Recovery is possible: “Resilience, really, that’s the key”

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255.

For Bonnie Castro, helping others is a way to help herself.

Bonnie is a Bert Nash Center Community Support Services case manager. Drawing upon her own recovery journey, she helps others who are going through mental health issues.

Bonnie has borderline personality disorder. Speaking from experience, Bonnie said, “It gets better. You learn skills. You learn ways to cope.”

June 27 was National PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) Awareness Day. For Bonnie, she has had a lifetime of dealing with trauma.

It began when she was 5 years old, and her single mom met a man who moved in.

“I’m just going to call it what it was, it was rape,” Bonnie said. “This went on for a very long time.”

Bonnie has a brother and two sisters who were also abused. “We all endured the same trauma,” she said.

When Bonnie was 7, she told her mom what was happening. Her mom confronted the man who denied it and said Bonnie was lying. Bonnie said her mom believed the man.

“I had this moment of severe invalidation,” Bonnie said. “I was like nobody loves me and I don’t want to be here anymore. That was the moment I started feeling suicidal.”

When Bonnie was 16, she tried to kill herself. She took a bunch of pills and drank half a bottle of vodka. She had a near fatal overdose.

“I woke up the next morning alive,” she said. “At that point, I thought I probably needed help.”

Bonnie walked to her best friend’s house, which was nearby. Her friend wasn’t there, but her friend’s mom was home. The friend’s mom called an ambulance. Bonnie spent two weeks in intensive care at University of Kansas Medical Center.

Bonnie confided to her grandmother that she wanted to kill herself. Her grandmother called Bonnie’s caseworker. For the next two years, Bonnie was institutionalized.

“I honestly didn’t think I had much time left on this earth,” Bonnie said. “There were flashbacks every night. I had really, really bad self-worth. I didn’t know why I was here.”

When she was 19 and a client at Wyandot Center for Community Behavioral Healthcare, Bonnie began working with a therapist named Amy Hammer and learning about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT is an evidence-based practice that combines strategies like mindfulness, acceptance and emotional regulation. It took time for Bonnie to embrace the goals of DBT.

“I might have been one of Amy’s worst clients. I think Amy might say that, too,” Bonnie said. “I fought against it all the way. I just had a mindset that I didn’t care. I didn’t believe in help, because my trauma was so severe.”

At some point, she did believe.

She was inspired by stories of people like Pat Deegan and Marsha Linehan, who both have powerful recovery stories and are leaders in the field of mental health recovery. Marsha is the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

“I started yearning to get better,” Bonnie said. “There was this internal desire for change to happen.”

After working with Amy Hammer for four years, Bonnie decided she wanted to work in the mental health field. She started teaching skills to other people that she had to use herself.

“Working with Amy was a big deal,” Bonnie said. “She was very compassionate and validating, which is what I needed at the time."

Bonnie joined the Bert Nash Center team in August 2020 and reconnected with Amy who has been a DBT therapist at the Center since 2007.

Bonnie has found that by helping others, she helps herself.

“I’m in a really good place working for Bert Nash,” Bonnie said. “I still have self-worth issues, and there’s always going to be fleeting thoughts about the trauma. People with borderline personality disorder have to admit this, because it has to be normalized. I’m helping clients recognize it for themselves, like I have had to do for myself.”

For Bonnie, recovery is a process.

“Picture a garden in your mind and these seeds get planted randomly and over time they grow,” she said. ‘That how it went for me; these seeds kept getting planted. And the more I worked in therapy, the more resiliency I built up. Resilience, really, that’s the key.”

From Bonnie: I want to thank the following people who also were a light in my darkness: Jane Magathan, Brenda Ulmer, Kay Hoffsomer, CJ Sullivan, Dr. Michael Leason, Sue Lewis, Simon Messmer, Amy Copeland, Randy Johnson, Marilyn Wherry, Cindy Taylor, Stephanie Mayberry and Brenda Rand. All these people provided me with opportunities and moments to improve myself. A special thanks to the consumer movement in Missouri; I learned healing can happen in huge numbers.