The conversation around reality TV and mental health has grown since Kelly Chase filmed Love Is Blind season 1 in 2018.
But when she left the show, Chase tells PEOPLE her mental health was “not in a good place.”
“You’re in such a confined container for eight weeks and you get to know someone so quickly, so you get to know so many people on such an intense deep level in such a short period of time, and then it’s just gone,” Chase said at the Wildly Better Well-Being event in N.Y.C. celebrating the launch of Roxanne Kaiser’s Proxy gummies on June 21. “Everything’s gone, and you’re like, ‘What do I do with my life right now?’”
Chase ended up hiring a mindset coach “because I recognized I was depressed,” she said. “She brought to light a lot of the things I was struggling with. Although I totally sought her out for something totally different, but she was like, ‘We need to address this.’”
While speaking on a panel with health professionals and other Netflix stars at the Wildly Better Well-Being event, Chase shared that she and her coach “addressed everything from the show,” which “was very traumatic.”
“I was running my own health coaching company at the time,” Chase said. “I wasn’t in a good place to show up for clients, so I felt like my business was failing.”
The reality star revealed that she “finally felt more like myself” only within the last six months.
“It’s been hard,” Chase admitted. “But meeting people, the opportunities, it’s been a blessing. So, I say that it was such a great experience and I don’t regret saying ‘yes’ to being a part of it.”
Part of the challenge for Chase came from the influx of social media followers she received after Love Is Blind season 1 — in which she turned down her fiancé Kenny Barnes at the altar — aired in February 2020.
“I use the expression self-abandonment,” Chase told PEOPLE. “I’m a recovering people pleaser, and I know that I was just doing what I felt like my audience wanted versus just showing up 100% authentically as I am. Or I would see maybe one other castmate create some type of content, and I was like, ‘Oh, they got like a gazillion likes. I’ll create something similar.’ Not that I’m different online, but there was something off.”
It also didn’t help that Chase would wake up to watch new episodes of her season at 3 a.m. as soon as they aired.
“So, of course, I’m sleep-deprived now,” she said. “I just remember sitting on the couch being so emotional and crying.”
Along with her mindset coach, Chase leaned on her castmates for support when the show aired. The ChaseLife with Kelly podcast host remains in touch with season 1 alums Jessica Batten, Giannina Gibelli, Lauren “LC” Chamblin and Damian Powers, and connected with season 3’s Nancy Rodriguez and season 5’s Stacy Snyder when they joined the franchise.
“Definitely season 2 and 3, I reached out to the cast to be like, ‘Just offering my hand. If you need me, I’m here if you want to talk about anything. I know what you’re maybe going to go through if you have any questions,’” Chase said. “Because I didn’t have that support and because their friends don’t know unless they’ve done reality TV.”
Despite a challenging mental health journey that followed her time on Netflix, Chase said she’d return to reality TV if given the opportunity.
“When we were wrapping my last filming day, my producer was like, ‘Would you do this again?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely. If there was not a wedding at the end,’” she said. “If I could do it again, I would definitely do things differently. Honestly, put me on anything else. I don’t know if it’s the Leo in me, but I really like the spotlight. I’m not camera shy. And seeing the impact and the connection that you can create from it, I’m like, I want to do more.”