Guest: Ally Towns
Ally takes a deep dive to express and share when mental illness began to take hold of her, and her emotional literacy and self-awareness were highly compromised. She indicates that she didn’t have the ability to ask for what she needed in times of crisis, in the process her family had to engage in a great deal of guess work of what she needed and while they were in several crises of their own, her parents were trying their best even if it wasn’t the best or most effective method for Ally. After self-injurious behaviour that Ally was engaging in became known to her parents, this is when her mental health journey amplified. Ally explains that she comes from a loving family however she struggled to feel loved and had regret for expressing her true feelings when she was asked by her father. She experienced feeling guilt for adding more stress to parents already difficult load with her older siblings who already faced their own mental health difficulties, and felt the only approach that parents had capacity for was the medical model, which did not allow space for empathy, compassion, or gentleness. However, she didn’t share her true experience with her parents as she wanted to give them a break. Before she found a way to cope and regulate the intense emotions for herself, she endured a great deal of shame, heaviness, consumed in thoughts, and a great deal of emotional turmoil. Her key message to the listeners is that: doing bad things, doesn’t make you a bad person, it gives you room to work on healing; be kind to yourself; don’t beat yourself; don’t rush to make amends before you’ve fully worked your process; unsavoury things happen when you struggle the key is to learn about it.
Guest Bio: Ally is a mental health advocate who embraces the ups and downs of her own journey with Borderline Personality Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Depression. She uses her diagnoses to relate to others around the world through skits and deeply vulnerable discussions on social media. Upon facing trials with a cocktail of mental illnesses from a young age, she found a profound fascination with recovery and the human condition. Through years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectic Behavioural Therapy, and a head-first mindset into healing, her understanding of the experience grew and her perspective on human nature shifted. With this new wisdom, she pursues a career in the field of mental health care.
Ally is a student at Mount Royal University, majoring in “Child and Youth Care Counsellor” with the goal of being the person she needed most when she was young and struggling. She has done practical work as a Youth Developmental Counsellor at a high school, a Child Behavioural Counsellor in a before and after school care program and has created a summer camp for youth transitioning into adulthood while maintaining emotional wellness. When she is finished full time schooling, she hopes to grow a counselling business of her own, while helping out with residential youth mental health care facilities.”
Passionate about: Inner Solutions she received 8 years of DBT treatment (they taught me most of what I know!)