Hi everyone,

Whew! Here we are on the second episode and dare I say, I’m starting to find my rhythm… and it feels good.

My favorite person on the internet and very dear soul, Hannah Ciordas of Beinghood, once described the calling she felt to be a writer like a child tugging at her pant leg for years, begging to be heard — and when she finally found the bravery to act on it, she started living as as her Whole Self.

That’s how creating this podcast has felt for me. I’ve always wanted to share more deeply, more personally, to dive into the difficult and messy parts of life and have these conversations in the open. This feels like honoring a long-held whisper I’m finally giving voice to. I have no idea where it’s going, but that feels like none of my business — I’m just going to keep showing up.

I’m truly touched by how many of you have tuned in and listened so far. And if you thought the last episode about The Body was something… well, buckle up. My experiences with the mind — with mental health — are even wilder.

Until now, I’ve never shared this story publicly, even though these mental health struggles have been some of the most defining experiences of my life. They’ve shaped how I see and move through the world, how I treat myself and others, and they’ve given me a deep resilience I carry with me everywhere. Sharing them now feels terrifyingly electric, in the best way.

In this episode, we’ll get into:

* Developing a debilitating anxiety disorder out of the blue, and the two years where I felt like I was actually losing my mind

* Miraculously stumbling upon my exact obscure diagnosis in a magazine on my parent’s coffee table.

* What it’s like living with “Pure O” OCD — not the stereotypical handwashing, but intrusive thought loops, rumination about taboo topics, and an exhausting search for certainty you can never find.

* Sneaking out of college classes to read notecards in the bathroom with my greatest fears written as if they were true 10x a day—yes, that’s how you get better.

* How CBT and ERP therapy taught me to sit with uncertainty instead of giving into my compulsions to “know for sure.”

* The realization that my anxiety has never been about the actual topics I worry about — but rather the primal terror of not being in control.

* The watershed discovery of my long-masked, severe ADHD that, up until starting my own business had always worked to my advantage— and then all came crashing down.

* How women are under‑diagnosed because they don’t exhibit the “textbook” signs and are experts at masking symptoms, even to themselves.

* The identity crisis I went through realizing that my brain works differently, after years of punishing myself for not being able to operate like other people

* The messy, contradictory mix of OCD’s perfectionism and ADHD’s chaos

* Being a highly sensitive person who feels everything at a 10 — sounds, lights, emotions, substances - and especially other people’s moods

* My mental health experience postpartum

* Why these diagnoses aren’t moral failings, but a realization about my unique brain wiring — and how self-compassion, therapy, and being direct with others has changed everything.

As always, my intention here is to speak from the heart so others feel less alone in their own experiences. I’ve linked resources below that helped me most, and I’d love to hear from you if you’re walking through something similar.

Sending my love to everyone navigating a difficult mental health chapter in their life - I see you, and if you keep an open mind, I promise you will find help. Please never give up on yourself, it does get better.

xo,

Kacie

RESOURCES:

Steven Phillipson and the Center for Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy - my beloved therapist who I saw for weekly for years. This treatment gave me my life back and I will love Dr. Phil (hehe) eternally for what he did for me.

“Choice” - An article by Dr. Phillipson that completely explains the OCD brain and the mental framework needed to finally get better. I have printed this out several times in my life and reread it whenever I need the reminder that my job isn’t to get rid of the thoughts and vanquish my fears, it’s to accept that in not knowing, I can finally be free.

Needing to Know For Sure - An excellent resource for those caught in the loop of reassurance seeking. I keep this book on my nightstand and pick it up whenever my brain is feeling sticky.

Liana Gergely’s Substack - My dear friend (and therapist-in-training) Liana writes so beautifully about so many of these topics, and always makes me feel less alone in my experience. She is a gift.

“When Worry Hijacks the Brain” - The very TIME magazine article that saved my life (I got weepy rereading this almost 20 years later.) The feeling that swept through me when I stumbled on this and finally understood I wasn’t crazy is difficult to describe. Finding this article truly felt like a divine intervention.

Vibration Plate - I have a very sensitive nervous system, and this vibration plate always pulls me back into my body and senses when I’m feeling stressed. Vibration and shaking is known to help reduce cortisol responses and is a widely used somatic practice by animals in nature :) I’ve also noticed it lowers my blood sugar after eating. I will say, this one is great but the buttons are a little loud. If you know of a better one, lmk!

Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World that Wasn’t Designed For You - A super important read to understand the spectrum of neurodivergence, and how it’s often missed in women until later in life.

Women with ADHD: Another great book that really helped me understand myself.

The Best Human Design Reader: Amy Lee of Holo Human Design. Book a session and prepare to be amazed. (I’m a Projector, obviously- 6/2 Splenic authority to be exact)

Opal Social Media Blocker: Without this app, my battle against compulsive screen time is a lost cause. I block social media, news, and all other internet type things that consume me completely from 8pm-8am, and then set up blocks during the work day too. I’ll never be without this.

Hi, my friends.

It’s taken me a minute to get this episode up — I actually recorded it 3 weeks ago, but then *Life* had it’s way with me. But here we are, almost a month later but right on track with my goal of being imperfect and showing up anyways :)

A little note about where we’re going from here:

When I launched this project, it was such a relief to know I wasn’t trying to teach, preach, or prove anything. I just wanted a space to show up and have real, honest conversations about my experiences and what I’ve learned along the way. I gotta say, I’ve been flustered by the response - I didn’t realize how much that energy would resonate with everyone! But after so many of you reached out after Episode 1 saying how refreshing it was to hear someone not striving for perfection, I’ve been feeling like I do actually *kind of* need to define what this podcast is about.

It might surprise you, given that I’m a nutritionist who mostly shares overflowing plates of seasonal vegetables and the finer points of intestinal permeability, but my relationship to health has always been about more than what you eat.

What I’ve come to realize is that everything I care most deeply for — everything I’ve lived and worked through — falls under three interwoven pillars of Health:

Body, Mind, and Spirit.

But for this second installment of the podcast, the body is where we’re going to start. Or more specifically, my body, and the experience of living in a very sensitive one that has required continual care, repair, and lessons that continue to humble me.

This tale has everything:

* Growing up on Hot Pockets and Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies

* Drinking Pepto Bismol daily throughout college

* Years of digestive distress, chronic illness, and autoimmune issues that forced me to reevaluate my whole life

* Tyrannical fashion stylists and debilitating travel-related infections

* Worsening my health problems with trendy plant based diets and agave smoothies

* Discovering functional medicine and ancestral nutrition and truly recovering my health by doing the opposite of what the wellness world was fixated on at the time

* Opening Honey Hi with zero experience and a dream to change the world — and proceeding to run myself into the ground again (Hey, I never said it was glamorous.)

What you hear here really lays the groundwork for how my philosophy around healing and wellness has evolved over the years.

In the second half of the episode, I open up about what I haven’t shared publicly yet: how pregnancy and postpartum exposed massive new layers of imbalance I didn’t see coming, and the identity crisis of being a health professional whose body just kept falling apart.

This episode is as much a story about food as it is about resilience, self-trust, and the humbling lifelong work of coming back to yourself.

For the next chapter, we’ll turn to the mind. This one’s a colorful tale, too — living with a debilitating anxiety disorder, OCD, ADHD, uncovering long-masked neurodivergence as an adult, and what it’s meant to move through the world as a highly sensitive person. It’s a story I haven’t told fully before, and I’m excited, hopeful (and nervous!) to open it up here with you all.

As always, thanks for listening,

xo

Kacie

*** At 1 hour and 15 minutes there’s a little addendum about how I nearly rerecorded this entire thing but decided to keep it; be sure not to miss it :)

At the bottom of each episode, I’ll try to always share a few resources that I’ve used over the years that might be able to help you in your own bodily exploration. For the body, here are some of my most trusted resources:

Function Lab Testing : Function Health is a membership service that tests 100+ biomarkers twice a year— from hormones and nutrients to toxins and inflammation — through a quick visit to Quest Diagnostics. Results are tracked in an online dashboard so you can spot changes, catch issues early, and make informed health decisions. The dashboard is so snazzy and contains a ton of resources to help you learn about each biomarker, and what lifestyle, food and supplement related changes you could make to improve them. I wish this had been around when I was younger - I’ll be a member for life.

Chris Kresser : My most trusted functional medicine practitioner. His website has a wealth of information about nearly every condition under the sun, including free E-Books that are well-researched and evidence based. His podcast is exceptional and just the right level of nerding out.

Adapt Naturals: The line of supplements created by Chris Kresser that I implicitly trust and use myself. These are some of the highest quality supplements you can find and I love that he builds most of the products with synergistically supportive nutrients to give maximum benefit. I was so happy when he came out with this line and I am a gung-ho supporter of them. Their Bio-Avail Organ complex is my favorite way to get your iron stores up and support healthy hormone production.

Genova GI Effects Test: A thorough at-home stool test that checks how well you're digesting fats, proteins and carbohydrates, whether there's inflammation or imbalances in your microbiome, and if there's any infection or leaky gut—kind of a gut-health deep dive. With scoring across digestion, inflammation, dysbiosis, metabolites, and infection, it’s designed to help clinicians pinpoint underlying issues and guide targeted support. You need to work with a functional medicine doctor to order this test.

DUTCH Plus + Urine & Saliva Hormone Test: Urine is a much more reliable marker than blood when it comes to hormones, and this test tracks at a specific time in your cycle, multiple times a day and even through the night to get a full picture of sex hormones and cortisol patterns.

Continuous Glucose Monitor: I love the Stelo monitor which you can order without a prescription. I pair it with the Nutrisense app for more advanced analysis of blood sugar trends. It also makes it easy to snap a photo of your meal and it will analyze both the nutrition and your body’s response to it. They also have nutritionists who are covered by insurance! So helpful to talk to them about your trends, questions, and what tweaks you can make to your diet and lifestyle to better balance your blood sugar.

Any other specific resources you’re looking for, just let me know and I can try to include them :)

I Can Only Speak for Myself is a reader-supported endeavor. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hello my friends,

Thank you for being here. It’s been a long time coming!

I’ve been mulling over ways to share something more personal and longform than what the confines of social media can offer, and after much thought, this podcast-meets-newsletter feels like the perfect way to connect with more humanity and humility. I want to add that even though this is being hosted on Substack, I’m not proclaiming to be a writer just yet (I’m sure your inbox is full of enough newsletters!) This will mostly be a space to share from my preferred medium - the voice, from the heart, in real time, unfiltered and unedited - with the added benefit of space for actionable resources to be attached to each episode when it’s delivered to your inbox.

In this inaugural episode, I’m introducing the intention behind I Can Only Speak for Myself — which is less of a “show” and more of a verbalized journal about my own personal process, discoveries and interests. I talk about my complicated lifelong relationship with perfectionism and people pleasing, how the internet makes me want to evaporate into thin air but I’m choosing to show up because I know it’s my dharma, and the phrase that’s saved my sanity time and time again - “I can only speak for myself.”

I’m going to share the real tea behind my experiences and my approach, without skimping on the details that give you context or the vulnerable, messy processes that go into them. I’ll always make the effort to share nuance and complexity over the quick dopamine hit of oversimplification.

It’s my hope that in sharing my real and honest feelings about some of the things I’ve gone through (and will continue to go through!) in my life, it can help others feel less isolated and alone- that’s what has helped me the most, after all.

Although the podcast will be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and I plan to make a majority of my posts in audio form, I do encourage you to subscribe here on Substack, as I plan to use it to share resources, recipes, visuals, and other information that’s best transmitted through writing.

I’m so happy you’re here and I can’t wait to keep exploring with you and sharing as I go. Thanks for listening.

xo,

Kacie

Thanks for listening to I Can Only Speak For Myself. Please feel free to share.