Broken to Brave | Guiding you to heal & break free from anxiety

Finding Your True Self with Stacy Blemaster

• Dr. Stephanie Lopez • Episode 74

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Have you ever felt like you're just pretending to be someone you're not? Stacy Blemaster joins me in this episode to share her inspiring journey from severe depression and a "two-dimensional" existence to discovering her true self. Tuen in and learn how confronting painful truths and finding genuine support can lead to profound personal transformation and a more authentic life.

In this episode, we talk about the following:
1. Stacy's journey through mental health struggles and recovery.
2. The impact of childhood experiences on identity formation and coping mechanisms.
3. The importance of honesty and self-discovery in the healing process.

You can connect with Stacy on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stacyblemasterauthor
Website: https://stacyblemaster.com/

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Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Steph and I want you to know that you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You are not, in fact, broken, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. All right, welcome back. I am so excited to share Stacey Bleemaster with you today. I have her on and she has an inspiring story that I think you'll be able to resonate with parts of. Now, stacey, tell us a little bit more about who you are, well.

Speaker 2:

I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. From 10 years old, went to Brown University for college, ended up having a mental breakdown, severe depression, went to a psychiatric hospital for a year and a half. Recuperated in Florida, came back to the Cleveland area, got married, had three children, two of which are autistic, and now I reside in retirement in Florida with my second husband and my two golden retrievers.

Speaker 1:

Tell me a little bit more about your mental or emotional breakdown. Was that while you were in college or after?

Speaker 2:

and family of origin that were very tight-lipped. That didn't really. They wanted to project a certain image that didn't talk about uncomfortable feelings. There was a lot of narcissism, secrets in the family, and I grew up and thought that I had a normal childhood. But when I got to college and the circumstances around me changed and it was no longer. There was no longer a status quo that I could hook onto and adjust to, I fell apart and realized that I had really only been acting the first 18 years of my life, that I really didn't know who I was. I had. I fell into severe depression. I was severely depressed on and off for those four years of college. Until two weeks before graduation I was an actress and applying to MFA programs in acting. When I realized that that was probably the biggest source of my problem was the acting and my applications and I actually checked myself into a psychiatric hospital because I was scared to death of graduating and I was really drowning in college. I was a total mess.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, oh gosh. I like that you use the word acting. Was there anything in particular that happened that gave you that insight? Like, oh, I think you didn't use this word, but I think I'm actually pretending.

Speaker 2:

For some reason, growing up where I grew up, with the homogeneity and the kind of having a few benchmarks that you needed to reach to just kind of make it, yeah, I had those benchmarks. I was pretty and I did well in school and I was an athlete and I and I was popular when I got the boxes.

Speaker 2:

I checked all the boxes and then I got to college, to Brown University, which was very diverse yeah, there's no status quo and so everybody's very individualistic and I just couldn't make it. I had no idea what, who to copy, who to follow, and I realized I really had no identity. I couldn't make any choices. I couldn't decide what to wear, I couldn't decide who to be friends with. I was completely lost and knew something was really really wrong with me.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah, yeah, asking the question like who am I Because, in that diverse environment, not even knowing, yeah, like what to do because there's not anybody to copy my goodness. So I would love to hear a little bit more about what life was like, how you grew up. You mentioned narcissism in your family, you know, not talking about uncomfortable feelings, which I think many people can relate to, that being the environment growing up. I certainly can. How did you feel about yourself? How did you view the world? What can you share with us about that time? Well, like I wrote, in my book.

Speaker 2:

I didn't realize it at the time but I certainly realized now.

Speaker 2:

It was a two-dimensional reality.

Speaker 2:

I thought everybody was acting the way I was acting, that we all you know.

Speaker 2:

I had like a whole bunch of feelings and parts of my personality that were sort of behind a curtain in my mind, that I kind of pretended didn't exist and I thought were things that made me crazy that I had to hide from the world and I just assumed that the images that everyone was presenting was who they were, that nobody had any problems, that nobody had any weaknesses. I didn't realize that really people were going home after school and probably in retrospect I'm thinking talking about a full dimensional personality, weaknesses and anger and insecurities and I thought what I was seeing as perfect images were what everybody actually were and that I had all these secrets and things in the back of my head that made me crazy, that I could never share with anyone else. And as I got older and got into therapy I realized those were all really important parts of my personality that I had to discover and flesh out to become a three-dimensional human being. And that's when I learned who I was, what my identity was, that I wasn't just two-dimensional actress.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I like how you said behind the curtain. I can resonate with that to a certain extent. I was doing an interview in 2012 and I was feeling pretty nervous, waiting for the person before me to get out of their interview. And I'm standing there and the these two women who already worked there they said to me like, oh, just be yourself. And that was probably the worst thing that I could have heard at that time, because I felt like if I showed who I was, that people would not like that version of me. I thought like at my core, I was broken and that I was just angry and anxious and I had to suppress and like, keep all of that hidden and pretend that I had it all together and had this like perfect image. And that sounds like there's some overlap in your experience as well. Does that feel true? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's exactly how I felt.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so tell us more about your story. Was there like a peak moment where everything changed for you, where you started to see things differently?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, freshman year of college, I started getting self-help books when I was really depressed, and I got this book by Alice Miller called Prisoners of Childhood, or it's also called Drama of the Gifted Child, and she talks about the sensitive child who's very intuitive, who's living in an unsafe environment with parents that can't really take care of the child, and so they learn to take care of the parents. Their whole identity is based around trying to figure out what the parents need to make the parents feel safe, that the kid in turn will feel safe, and the child's whole identity is just kept suppressed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, that's so relatable. I hadn't heard of that book before, but I can see how that would have resulted in you feeling like really seen right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I knew that that was me. I knew that when I wrote this book. That was the turning point where I realized okay, this is the essence of what is wrong with me. I knew it. I had two parents who, to this day in their eighties, are like children and they really weren't apt at being parents and they were very needy and very insecure and very volatile and narcissistic and the world revolves around them and they were really unable to be other-centered or develop their children into who their children were meant to be, and they needed that caretaking because they had never gotten in as children from their parents.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, which is sad on many levels. I know before the call, you mentioned having one person that accepts you or believes in you. I'd love to hear more about that and hear where that person came in on your journey and how they impacted you.

Speaker 2:

Well, I had been in the psychiatric hospital for a year and a half, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as a possible diagnosis that they were looking into. I had people with relationships and mood swings. But a year and a half into being in the hospital, when I was moved to a halfway house, I had a manic episode and my parents got very upset because they thought that the hospital had misdiagnosed me all that time. They hadn't asked pertinent questions about possible hypomanic or manic episodes before I got to the psychiatric hospital which I had had and they pulled me out and it's a good thing because I probably would have stayed at that hospital for the rest of my life. That's pretty much how they handled things.

Speaker 2:

People that went to the hospital basically stayed in relationship to the hospital and way houses or in the community and apartments and they took me out and the doctor I met in Florida that they brought me to they really held my hand and gave me his pager number and there's major regressive aspects about being in a hospital that long. We are not paying bills, we are not in real life and I had a ton of problems that I had to overcome and was on the verge of falling apart multiple times a day, and if it wasn't for him holding my hand and going out of his quote unquote job description, giving me his pager number and helping me through all the little things that came up according to my day, I wouldn't have made it, but he enabled me to live a life outside of a hospital and flourish.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow. Are you still in touch with him today?

Speaker 2:

He's passed away, unfortunately. Yeah, but he was in my life for decades. I ended up seeing him as a doctor Even when I moved back to Cleveland. I went back to Florida and saw him four times a year, called him. He stayed in my life for decades until he passed away from cancer. But I credit him with saving my life the one, one person who saved another person's life, no doubt.

Speaker 1:

I'm so glad that you found him Me too, yeah, yeah. So tell me about life now. After working with him and doing a lot of healing work, working on finding your identity so that you weren't pretending anymore and acting anymore, how is life now?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's totally different. There's really no curtain in my head where I'm hiding things. I realize all those things have been looked at in therapy, are now assimilated in my personality and I'm a three-dimensional human being now I don't judge people on superficial traits. I get to know people for who they are. I don't judge myself superficially. I know that my insides are more important than my outsides. I have a relationship with my second husband where I can share my deepest fears and insecurities and be at my worst and just have the experience of someone who is really there for me at my darkest moments, which I'm realizing for me is probably the most important part of a relationship, especially with a significant other, is having someone can really see you at your worst and will pick you up and be there for you in your worst times.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, absolutely. I love hearing about the like, everything that you've gone through and the changes that you've made. I know you mentioned a book.

Speaker 2:

Tell me more about that, well that was the final step in my healing, because my biggest struggle was this as-if personality that I had been diagnosed with at the psychiatric hospital. A full, tell-all, honest book about my life was my way of finally getting rid of that as a personality. And getting my truth out there in black and white in a book really just snapped me out of it for good and it was yeah, it was really really healing.

Speaker 1:

Is that the name of it? As if personality.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's to be, or not to be, shedding an as if personality.

Speaker 1:

How would somebody listening know that they should read this book?

Speaker 2:

I would say well, this is what I said on the back of the book.

Speaker 2:

If you're struggling with a mask, you feel you can't take off.

Speaker 2:

You feel like there's more to you than you feel like you can show to people, you may have some version of an as if personality.

Speaker 2:

In the book I talk about the things I did that helped me get in touch with who I really was, one of which was getting honest, totally honest with one person, which was the psychiatrist that was in my life, and then continuing to be honest in a 12 step program, which I've been in for 30 years, where I could go once a week and talk to people that were struggling with emotional issues, like I was, and just getting as honest as possible with people that were struggling with similar things. I think sometimes in life we have trouble really revealing parts of ourselves to the people in our lives because they're not struggling with the same things we are and we think well, how can I bring up in this professional setting that I'm really anxious or that I'm struggling with issues of being sexually molested? These things aren't appropriate. But when you can get yourself into self-help groups that are centered around those topics, you realize those are really safe places to talk about those things, to bring them to light, and you can touch with those parts of yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that you want listeners to know about you, or your journey or your book?

Speaker 2:

Well, for me really healing was about just getting honest. I was so lost when I got depressed and had no idea really where to begin and fixing myself, and so what I did in therapy was every day I went into therapy, especially after I got out of the hospital with my doctor that I really trusted was one. Find someone that you can fully trust. Not all therapists will fit the bill for you not all therapists will fit the bill for you.

Speaker 2:

they're not all a good fit, yeah, and that's okay. Yeah, find someone you can really trust. And what I did was not knowing how else to really begin was every session that I went into, which was three times a week, I just talked about. The thing that was most embarrassing, that felt most was a secret that I need to get out, and that's what I did for a half three times a week until I had no more secrets and that made me feel confident walking around in the world, that I wasn't hiding things and that gave me the feeling that I really was who I said I was, even if I didn't share everything with everyone I met. There was my truth had been given out to one or a few people, so yeah, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1:

And then when you speak it, any shame that's there can dissipate too. Yeah, yeah, I love that so much. If there's somebody listening right now, that has moments where they feel broken or they're asking themselves why am I like this? What advice would you give them?

Speaker 2:

If there's a reason why you're like the way that you are, that things don't happen by accident. You're not crazy likely ways that you're dealing in the world that might not be working for you, or strategies that you developed in your childhood to cope that are, just you know, longer working well for you and new in your new environment, which is a good thing. It means that you're not in that same environment. You don't need to use those coping mechanisms anymore. You can let them go and use more healthy coping mechanisms that can let people more into your life and into your feelings, where you can build more meaningful relationships and trusting relationships.

Speaker 1:

I love that so, so much. Thank you so much for coming on today. How can listeners find you?

Speaker 2:

I have a website, stacyblemastercom, and I'm also on Instagram, stacey Bleemaster, author on Instagram, and I usually just give out my email if anyone needs help. I was a therapist for a while and have a master's in counseling and human services and I'm willing to just talk to people for free if anybody would want help, and so I'm at StaceyBlee at gmailcom.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'll put that in the show notes, as well as your website and your Instagram handle. Thank you so much for coming on today, stacey.

Speaker 2:

Sure, you're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening today. Are you ready to finally heal and break free from anxiety, including symptoms like replaying interactions, fearing, making mistakes, imagining worst case scenarios and constant worrying? If so, DM me the word free on Instagram at Dr Stephanie Lopez and I will send you a link to my completely free class to officially ditch anxiety.

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