived with me for five years, and I thought, you know what, he's gonna kill me too. And so I'm gonna have to move. I'm gonna have to quit my job, and I'm gonna have to leave my all of my support. I'm gonna have to leave the place that I've lived for 20 years. I'm gonna have to leave my friends who are like my real family, and I'm gonna have to move to Tennessee. And I became depressed again. And so there are huge, huge costs. It's not like you set a boundary and like, oh, everything's all better now. No, it took years to establish stability after that. And I hit probably the lowest low I've ever had in order to set that boundary and be like, all right, that's it. You know what? I have to have space from all of you.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, absolutely. You set boundaries, you allowed your brother to move in with you for five years, realized that he was going through major depression, he had to go through the whole surgery, all of these things, and no money, couldn't make a living. So no money.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

No one else from the family was supporting him but me.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

No one else supporting you, and you were already dealing with, and at that time, we are skipping FYI listeners, we are skipping along to you'll see where she is at today. But you are already successful in your career at that moment, and you already graduated college, you've already found the medication that works for you, you regulated yourself, you were in a healthy, good mental health standpoint prior to him coming along, and not that he was dragging you down, but sometimes carrying in the weight of someone else's bag can also lead you into a depressive or a mental health crisis yourself. Yes. I want to talk to that because I think that is such an interesting point because you know, so often I feel like people use this thing called trauma binding, or they and you all are obviously brother and sister, so it's not that you're trauma binding in a relationship per se, but it is a relationship in a sense because you're family and you are helping your brother carry this weight. But when you're carrying your own weight and you're carrying someone else's weight, it's easier to be drugged down and to start getting more exhausted, tired, lack of rest. So talk to us on when did you realize that it was important to get your brother his own help and you to go on your own because of your own mental health?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Right. Well, I can give you the analogy first of how I felt during that time. Yeah. I felt like and this is always the way that it feels in those transitions, you know, when a relationship ends or a job ends or something ends, and you had had this vision of how your life is supposed to look like. And usually it feels like I'm on a raft in the middle of the ocean and I can't see any land. I have no idea where I'm gonna go, what direction to go in, or what's going to happen to me. But when I was taking care of my brother during that time, it was like I am a boat and I can see the shore. And I'm almost there, but the boat is so heavy. There's so much on there that I'm throwing stuff off left and right, as many things as I can to get rid of it, so that I can try to make it to the shore. I'm like doing everything that I can to make it. And when I took that last step, and I took it because, well, one, it was COVID, and I realized how nice it was that I didn't, because I was also commuting an hour and a half to get to my job. And I had a boss who she didn't just do it to me, but it was particularly triggering for me because of my dad, who was constantly telling me that I wasn't doing enough. And when I did something well, she would use it to shame other people and say, Why aren't you seeing as many clients as Chrissy? But I never knew that I was one of the top two people who were who was seeing the most clients. So she never told me anything positive. She only told me when she thought that I was failing. And sometimes she jumped the gun and just didn't have enough information. And so when I realized, like, ooh, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

She's too busy with this COVID stuff, so she can't be in my business.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah. And I could do virtual therapy and I don't have to commute. And I could begin to envision a life where my practice could look the way that I want it to look, which is the way that it looks now, right? Where I'm doing virtual therapy and I don't have a boss. I'm self-employed, and so I can do whatever I want and take ever, however much time I want and start whenever I want and end whenever I want. And I'm still a pretty tough boss, but I'm nowhere near as tough tough as she was. And I think I'm a pretty good therapist, too. And I don't know if she thought that I was or not. I have no idea because she would have never told me anything positive. So that was one thing. The other thing is that my brother was in a manic episode and he was doing things at work that could have really gotten him into a lot of trouble, could have gotten him in trouble with the law, could have gotten him fired. And he knew that I didn't approve because he knew that what he was doing was wrong. But this is what people who are narcissistic do. They project their vulnerabilities, their weaknesses, and their mistakes onto you, and they blame you for it. And it's like, you know what? All I've done for the past five years is to save your life, and you're gonna turn around every day and yell at me because you're making these stupid decisions that are gonna ruin your life. It's like that's it. And I couldn't get him to move out because I could barely get him to freaking clean his room. Do you know what I mean? To sell the house. So I was like, I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna move. I'm gonna drop everything that I have, every resource that I have to save my own life, and I'm gonna move to Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Wow. Girl, you moved, left him in the house, or did he just eventually move?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

He had to because he's not gonna be able to afford the house. But let me tell you, I was out of the house at n three o'clock in the afternoon, and I told him, hey, the people, and I lied, I just said they're shutting off the electricity because otherwise he might just keep keep living there. And I was like, They're cutting off the power at nine o'clock in the morning tomorrow morning. He didn't get out of the house until 12 30, 1 30 in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

And I was like, see ya, I'm driving to Tennessee. Good luck. And it broke my heart to tell him. I was like, I'm moving, and he's like, Well, when are we doing it? And I'm like, We're not doing it together. Same thing. God came in for him. He stepped up for for my brother. And someone called him and recruited him from Indeed and gave him a job. And that week, because he procrastinated and waited three days before he was supposed to move out, he landed a townhouse that was a great deal that he could afford. He landed a great job. And so God was like, I'm I'm gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of both of you.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

You know what? I realized too. If you uh what is the quote? Like if you give a person if you have a person too much too long, they don't what is the quote? I need the quote.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

About like the fish teaching someone to fish.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Yeah, you have to teach them how to fish.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

If you go let me what like if you give a man a fish, then he eats for whatever, a day. I don't know if that's the one that you're talking about, right? But if you teach a man to fish, and it was a good thing for both of us, because I was enabling him, if that's what you're getting at. And for him to be forced to go out there and struggle and realize how hard it is and how easy I had been making it for him. And he's still struggling, and I still help him, but my help is much more limited now than it was before.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah, well, good for you. Yeah, you're definitely teaching a man how to fish, but also I think like he'll stop if we sorry, my words are da-da-da. If we can go back to like even at what you said at the beginning, sometimes they realize that they can't find their own wings, you know. He realizes like if we do what is it, if we do for others what they can do, they ought to do for themselves. We all often weaken them rather than strengthen them. And I was yeah, you know, he was relying on your support for so long that he only imagined what life would be with your support and couldn't imagine standing on his own two legs. And I do believe that we should offer a bridge in order to help someone or offer a hand up in order to allow someone to see from a different viewpoint or to give them a leg up, a hand out, you know. But when the reliance happened for too long, a person then starts figuring they lose their inner spark of like realizing that they can do it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Yes. But I think that's such a great point. I mean, and that's what I do now. Now, the way that I work is it's like, you know what? I realize that one of my superpowers is that I know what your strengths are. And I'm going to tell you what your strengths are. And I am going to tell you what you can do so that you can start using your strengths. And I know what your weaknesses are too. And I'm going to teach you what to do when you become dysregulated because of your weaknesses. And once you know those two things, once you know how to utilize your strengths, and once you know what to do when you're dysregulated or in distress, right? And know how to stabilize again, then you can thrive.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

I love that. I love that. We're gonna just shift it back to a few questions that are just on the timeline for other people that have been in your same situation before they got to helping their brother, and it's becoming a clinical psychol psychologist. My words are not working today, but it's okay. I'm gonna edit this episode. So we're gonna hop right back in because I know some people are wondering, okay, wait, wait, wait. So, six years old, you know, first experience, dad disowning you, realizing that you are the oldest of five and you were the only four. Though you were the oldest of four, you were the only girl. You had the reliance of being the helper in the house, taking care of your younger siblings, and also realizing that you had some mental health issues, but not exactly figuring out what that pinpoint was. And then at the age of 19, finally being diagnosed your second semester, second year in school, correct? Yes. So I wanted to know once you were diagnosed, what was that like for you? What did you feel? And did you did it come with medication or did it come with you just need therapy?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

So that's a great question. And by the way, I knew that I was depressed that whole year. The reason why I finally went in is because my roommate, who was also depressed, attempted suicide on her birthday by overdosing on all of my samples of Tylenol. And so then I was like, I need help. I can't. I can't fake it anymore and just keep producing and producing and producing. And when I went in, he was to this day the most compassionate psychiatrist I had ever met, met. And he saw me. He literally saw me. He saw that I was dressed in complete black. He articulated my depression perfectly. And he said, You're depressed. Maybe that seems like a no-brainer, but when you don't know, like when in your head, your inner critic is saying things like, It's not real, people, people are doing worse, you know. You what do you have to be upset about? You're at UVA and you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're you're succeeding and whatever. And then someone says, No, this is a real thing. You are depressed. This is an actual disorder. This is not your fault. You are suffering. This is real. It's like, wow. And I know that that's the way that people re feel when they read my blog posts. They're like, wow, that's what she's telling me. That what I'm going through is real, that this is real, and that I am suffering terribly. And thank God, finally, someone saw me and said something. And so he at the time had just re recommended therapy. But the weight of just being told that I was depressed and that it was real for a while was enough to it's like it's like not fair to call it a placebo. It's more sort of like a common factor. There's a common factor to anything, to medication, to any type of therapy, anytime you talk to someone, and that counts accounts for about almost a third of what helps people. And so for a while, that was enough to bolster me and to be like, oh, this is real? Yeah. Well, okay. Then I guess I can do it as long as I and that is real. I can do this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Wow. And then when did the medication part come into the picture?

SPEAKER_01 31:34

So the medication part came. First, the first therapy came after college. So I was about twenty two. And then the first medication came when I was thirty. So this is important too. You see how long and my story is very typical in terms of how long it takes from the time that you realize that you're suffering, to the time that you realize this might actually be a thing, to the time that you go and you get help, to the time that you actually commit to therapy, to the time that you start a medication and that you stick with it. So stability takes a very we're talking decades.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Yeah. Well, well, you guys l y'all hear that.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

So if I can speed up the process for you by getting you to listen to this podcast, you know, speed up. It doesn't have to take decades. It doesn't have to take care of it.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

It doesn't have to it doesn't have to. You know, I really appreciate how you were so honest with the shame that you carried and also the honesty that you felt like something was going on around depression, and you were able to also get the validation that it was real. And like you said, there's so many people that need to hear that. Like Chrissy just said, it doesn't have to take decades. You know, go see go see a psychiatrist. Go today. Yeah, go today. Reach out to your doctor because the reality is you could be living a much healthier life and also feeling validating with who you are and understanding that you're not alone and there's people all around the world that are battling mental health on a daily basis and that your life matters. I would like to know. I love that you created your blog. I definitely want to get that at the end of this podcast so other people can also look at it. I love that you have been putting into words on how you feel, and it's validated on how others also feel. I wanted to just shift really quickly and ask you what made you want to go into the field that you're in today, and how does you going into, you know, being a PhD psychologist affect you with also your own mental health?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

So, you know, this is this is actually one of the interviews that's on my Normal in Training podcast. I have my niece interview me. And so she asks me the questions that people often ask me. But when I was in high school, I knew that I wanted to be two things. I knew that I wanted to be a writer. At least I wrote an essay saying that I wanted to be a writer. And I knew no, I did want to be a writer, which is why I started the blog. And I knew that I wanted to be a therapist because um I was used to people coming to me. They sense it about you. Do you know what I mean? It's just a quality that you have where you talk to people and they know that they're going to be seen and heard, and they know that they're going to be listened to, and they know that they're not going to be judged, and so they sense that you're safe. And it's like, this is what I want to do for a living. I want to do this for people. And so I knew in high school, right around that same age, around 15, I want to be a writer, I want to be a therapist, you know, I'm depressed. And they're all interrelated, you know what I mean? Right. Like, yes, I know these negative things, but I know these positive things too, of what I want to do about it. I want to be a writer and I want to be a therapist.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

I love that. And how does that play? Do you ever feel like you have any episodes that you need a moment because you hear of everyone else's problems and issues and you're carrying that weight? Or do you feel like you can balance those two? How do you balance those two?

SPEAKER_01 35:17

I do still have problems setting boundaries. And the funny thing is that now, because I am so much more authentic in my therapy, that my clients will be the one like, girls, take more than one day of vacation at Christmas. And they'll be like, I feel so terrible that we're going over. You need to go eat. Go get something to eat. Which which is like that's probably not good. And if there are therapists out there who are listening, but you know, for me, it's common humanity.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Therapist are people too.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

It's common humanity, right? I'm taking care of you, and they're taking care of me, and we're taking care of each other. And that's the way that I do therapy. I don't speak out, and you tell me I'm not setting a boundary, and I will call you out, and I'll tell you that you're not setting a boundary. And we are committed to making sure that we take care of ourselves and that we take care of one another. And that's the way I do my work.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm sure the majority of the session is not that discussion, but I also believe like we're human and we know that therapies are human and everyone's too. And right now, with the information overload and also so much unfortunate events happening around us, it's normal to also be like, hey, I know you're human and you watch TV or you go outside and you see things happening too. Are you okay? You know?

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Exactly. And therapists are notorious for burnout because we give too much, because we give too much. And so I'm thankful for those clients who are like, No, I've gone too far. I need to get off, and you need to go eat, you need to go take a nap, you need to take more vacation, you need to do these things because they're right, because I'm still the same person. I'm still the person who is always at risk of giving too much, and it's a lifelong thing that I have to pay attention to and monitor.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah. I love, I love that. Um, that y'all have that relationship. I have two more questions for you as we wrap it up. And life feels overwhelming, especially now. And like we kind of talked about it briefly. What are ways that you do sorry? What are what are ways that you help regulate yourself? And then what are ways that our listeners can help regulate themselves during that time?

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Sure. Um, I meditate and I actually give a free meditation for anyone who wants to listen. There are recordings of it on Zoom or on um on um YouTube that you can find under my name. But I also give a free meditation to anybody who wants it. They just have to email me, and that doesn't commit you to coming. It just means you'll get the link for the meditation, and after the meditation is over, you'll get a recording so that you can listen to it at your own convenience. Very, very few people take advantage because people are afraid to fly because they can't take that first step. And you gotta walk before you can fly. But I offer that to everyone. I meditate every single night, I read, I knit, I crochet, I play tennis, play pickleball, I write, I blog, I have a podcast, I do so many things that I love. I do so many things that my day, I right now I I'm finding a way to do it all. And now I'm on this podcast, and it's like, hey, and then I actually just applied yesterday, because this is my dream job, is to be like a commentator, a tennis commentator, but as a psychologist. And so on TikTok, I just did this yesterday on the spur of the moment. They're like, hey, enter this contest to, and then I keep getting, I don't know anything about self-promotion, because really I'm doing it all to help people. And so I'm not that concerned about making money. I just trust that if I do what I'm up here on earth to do, God's gonna take care of me, right? No, that's right. And so I was just like, okay, TikTok has changed there, everyone's all freaking out about it. There, it's like I don't have that many viewers anyway, so it's not really affecting me that much. But they're they want you to use this live function, and then they're like, you could be this tennis commentator. And it's like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna, I don't even know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna use the live function. I'm gonna go live. No, go live, go live. I've never done a live thing in my life. I don't even know how to turn the sucker off. But you know, like these people, these people don't know me. Yes, I'm gonna use my tennis knowledge, my tennis skills, my my analysis of personality, my psychology. I'm gonna use everything. And then I'll be like, vote for me, people, because look how brave I am. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone. I'm gonna make this happen for myself. This is my ultimate dream job, and I'm gonna make it happen. And I just did that yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

I love that. I love that, I love that, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your resiliency story. I think it's so beautiful. And wow, you guys, like this episode has been so so many gems have been dropped and so many nuggets of not only like you're doing right now, taking courage to really step out of your balance, but also finding that balance. If you need to regulate yourself, finding something that you're passionate about that you absolutely love. Also, it doesn't have to take you decades to be diagnosed. So see a psychiatrist today if you feel like you're battling depression and mental health. Our guest here, Chrissy, has shared with you so vulnerably, like even the disassociation with her father at the young age of six, and just to see where she's grown now to being a psychologist and helping other people with their mental health battles. So if you hear this episode, just know that you're not broken, you're not not normal. You know, you don't have to be ashamed that there are people out there just like you and you are perfectly made the way you were supposed to be made. You just might need a little help, a little validation so you can get the thing you need in order to thrive in life. And it's Christmas five, right? We want to fly.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Everyone can fly.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Everyone can fly. Thank you so much, Christy, for your vulnerability and your courage. We appreciate you being here on the resilience pile. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Thank you for the letting me do what I'm meant to do, which is to spread this message. That's really all I care about is that I spread this message and help as many people as possible.