Depression, Connection, and the Strength to Stay Open
Depression rarely arrives in a single moment. It builds quietly, shifts shape, and follows us through different seasons of life. In this episode of TURTZED, Casey Rieger opened up about her lifelong relationship with depression and the work she is doing to understand it with more honesty and compassion.
When You Feel It Before You Have Words For It
For Casey, the first signs showed up in high school. After her first heartbreak, she found herself sleeping for hours after school, retreating from the world without fully understanding why. She kept moving through sports, activities, friendships, but something inside her felt heavy and unshakable. It would take years before she realized these feelings were more than teenage sadness. They were the early shape of a depression she had carried far longer than she knew.
The Mask That Makes You Hard to See
In college and beyond, Casey built a life that looked bright from the outside. Prestigious internships, friendships, big experiences, constant movement. Yet underneath it all, she felt flat, disconnected, stuck on a low emotional baseline no accomplishment could lift.
She became exceptional at first impressions: warm, funny, engaging, but mastered the art of pulling back before anyone could see the deeper parts of her. It protected her, but it also isolated her. And the more she hid, the heavier the emotions became.
Letting People In, One Conversation at a Time
As she got older, something shifted. A breakup cracked open the version of herself she had carefully kept guarded, and she began letting friends see the parts of her she once believed were too much. To her surprise, they didn’t run. They stayed. They listened. One friend even walked her through getting out the door for some sunlight, staying on the phone until she stepped outside.
For the first time, she realized people could hold space for her if she let them. And that her emotions, even the darkest ones, weren’t a burden. They were human.
Learning a New Way to Love Yourself
Therapy helped Casey name what she had felt since childhood. Those big emotions she used to hide weren’t weaknesses. They were unmet needs. They were pieces of her that had been shamed, dismissed, or pushed down for so long that she learned to fear showing them at all.
Her work now is simple and difficult at the same time. To stop shrinking. To stop hiding. To believe that the 95 percent of her that is light, joy, humor, empathy counts just as much as the 5 percent that feels heavy.
What Casey Wants You to Know
Have empathy.
Life is never just black or white.
People carry more than they say.
And you deserve the same compassion you give to others.
As she put it, “Nobody is thinking about you as much as you think they are.” There is freedom in remembering that. Freedom to try. Freedom to share. Freedom to exist without the constant fear of judgment.
And for anyone living inside their own gray space, may her story remind you of this:
You are not broken.
You are not a burden.
And you are allowed to let people stay.
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