Unexpected Darkness, Then a Healing She Didn’t Think Existed — Katie’s Journey

Welcome back to another episode of the Dancing With Depression podcast. I’m your host, Adam Turner, and today I get to share a conversation with someone I met during a pivotal time in both of our lives.Katie and I crossed paths completely by chance. She was finishing her time in the residential program at HopeWay, and I had just started Intensive Outpatient Therapy. The odds of us ever meeting were slim—almost like lightning striking twice in the exact same spot. Yet here we are. Group therapy gave us the chance to learn pieces of each other’s stories, and in doing so, we developed a genuine respect for one another’s openness. There’s something almost surreal about hopping on a Zoom call with people you’ve never met, only to find yourself forming a quick, unexpected connection.Katie is a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, and a talented photographer. But what makes her story so impactful is the depth and honesty with which she shares her experience with anxiety—how she first recognized it, how it shaped her life, and how it eventually contributed to depression. Her story is one many people will recognize, even if the circumstances differ.What I appreciate most about Katie is that she shares her journey not for attention, but to help others feel seen, supported, and empowered. From the day I met her, she’s been an advocate for helping people find the courage—and the resources—they need to take that next, and often first, step toward healing. So it wasn’t a surprise that she agreed to join me on the podcast, but I was genuinely excited for this conversation. You’ll understand why once you hear how openly and thoughtfully Katie reflects on one of her most vulnerable experiences.I’m grateful she trusted me with her story to share with you.“Now, let’s hear from Katie herself, as she opens up about her journey, what she learned, and how taking care of herself became the first step to being there for the people she loves.”-----------------------------------------------------Adam Turner (00:01)Hi, Katie. Katie (00:03)Hi, Adam. I'm doing a pretty good today. I'm recovering from a cold, but other than that, ⁓ I'm doing pretty good. Adam Turner (00:04)How are ya? Good, you sound great. It's great to see you. It's been a little while, yeah, yeah. So I'm glad we got a chance to get together. ⁓ Obviously, you know, we met in probably a way that we probably never thought we would have met. ⁓ And, you know, got a chance to get to know each other a little bit through sharing and processing and so on. But ⁓ I wanted to have you come and Katie (00:15)Yes, about a month or two. Sure. Adam Turner (00:41)share a little bit of your experience, your journey, certainly just kind of reconnect and ⁓ see if we can't help some other folks through their journey as well. Does that sound good? Katie (00:57)Yeah, that sounds great, Adam. I'm excited to share. Adam Turner (00:59)Awesome. So again, as I mentioned, you know how we met, but I want to first start off with like where things started for you ⁓ on your journey and what that looked like. Where do you have a time like where you remember kind of like first feeling of either feeling off or something just wasn't the norm? Katie (01:24)Sure. Yeah, so I guess it was around this time last year. I just started noticing that I was a little bit more achy, was having some trouble sleeping. ⁓ Little things would stress me out here and there. ⁓ I kind of did what I call like a medical tour of different doctors saying like, just, feel kind of off, ⁓ you know, and we ran a bunch of tests and all of them are coming back pretty, pretty normal. ⁓ And so Christmas came around and we celebrated the holidays with my family. And then come January, you know, I was looking around and thinking life's, life's pretty good right now. ⁓ And then one night I went to bed and I could not sleep. ⁓ And one night turned into three nights turned into eight nights. And when I could sleep after that here and there, I would just continue to wake up with what I thought were heart palpitations. I didn't know if it was something hormonal. And I would wake up in the middle of the night and just lay on my kitchen floor and hope that it would stop. ⁓ And now what I'm coming to know that those actually were were panic attacks. And I would have them each night throughout my sleep. They're actually, ⁓ they're called nocturnal panic attacks. And they are really difficult because nothing brings them on. ⁓ And there's not a lot you can do in the middle of the night to make them go away. And they just come one after another. ⁓ So after that, I started, ⁓ you know, seeing a therapist, started seeing a psychiatrist trying to figure out what this might be. And I initially started on, you know, low dose SSRIs and another medication. And I just, I felt kind of out of it. ⁓ So I still thought maybe there's some kind of psychological piece to this that...