This is personal.
Lindsay’s Story
Past
I’ve always been a nerd — bright, curious, usually found outdoors and barefoot.
But when I turned 11, my world started closing in on me. My curiosity was sapped. Afterschool activities and playdates became moments of panic, where I tried to hurt myself rather than go out. I spent most of my time alone in my room, binging and restricting food, pacing around in circles, imagining more and more elaborate fantasies of my future — withdrawn from the world.
At 14 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. That began a long series of different doctors, meds, diagnoses, and hospitalizations. I graduated from Yale by the skin of my teeth, and went into finance where I became increasingly suicidal, quitting job after job, till I stopped trying to work or leave my room. By the time I hit 24, my doctor told me that we’d tried everything, and I was unlikely to ever recover.
Luckily, I’m stubborn as hell. I went to one more hospital — and was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. After 11 months in a specialized treatment program called the Gunderson Residence, my life started to open up slightly, and then rapidly.
6 months after leaving the Gunderson Residence, I was COO of a successful start up. From there, I went on to get my MBA and then tried my hand once again at the industry I considered my kryptonite — finance.
My first year performance review stated how calm, consistent and hardworking I was. Not only that, but my ability to handle stress allowed me to be an emotional support to others during challenging times. It was then that I knew that I had won my battle with mental illness.
Sure I was proud, but I was also so angry. Had I believed every other doctor, not only would I not have beat mental illness, I probably wouldn’t be here at all.
There must be a better way.
Creating Personily
We started Tetricus Labs — Personily’s parent company — with the belief that advances in neuroscience should allow us to understand the nuances of brain and personality function in a quantitative way. If we can quantify the differences between individual’s personalities and ways of responding to treatments, we can then use machine learning to recommend effective treatments on an individual basis. This is the vision behind Tetricus.
But as I dove into the challenge of that work, it became clear that the quality of the treatment I received at the Gunderson Residence is only available at a few, exclusive spots around the world. What’s the point of recommending treatments that, basically, don’t exist?
I reached out to Dr. Lois Choi-Kain — the Founding Director of the Gunderson Residence — to try to find a solution for quality care at scale. There’s no one I trust more to build solutions in mental health than the woman who built the solution for my own struggle. Turns out, she too was passionate about creating high quality, scalable interventions, and so Personily was born!
Defining Principle
The most important factor in my recovery was developing a sense of agency. During the 10 years before my accurate diagnosis, I was prescribed medication after medication. Each time, I’d fill my prescription, and then go back home, take the meds, and lie on the couch waiting for the meds to kick in and my life to suddenly start to build itself.
Each time, I was disheartened when, long after the meds were meant to be working, I still woke up to the same life I had before — my relationships were still a mess, I was still not as good at work as I expected to be — the crushing weight of my failures couldn’t be magically erased by medication.
What Lois and the Gunderson Residence hammered into me was agency: to stop being a passive observer in my life; instead to take the tools I had and start using them, despite how painful it was. Over time, with practice and experience, the pain lessened, my mastery grew, and life became easier.
Agency is the core principle behind the Personily platform. Giving you the tools to build your life; letting you drive the car; you are the captain now… The standard of care for most personality function issues is to target building a robust sense of self that’s effective in the world.
Personily aims to give you the information, tools and community to empower you to do just that. The more you do for yourself on our platform, the more opportunity, connection and support you unlock. I would call it the harder path, but from where I stand it seems like the only path to building true resilience.
Hope
Every few years — often when I find myself back near the Gunderson Residence for some reason — I’ll pause and try to remember what it was like to be me before treatment.
The first year out, I was astonished at just how hard things still were for me. I wasn’t “acting out” in the same ways, but I was still full of panic, anger, constant mood swings — I was teetering on the edge, terrified that I could slip backwards at any minute.
Two years out, I noticed that certain things — like getting out of bed and going to work — had become surprisingly easier for me. Where before it took every ounce of energy I had to show up, now I trusted that it would happen.
Five years out, I went into finance, and finally felt a sense of mastery over myself — I found a capacity for work, for navigating social situations, that I never dreamed of. I wasn’t just “OK for a psych patient.” I was “OK.”
Now when I go visit Lois at McLean, I try to recall my mental state when I was hospitalized. I’ll admit its getting harder and harder to recognize that Lindsay from before in the person I am now. It feels almost like a different person. A lifetime ago.
I’ve littered this website with my own personal pictures. In part because that’s what I have license to use…but in part because in looking at those pictures, I’m reminded of the life I’ve been able to build. It was a life that felt literally unimaginable ten years ago. I still feel all the feels — deeply and intensely — and life is still a b*tch. But I trust myself to handle the challenges, not crumble at them, and to find joy on the other side.
Personily is dedicated to that. To finding a way to deliver that sense of resilience to everyone who wants to work for it. I promise you, it’s worth it.
