The ARCast

Ep.113 Navigating Borderline Personality Disorder - Carrie Anne Walters' Journey

• The ARCast • Episode 113

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Join Booda in this episode of The ARCast as he connects with Carrie Anne Walters, who bravely shares her journey living with borderline personality disorder (BPD). From a challenging childhood filled with family struggles to her inspiring path of self-discovery and resilience, Carrie’s story is both raw and uplifting. This conversation dives deep into the complexities of mental health, the impact of early diagnoses, and the journey to finding inner strength amidst adversity. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of BPD and be moved by Carrie’s powerful testimony.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, please know that you are not alone. Reach out, educate yourself, and advocate for your well-being. If Carrie’s story resonated with you, share your thoughts and positive affirmations with us, and we’ll make sure she receives them. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories designed to bring hope and understanding.

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If you, or someone you know is in need of substance abuse treatment, please contact Americas Rehab Campus. We're available 24/7 and our phone number is 1-833-272-7342.



Booda: Good afternoon, thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of The ARCast. My name is Booda, and I am here today to talk with a very special person. Man, I'm going to explain to you guys how this even came together. So, my wife and I were hanging out one day. We went to go have lunch at a local restaurant in town, and, uh, we ended up meeting one of the waitresses that was there. Very, very sweet. Very, very kind. We started talking about the podcast and everything like that. And she let me know that she was a part of a podcast, and we started talking about different things. She had recommended her sister to come on because she said that her sister has struggled with things before and that she has an amazing story that could help a lot of people. So here she is. She's with us right now. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a huge round of applause to our new home girl, Carrie. How is it going, Miss Carrie?

Carrie: Today is a good day!

Booda: I agree, I agree. I had a bit of a messed up evening, I'm not gonna lie.

Carrie: Oh no.

Booda: Yeah, I'm trying to like take supplements and stuff and I started taking niacin and it got like this flush and I felt like I was on fire and I was gonna die. It was a horrible, horrible evening but I'm much better today.

Carrie: I am relieved to see you are alive.

Booda: Thank you, thank you very much. How was the ride down here?

Carrie: It was okay.

Booda: Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. They're like, you know, they should stop driving. We should just have all like tram cars now.

Booda: I agree.

Carrie: It's gotten really bad. It sucks.

Booda: Yeah. Nah, man, I feel you on that. And then like, you know, just everything today, I feel like, you know, the pressures of the day and all of the things that happened. I feel like there's like a supernatural type of enemy out there that's always trying to affect me before we have an amazing podcast. So that's what I'm giving it up to. It's all right, Carrie was coming in to share her testimony. It's got to be a good one because I keep having all these outside things affecting me.

Carrie: It's that elegant universal balance. You can't have too much good and too much bad. It's that different, like with my stuff, you can't have black and white. You need to find the gray.

Booda: Yeah, that's not always easy.

Carrie: Yeah.

Booda: Man, so first of all, I want to give a huge shout out to your sister, Whitney.

Carrie: Whitney!

Booda: Whitney's awesome. You're the homegirl now for sure. I love where you work. You're pretty awesome. I appreciate it, you know, it was nice to meet you and I appreciate the recommendation. It's glad to have you here for real.

Carrie: I'm happy to be here.

Booda: So she had told me some of the struggles, you know that you've gone through in your life. And I know that you told me a little bit about you struggling with your personality disorder and stuff like that, right. When were you diagnosed with that?

Carrie: That was probably when I was 23?

Booda: 23 years old. And prior to that, you know, going back your adolescent age and things like that, did you have any diagnoses back then?

Carrie: At 14, I was diagnosed with depression.

Booda: With depression.

Carrie: Yes. I was having disassociative episodes.

Booda: Really?

Carrie: Yeah, I would get so upset that my mind would power down and I would end up like under a bed, in the bathtub, in a closet, just not remembering how I ended up there.

Booda: Really?

Carrie: Yeah, it's like I got so upset my mind said, nope, forget this. We're closing shop.

Booda: Almost like a defense mechanism for stress. And going back even further into your childhood and things like that, we always like to touch on that to see if there was anything that happened during those times that may have brought on some of those symptoms. Like as far as your childhood goes, did you guys have a pretty decent childhood growing up?

Carrie: Nope.

Booda: Nope.

Carrie: Nope.

Booda: Not at all, huh?

Carrie: No, our parents were, well, Whitney and I have different fathers. He was abusive towards my mother. And then when she met Whitney's father, they had her, and then shortly after got divorced. And my parents were pretty into drugs and alcohol. In all honesty, I pretty much raised Whitney. Because if mom wasn't at work, she was at the bar. She was out drinking, doing drugs and alcohol with other people. So I was feeding Whitney, I was doing the laundry, I was cleaning the house, getting her off to school, getting her to bed, and still, even at eight, nine years old, worrying about my mom, you know, staying up till she got home. Worrying about bills. Where are the groceries gonna come from? And you know, at eight or nine, these are not things that should be a concern. But yeah, it was hard watching my mom do these things. As a child, you don't really know how to process that and so it scars you. Your mind actually physically rewires itself to trauma. The response that you feel, and that's where codependency starts. Because, in order to keep the machine running, I have to keep mom happy. So, I have to be her codependent to keep her happy, so that the house is okay. Everything is okay if this person is okay. And you don't worry about your own needs. You don't worry about whether or not you're sleeping enough or eating enough. It's all good. It's, you know, is my mom okay? Is my sister okay? Okay, now I can see if I'm okay.

Booda: Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of pressure for a young lady to have. How much older are you than Whitney?

Carrie: Five years. Four years, eleven months.

Booda: Four years, eleven months. So, you're saying that these mother instincts that you were kind of forced to start doing at such a young age, this was happening when you were already like 8 years old, 9 years old. Man, how does somebody that young, like a young child, think about things like bills and stuff like that? How is that even part of that thought process? It seems like a very mature way of thinking.

Carrie: We had power shut off. There were times where we didn't have groceries. And it's not because the money wasn't there. It's because my mom was delegating money to her important issues. We had clothes, we had food. We had all the necessities. It was just the glue that holds all of that together had to be me, and if it wasn't me, it was gonna fall apart. And I was always worried that teachers were gonna find out. So, you know, it was really, there was that, like, I have to make sure Whitney has a good lunch, because if she keeps coming in without a lunch, somebody's gonna think something. I've got to do the laundry, because if we don't have clean clothes, teachers might notice. So it was really kind of about maintaining a facade. And it doesn't really sound horrible, but it is very traumatizing for a child that young to think that so much depends on their actions.

Booda: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I can go back and remember seeing, you know, my drunk uncle. And there is a fear that comes up when you realize this person who's supposed to be protecting me right now, that this is not them that I'm looking at, you know, and there's a lot of scary things that could happen when a person is under the influence like that. So I could only imagine. And as far as your mother and father goes, you said that they had separated. Was there abuse in the first relationship too with your dad and your mom? Were they both using drugs too?

Carrie: No, not with my biological father. He was just a very angry man. And honestly, when I met him, cause he was signed off parental rights, and I met him when I was 19, he showed up as a patient where I was working.

Booda: Oh shit, that's crazy.

Carrie: Yeah, so I hadn't seen him since I was 6 months old. And here I'm 19, my biological father is in my department in X-ray. And I find out that he's dying of large cell lymphoma. A complication of end stage AIDS. So then we find out that he's gay, and he has been lying to his family, and he was, because of all his insecurity issues, taking it out on my mother and physically beating her. So my mom decided to get a gun. At one point, she was at one end of the hall, and he was at the other, and he pulled it out and pointed at her. She said, shoot me. And he pulled the trigger, but she had the clip in her pocket. She said, I'm not going to leave a loaded gun in the house with you. Do you think I'm mad?

Booda: Wow. So, okay. So all of those types of things. And as far as growing up with school, academics, were you involved in any sports, any activities like that?

Carrie: No, I'm not physically inclined. I tend to hurt myself more than anything. Artistically, academically, I was usually in that upper echelon, yeah.

Booda: Creative writing, drama, choir, all of those things.

Carrie: No, I did like math class and science club or math club, science club. I was in these weird things. I was like, the president was this friendship club in junior high. I was in all the gifted classes and AP classes. I was going to go to Duke. It was great.

Booda: That's cool though. I think of the analogy of putting the square peg in the round hole. That was one of the struggles that I had growing up, being diagnosed at an early age with ADHD and them shoving medications down my throat. Maybe the education system isn't meant for everybody.

Carrie: Yeah, especially if you have classrooms that aren't necessarily tailored to that learning behavior.

Booda: Yeah, for real.

Carrie: Nobody learns the same. Honestly, people are, you know, physical learners, audio learners. They need to write it down, or the repetition of it. Not everybody learns it just looking at a blackboard.

Booda: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Did you end up graduating from high school?

Carrie: I did.

Booda: You did?

Carrie: Top of my class.

Booda: There you go. There you go.

Carrie: And then after that, I had to go party. I had been so responsible my whole life. It was time to let loose and I'll tell you those were some dark days in my life.

Booda: Oh man. I'm sitting here thinking I'm sure they weren't all dark. You probably had some good times in there too.

Carrie: Well the problem is the good time hurts tomorrow.

Booda: Yeah, that's crazy.

Carrie: Yeah, that's why I don't do that stuff. It's not, it doesn't, like, why?

Booda: Yeah, no, I feel you. I feel you on that. When you initially got the diagnosis at 14 with the depression and the disassociative disorder, was there a certain situation or something that happened that you feel triggered that to happen?

Carrie: I had been writing poetry. Really morose, dark, death stuff. And that led to some questions. And then my behaviors, of course, the constant crying, the mood flopping. It was kind of a culmination of everything, really. I finally went to my mom and I said, I can't live in my head anymore. This is not where I want to be.

Booda: Man. You ever have suicidal ideations and things like that?

Carrie: I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention this, but yes, I've had many. Many, many, but that's part of the borderline. There's a pretty high death rate among people diagnosed with borderline. Because self mutilation and self harm are a very common aspect of borderline personality. I would like to say I've had less than 10, but definitely more than 5.

Booda: I think it's important for people to understand those things, because I mean, one of the most beautiful things about this podcast is whoever's listening on that other end may be too afraid to come forward with some of the things that they may be experiencing. Your testimony may help them with that.

Carrie: I certainly hope so.

Booda: So, for somebody who doesn't understand what personality disorder is, can you explain it?

Carrie: Well, this borderline personality disorder is specified by like, fear of abandonment and rejection. They tend to make everything about themselves. But we're always the victim. Why did you do that to me? Why did this happen to me? And then, of course, there's the personality disorder. Black and white thinking that I mentioned. It's all good, or it's all bad. You can't find that there's good in bad and there's bad in good until after all of my therapy. I'm able to sit here and say, I hate driving, but you know what? It got me here. So you gotta, you know, cancel each other out. But there was no actual precipitating event in my life. I just remember being 24 and told that I was borderline and it was almost like a death sentence.

Booda: Horrible for them to say that. I know a borderline. Tell me if this fits the description. When you love, you love unconditionally. It's like you're the most amazing, most incredible thing in the world. Love, love, love, love, love. But when you hate something or you can't stand someone, I will kill you.

Carrie: You know, what's funny is I actually thought today I was like, I am not capable of murder, but God damn, I have some road rage.

Booda: I hate driving too. I think that shit's in my blood. But at such a young age, being diagnosed with this, we look at behavioral health now, in 2024, when we're recording this episode. I don't know when it's gonna drop, it'll probably be like August or sometime. You look back to the 80s and the 90s, when they didn't really know much about behavioral health. With Adderall and a lot of those medications. Do you feel like they treated you correctly when you were initially diagnosed?

Carrie: Absolutely not.

Booda: No?

Carrie: For some reason, anytime I've tried to treat this, the first line of defense is pills. Here's some antidepressants, here's some antipsychotics, here's something to sleep. Here, you know, and of course, when I was originally diagnosed, I was on pain meds too. At one point, I was over medicated, seriously over medicated, because pills, I don't know why, they're not magic. They really aren't. And if I could be off all of them, I would. However, I know that that's not a reality. High blood pressure people need their blood pressure medication. I need my reality check medication.

Booda: Reality check meds.

Carrie: Well, the challenge as a teenager is a lot of these meds aren't supposed to be given to teenagers because of increased risk of suicidal ideation. When they couldn't get it right, they kept putting me on something else. I'd have adverse side effects. They'd take me off and put me on something else. There was no therapeutic intervention, talk therapy, anything. Just pills. If it wasn't working, here's a new one. You'd have to go through that initialization phase where you build it up in your system. Two months I'd be on a medication. Something would be wrong. They'd say, well, let's try this then. At 14, 15, 16 years old, my brain chemistry and my brain structure aren't fully formed. These things are gonna come in and they're gonna mess me up. My brain hasn't developed enough and then I've got all these neurochemical mixtures coming in with already imbalanced neurochemistry. The doctor never really talked to me at length about anything. It was always, how are you doing? Not good. Well, maybe we should increase this. Maybe we should stop that and add this. This is a little further in the future, but during that stage where I was over medicated, they had me on lithium. For some reason my body just swelled up. Even my toes looked like grapes. So they told me I needed to be on diuretics to flush out the fluid. I was on two different diuretics, depleting my potassium. So I had to be on a potassium supplement on top of that. Eventually it led to a stroke. This is where that medication component comes in because you have medications on top of medications and they all have horrible side effects. You're mixing them to the point you don't know what's happening. This is for this, this is for that. They may interact, but as long as you're acknowledging both different symptoms, then why not? But the mixture itself, I don't think people are fully aware. I get that negative space feeling in my head. I'm currently going through an episode of depression where it's not a sadness. It's the anhedonia and lack of energy. I just don't want to do anything. I'm happy to be here with you today. They've been doing all kinds of medication changes the whole time, and it's just constantly adapting to one, coming off of another. And it's been up and down for six months.

Booda: And this is something you've been struggling with for years. And like, what advice would you give somebody who's listening, you know, that may be experiencing the same fears. They know that they need to get help, but they're afraid because they're afraid that a doctor's gonna just maybe throw things at them. What can you say to them?

Carrie: Duck. Honestly, I think it's important. It's, to take care of yourself is important. And to do that, know what you're talking about, try to educate yourself, look for resources, but definitely advocate for yourself. If you are not comfortable taking a medication, say so, because they can't make you, unfortunately, unless you're court ordered.

Booda: That's a different story.

Carrie: We're not going there. But there is a certain amount of hope you get just taking that first step. I really wish that I had known more people in my circumstance. It is scary. It's scary, and it's hard. But nothing in life that's worth it is easy.

Booda: Absolutely.

Carrie: You're worth the help you got. You're worth the time you spend on yourself. And, be strong. Be strong. Don't let people stomp on you. Because being a mental health patient puts you pretty low down on the totem pole for a lot of people. Don't let them put you there.

Booda: Yeah, that's it. We were just having that conversation yesterday about how I never liked walking into like Codak or different places like that because I always felt like they made you feel like you were less than human sometimes.

Carrie: You know what I love walking in there. I feel like the most sane put together person in there.

Booda: I know. I just never liked the vibe that I would get. It's like, you're here for help and... I mean, what other doctor's office do you walk into and there's a bouncer right there standing, you know what I'm saying?

Carrie: Apparently I'm not going to the right doctor's offices.

Booda: You know what I mean? But no, I think that's very important information that you just gave. And, you know, I'm curious to know, they say that, you know, when your brain does reach a certain age, like in your, I think it's like 17, 18 or like somewhere around your 20s. I can't remember, but that's when certain things do come to finally come out of the woodworks, like different disorders and things that you may be experiencing. Was that something that changed in you as you got older?

Carrie: I noticed I've calmed down quite a bit.

Booda: Yeah.

Carrie: I used to have a hair trigger temper, but now I think I just don't have the energy to puff that fast.

Booda: The cortisol levels are dropping.

Carrie: Oh yeah, my body is like we can't move that fast. Just calm down.

Booda: Just calm down. So, and then they've also had a lot of DBT. Do you know what that is? DBT?

Carrie: Is that the...?

Booda: It's a type of therapy. It's a, it's called dialectical behavioral therapy. Dialectical being the black and the white, the one and the other, not the both. It's a behavioral therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy that changes your thought process a little bit at a time. Being able to incorporate that into my daily life, and as I've aged, I've noticed that some of my symptoms are either gone or really easy to manage.

Booda: That's great. And just going back a little bit, I don't want to go too far back, but going back to your mom and your dad, did either of them have any of the depression or the personality disorder? Was that something that was passed on?

Carrie: I believe that my mom and my aunt both had some depression. I don't think my mother would have self medicated to the point that she did had she not had issues. But then again, she's from another generation, you know, the Sylvia Plath generation where mental hospitals were a horrible place to go. But of course that was back when ECT and lobotomies and everything were still a thing.

Booda: Haha, no shit.

Carrie: But at her age, people didn't really go for treatment. Depression wasn't something people talked about. So her generation was drinking, using drugs and partying in the 80s.

Booda: I think of Mad Men where they're sitting there drinking whiskey in their business meetings at like 10 AM.

Carrie: Well, it's kind of like the smoking rooms in hospitals, you know.

Booda: Oh yeah, damn, I remember that. Matter of fact, I remember I worked at St. Mary's Hospital for 12 years and the initial part on the fourth floor where the smoking room used to be.

Carrie: I worked at St. Mary's. When did you work there?

Booda: Let me see, I have been here for...

Carrie: Was this recent? Cause mine was like I worked there in late 90s, early 2000s.

Booda: No, I worked there in early 2000s. Probably like 2008.

Carrie: No, this was before then.

Booda: Yeah. Well, I started there when I was 19 in X-ray and then I went to St. Joe's.

Carrie: Right there on the first floor.

Booda: Yeah.

Carrie: Where they had all of the medical records. No, the medical records were on the other side, but they had a bunch of files in the back.

Booda: Oh yeah, the roll-a-file.

Carrie: Yeah, yeah, the roll-a-file.

Booda: Yeah, that place is eerie, man.

Carrie: I didn't like it.

Booda: See, well my experience, I started there as housekeeping and I moved up to being a B.H.T. in the second floor in 2 North. So I was up there for a few years.

Carrie: Well, you got prisoners and stuff up there too, didn't you?

Booda: That was, I think that was 3 South where they had the prisoners.

Carrie: Okay.

Booda: The D.O.C.?

Carrie: Yeah.

Booda: But yeah, no, that was a crazy time, man. Crazy time.

Carrie: Oh yeah. Well, when I was there, there was a woman who had a baby in the toilet in the ER.

Booda: Really? Geez, that's crazy.

Carrie: More podcasts later.

Booda: Yeah, no kidding. So, I know you said that, going back to your story a little bit, apologize for getting off topic, you got two people with ADHD in the same room, it's very easy for things to go haywire.

Carrie: Yeah, we're lucky we've still stayed in the same vicinity.

Booda: It's all good though. I love people with ADHD. When I was in drama, I was a recruit to bring people in and everybody that I brought in had ADHD. My teacher was like, dude, really? Everyone's, it looked like that scene in that movie WALL-E where all the dysfunctional robots...

Carrie: Robots, yeah.

Booda: Little area, and they're all doing all this. That's how it was.

Carrie: Everybody's skitting out in some other way.

Booda: Skitting out. All right, we're going back. So, that part of your story where you said that you were partying and stuff a lot, you know, just because you had been responsible for such a long time. Were you finally on your own during this time? Is it was like living on your own and stuff?

Carrie: No, not quite. The end of my senior year, I emancipated myself so that I didn't need my mom to call me in sick. And then from there on, I had, I was ready. I had been stockpiling stuff for an apartment since I was 17. I just wanted out. So by the time I was graduating, I think I moved out the December after graduation. Because I just couldn't live with my parents.

Booda: Yeah, no, I feel you.

Carrie: My mom had gotten sober by that time. I had just developed such an anger towards the world. Towards myself, really. And that's another part of mental illness is why do we blame ourselves like that, you know? Like, it doesn't make sense. But for about seven years, I didn't talk to my family. There was a time my mom relapsed and Whitney called me because there was an accident and I wrestled with myself. Do I go back? And, and I said, no, because my natural reflex would be to go back and fix the situation and make everything okay. But this is my mother's mess and she's an adult and she can figure it out.

Booda: And what allowed you to get to that mentality? Was it therapy that allowed you to see it that way?

Carrie: Yeah, it was therapy and just, at some point, common sense.

Booda: Yeah.

Carrie: Because, you know, we can't all keep doing the same thing and expecting...

Booda: It's true. It is true, but I do know a lot of people who stay in that enabled, thought process for a long time. So I feel like it just shows your strength. And resilience in trying to figure out yourself because there are a lot of people who just get taken advantage of or they have issues with their parents or their dad where they have to put up certain boundaries. And unless you even see it as a problem in the first place, it's hard to clear it up.

Carrie: Exactly. Yeah. It's hard because they're your parents. They've taken care of you. Well, most parents take care of their children, but seeing your parents in a difficult position took, for me personally, I had to weigh it out. Do I pause my recovery because she needs to go back into hers, or do I take care of myself? And this is why we have to put our oxygen masks on first. Because we can't help everybody else if we're dying.

Booda: That's a great analogy. I love that. And, moving forward in your life, how did the personality disorders and these things affect your life? Do you feel like they helped you become a better worker and a harder worker? Or do you feel like it worked the opposite, made you less motivated? How did it work in your life? Because I think of them as superpowers now that I'm older and I've seen them.

Carrie: Oh, they are. They absolutely are. They allowed you to see the world through a different lens. Stained glass. That’s my perspective. I think it's made me really strong, really resilient. It's kind of a superpower in the way that we take time to think. Well, I have to take time to figure out what I want to say before I say it. And because of my therapy, I can do that. In the past, it would just be an automatic knee-jerk reaction. Now, because of my mental illness, I have to slow down. I have to take a minute, like, is this reaction appropriate or not? Do I need to be constantly surveilling my environment for safety? No, not anymore. So there are a lot of things that, yeah, they are superpowers, but sometimes, you know, like Spider-Man has to wear his goggles because there's too much information coming in. Sometimes being on the spectrum, having stress and anxiety, having any kind of depression, it does feel like it weakens you. It does feel like a chink in your armor. But when you have recovery under your belt, it’s beautiful. It's a beautiful thing.

Booda: Absolutely. Absolutely. And just curious now, you know, to where you're at today, what does your life look like now?

Carrie: Well, I mean, I'm a housewife who spends every day on mental health. That’s for sure.

Booda: How so? What’s part of your daily regimen?

Carrie: Well, you know, you gotta do a lot of mindfulness exercises. Sometimes I set some time up just to sit still. Sitting still is important. There’s, you know, sitting still and doing nothing are two different things.

Booda: Mmm, amen.

Carrie: But yeah, you gotta kind of just incorporate all of these things and then decide how you want to approach life. And you wake up in the morning, some days it's like, nope, I’m not going to face the day. Other days it’s like, bring it on. Let's do this.

Booda: Yeah, okay. And how has the way that you act due to certain situations changed now that you're older and you have a better understanding of who you are, how to cope with your diagnosis and all of these things, versus how it would have been when you were a lot younger?

Carrie: Well, I think when I was younger, it was a lot more reactionary. So if something happened, it was a reaction, not a response. Now, like, especially with my father-in-law’s incident, for some reason I was able to kind of just stack my thoughts together, and they were step by step. It wasn't like I have to do all of this, but because of my therapy and everything, I learned that, okay, do this. And then do this, and if you have to come back to the first one, do that. But don't worry about the 50 things.

Booda: That's good.

Carrie: You got one step in front of you today. And that’s kind of another way I approach life, it’s not by the whole. You can’t eat a burrito in one bite.

Booda: You don't know me very well.

Carrie: Yeah, we haven't broken bread together.

Booda: No, that’s cool, though. I think that’s awesome. And what about as far as healthy relationships go now, like with your husband? Is he real supportive and understanding of everything?

Carrie: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Oh yeah. Love you, babe.

Booda: Yeah, this is for you, buddy.

Carrie: That's like my least favorite sound in the world.

Booda: That’s my wife’s too.

Carrie: I hate that.

Booda: I always do it like 50 times. She's like, Bro, I hate you ‘cause I can connect it to Bluetooth. So I’ll call her and just start hitting the air horns.

Carrie: You’re mean.

Booda: She's like, I’m gonna hang up on your ass, dude.

Carrie: Oh, yeah. Well, my husband likes to come over the cameras in the house and scare me.

Booda: Oh shit, really? That’s awesome.

Carrie: No, it's really not. Not for somebody who's got a little, you know, sub-level paranoia running around all the time.

Booda: That’s so funny, but no, that’s good though. I mean, was that something that he always understood about you? Were you guys like friends and stuff before everything?

Carrie: Honestly, we were a one-night stand, and now here we are, nine years later.

Booda: Heck yeah, rock and roll right there.

Carrie: Oh yeah, love is love is love. But I didn't tell him immediately, because I am pretty put together now, and stable. So I thought, let me see if this guy's cool enough. And then at a certain point, you know, I told him, this is why I don't work. This is why I'm on these meds. And I gave him ample opportunity to leave. That was his door. I opened it, but he said, no, you know, you're all of these things make you the person I fell in love with. So I'm, I always say I won them over with my awkwardness.

Booda: Hey, there you go. It's an amazing trait. And you know, as far as your story goes coming through and sharing your testimony, was there something that you really wanted to get across to anybody who may be listening to this?

Carrie: Well, for one, you are not your illness. You and your illness need to learn to be friends. You need to coexist because your illness will never go away. Just be strong and remember there's only one second at a time. There's no such thing as everything at once, and there's no such thing as nothing all the time. So find your place, and sit in it and be comfortable. Find your joy, find your center, and realize that life is so much better when you have that.

Booda: That's awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to give it up to Carrie one more time. Thank you so much for coming through.

Carrie: Oh, happy to.

Booda: Yeah, and for all the listeners that are out there, if you're struggling with anything, it doesn't necessarily have to be just addiction. If there's something going on in your heart, something in your life, you want to come and get it all out on the table, come, let's have a therapy session, man. I'm down to chop it up with whoever wants to come through. All of the links and everything are going to be in the show notes of this episode. Feel free to hit me up directly. If you've got any positive affirmations that you want to send in to Carrie or any of the other guests that we've had on the show, please hit me up and I'll make sure that they get them directly. But until next time, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week. Much love, God bless, and we'll see you on the next one. Peace.

Carrie: Salud.

Booda: Salud. There you go.