Dec. 31, 2023

Living the dream with mental health advocate, songwriter, and educator Kiah Penfield

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Join Kiah Penfield as she takes us through her compelling narrative of living with mental illness, her educational pursuits as a deaf educator, and her mission to shed light on unsolved crimes. Her candid discussion on mental health treatments and the power of songwriting as an emotional outlet will leave you enlightened and encouraged to seek your own paths of healing and expression.

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

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> Speaker A>Welcome to the living the dream with curveball podcast, a, uh, show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, I am joined by mental health advocate, teacher songwriter, and podcaster, Kaia Penfield.

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> Speaker A>Kaya is a deaf educator. She lives with OCD and anxiety, and she hosts the true crime podcast. So we're going to be talking to her about everything that she's up to and what she's going to be up to next and why she is so passionate about mental health. So, Kaia, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

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> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about.

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> Speaker B>Um. I feel like. I always feel when people ask me to tell me about myself, it takes me back to every therapy intake appointment I've ever had, right where they're like, tell us a little bit about your history. And I'm like, okay, so when I was 14, um, but I got my original mental health diagnoses when I was 14, um, and I'm about to turn 28, so it's been about half my life living, uh, with that mentally ill label and all that comes with it.

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> Speaker B>Um, in addition to that, grew up as a military kid, went, uh, to school for teaching.

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> Speaker B>Um, I teach at a deaf school right now. Um, and my cousin was murdered in 2017. So I've been doing a podcast to try and bring awareness to her case, which, as it turns out, is not super great for your mental health, um, but feels very necessary to do absolutely well.

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> Speaker A>Um, you also are a songwriter, so tell us about that as well.

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> Speaker B>I am. That tends, uh, to be really helpful for me in kind of working through my feelings.

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> Speaker B>Um, I'm not a successful songwriter at all, but I really enjoy writing them, and I've been recording some demos to try and send off to get some people to potentially, uh, record. My biggest hang up there is my songwriting abilities and my vocal abilities don't quite match themselves. One is far superior to the other. Um, but, yeah, I've found them really helpful in kind of working through some of the stuff that I'm feeling.

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> Speaker B>When I can't verbalize how I'm feeling, I can find a way to, uh, put it down in words that rhyme, which it just feels like it'd be easier to say them, but apparently it's not.

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> Speaker A>Well, you did some stimulation treatment that has helped you through your mental health journey. I'm sure. I'm about to butcher this, but I would like for you to tell everybody what transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment is and how it helped you and how it might be able to help somebody out there.

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So, uh, transcranial magnetic stimulation is not easy to say. Um, so it's called tms.

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> Speaker B>Um, I like to think of it as kind of electroconvulsive therapy's younger cousin.

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> Speaker B>Ah. Which probably doesn't sound appealing at all, but essentially what they do is they take a giant magnet, and they stick it on your head. And I'm trying to remember which side of my head it was on. I believe it was on the left side. Um, and they put it over, I believe, your vagus nerve. Um, I am not a scientist by any means, so fact check everything that I've said if you're at home listening before you get this, but I'm pretty sure it's on your vagus nerve.

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> Speaker B>Um, and it kind of feels like a metallic woodpecker pecking on your head.

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> Speaker B>Um, but it was actually. I like to tell my wife that she's the second best thing that ever happened to me, because TMS is the first best thing that ever happened to me. Um, so it was about three months of treatment. So I started in, let's see, December, November, October. I started around October of 2019.

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> Speaker B>Um, and at that point, I was really in pretty dark depth of my depression. Um, a full diagnosis was severe, uh, recurrent, treatment resistant major depressive disorder, which is on top of being a mouthful, really, not an optimistic outlook. Right. I had been on 15 different antidepressants. None of them had worked. Um, had done the antipsychotics and the mood stabilizers and the ssris and the snris and the tricyclics. And, um, I had really gotten to a point where I was starting to think about, when is the cut off? How much longer do I go through feeling like this before I say, it's not fair to make me live like this and end it? Um, and so I had kind of come up with, if I get to 30 years old, 30 years old means I will have lived about 15 years feeling horrible every single day. And I think that's a fair amount to give my family, um, which completely strange way, I suppose, to think about this.

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> Speaker B>Um, and now that I'm about to turn 28, getting close to that 30 year mark, it's very surreal to be going through that. But, um, I initially pursued tms by talking to my psychiatrist. I, um, was in Indiana at the time, because that's where I went to college.

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> Speaker B>Um, and my psychiatrist actually told me I wasn't depressed enough to have transcranial magnetic stimulation, um, which I've considered many times. Kind of writing her a letter and being like, hey, actually it saved my life.

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> Speaker B>Um, but she thought I wasn't depressed enough because I was still able to go to college. And I, uh, was making it through getting my degree.

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> Speaker B>Um, so I ended up having to self refer, and I went to the Seattle neuropsychiatric treatment center, seattle, NTC, um, because my family is in Washington. So when I came back after college finished, that was like priority number one, not get a job, not do I want to do post secondary. It was, we need to figure something out because the depression is killing me.

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> Speaker B>Um, so I went and I actually was going to get electroconvulsive therapy because I was in a headspace where I've failed 15 different medications.

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> Speaker B>It felt like so much of my life at that point, um, being severely depressed. So I told him, I don't even want to try tms. I want to go straight to ect. I want to go straight to electroconvulsive therapy.

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> Speaker B>And I had this really fantastic, uh, neuropsychiatrist. His name's Dr. Jesse Adams. Um, and he looked at me, ah, he told me two things during my appointment that have kind of stuck with me for the rest of my life and are general advice I give people with mental health. His first advice was, don't underreport your symptoms. You're trying to make it seem like you're handling it because that's what you've been socialized that you have to do and that you have to make other people feel comfortable. You're shooting yourself in the foot here by doing that because I have to prove to insurance that they should pay for this. And if you tell me on a scale of one to ten, you're at an eight because you pretend the nine and ten don't exist, that's not going to help you. You need to tell me you're at a ten, because if your scale is one to eight and I ask you one to ten, your eight is my ten. So tell me a ten.

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> Speaker B>The other thing he said to me was, I understand you want to go straight to the big thing, to the big solution, because you're scared, because nothing's worked. There are potentially some serious side effects with ECT, and you're very young, and I'm giving you my word, if we do TMS and it does not work, I will immediately get you into ECt.

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> Speaker B>Um, and so that was really comforting for me. So we decided to go with TMS. Um, it was 36 sessions over the course of three months. It actually may have been four or five months, um, because they start spreading them out longer. Um, but regardless, I finished my course of treatment in December 2019, or, sorry, December 2018. I'm really bad with years. So I finished it in December 2018, which was great, because I got to go into 2019 as a new year.

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> Speaker B>Not feeling depressed, and it really was insane, because I guess the way I always imagined feeling not depressed anymore would feel would be like a gradual weight coming off my shoulders. But it was absolutely like a light switch flipped. I don't remember what day it is or what day it was, but I remember that it was a Tuesday, because Monday I was severely depressed. Tuesday I woke up, and I literally could see colors differently, and I literally felt like I wanted to be awake and I wanted to be involved in the world. Um, and so that was obviously a huge deal. Um, what I didn't anticipate, um, was that there would be a lot of work after getting rid of the depression. I kind of thought that would just be the end of it.

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> Speaker A>Okay, well, tell us about the work. If you feel free to let us know about the work that you had to overcome after getting rid of the depression.

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So I think, um, being diagnosed and starting my kind of mental health journey at such a young age, having depression, really for my entire adolescence, that's when you're developing your personality. So there were a lot of things that I truly believed were characteristics of myself or personality traits.

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> Speaker B>I thought I was a pessimist.

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> Speaker B>Um, and I thought that I just really liked more muted colors.

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> Speaker B>I didn't like bright colors. Um, it's so hard to describe to some extent, but those are kind of the two clearest ones I think I can describe that people can latch onto. Um, and I didn't even like happy music. If you gave me a song with a nice little beat, a nice little poppy thing, that other people were, like, shaking their heads to dancing, having a good time, I didn't want to listen to it.

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> Speaker B>I think now it physically caused me some pain.

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> Speaker B>Um, so those were all things that I considered to be part of who I was. And then when I all of a sudden kind of started liking bright colors or not hating them, and, um, was talking to.

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> Speaker B>I had a therapist. Throughout the entire process of having tms, um, I learned that I had to really deconstruct my notion of myself. So that was one of the big hurdles was who actually am I? What was depression? What was me? Um, and it was surprising, too, because there were some things that I thought were depression that actually were me.

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> Speaker B>Um, so it was very much a sort of disentangling, um, and I listen to a lot of podcasts about cults right now. I'm really into cults. And honestly, the way that I've heard people describe their experience of trying to deconstruct their cultish upbringings is how it felt trying to deconstruct from depression. Um, I also had a major fear of relapse.

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> Speaker B>Um, and granted, this could have been the OCD to some extent, but a very obsessive fear. Over know, every time I felt sad, I was like, the depression is, you know, now I realize it's completely natural to feel sad sometimes. Like, I watched fox and the hound the other day when I was teaching. I don't know why I watched it.

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> Speaker B>Life tip for everybody. Don't rewatch the fox and the hound. It's not worth it. But I rewatched the fox and the hound and just bald. It was so sad. And if I had done that circa 2019, 2020, even 2021, I would have thought my depression was back. Um, it's something that I still kind of struggle with a little bit now, but not at all to the extent that I did then. Um, I'm learning that it's completely reasonable when something scary or sad happens to have a negative emotion, and negative emotions are a healthy part of our kind of emotional spectrum. Um, but I would feel a little bit anxious, or I would feel a little bit sad, or I would even feel just, um, not even feel sad, but feel like the hint of sad. Kind of like when you're about to sneeze, you have that feeling in your nose, and you know you're about to sneeze.

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> Speaker B>I'd have a feeling similar to that with sadness, and I'd be like, no, I'm going to relapse. I'm going to relapse. I'm going to be depressed again. This is going to be awful.

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> Speaker B>Um, and so it took me a really long time to get to a point where I wasn't kind of fearing every day that I would be depressed again. And part of that was working with my neuropsychiatrist as well, and him going, okay, and you know what? One day you probably will relapse. Uh, one day you are going to probably be severely depressed again. You're very young, and we don't have a ton of research on this treatment, they've done more since then, but they didn't have a ton of research on the treatment. They didn't know, kind of, on average, how long it lasted. He's like, you probably are, but what we know is it worked for you. So when that happens, you come back here, we do it again, and you'll be okay. Like, you survived it once already. You can survive it again. Um, and so that was really helpful and freeing. And, uh, we're going into 2024. I'm horrible at fast math. So this is going to be, I believe, my fifth year. Going into my fifth year with no depression, which is really exciting.

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> Speaker B>Um, I also had this very bizarre thought of maybe my friends won't like me or people in my life won't like me, because who I am has changed. As if the person without depression was going to be so much worse than a person who was suffering with depression all the time.

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> Speaker B>Realistically, if I had been looking at that, clearly, they were really just excited for me that I wasn't depressed, but I was in such a state. And I also think, even with the depression gone, my brain had formed such habits of thinking patterns, like negative thinking patterns, that even though the depression wasn't causing them, those pathways were still there, and you can rebuild them with neuroplasticity, but you're going to take the path of least resistance. So it was very much that negative thought of, I'm different now. They're not going to like me. Um, I also found that my depression had been kind of covering up a lot of traumas that my brain and my body hadn't really been ready to deal with yet. So once I wasn't depressed anymore, they kind of bubbled up to the surface, as did kind of the intensity of my anxiety, uh, and m my OCD. I didn't actually get my OCD diagnosis until after I did TMS. Um, so a lot of stuff that the depression had really been covering, that needed to be worked on. It's not like I would like to have the depression back, so I didn't have to deal with them. It's healthy to deal with them, but it's crazy to me how much the depression was able to kind of COVID up who I was, cover up things I had been through, and just completely make me into a different kind of. I say sometimes that TMs saved my life, but I also kind of feel like TMs gave me a life that was a life kind of ruled by depression that I was present for.

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> Speaker B>Um, so that's kind of I guess a good synopsis of what it was like.

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> Speaker B>It's kind of hard to totally describe it in detail because it was really that grueling work every day that once you're not doing it anymore, feels like it was such small things.

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> Speaker B>Like this one sentence someone would say to me, right? Somebody would say, oh, we're so glad that you were able to join us. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? It means they were glad that you joined them. They literally said it, but my brain is going, but do they mean they're glad that you joined them now as a not depressed person?

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> Speaker B>Or do they mean, was there a tone to that? Oh, we're glad you could join us, because before you wouldn't, because you didn't want to leave the house. And it was just this constant questioning of my reality. And I think that was caused because my reality had shifted so significantly.

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> Speaker B>Uh, it felt like I had entered a completely new world. Um, and that probably, um, was reinforced a bit by I met my wife around the same time that I finished my TMS treatment.

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> Speaker B>So my entire relationship, my entire marriage is defined by post tms.

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> Speaker B>Um, and that was also kind of a thing we had to deal with in our relationship, or that I had to deal with, really, in our relationship was, I know I'm going to relapse.

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> Speaker B>And so when that happens, is that going to affect how she sees me, how she loves me, how she feels about me? Um, so that was pretty crazy. Um, and it ended up being one of the things that I did to kind of cope with that and draw a line in the sand for myself was, um, I ended up taking her last name when we got married, which was 2020, um, and so it felt really good for me to be able to have kind of a clear delineation in my mind of Kaya Beeman, which, that's my maiden name. So Kaya Beeman was the person who had severe depression and went know all of this stuff and really struggled and then really went out and found the treatment despite being told she didn't need it and saved her own life and paved the way for me to now have this life as Kaya penfield, where I can feel more secure in who I am. And my, um, talk about.

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> Speaker B>I try to talk about my depression as being in remission rather than cured, um, because I think very similar to an addiction or a, uh, cancer diagnosis. I know that it's going to be a lifelong thing, even if I'm not having to deal with it right now. Um, and so calling it saying that it's in remission helps me remember that we're good right now. It's great right now. It can also at any time, come back. And I need to be prepared for that and have a plan for that, a safety plan steps in place, um, make sure I have my mental resources or my mental health resources close by.

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> Speaker B>Um, and I'm also still on all of my antidepressant medication in order to try and maintain the gains through tms to help it stay kind of effective for longer. So all of that has been some significant work to get to, and to get to a place where I kind of feel safe in what I'm experiencing in this moment.

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> Speaker B>And I don't have to look back at the past, with the depression, with judgment, and I don't have to look at the future, um, with anxiety about whether or not, uh, I relapse. I've had psychiatrists and psychologists tell me before depression is in some ways a hyper focus on the past. It's being trapped in this sadness, being trapped in all these bad things that happen to you. And anxiety is a hyper focus on the future, the bad things that could happen, the bad things that haven't happened yet.

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> Speaker B>And being present is being in the now. And, um, that's probably an oversimplification, but I found that very helpful to kind of ask, uh, myself, where am I looking? Am I looking at the past or am I looking at the future? Or am I just kind of living? Because I feel like I didn't ever have permission to just live before I was surviving.

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> Speaker B>And so transitioning from survival to living has been really a beautiful experience, but a hard experience.

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> Speaker A>Well, what can loved ones do to support people that are going through mental health issues?

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> Speaker B>Oh, goodness. Um, this is such a tough one because my mother, my dear, sweet mother works in healthcare, so, ah, in my head, that feels like you work in healthcare, so you should kind of know. And I've come to realize, uh, what you do for a living has really absolutely nothing to do with your ability to support a loved one with mental illness, because it's very different when it's textbook, uh, or theoretical, versus when it's personal and it's in your everyday life. Um, so my mom has gone through a lot of learning and training, um, and I'd say now is a really good example.

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> Speaker B>So, um, one of the biggest things is, I feel like it's really easy to say, I'm here. I'm here. If you ever need to talk. I'm here if you want to talk about it. It doesn't matter. But I would actually caution people to kind of take a look at themselves and what they're capable of handling before they say that. Um, I've had some experiences in my life where people were like, anytime I want to hear it, what's going on? And I had one instance where my mom was like, hey, I want you to talk to me. It seems like you're really depressed right now. I want you to talk to me. And I started to talk to her. I was like, I feel really suicidal right now. I'm really scared. And my mom was like, I have to go to work. I don't know what you want me to do. I have to go to work in ten minutes. And I was like, then don't tell me that you want to hear it right now. Don't tell me that you can talk right now, because is now, I've gone through the experience of opening that up for you just to have it shut down. Um, so I think it's completely okay to not be able to handle the struggles that come with someone else's mental illness in a moment or even in a lifetime, depending on your own struggles. Right. It can be very triggering. So I think it's important to, if you can handle it, say, I want to be here. I want to help you. You can talk to me anytime if that's not something you can promise. I think having an alternate go to. Right.

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> Speaker B>Hey, if you're struggling, I'd love to help you make some phone calls. I'd love to help you, whatever. I think people with mental illness, at least from my own experience, um, my wife also has PTSD, so we've got a double mental health kind of situation going on in our house. So sometimes it's those everyday tasks that are really difficult. So I think, hey, would you like to go grocery shopping with me?

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> Speaker B>Would you like to have a laundry party? Just those basic everyday tasks, making, um, them less not alienating, less, uh, isolating, less lonely, less boring.

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> Speaker B>That's a time when your mind's really able to wander.

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> Speaker B>So doing those tasks with someone else, if you know somebody who's trying to get into therapy and you're close enough to them that they're doing that, it is such a pain to go through lists of therapists and have to call them and.

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> Speaker B>Okay. You're not accepting new patients. Okay. Yeah, no, thank you. Okay. The website wasn't updated. Do you only work with children now? Okay. Yes.

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> Speaker B>Thank you for your time. Oh, okay. You don't accept our insurance. The website said you did, but that's cool.

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> Speaker B>Um, so one of the things that I found, and I kind of take this on as one of my pay it forward, uh, in air quotes, pay it forward moments, is I feel like I'm in a good place right now, and I've been through the system a lot.

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> Speaker B>So if I'm with a friend who's trying to get into therapy, who's struggling, uh, I'll tell, know telehealth or in person. Do you have a preference?

00:24:46.337 --> 00:24:49.029
> Speaker B>What's your city? What's your insurance?

00:24:49.180 --> 00:25:03.549
> Speaker B>How far are you willing to travel if it's in person? Are there any must, like a specific religion, a specific gender, whatever? Okay, I'm going to compile the list for you. Do you want me to start calling people on the list to see if they're actually accepting new patients?

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> Speaker B>Um, that is really one of the best ways to get rid of some of the barriers to treatment, because the really awful thing about our mental health care system is there are such long waitlists that by the time a lot of people realize they need help, it takes time to get help.

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> Speaker B>Um, I think in a perfect world, we'd all have, I don't know, like every six months, we'd have a checkup with a therapist. Be like, yes, you're doing great. Or, you know what? I think we should continue to see you a little bit. Um, but we don't live in a perfect world, and we have limited mental health resources. And so understanding that and how to navigate that is really important, especially if you are a loved one of someone, because it's already, like, navigating everyday life is so difficult for anyone, but especially for someone with a mental illness who's got that taking up so much real estate in their brain. So finding ways to help them get that care, um, other stuff. If you're somebody who likes cooking for people, if you're somebody who likes cleaning, those are some of the hardest self care tasks to take care of, especially if your loved one with a mental illness lives alone, because it's very much, what's the point of cooking for one person, right? Also, no recipes are written for one person unless you buy a special cookbook. Um, bringing them leftovers, taking them to a meal, getting them a doordash gift card. The added benefit of stuff like that is one you're taking care of a basic life need, which is super helpful. The added benefit is that reminder of, hey, I care about you. Hey, I want to do this for you. You didn't have to ask. You're not a burden on me. I want to be there for you.

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> Speaker B>Um, if I could say one thing that people with mental illness in my life as well as myself have said and or thought over and over and over, it's the. I am a burden on fill in the blank. My spouse, my parents, my children, my siblings, my friends.

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> Speaker B>Um, and it's really hard to beat that narrative because that's how mental illness thrives. Right.

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> Speaker B>If we have strong support systems and we give them our full vulnerability, it's a lot harder for the mental illness, I think, to live. I guess I conceptualize it a little bit with parasite, um, which is not physiologically at all accurate, um, but feels very metaphorically accurate. Um, other things I would say are educating yourself.

00:27:48.789 --> 00:28:02.614
> Speaker B>I think, especially when I was struggling with mental health, this was not as when I was struggling with mental health, like, I'm not still doing it. That was pretty. When I was in the depths of my depression, this was not something we talked about as much as we do now.

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> Speaker B>But, um, now there's a lot of conversation around. Don't make the person with the lived experience be your educator. Right. We look at this with race, we look at this with queer, uh, issues, disability. If they want to educate you, great.

00:28:18.655 --> 00:29:16.880
> Speaker B>Listen to them. Absolutely. They should be the people that you are listening to. But also, if you have a loved one with mental illness, don't make them be your teacher on know, you can ask them if they want to share, but you can seek out sources from other places. The National alliance on Mental Nami, really, really fantastic source in the US. Um, the National Institute on Mental Health, I believe, is also the US. That's a great resource. Uh, it might be Canada or the UK. I can't remember off the top of my head. Um, there's also local chapters of the National alliance on Mental Illness. So they do stuff, know specifically talk to families to help give them a better idea of kind of what they might be going through. And I think the really hard part, at least for my mom, was she couldn't conceptualize what I was going through because she couldn't understand it.

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> Speaker B>Um, she had, uh, some situational depression recently, probably a couple of months ago, and she was like, oh, my gosh. I fully acknowledge that this is only a tiny piece of what you went through for a tiny amount of time.

00:29:34.230 --> 00:30:08.221
> Speaker B>But now that I have felt it, I can't understand how you lived through this. It does not make sense to me. And so I think to some extent, our brains are selfish things, right? If it's not our experience, we don't super notice it and we can't conceptualize it the same way. So I think one of the things you really have to do, and this isn't just for people with mental illness, right. This is for anybody who has a different life experience than you, is to let go of the need to understand it. You don't have to understand it.

00:30:08.276 --> 00:30:30.599
> Speaker B>You really don't. Um, you just have to understand that it's causing direct harm to the person that you love and listen to what they need and listen to other people who have been in that experience and what they're saying. Um, yeah, I guess those are my best tips. I feel like they're not particularly hopeful, but, um.

00:30:31.190 --> 00:30:41.894
> Speaker B>Well, I guess I have one other, which is new treatments are coming up all the time, especially right now. We're in a pretty great moment for researching mental health treatments.

00:30:42.021 --> 00:30:47.670
> Speaker B>There's more research being done on tms and making electroconvulsive therapy safer.

00:30:47.750 --> 00:30:52.905
> Speaker B>There's ketamine assisted therapy, there's, uh, other psychotropic assisted therapy.

00:30:52.938 --> 00:31:52.945
> Speaker B>There's new medications coming out. Um, so I think, especially as the person with depression, it's really easy to get stuck in that moment because of course you would, um, as a loved one, some of the things that I have found helpful that you could approach, and I do say approach because. Right. Forcing anyone to do anything is generally not very helpful. Um, mood trackers, those are really helpful to see. Yeah, you're feeling it. A zero out of ten today, and that really sucks. And it probably feels like it's going to be forever, but two weeks ago, you hit a six out of ten, and that's pretty darn good. Um, having some of those things that can bring perspective, that reminder of, hey, this thing you're on, or this thing that's a possibility didn't even exist a year ago, so I know it feels right now, like maybe it would be better to just end it all, but who knows what's going to come up a year from now? Who knows? We have no way of predicting it.

00:31:53.048 --> 00:32:15.746
> Speaker B>And on that note, that s word, that big, scary suicide word, don't be afraid of it, because nothing shuts down an open conversation. I can't even talk. Nothing shuts down an open conversation faster than being afraid of suicide.

00:32:15.938 --> 00:32:42.160
> Speaker B>I feel like I remember so often feeling like I had a box of what I could talk about and I'd get close to the line and go, oh, no, too much suicide. Back up, back up. Um, I also think be aware that there's a lot of things that are risk taking behaviors that are not suicidal that you may see people with mental illness, particularly depression, engaging in.

00:32:42.250 --> 00:33:17.339
> Speaker B>Uh, uh, I say favorite because I use humor as a coping mechanism. But one of my favorites from when I was depressed was I just wouldn't wear a seatbelt. It's not trying to kill myself, but it wasn't taking my safety seriously. Um, so I think those are good ways. If you're not sure if somebody is struggling with mental illness, that you can kind of look for some of those small things. Does it seem like they're not valuing their life? Maybe they don't talk openly about being depressed. In a lot of places and cultures, it's still really not okay to do that.

00:33:17.609 --> 00:33:37.410
> Speaker B>Um, another kind of quick note that I think is really important to mention whenever I talk about mental health is I think, as a society, we've gotten a lot better at being open about some mental illnesses, and I call them the socially acceptable mental illnesses of depression, anxiety, and, to some extent, OCd.

00:33:37.710 --> 00:33:50.246
> Speaker B>Um, we're not as kind about bipolar, we're not as kind about schizophrenia. We're not as kind about anything that's not also used as an emotion, really.

00:33:50.347 --> 00:34:36.161
> Speaker B>We think depression. You can say, I'm feeling depressed right now, or I have depression, right? There's little d, capital d. Anxiety. There's little a, capital a, but we really don't handle anything outside of that experience very well. Um, so if your loved one is dealing with one of those, being very mindful of the fact that while there's still stigma for all mental illnesses, there's extra stigma for those. Um, other stuff, I think just being an ally, right. Shutting down some of those comments that we make. I was so OCD about how to set up my kitchen. Were you or were you just kind of neurotic? Were you just kind of. I don't know, what's a good word? I struggle with this, too. But were you just kind of particular.

00:34:36.295 --> 00:34:44.501
> Speaker B>Were you just kind of particular about where you wanted things? Because those are different. Um, and recognizing that presentations of mental illness are all different. Right.

00:34:44.556 --> 00:34:52.730
> Speaker B>Ocd. I wish I had cleaning OCD, because that would make my life a lot easier. That is not the form of OCD I have. My house is a wreck.

00:34:52.938 --> 00:35:06.559
> Speaker B>Um, so being kind of mindful of those different presentations and not assuming one thing is like another thing. I think there's a famous quote. When you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. Same deal.

00:35:07.170 --> 00:35:22.610
> Speaker A>Okay, perfect. We got about ten minutes left. So, in his ten minutes, I want to let you talk about your podcast and what listeners can expect. Talk about any current or upcoming projects, and give our contact info. So, let's start with your podcast.

00:35:23.190 --> 00:36:03.422
> Speaker B>Perfect. Uh, my podcast is the stand our ground podcast. It's available wherever you get your podcasts. Um, it's kind of a play on the stand your ground law, because that's the law that was used to justify my cousin's murder. Ah. My cousin's name is Deanna Stevenson, and she was killed in the pensacola, Florida area. Her murder was investigated by the same sheriff's office that one of the people present at the shooting was formerly employed by. Um, and there's a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to add. Said, you know, the bullets ricocheted. No evidence of that. There were a lot of witnesses. Never interviewed. The last guy to see her that night spoke for the first time on my podcast.

00:36:03.485 --> 00:36:28.570
> Speaker B>Police never reached out to him. Um, so if you're interested in true crime or police corruption or how we can make our justice system more ethical, uh, please check it out. We don't have very many listeners at all, but, um, doing my best to get justice for my cousin and make sure that her death is not just written off as somebody's self defense.

00:36:29.050 --> 00:37:03.539
> Speaker B>Um, you can find us on Facebook is probably the best place. We have a Reddit and we have a TikTok, but they're not very active, uh, because I work two, uh, jobs in addition to the podcast. So you can find us on Facebook by searching stand our ground podcast. Um, and as for myself, I am probably most likely to be found on either TikTok at Mrs. Penfield, M-R-S-P-E-N-F-I-E-L-D or on Instagram by the same name.

00:37:03.989 --> 00:37:26.262
> Speaker B>If you're looking for a songwriter, I have an Instagram for songwriting. Um, I think it's just called Kaya Penfield songs. So Kaya is spelled K-I-A-H. You can also always find me on LinkedIn, the most boring social media. Uh, I probably shouldn't say that in case LinkedIn gets mad, but Kaya Penfield.

00:37:26.326 --> 00:37:30.380
> Speaker B>K-I-A-H-T-E-N-F-I-E-L-D.

00:37:31.070 --> 00:37:35.920
> Speaker A>Okay, tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know.

00:37:37.030 --> 00:38:19.338
> Speaker B>Uh, know, honestly, my current and upcoming projects are my own mental health and self care, because I don't do as good of a job, uh, as I should, I guess. I am working on putting out M an ep on Spotify that's going to be called loud um, and I have no idea when it's going to drop because it's not finished being recorded yet. But there is a single on Spotify called Indianapolis. Um, so if you're interested in music, you can check that out again. That's under my name, Kayapenfield. The single that's out is Indianapolis, and the ep loud is going to be coming out. Um, and if you have any questions or ever want to contact me, you can email me at kayapenfield@gmail.com.

00:38:19.503 --> 00:38:23.402
> Speaker B>No underscores, no dashes, no dots, just boring.

00:38:23.465 --> 00:38:28.079
> Speaker B>Kiahpenfield@gmail.com.

00:38:29.090 --> 00:38:32.041
> Speaker A>Ladies and gentlemen, there she is. Kaya Penfield.

00:38:32.106 --> 00:38:57.079
> Speaker A>Please be sure to check out our podcast, check out our music, everything that she's up to. Hit her up. You want to talk to her, please be sure to follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible. If you have any guests, uh, or suggestion topics, please send them to cjackson 102 ah@cox.net. As always, thank you for listening. And Kaya, thank you for joining us and sharing your story.

00:38:57.449 --> 00:38:58.599
> Speaker B>Thanks so much.

00:38:59.050 --> 00:39:07.045
> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

00:39:07.228 --> 00:39:12.090
> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.