Losing My Career and Myself, Then Choosing Who I’d Be – Cassie Jewell

Identity After Stroke: Who Are You When Your Career Is Gone?

Cassie Jewell got back from Iceland on a Monday. On Wednesday, she was demoted from the job she had built her life around. On Friday, she was in an ambulance with a stroke.

She was 42, a licensed counsellor supervising behavioural health programs inside a US jail. She loved working with inmates and took two or three extra hours of work home most nights. “My entire identity was my career,” she told me. Within a single week, she lost the role and nearly lost her life.

Her story shows something many survivors struggle to name: identity after stroke isn’t only about what your body can still do. It’s about who you are when the roles you relied on are gone.

The Week Everything Changed

On the Thursday night after the demotion, Cassie stayed up writing a book, determined to prove she still mattered. As she typed, her left hand stopped working. She put it down to tiredness and went to bed.

She woke the next afternoon knowing something was wrong but not what. She decided it was a panic attack. Then she remembered her hand. She texted her mum, a nurse practitioner, who told her to call 911 and ask for a hospital with a stroke centre.

When the paramedics arrived asking for the stroke patient, Cassie was the one who had answered the door. One side of her face was drooping and her left side was weakening. The diagnosis was an ischaemic stroke in the right basal ganglia, a deep brain region involved in movement, balance and, as she discovered, emotional regulation. If you want to understand this area of the brain better, our episode on lower basal ganglia stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/lower-basal-ganglia-stroke/) goes deeper.

Her doctors told her stress contributes to stroke rather than causing it directly, and her cardiologist is still monitoring her heart rhythm. Cassie has her own view: “I was literally burning myself to the ground… and then my brain was like, okay, we’ve had enough. We’re gonna stop you.” It’s a theme we’ve explored before in stroke and stress (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/stroke-and-stress-darren-walker/).

When Your Brain Tells You You’re Fine

The day after her stroke, Cassie tried to go to work. Her mum stopped her. Later, before she was cleared to drive, she got behind the wheel and bumped another car on her first day out.

There’s a name for part of what was happening: anosognosia. It describes reduced awareness of your own deficits after a brain injury, and it’s more often associated with right-hemisphere strokes like Cassie’s. It isn’t stubbornness or denial; it’s a symptom of the injury itself, which is why a survivor can sincerely insist they’re okay while the people around them can see otherwise.

Cassie summed up that period in one line: “It’s fine, it’s gonna be fine, even though it clearly, you know, wasn’t fine.” For families, understanding it can turn an argument into patience.

Why Identity After Stroke Hits So Hard

Identity is built from what we do, the roles we hold, and the stories we tell about ourselves, and a stroke can remove several at once. The more tightly your sense of self is tied to a single role, the larger the gap it leaves.

“I lost my career and myself at the same time,” Cassie said. Her first job after returning to work didn’t last. She found she wasn’t as quick as she used to be, and that raised a harder question: “When you measure your self-worth in the things that you do… and then all of a sudden you don’t have your career anymore, who are you?”

I recognised that question. Before my own strokes, I was a business owner and a dad, and I couldn’t have told you anything about myself beyond those labels. I didn’t have the vocabulary for identity loss. Guests such as Adam Wolfers (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/cerebral-vasculitis-stroke-identity-change-adam-wolfers/) have described the same collision between who they were and who they now are, and anyone weighing up work decisions may find our episode on changing career after stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/change-career-after-stroke/) useful.

The emotional side can catch even a professional off guard. “You’d think as a therapist I would be good with it,” Cassie said, “but I’d prefer to deal with other people’s emotions, not my own.” Our conversation about emotional changes after stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/emotional-changes-after-stroke-sam-hanes/) explores this further.

Choosing Who You Become

Eighteen months on, Cassie doesn’t have an elevator pitch for who she is. She’s clearer about who she isn’t: someone driven by work. She values free time, her partner, and her dogs. She works full time doing intake assessments and sees private clients, and she describes herself this way: “I’m not as sharp as I was before, but I think I’m kinder.”

A stroke, she says, “strips away everything else so you have nothing left but yourself,” and then “you can also choose what your new identity is gonna be.”

That choice matters most. For most of my life I did what I’d been trained to do; it took a stroke to show me I could choose differently. Researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun called this post-traumatic growth: positive change that comes from the struggle with a traumatic event, not from the event itself. Cassie put it in her own words: “It’s not about the stroke. It’s about, okay, what am I gonna choose to do now?” It’s the idea at the centre of my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/book).

Practical Ways to Rebuild Identity After Stroke

Drawing on Cassie’s story, here are a few starting points:

• Separate what you do from who you are. Write down your values, not your job titles. Values survive a stroke better than roles do.
• Give it time. For me, it took a few years before I could say I liked the person I’d become. Early recovery is rarely the time to decide who you’ll be forever.
• Let people you trust be your early-warning system. Cassie’s partner noticed her overwork long before she did, and her mum recognised the stroke symptoms. With anosognosia in the picture, other people’s observations matter.
• Replace old coping habits, don’t just remove them. Recovery is a chance to swap quick fixes for stress for ones that last.
• Use time as a lens. Cassie is reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and aims to visit all 195 countries.
• Find people who understand. Other survivors often give you the words for your experience. Our episode on finding purpose after stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/finding-purpose-after-stroke/) is a good next listen.

Listen to Cassie’s Full Story

Watch or listen to the full conversation with Cassie Jewell. You can find more of her work at cassie-jewell.com (https://cassie-jewell.com).

If a stroke has left your world feeling smaller, my new book, Your World Doesn’t Have to Stay This Small (https://mybook.to/yourworld), is a practical guide to rebuilding your life after trauma, even when you’re not ready.

If this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan.

Losing My Career and Myself, Then Choosing Who I’d Be – Cassie Jewell (Interview)

A stroke at 42 took Cassie Jewell’s career and the identity built on it. What she found underneath changed how she works, loves, and travels.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction – Cassie’s Identity After Stroke
01:08 Life Before the Stroke
09:35 The Day of the Stroke
23:02 Aftermath and Recovery
28:41 Hospitalization and Rehabilitation Journey
32:04 Dissociation and Identity Post-Stroke
38:12 Life After Stroke: Adjusting to New Realities
50:32 How Stroke Forced Me to Discover Who I Really Am
01:02:14 The Dual Nature of Stroke Experiences

Transcript:

Introduction – Cassie’s Identity After Stroke

Bill Gasiamis (00:00)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Gassiamis. My guest today is Cassie Jewell, a counselor and author from the United States, who in February of 2025 at 42 had an ischemic stroke in the right basal ganglia. In the same week, she was moved out of the role she had built her whole identity around. We talk about perfectionism and the overwork loop that’s so hard to step out of.

Why she tried to go back to work the day after her stroke, a condition called anosognosia. And the question at the heart of this episode: who are you when your career is gone? Now, if stroke has made your world feel smaller, my book is written for you. It’s called Your World Doesn’t Have to Stay This Small: A Practical Guide to Rebuilding Your Life After Trauma, Even When You’re Not Ready. Search for it on Amazon or tap the link in the show notes.

And if this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. And a massive thank you to everyone who already supports the show. You’re the reason these conversations keep happening.

And now it’s time for the interview.

Life Before the Stroke

Bill Gasiamis (01:08)
Cassie Jewell, welcome to the podcast.

Cassie (01:10)
Hi, how are you?

Bill Gasiamis (01:12)
I’m well. Thank you. Great to see you here. I really appreciate you joining me. I want to ask you a little bit about what your life was like before the stroke. What did you get up to? How did you occupy your time?

Cassie (01:26)
So my life was out of control before the stroke. I was working at a jail and it was a super stressful position. it was just stress all the time. I had a really bad supervisor too, a micromanager.

but I also that wasn’t the only part of my life. I traveled a lot.

I don’t know.

It’s hard to even think about it now, honestly.

Bill Gasiamis (01:54)
How long ago was the stroke?

Cassie (01:57)
So the stroke was it’s been about a year and a half. It was February twenty first, twenty twenty five.

Bill Gasiamis (02:02)
Mm-hmm.

w were you in a relationship? Were what’s the living arrangements like? What were you doing like personally?

Cassie (02:12)
Yes, I was in a relationship. I’m still in the same relationship. but I guess I was talking about work first because that was my entire life. It like revolved around my job. And I actually loved my job. It was just

some of the stress part that I didn’t love.

Bill Gasiamis (02:29)
You loved your job, so you’re working in a jail with inmates?

Cassie (02:33)
Yes, I’m a therapist.

Bill Gasiamis (02:36)
okay.

Cassie (02:38)
And so

I was working as a behavioral health supervisor at the jail. I didn’t have a lot of client contact, but when I did, those were the good days. But a lot of it was just inputting data, which was not fun.

Bill Gasiamis (02:54)
just all about reporting things to the bodies governing the jails or to

Cassie (03:00)
Yes. So specifically I worked with the when I say MAT, do you know what I mean by that? Medication

Bill Gasiamis (03:06)
No.

Cassie (03:07)
assisted treatment. So for the inmates who had opioid use disorders, they would start taking medication to help with that. It’s called Suboxone or buprenorfin is the name of the medication. Suboxon is the brand name.

Bill Gasiamis (03:24)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (03:25)
But it helps

with cravings, so a lot of the inmates were on the medication. My role was to track all of the inmates who were on medication.

And so that was the data piece, like spreadsheets and just that was a lot. I kind of

Bill Gasiamis (03:42)
So you

Cassie (03:43)
sorry, go ahead.

Bill Gasiamis (03:44)
I was gonna say you became a counsellor or a therapist to have one-on-one contact with people, but you’re finding

Cassie (03:53)
Right.

Bill Gasiamis (03:53)
yourself in a situation where it’s all about statistics, data and a whole bunch of other things that you really w didn’t sign up for when you first started out to be a therapist.

Cassie (04:03)
Exactly. Like it was a good day if I got to spend time with clients or inmates. And a bad day would be me just at my desk, like hunched over till my neck was aching and just like I said, spreadsheets and data.

Bill Gasiamis (04:18)
Your world kind of revolved around work. How many hours a a week did you work?

Cassie (04:24)
I mean technically I was supposed to work forty hours, but I would stay late and I would work from home. So like that’s the worst thing about, you know, since the pandemic everybody works from home. I was able to bring it home with me, so if I didn’t finish something at work, I would just I’d be sitting on my couch make

Bill Gasiamis (04:45)
Is it that the

workload was too too high or was it just the nature of the job?

Cassie (04:51)
So to be honest, well the workload was definitely too high and I I’m sharp enough to know like if it was or wasn’t and it definitely was, but at the same time I’m a perfectionist and I wanted things to be perfect and so that played a lot into it. And this is what I realized in hindsight, ’cause at the time I would have told you that the workload was ridiculous and like I didn’t play any role in it, but I did.

Bill Gasiamis (05:20)
Wow. So that’s an awareness

Cassie (05:21)
I wanted it.

Bill Gasiamis (05:22)
you’ve had recently. The perfectionism thing is a real what is it like a real barrier?

Cassie (05:30)
Yeah, it’s I’ve dealt with it my entire life. But when it comes to employment with certain things, you can’t be a perfectionist ’cause it’s just going to kill you eventually. And for me it almost did. Like I believe my stroke was in part caused by stress because that was the only thing in my life that was like different. I’m a pretty healthy person.

Bill Gasiamis (05:56)
Yeah. At home, when you were working at home, how many additional hours would you be doing if you had a regular day at work and then came home? How much additional time would you be spending?

Cassie (06:06)
Like two or three.

Bill Gasiamis (06:08)
Yeah. Okay. And then are your employers noticing? Are they going, Well, congratulations, you’ve got the best notes in the world or the best statistics or data?

Cassie (06:17)
Nope, nobody noticed. My manager also worked from home and I know this because she would send emails like at ten PM and be like she’s doing the same thing because I think it’s probably in America like jails are not well staffed and not well run. And it’s probably just widespread. You have people who are overworking and no wonder nobody wants to work in a jail.

I loved it though. I loved the like I said, I loved working with the inmates. I like people.

Bill Gasiamis (06:49)
Yeah.

Cassie (06:50)
I like working with people. Doesn’t matter if they’re an inmate or not an inmate, like that’s why I became a therapist.

Bill Gasiamis (06:57)
Yeah. Ideal candidates for support therapy,

Cassie (07:00)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (07:01)
learning new skills, understanding how their behavior impacts their life and other people and all that type of thing. And maybe some of the first times that they’ve ever come across a therapist, would you say for s for a lot of the people that end up in jail?

Cassie (07:17)
Possibly.

And a lot of the people who were addicted to opiates or they maybe h not b have been addicted, but who used opiates didn’t even recognize how deadly it was. They

Bill Gasiamis (07:30)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (07:30)
had just been like they were young, like I said, children is how I see it. Like I’m in my forties now, but so everybody’s a child to me, but you know, eighteen, nineteen year olds in jail because

Bill Gasiamis (07:42)
Yeah, they yell.

Cassie (07:43)
they were using with a friend or something and they didn’t

know what they were getting themselves into.

Bill Gasiamis (07:47)
No, that’s perfectly fine. They’re children. in my mind as well, I know they’re technically an adult, but it’s such a small gap between childhood and adulthood when you’re eighteen. Like I

Cassie (08:01)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (08:02)
mean, as if there’s a a year when it’s definitely an adult now. I know that the law is a little more kind of restri harsh on that definition, but

The truth

Cassie (08:15)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (08:15)
is is this is very hard to kind of fit people into.

Cassie (08:18)
Their brains are still developing.

Bill Gasiamis (08:19)
Yeah, till twenty five or something, like many

Cassie (08:22)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (08:23)
of the lobes haven’t come one of the lobes at least hasn’t come online. I think it’s the frontal lobe.

Cassie (08:27)
That I don’t know, but I’m sure

Bill Gasiamis (08:28)
Yeah.

Yeah. I might be wrong, but that’s okay. so life was pretty hectic, pretty full on, lots of work at home as well as at the office or in the jail. And then

Cassie (08:41)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (08:42)
how is that impacting kind of your just regular life in that switching off part, that doing things that you loved, or going out with your partner, or taking the dogs for a walk? How did it affect that part of it? Did it eat into that?

Cassie (08:57)
It did. I was not a great person to be around ’cause I was cranky all the time. I was tired all the time and thinking about work all the time. But I’ve always traveled and so I made a point to travel still. So I was still traveling the world. so that piece was good.

Bill Gasiamis (09:14)
Like the circuit breaker that you at least always did for a period of time. How long would those trips last?

Cassie (09:22)
I travel whenever I can, so sometimes it would be like a three day trip, sometimes it would be like a ten day trip.

Bill Gasiamis (09:29)
Uhhuh. So squeeze in whatever you can just to get out and about.

Cassie (09:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

The Day of the Stroke

Bill Gasiamis (09:35)
So what happened on the day of the stroke? Do you have any recollection of that, any awareness of the lead up to that?

Cassie (09:43)
So I can tell you the story. There’s not like a anything that seemed to lead up to it. It was just living my life as normal. I had just gotten back from Iceland, but you know, like I said, that was travel was my norm. And

So this is still hard for me to talk about. This was like a horrible thing that happened to me. This is like sometimes I think it’s worse than the stroke. I don’t know.

If it is or not, but I was demoted from my position. And so this position is, you know, it’s everything. And then at the same time, it’s like the worst thing in the world because I’m so I’m overworked. I’m exhausted. I have a a manager who’s not supportive. And I could almost see it coming, but I was still still shocked and like.

I put my like everything into my career. Like that’s who I am. Like my entire identity was my career. And so being demoted was was is maybe the worst thing that has ever happened to me. And so that happened on a Wednesday and then the stroke happened on a Friday. So it was a very busy week for me. And I had gotten back from Iceland on a Monday. So it was in one week that all these things happened.

Bill Gasiamis (11:07)
Intense so you’re back at work after traveling, jet lag, you know, holiday mode, all those things. Then two days later you get called into the office, you get demoted from the role that you’re in into a different position. You take

Cassie (11:22)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (11:22)
a bad lib by the sound of things.

Cassie (11:25)
I think I was very professional when it happened but it was absolutely like devastating. It’s

Bill Gasiamis (11:31)
Yeah.

Cassie (11:32)
not something I talk about because it’s still like very painful.

Bill Gasiamis (11:35)
Raw.

Yeah. And then two days later, what happens on the Friday? How does that play out?

Cassie (11:43)
So it was Thursday night and I was I had just stayed up and been writing. I was working on a a book that I never ended up publishing, but it was a book that I was working on. And it was kind of like a well, let me show that I still matter, that I’m still worth something by I’m gonna write this book and so I was just driven by like spite and like my whatever, who knows.

So I hadn’t gone to sleep at all, and it’s Thursday night, and I’m still up and I’m still writing, and I’m drinking wine and I’m on the couch.

so leading up to it was the demotion, and had been traveling, and then I’m typing, and as I’m typing, like my left hand just stops working, and I didn’t think anything of it. I was like, that’s

Weird. This is weird. And I was like, I’m gonna go to bed. I’ve had too much to drink. And so like I get up and just kinda stumble to bed. And it’s not until the next morning, well it’s a afternoon by then, when I finally wake up or I get up and I know that something’s like wrong and I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m just like I can tell that something is off with me.

And I’m saying this to my partner. He’s like in the other room, but I’m still in bed. I’m like, something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with me. And I just keep on repeating that over and over again. And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And I was like, I decided that I was having a panic attack because I’m familiar with that. And it fit because I felt like I was dying, but I knew I wasn’t actually dying. And then I remembered, I was like, wait a minute. Last night was weird. That was weird. That thing happened. And so

I don’t call 911. I text my mom. And I’m like, mom, this happened to me. My mom is a nurse practitioner, so it makes sense that I texted her instead of calling 911. And she was like, Those are stroke symptoms. Call 911 now and ask me to take you to a stroke center or to a hospital with a stroke center. So my partner ends up calling. He makes the phone call. I don’t know what I’m doing at that point. And he’s like,

Yeah, maybe you should get ready. And I don’t know how I did because apparently I’m paralyzed on my left side. I don’t know when that actually s like settled in, but I was able to function enough until the ambulance arrived. And they’re like, Where’s the victim? Where’s the stroke victim? And I’m like, it’s it’s me. Cause I’m still standing, I answered the door and everything. But my

Bill Gasiamis (14:21)
Wow.

Cassie (14:24)
And I don’t know this of course, but like later I’m told one half of my face is drooping. So it was obvious, even though I’m still like walking and talking.

Bill Gasiamis (14:34)
And there

Cassie (14:34)
And I

had I had pictures of it, like how bad it was, like how pronounced it was, but I deleted them all because I’m very vain and I don’t want anybody to ever see how awful it looked.

Bill Gasiamis (14:44)
Wow.

Cassie (14:44)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (14:45)
Do you prefer that you hadn’t deleted that now or are you happy that they’re gone?

Cassie (14:51)
I have there’s one picture left. Somebody else took the picture actually. And like looking back on it’s just I mean, I probably it probably would be good to have those pictures because I would be able to like remind myself of how far I’ve come, but it’s also like really d uncomfortable and disorienting to see yourself look like that. I don’t know if you

Bill Gasiamis (15:13)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cassie (15:15)
if

you have that experience if there were pictures taken of you after your stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (15:20)
There was, not a lot of them, only because it wasn’t the first thing on our mind.

Cassie (15:26)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (15:27)
but I had pictures taken when I was in the rehab facility where w I was strapped in and I was attached to the ceiling and I was walking along trying to rehabilitate my leg

Cassie (15:39)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (15:40)
like like a marionette. so that’s about it. And I’ve got some pictures of my scar, which were pretty epic.

The surgery scar was pretty epic.

Cassie (15:52)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (15:54)
and and then that’s about it. and they’re

Cassie (15:58)
So how do you feel

when you look at those pictures?

Bill Gasiamis (16:01)
The thing, Cassie, with me is I don’t relive the experience when I talk about it. Whereas I know people who have had something challenging happen to them that th when they’re re expi when they’re talking about it, it’s like they’re reliving it. So I kind of really understand why it’s difficult for them to talk about it or to see a photo.

And when I talk about that, there’s a disassociation with it. And it’s not a disassociation that I’ve made from the perspective of I don’t want to think or remember or etc. It’s just that I I’ve spoken about it so much that it’s like I’m telling a story about somebody else. Now,

Cassie (16:44)
Yeah, that’s healthy.

Bill Gasiamis (16:45)
yeah, it’s me, but it’s not really.

Cassie (16:48)
Right.

Bill Gasiamis (16:48)
I see the pictures, but it’s 12 years since brain surgery. Like I don’t connect me to that.

day, even though it’s definitely me and I have the deficits and I live with the, you know, injury and all the things that it did to me. Like, I don’t know, like I I don’t get triggered by in a negative way, but I understand when I’ve seen people talk about experiences that they get triggered by, it’s because they’re reliving it and that somehow they haven’t separated their current self to the the self that went through that part of the experience.

Cassie (17:25)
I also think that just the passage of time helps with it, like ’cause you’re so far removed from it. It’s

Bill Gasiamis (17:30)
Indeed.

Cassie (17:31)
like I believe that people change, like almost every decade we become new people. Not like every decade on the, you know, like at right at thirty and then forty, but like approximately every decade we become relatively

Bill Gasiamis (17:44)
Yeah.

Cassie (17:44)
different people than we were before. And so it’s like looking back

Bill Gasiamis (17:49)
I agree.

Cassie (17:49)
at a different person almost when you see that.

Bill Gasiamis (17:52)
I I agree. And a different person in many ways. Like not a podcaster, not an author, you know, not a speaker. a very different person, you know, and

That one that the person that I was was just basically a guy not dissimilar to what you described, just getting through, you know, like working as much as possible, at home, at work, too many hours, the phone always on, people reaching me any time of the day. It was mental. and it was the best time and the worst time. I’m gonna interrupt you for a second ’cause I’m expecting a phone call.

From my dad’s appointment at the hospital. One moment, please. Hello. Hey, is that Bill? Yes.

Yeah, he’s done with that injunction. He’s ready to be collected. Okay. well we’ll get there as soon as we can if that’s all right. Yeah, sure. Shouldn’t be too late. Okay, no worries. I’ll just organise someone. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

My dad had a little procedure.

Cassie (18:58)
Si okay.

Bill Gasiamis (18:59)
Yeah. And he just needs to get picked up.

And of course

I bet you’ve his grandson who was meant to pick him up has forgotten.

And we’ll edit all this out anyway, so

Let’s see what it says.

All right. let’s see what it says.

Awesome, he’s going now.

yeah, so as I was saying, so I

I I I put a lot of work into being a different person as well. Like that was important. I couldn’t be the same guy that came out of all of that stroke stuff because that guy was not heading in the right direction. He was gonna be unwell again. Right. And and what you said kind of reminds me of how I was. perfectionism might not have been my thing, but it was there was a thing, you know, that I

bought into that I needed to do that I couldn’t do any other way, that if it didn’t happen like that it was gonna be wrong. You know? And it was for me it was I can’t outsource it to anyone else because nobody’s ever gonna do what I do, how I do it, make the customer happy so we can get paid. It yeah, it’s kind of it kind

Cassie (20:08)
That’s perfectionism, maybe. In a sense.

Bill Gasiamis (20:11)
of is. Yeah. I see perfectionism in my wife differently ’cause she described what you described at her cause she’s a she’s studying and just finished her

masters in psychology. Yeah, and she does

Cassie (20:27)
good. It’s awesome.

Bill Gasiamis (20:28)
case notes and my gosh. It’s like you’ve done a day’s work. Yeah, I honestly like she does a day’s work. And then I’m like, how long did it does it need to take to do case notes after a day’s work? And she’s like, as long as it takes. And I’m like, Well, it as an outsider, somebody who doesn’t understand what you’re doing.

It seems like it’s taking way too long after the session with your client to d to do the case notes. It’s it’s what it seems like to me. And and she’s not denying it, but she is kind of saying, Well, I’m early on in my career and I have to make sure that the case notes are done well, et cetera. And I’m like, How have you ever compared them to other people’s case notes to know what’s good enough or acceptable?

And that’s kind of what I didn’t do either. Like I never understood that when you’re delivering a painting project to a client, ninety percent is good enough. If the client says it’s a pass, it’s a pass. And then you get paid. Trying to overdeliver to ensure payment, because I was concerned. I think it it was more for me, it was about getting paid rather than me being a stickler for perfection. It was about if I don’t do it.

To the client’s expectation, then I won’t get paid. And that was kind of what it was. But it’s a similar ailment, you know, like it gets in the way of spare time and hours for me to do something other than work, but I I didn’t know it at the time. It was just the way that it was.

Cassie (22:10)
Yeah. Well it’s hard to know when you’re in the middle of it also. And my partner would point it out like how insane I was being and I didn’t see it. Like I said at the time I just I didn’t well

Bill Gasiamis (22:26)
Yeah.

Cassie (22:27)
I did to an extent, but not enough to make me stop.

Bill Gasiamis (22:33)
Yeah. And you then have maybe the exit part of the loop. Like, where do I get off the loop? You know, like how do I jump out of here? I know he’s told me, and I know somebody else might have mentioned it. And I know I’m working too many hours, but like how do I get out of it? Like what’s the the exit? I get that too. That’s kind of how I was. The stroke became that for me. Is that how you kind of experienced your stroke afterwards? Was it a circuit breaker as well as this illness?

Aftermath and Recovery

Cassie (23:02)
Yeah, I feel like that, like the way you said it. Like I feel like I was literally burning myself to the ground, like I was burnt out and just wasn’t gonna stop and was gonna keep on going and going and going. And then my brain was like, Okay, we’ve had enough. We’re gonna stop you. And I had a stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (23:21)
Mm.

Cassie (23:22)
And they say that stress doesn’t directly cause strokes, like it contributes to it. But like I mentioned, like I’m pretty healthy.

And I was I’m forty three now. I was only forty two. And that’s not normal. Like it’s usually age sixty five and older that have the strokes. Definitely

Bill Gasiamis (23:42)
Yeah.

Cassie (23:42)
wasn’t expecting it.

Bill Gasiamis (23:44)
What kind of a stroke was it?

Cassie (23:46)
It was an ischemic stroke. It was a right hemisphere stroke in the basal ganglia, which I didn’t know what they were. I learned about it after my stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (23:55)
And did they have

Cassie (23:55)
They apparently do a

lot with like has to do with your motion and balance, but also emotional regulation, which that was a huge thing when I was recovering, like having to deal with emotions. You’d think as a therapist

Bill Gasiamis (24:10)
Just crying.

Cassie (24:11)
I would be good with it, but I’d prefer to deal with other people’s emotions, not my own.

Bill Gasiamis (24:16)
And you’re human as well, right? So yeah. Just because you

Cassie (24:17)
yeah, I forgot about that. Yes. That too.

Bill Gasiamis (24:20)
learnt about it doesn’t mean that you’re the epitome of the perfectly emotionally regulated human just because you learned about it or studied it.

Cassie (24:28)
Yeah, absolutely not.

Bill Gasiamis (24:31)
Yeah. and do they know what the underlying cause of the ischemic stroke was? Was there an underlying cause?

Cassie (24:40)
They still I have like a little heart thing in still. It’s they’re like, maybe it was AFib and I told my cardiologist I was like, it’s not, it’s stress. I know it was stress. And he was like, it might be AFib. We’re gonna still check for this. So it’s like it can stay in for up to four years. I don’t know when they’re gonna take it out. but so far no AFib, which kind of doesn’t mean that my theory is correct, but it seems more plausible that there was they can’t figure out

Anything else? I probably drank too much. I was drinking the night of my stroke, but they said that didn’t cause it.

Who knows? Combination of

Bill Gasiamis (25:16)
Hmm. What

Cassie (25:18)
alcohol and stress.

Bill Gasiamis (25:20)
Yeah. Or when you say you drink too much as in what are you doing, a bottle a day or just a couple of glasses or

Cassie (25:28)
So before my stroke I was probably drinking more than a bottle of wine a day.

Bill Gasiamis (25:33)
Okay. Yeah, that’s too much.

Cassie (25:34)
So that’s like

four to five drinks. And for women, you shouldn’t have more than one drink of alcohol per day.

Bill Gasiamis (25:43)
Yeah, it is too much for any person really. Yeah.

Cassie (25:46)
It is. That

was my way of coping with stress.

Bill Gasiamis (25:51)
Yeah, takes the edge off, right?

Cassie (25:53)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (25:53)
Yeah. It’s not uncommon. Like it’s so many I’m not hearing anything new here, you know, like it’s

Cassie (26:00)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (26:00)
we’re all the same pretty much everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you live. And everyone needs a way to cope. And sometimes the easiest thing is whatever’s at arm’s reach. And it could be for it could be a piece of bread. It could be a piece of you know, sweet cake or whatever, it could be alcohol. There’s so many ways that we

Cope and it’s really useful, especially if you can cope. Yeah. If you Yeah. Yeah. The problem

Cassie (26:25)
It works so well it just kills you at the same time.

Bill Gasiamis (26:30)
is it’s short lived coping and it’s not learning or teaching you how to cope ongoing and without it. And that’s the the challenge, right? Is how do we cope with that? I used to smoke. And I would tell you still today that I loved smoking. It was one of the most amazing, most enjoyable things to do.

It also came with alcohol and it came after a meal and it came with a coffee. Like all the things I loved to do happened together and smoking was one of them. And I’m sure, I’m certain it was, you know, the nicotine hit and all the things that you get from a cigarette, good, bad, were all contributing to my coping mechanism. But I also was creating the perfect storm for being unwell and

Cassie (27:17)
Right.

Bill Gasiamis (27:18)
stress at work,

Not enough me time, always thinking about the job, the phone always being on, all that kind of stuff. And then it’s like, okay, well, what do I need? What do I need? What do you I know what I need? I need another coffee and a cigarette. Let me go and grab one. That’s gonna make things better. And it did, like just for that small amount of time. But not enough to be use supportive or not enough to be healthy. It was not healthy, but that’s okay. I learnt and

I don’t do that anymore. I don’t smoke anymore. Although I love walking past people who are smoking.

Cassie (27:57)
That’s funny. I hate the smell of I think a lot of people do, the smell of cigarettes.

Bill Gasiamis (28:01)
Yeah.

I love the smell of cigarettes. Not in the ashtray part, just in the air, kind of wafting around. You know, there was nothing better than being at a really smoky club or whatever. I don’t like the smell in my clothes the next day. But I’m old enough that when we were smok when we were going out to nightclubs and dancing and all that kind stuff, smoking was still allowed indoors in Australia. Whereas now it’s not. it was so cool. man.

so how long did you end up in hospital for and how did you manage to deal with the deficits that it was causing before you went home?

Hospitalization and Rehabilitation Journey

Cassie (28:41)
So I was in the like the actual hospital, like in the hospital on the stroke unit for a week. And then they moved me to inpatient rehab for a little over a week. So altogether it was a little over two weeks, so not that long. I was paralyzed for about a week, although it’s crazy, I barely remember it. you’d think like something huge like that you would remember, but I just remember the doctors coming in and being like, Okay

pull on my hands, now push on my hands or do this, do that and like I just remember my left hand wasn’t working as well, but it didn’t it didn’t feel like being paralyzed, but I don’t guess I don’t know who would know what that feels like if you’ve never been paralyzed, or you wouldn’t

Bill Gasiamis (29:23)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (29:24)
feel anything, I guess.

Bill Gasiamis (29:25)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie (29:26)
And I was able to walk, so my rehab wasn’t that like intensive. It was focusing on I had this weird like kind of like lean where I would like lean left and like veer off to the left. Like if there was nobody to direct me, I would have just like walked off into the walls.

so two weeks and then for a month I did like outpatient OT and PT. But I also like I took a look at my drinking and I was like, I need to stop drinking. And so I went to treatment like a month after my stroke, or it was like six weeks after my stroke. So that interrupted my OT and PT. But two weeks to answer your question about

two weeks in the hospital and in rehab, which was they

were basically the same thing. I was in a bed, an alarmed bed, because I was a fall risk.

Which was awful ’cause I’m super independent, so having that taken away from me was like I couldn’t I wasn’t even allowed to get up. I would get scolded like a naughty child when I did. It didn’t stop me from getting up, but I got some scoldings. The nurses I was not a favorite among the nurses, I suspect.

Bill Gasiamis (30:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they were looking up for you.

Yeah. They were they were looking out for you but they needed to get the point across as much as possible. I

I kinda get it, but yeah, it’s also not nice to be told you shouldn’t do something. but when you can’t do it and it’s a risk

to your health, then maybe it’s maybe it’s all right to be told don’t do that

in no uncertain terms.

Cassie (31:13)
They so they taught my partner how to like unarm the bed. And I have to give him credit here because I like begged him to teach me the trick to unarm it and he never did. Yeah. Which was I didn’t care for it at the time, but he realized that maybe I might hurt myself, so

Bill Gasiamis (31:26)
Ha ha ha.

Cassie (31:35)
didn’t let me have my way on that.

Bill Gasiamis (31:38)
I’m gonna have to interrupt us again, my dad’s calling.

Cassie (31:41)
Okay.

Bill Gasiamis (31:44)
I don’t like cancelling appointments when we’ve made a a appointment for a podcast. So anyhow I’ll get this

Dissociation and Identity Post-Stroke

Bill Gasiamis (32:03)
to that.

Bill Gasiamis (32:12)
Is

He’s just went in for a little procedure where they injected some cortisol into his back ’cause he’s got some pain. And they put him under so they need him to be picked up. And he’s getting picked up, but he just doesn’t know it and w now

we’re going backwards and forwards between

between us and the nurses, but I did tell

him and he does know but he’s eighty two and he doesn’t listen. If he rings back I’ll just interrupt us again. I’m so sorry.

Cassie (32:46)
No, it’s fine.

Bill Gasiamis (32:49)
so

Your

time in

hospital other than being scolded. How do you come to terms with what has happened? Do you come to terms with it? Are you thinking about what this means for you now?

Cassie (33:06)
Not once. It didn’t even cross my mind. My world like when I look back on it, like my world shrank just to like the hospital bed in the room that I was in. And it just that was the only thing that existed. I didn’t think about, well, how is this gonna impact me long term? Am I gonna be able to go back to work? Like they gave me they told me I couldn’t go back for four months. But I actually tried to go back to work. I was

Bill Gasiamis (33:19)
at work,

Cassie (33:34)
working overtime, I was also working at a different

location, doing like some overnight shifts. And the day after my stroke I tried to go to work. I was going to just go

and not tell anybody and then come back. But they found out my mom was there. She found out. She’s like, Cassie, you can’t you can’t go. You can’t work. You can’t even walk. And I was like, I mostly would just sit at a desk. It should be fine. I’m sure it will be fine. That was kind of my

motto the entire time, like,

it’s fine, it’s gonna be fine, even though it clearly, you know, wasn’t fine.

Bill Gasiamis (34:09)
just there was that stroke

brain? N like normal Cassie wouldn’t do that. You would know not to do that normally,

would wouldn’t you? Like somebody is unwell, that’s not what we do when we’re unwell. Or was it just

Cassie (34:21)
I don’t

Bill Gasiamis (34:21)
the stroke playing up on you?

Cassie (34:24)
So it’s both. Like I didn’t feel unwell for one

thing. Like I felt or I thought that I was normal. I thought I was still myself then. But then with right brain stroke especially, there’s I forget the word for it, but you become overconfident in your abilities and you think

that you can do things that you can’t do. And so

Bill Gasiamis (34:47)
Wow.

Cassie (34:47)
that was a part of it too. I do you know the word for that?

Bill Gasiamis (34:51)
I don’t.

Cassie (34:52)
There’s like a very specific word for it. It also happens to people with severe mental illness where they think that they’re okay when they’re not. But it’s specific to right

brainstroke. And so I thought it was fine. And then also like me, I’m pretty stubborn and think

Bill Gasiamis (35:06)
Yeah.

Cassie (35:13)
I know better than doctors. So there was that too.

Bill Gasiamis (35:20)
I’m gonna check what it is. I wonder if I can ask Chat GPT what it is, w what is it when somebody’s overconfident after a brain injury or a

stroke, right? Is that’s kind of what the search will be. Let’s see what

Cassie (35:32)
Probably starts

with an A.

Bill Gasiamis (35:36)
wonder what Chat GPT’s got to say about it. Yeah.

Cassie (35:39)
But it’s being completely unaware of your

Bill Gasiamis (35:44)
Anosognosia. Anosognosia. It’s a Greek word by the sound of it. from my background. And it is the

Cassie (35:45)
That sounds familiar.

Bill Gasiamis (36:00)
Anosognosia is impaired awareness of one’s neurological deficits following brain injury or a stroke. A person may genuinely not recognize or may substantially underestimate.

their problems with movement, cognition, communication, behavior, or other abilities. Does that sound like it was your thing? Yeah, wow.

Cassie (36:19)
That’s exactly what it was. And

But then that kind of like followed me after

my stroke. Like I was like, wait a minute, am I completely like disabled and I just have no idea? Like so that was difficult. That piece of it, like where I felt like I was doing okay. I mean I was walking and talking still, you know, after my stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (36:37)
Mm-hmm.

See?

So you have cognitive awareness of the deficit, but yet the deficit still plays out. This overconfidence

in your ability still played out, but you’re still kind of have awareness of it somehow.

Cassie (37:06)
Yeah, but I don’t know like to this day, like I don’t know, maybe I was completely not functioning at all and I have a memory that I was, who knows. It’s really weird, it kinda messes with your head.

Bill Gasiamis (37:18)
Yeah. How we it is it’s so weird. I know. I I remember being in all s sort of weird

out of brain spaces and experiences and trying to work out w is this actually happening or am I imagining this happening? Is this reality or is it a dream? Like what is it? had a lot of those moments and then people observing me doing that was the most interesting part ’cause then I had to explain to them what I

Cassie (37:35)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (37:47)
what I was ha happening to me and I was like I was unable to even you know verbalize that like how do I explain that to them when I don’t even know what’s going on. It was just really freaky. and then you ended up going home at some point

and what was that like? What was the transition from rehab and care like when you ended up home? How do you

manage that?

Life After Stroke: Adjusting to New Realities

Cassie (38:12)
It was really underwhelming. Like I had to

do training beforehand. They’re like, Okay, you have to learn how to get in and out of the shower and in and out of a car. So I had to do like training for that, which was silly because

Well, like I said, I thought I was functioning fine. But I’ve never fallen once, not once, which I think says that maybe I was functioning to

an extent. The physical disability was never really that big of an issue. It was more like the the cognitive stuff and then like the emotional piece. That was what was my big struggle. But yeah, they

I had to they had to put

me in a wheelchair to leave the hospital, even though I insisted I was fine. They were like, No, we don’t just let people get up and go, you have to do this. So they wheeled me out and my sister picked me up and took me home and that was it. And then I was home and I expected life to go back to normal, but it did not.

Like that was probably I guess being

home was like the wake up call when I was like, my life is gonna be different now. Very different.

Bill Gasiamis (39:25)
Yeah. Cybering.

Cassie (39:28)
Exactly.

Bill Gasiamis (39:30)
Hm. You weren’t working. Were you allowed to drive or go out and about were you up to that?

Cassie (39:36)
You know what? I was really, really, really tired for I’m still tired all the time, but like so I wasn’t like really up to doing anything. I wasn’t allowed to drive for six months, but I did. I got into an accident, I think, my first my first day behind the wheel. It was just a tiny little accident. I just tapped somebody’s bumper and they got very upset about it. They were overreacting, I think.

Bill Gasiamis (40:07)
People tend to do that with car.

Cassie (40:09)
They

do.

Bill Gasiamis (40:10)
Yeah. I don’t know why.

Cassie (40:12)
Yeah, she was upset.

Bill Gasiamis (40:14)
you wouldn’t it how how we act in a car when we’re in the car, when somebody

Cassie (40:21)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (40:22)
does something minor on the road, we would never act outside of the car in the real world in public when somebody crossed our

Cassie (40:29)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (40:30)
path or bumped into us or whatever. It’s just strange what happens when people get in a car. Yeah.

Cassie (40:34)
wild. Same thing online,

people act w in ways they never would in real life.

Bill Gasiamis (40:40)
Yeah, it’s a little bubble of false sort of bravado or security or something, I don’t know what,

and people just change their behavior. I’ve become aware of that recently and I’ve made a massive effort to not be that way. And I did a lot of work around actually not

reacting when I’m in the car to

Cassie (41:00)
That’s amazing.

Bill Gasiamis (41:01)
yeah, incidences that are so insignificant because every time you drive

there is an insignificant incident and if you’re just freaking out about it all the time, all you’re doing is making yourself unwell. It’s just another negative

Cassie (41:13)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (41:13)
thing that you do, right? So I’ve made a concerted

effort about a year ago to make sure that I do not react by yelling and screaming to people in a car when they’re just driving on the road. I’m doing exactly the same thing. I don’t know where I get off being the guy.

who thinks that my driving is so much better that that I I am if within my rights to be aggressive or act out or yelling or screaming at the person

in the other car who actually can’t hear me anyway and doesn’t even know what they did wrong.

Cassie (41:56)
That’s so one thing that like I could be a bit of a jerk before when driving. Not that anybody would know. I was just in my car yelling and cursing, but you know But since the stroke I’ve actually I have more patience because I’m much I’m slower and that’s just in like life in general, but also behind the wheel. I’m I’m much slower. And

Bill Gasiamis (42:07)
Yeah.

Cassie (42:21)
so then when somebody starts tailing me, I get super frustrated with it, but I’m like

when I think somebody’s going too slow, now I’m like, Well, there’s probably a reason for that so I can chill and just drive slow. I probably need to anyway. So

Bill Gasiamis (42:36)
awareness, yeah. Like it’s like maybe they’re recovering from something, maybe they’re just more careful. Maybe they have a you know, more more kind of anxiousness about them and they want to make sure that they’re paying more attention, you know, it’s

all all sorts of things going on. And judging people without having any idea was s so getting in the way of my just five minute trip down the road, you know, to pick up something. What’s the point of going for a drive and being angry for no reason? Like it’s ridiculous.

Cassie (43:05)
Yeah. The wild thing is is I had all these skills before my stroke. Like I could have I’m a therapist, you know. I understand these things. I empathize with people, but I would get so mad at other drivers. But now I

I’m just like, somebody they’re probably like me. And that’s in not just

in driving, in like all areas of my life. I’m more empathetic. I think I’m a better therapist in some ways. I’m not as

sharp as I was before, but I think I’m kinder.

Bill Gasiamis (43:40)
You have more insight.

Cassie (43:42)
More insight, yes, for sure.

Bill Gasiamis (43:43)
more life experience.

Cassie (43:47)
Yeah. Exactly.

Bill Gasiamis (43:50)
Yeah. so did you kind of find a way back to work? Are you working again?

Cassie (44:00)
I’m working I’m

working at a very different like paced job. I’m doing

intake assessments now, so it’s

Bill Gasiamis (44:08)
manage to deal with the deficits that it was causing before you went home?

Cassie (44:12)
I get more like FaceTime, which is nice, but it’s also it’s not a very challenging job. And before it was the work was very challenging. So it’s different pace of life. But I’m back to work. I’m working full time.

And then I see clients on the side and my and it’s not my practice, it’s a group practice, so private practice clients too.

Bill Gasiamis (44:36)
Sounds like it’s more alig aligned with the whole intention of becoming a counsellor, a therapist, like at the beginning.

Cassie (44:42)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (44:44)
Yeah. Less statistically based and more client focused.

Cassie (44:49)
Yeah.

I do miss the population ’cause like I really liked working with the inmates. But

Bill Gasiamis (44:55)
Yeah.

Cassie (44:56)
I just I wouldn’t go back into that environment.

Bill Gasiamis (45:00)
Yeah. E especially when you’re you know, the people you’re reporting to are also maybe, you know, a bit difficult to handle as well or highly, you know, tense or whatever. They’re we’ve got to also understand like they’re living in a environment where they’re working in a jail as well and God knows

Cassie (45:18)
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (45:19)
what they’re dealing with and putting up with as well and how they’re able to personally manage it. And if everyone’s kind of dysfunctional, you wanna not

Cassie (45:27)
Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (45:28)
be there, even though

that’s where people are needed, you need to kind of do your time and get out.

Cassie (45:35)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (45:36)
’cause ongoing dysfunction just becomes traumatic for everybody who’s involved, even though you’re going there to do good work, you’re coming out and then you’re not well, you’re not healthy, and it leads to illness and what’s the point of that? your website is cassiejewell.com and there’s a couple of things on there that you talk about and promote and

There’s a very cool photo of you on the home page. Like I love that photo. It’s

Cassie (46:03)
Hello, thanks.

Bill Gasiamis (46:05)
so cool. and it says Cassie Jewell is a counselor and an author exploring psychology of change, resilience, regret, and identity.

Cassie (46:14)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (46:15)
Change, resilience, regret, and identity. Huge.

Cassie (46:18)
That’s all from my stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (46:20)
Huge words. Okay. I was gonna ask you whether that may have been on there previously or whether that is the new thing that you’re interested in.

Cassie (46:28)
That is something I’ve definitely focused on more since the stroke, especially identity. because before I identified just completely like with my career, or more so with my job, not my career, but my job. But that I was just completely wrapped up in that. And now I’ve had to well, I went through I had another job

when I first started back to work, that didn’t work out. It’s ’cause I’m not as competent as I used to be. It’s really hard. I’m still dealing with that. But when you measure your self-worth in the things that you do, like in your career, and then all of a sudden you don’t have your career anymore, who are you? I had to figure that out. And I like who I am now. I think

Or I I don’t know if I’m the same person or if I’m a different person. It’s hard to gauge that. I think I it took me some time, but I think I finally just adjusted to who I am now and I’m choosing to like who I am now. I’m a

Bill Gasiamis (47:37)
Yeah.

Cassie (47:37)
different person, probably, but I’m the only you know, this brain is the only one I’ve got, so I might as well invest in it and like it. Don’t

Bill Gasiamis (47:47)
Yeah.

Cassie (47:48)
have any other choice.

Bill Gasiamis (47:50)
No. and yet i your

your identity, like do you i if I was to ask you what it is or how would you like what how do you identify? Like how can do you have a elevator pitch? Can you say that to to me now?

Cassie (48:10)
I do not

have an elevator pitch. I have no idea. I don’t know how to describe it. I just I know more what I’m not and I’m not driven by work. Like I value free time more in my personal life and my loved ones, my dogs. I don’t have kids, I have dogs. They’re my kids.

Bill Gasiamis (48:30)
Yeah.

Yep.

Cassie (48:34)
and like I would be okay if I didn’t have my career. I would still know who I was without my career. Where before I didn’t, and so losing that was like losing everything. That’s why the stroke hit so hard is because I lost I lost my career and myself at the same time, almost my life, but it was more the losing of like my identity and so

My new identity is part like having lost that I’m no longer that career woman that I was and then also who I am since the stroke. So

Bill Gasiamis (49:11)
Mm-hmm.

When I was younger, I didn’t have an opportunity to work out my identity. I just got stuck into the tasks that I needed to do.

Cassie (49:21)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (49:21)
To pay the bills, to feed the kids, to put through school, to pay the mortgage, to do all that stuff. And it was never a conversation like, how do I who am I, who do I identify as? Or if somebody asked me the question, I wouldn’t even know what it meant. Like they’d what are you talking about? Like, I just go to work and I do all these things.

You know, but beyond what you do, who are you? That’s such a bizarre thing to have to contemplate. I think that’s what I found difficult about it as well, was that not only did I lose all those things that I did who I thought I was, I actually didn’t have the vocabulary or the insight about the topic or anything. I had nothing. And I’m starting from completely scratch. And that would have been the hardest question in the world for somebody to ask.

Now I stumbled into identity loss and all that kind of stuff just by interviewing people and realizing that other people are going through that and they had a word for it. But before that, if I if I was asked, I wouldn’t have a clue how to begin a conversation with that. I wouldn’t be able to get off telling somebody that I was a business owner and I was a dad and it was all about other people.

Cassie (50:35)
Do you feel like

did it take you a long time to like yourself, like your new self after the stroke?

How Stroke Forced Me to Discover Who I Really Am

Bill Gasiamis (50:42)
A a few years, yeah. I think I realized

Cassie (50:44)
Few years.

Bill Gasiamis (50:45)
that so my whole thing started in twenty twelve and then out I was at home out of surgery in twenty in December twenty fourteen. And then I was at home alone from late December twenty fourteen for the first five or six months of the following year, twenty fifteen. Twenty fifteen, around twenty fifteen is when I started the podcast, but there was only a few episodes.

And they were intermittent and I wasn’t well. I had fatigue. I was dealing with and all the things. And then by around early 2016, maybe middle of the year, something like that, would have been the first time when I said, I think stroke was the best thing that happened to me. And and it you know what why I said that. It wasn’t because I I loved the experience of being unwell, nearly dying, brain surgery, all of that. It’s because I realized that I had grown as a person.

And that my identity had shifted from somebody who was caught up in all the labels and all of the what is it like all of the barriers that I put up in between, you know, from in my own way that I created in my own mind about myself. And then I realized I was on a podcast interview and I said that with the the person who I was interviewing. I think stroke’s the best thing that happened to me, and they said the same thing back. And then it’s like, wow, how did you get here?

And I realized how I got there was I how I was speaking on a stage, sharing information about stroke awareness. I was meeting stroke survivors who I really got along with and we understood each other and we were able to appreciate what what both of us had been through. I felt understood for the first time. you know, so I was doing all these things that were different that were actually bringing a different kind of joy into my life.

Cassie (52:36)
Yeah, fulfillment meaning.

Bill Gasiamis (52:37)
Yeah. Purpose,

meaning. And I never knew those things existed before that. I didn’t know that my purpose and meaning needed to be refined and it shouldn’t have been about making as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Because apparently my kids needed the new pair of sneakers or, you know, the new console or whatever it was that they needed. And I thought I should work harder to make possible for them. So yeah, it was

Cassie (53:08)
I think it kind

Bill Gasiamis (53:08)
Unbelievable.

Cassie (53:09)
of I’m thinking about it now, like it strips away everything else so you have nothing left but yourself and you have to take a look at yourself and then that’s when you can really decide who am I and am I gonna choose to like this person? And you can also choose what your new identity is gonna be. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (53:28)
That’s the best part about it. Choice.

I never had that before. Well, I did, but I didn’t think I did.

Cassie (53:35)
Right.

Bill Gasiamis (53:36)
I did what my parents told me to do. I did what other people told me to do. I never did what I wanted to do. I was always doing stuff that I’d been trained my entire life to do. You know, you go to school, d do X amount of hours Monday to Friday for your primary years and then your secondary years doing a certain amount of hours. 13 years later, you’re spat out. And it’s like, okay, what else do you guys want me to do?

Okay, I’ll just do that. And I envy

Maybe envy’s not the word ’cause it’s a little bit harsh, but I I kind of I maybe it is envy and jealousy. Like of people who were twenty or eighteen or nineteen and knew what they wanted to do somehow. And they just went and did it. Now I know they’ve got their own issues and they’re probably struggling in other ways. Yeah. Maybe maybe.

Cassie (54:20)
They probably didn’t know. I don’t think anybody does.

I think you have to have something like a stroke happen to you to really know what you want and to be able to have this different perspective on life. So I get how like it can be it can be the worst thing that’s happened to you and the best thing that’s happened to you at the same time because it’s not about the stroke. It’s about okay, what am I gonna choose to do now? And you can do anything.

Bill Gasiamis (54:48)
Yeah. And that was

Cassie (54:49)
And that’s amazing.

Bill Gasiamis (54:51)
such a gift.

Cassie (54:52)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (54:53)
And it came from this

Crappy path, like whatever. Like such a massive, difficult thing. I have a couple of people who I coach through stroke recovery and whatever. Like I I’m not not not in a doctor way, just like we talk about things that they perhaps don’t get to talk about with other people who are not stroke survivors, right? And one of the things that really happened to me recently was the person who I’m coaching at the moment just came on on board, signed up, and their first session.

The person’s still in rehab. And they’re very emotional and it’s very challenging and very difficult. And it’s so fresh between having gone from their regular life to what their life looks like now.

Cassie (55:37)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (55:38)
And that was in my mind a little bit triggering in that, I had forgotten that feeling. Now I remember what that was like. And then it’s trying to keep somebody in a space of remain calm, you know, be

What Bruce Lee used to say, you know, be the boat on the wave, you know, like just go with the flow and all that kind of stuff. And it’s the time to practice all those things, but it’s also the most difficult time to practice all those things because you’ve had a stroke and your brain is not working optimally and you know, there’s yeah.

Cassie (56:12)
It’s so traumatic and like it’s great too.

Bill Gasiamis (56:15)
It’s traumatic, it’s grief, it’s identity, it’s loss, it’s everything all together, all in one lump sum. And then I’m thinking, okay.

What I know about this person is that it will be better in twelve months time, but how do I how do I impart that s that knowledge, that feeling, that state now onto that person then I can’t. Like they have to go through the next twelve month journey to get there themselves. And maybe all I can do is just plant a seed just to say, look, it might be all right in in twelve months. I don’t know what all right means, but it might be all right.

Hard, difficult, challenging, all those things, but still okay, you know.

It’s fascinating complex topic to wrap your head around and talk about and investigate it. I’ve been doing it for more than four hundred interviews and it’s I’m still not there. I don’t think I’ll ever get there. And conversations like this with you kind of make

just, you know, like they just get me going. They they I just love it because again, you know, here we’ve never I’ve I’d never contemplated stuff like this before. It was out of sight, out of mind. And I think I wasn’t I’m richer for it now where I wasn’t before.

Cassie (57:31)
Yeah,

I like that word. You said richer.

Bill Gasiamis (57:34)
Yeah.

So how do you see the next few months happening for you now? How do you see them kind of how do you see yourself moving through the next few months and evolving?

Cassie (57:47)
I

same way that I’ve been going, it’s just moving forward and

all you can do. And some days suck. And some days there’s like a whole new thing that happens that I was like that I’m like, how is this happening to me? I never experienced this before. I don’t know, I just live my life.

Bill Gasiamis (58:10)
That’s all you can

Cassie (58:10)
But I

Bill Gasiamis (58:11)
do.

Cassie (58:12)
I do think about things a lot more than I used to.

Bill Gasiamis (58:15)
In a contemplative type

Cassie (58:15)
And how.

Bill Gasiamis (58:16)
of way.

Cassie (58:17)
Hmm. There’s a really cool book that I’m reading. It’s called

It’s something about time management for mortals or something like that, but it the concept is about like time management, but it’s not what we think it is. It’s not about like managing your time to be more productive. It’s about living your life to the fullest and how do you want to do that and how can you do that? Have you heard of the book? It’s

Bill Gasiamis (58:41)
I haven’t, but it sounds like a great book.

Cassie (58:44)
four I think it’s called four thousand weeks or two thousand weeks. ‘Cause we live

Bill Gasiamis (58:48)
okay.

Cassie (58:49)
we only live for X amount of weeks and it’s either four thousand or two thousand one of those.

Bill Gasiamis (58:56)
I’m gonna check it up while we’re here as well. So we can let people know who are listening in case they’re interested. So

Cassie (59:03)
And I’ve only gotten into the first couple of chapters, so hopefully it’s a good book actually.

But so far so good.

Bill Gasiamis (59:10)
It’s amazing how

Yeah, four thousand weeks, time management by mortals by Oliver Berkman. Okay.

Cassie (59:17)
Yeah. So if you live to

be eighty, you only have that many weeks in your life to to live. So how do you want to live them, you know? And

Bill Gasiamis (59:27)
Yeah.

Cassie (59:27)
that’s something that us anybody who survived a stroke ha already thinks that way ’cause you’re like, I you know, I may not have that many left. Who knows? I barely got this many and I’m lucky to have had this many and how do I want to live my next week and my next week? I want to travel as much as possible.

There are a hundred and ninety five countries in the world and I wanna travel to all of them before I die. So

Bill Gasiamis (59:53)
That’s great thing to aim for. How many have you been to so far?

Cassie (59:58)
Just thirty five.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:00)
Just thirty five.

Cassie (1:00:01)
Most Americans have only been a lot of Americans haven’t even left the country. But it’s I’ve traveled more than most Americans at least.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:13)
Yeah, thirty five countries, that’s a lot of places. You’ve done well to squeeze in thirty five. I don’t think I’ve been beyond maybe five or six and it’s not a competition, but I never thought about it the way that you think about it, you know.

Cassie (1:00:28)
It’s kind of like a personal bucket list.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:31)
Mm.

Cassie (1:00:32)
And I love it too. I love traveling. I love everything about

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:36)
Does

Cassie (1:00:36)
it.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:37)
does your partner like travelling with you?

Cassie (1:00:41)
He does. He’s

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:42)
Yeah, that’s cool.

Cassie (1:00:43)
not as obsessed as I am with travel, but he loves it.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:47)
Yeah. So does he let you organize it all and then it just he tag along?

Cassie (1:00:52)
Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:54)
That’s the best. That’s the best kind of partner. w this is where we’re going next year. Okay, cool. Organise it and I’ll be there. I’d love that.

Cassie (1:01:02)
Yeah. And I

love to plan things and he loves to show up for things, so it works perfectly.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:09)
That’s awesome. And the dogs, what about the dogs? Who cares for them when you guys are gone?

Cassie (1:01:13)
My friend’s niece will come and stay at the house and take care of them.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:18)
brilliant.

Cassie (1:01:19)
Mm-hmm. So they’re in good hands.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:21)
That sounds like

that sounds like the perfect plan. Cassie, I really appreciate you reaching out and sharing your story on the podcast. I think it’s very important that stroke survivors do that. A share their story for themselves, like there’s a lot to gain, but also your insights from a stroke survivor and a psychological perspective, just because of the work that you did is really unique and it’s cool to hear. And

This is gonna sound weird, but I love that I have a person who’s a therapist, psychologist on the podcast.

Cassie (1:01:56)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:57)
I I know that the only way for them to get here is to have a stroke and to talk about their experience

Cassie (1:02:01)
Ha ha.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:02)
and that’s not the part that I love, but I love that you’re on here and that we had that conversation, that we shared it and hopefully people get a lot out of it.

Cassie (1:02:09)
Hopefully.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:11)
Thanks for joining me.

Cassie (1:02:12)
Thank you.

The Dual Nature of Stroke Experiences

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:14)
Well, that’s it for another episode of the Recovery After Stroke Podcast. A massive thank you to Cassie for joining me on the show and sharing the hardest weeks of her life and for bringing a therapist’s insight into a survivor’s experience. The line I keep coming back to is a stroke can be the worst thing and the best thing at the same time. Because it’s not about the stroke, it’s about what you choose to do next. You can find Cassie at Cassie Jewell.com.

And if identity after stroke is something you’re working through, go back and listen to my conversation with Adam Wolfers, who describes the same collision between who he was and who he is now.

Picture one person in your life who has lost a part of themselves recently through a stroke, a job, or anything else, and send them this episode today. If you want to explore your own path to post-traumatic growth after stroke, grab a copy of my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened. It is available at recovery after stroke.com/slash book.

and if you’re working out who you are after a stroke and you’d like someone in your corner, I offer one-on-one coaching built on my own lived experience. It isn’t therapy or medical treatment; it’s support from someone who has been there. Find out more at recoveryafterstroke.com/momentum. I’m Bill Gasiamis.

Remember to be kind to the person you’re becoming, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

 

The post Losing My Career and Myself, Then Choosing Who I’d Be – Cassie Jewell appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.