ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Cassie Gipson’s passion for mental health started from her own experiences.,
“In high school, I started having panic attacks,” she said.
Gipson had a helpful and compassionate social worker helping her through the attacks.
“I would meet with her, and she’d talk me through it,” she said.
From there, Gipson’s interest in the field grew greatly.
“I thought that was really cool,” she said. “I thought her job was really intriguing, so I thought maybe I could be a social worker at a school. I always knew I wanted to help people. I was a stay at home mom for 16 years, so it didn’t come until later.”
Gipson initially got an associate’s degree in health care administration, as she thought this was the field she wanted as a career.
“I decided talking in front of people was not going to work for me,” she said.
Gipson would later receive a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Adams State University in Colorado.
Before this, though, she had worked at Head Start as a mental health specialist, where she would visit classrooms and assist teachers with children who had behavioral issues.
Now a therapist at Liberal’s Heartland’s Hope Mental Health Center, Gipson said both her schooling and life experience have helped with her work, but she feels she has learned most from her life experience, especially in doing her job.
The age range of Gipson’s clients at Heartland’s Hope goes from children as young as 4 to adults in their 80s, and she likewise treats many types of people and conditions.
“I do families, couples, kids, teenagers, adults and everyone in between. I work with everything from anxiety, personality disorder, trauma, coping skills,” she said.
Gipson said she does not think of her work as a job, and this shows the amount of passion she has for it.
“Yes I have to get paid, but I also feel it’s what I was supposed to do,” she said. “It’s my purpose, so even if I wasn’t getting paid, it’s what I would want to do.”
Gipson also uses several approaches with clients such as cognitive behavioral therapy, solution focused and acceptance commitment therapy. However, the simplest root of her work is being empathetic and connecting with people.
“Connecting with people and letting them feel seen and heard is where you can make a difference,” she said. “The clients can take that and apply it to their relationships. If they’re in an argument with somebody and they feel validated or seen, it’s going to make a difference. That’s why people continue to argue. They don’t feel they’re being heard.”
Gipson said her goals are simply to continue helping people, training and gaining more experience in her line of work.
“I feel over the last two years, I’ve gained a lot more experience and confidence and become more relaxed and found my groove, but my biggest thing is getting people support, letting them know they’re not alone in whatever they’re going through, helping them see there’s hope, they have worth, and they have value,” she said.
As for what she hopes clients get out of their sessions, Gipson said she simply wants people to feel mattered and that they are not alone.
“Even though sometimes it’s really hard and it doesn’t seem like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, they’re going to get through it, and they’re not alone,” she said. “They’re going to have someone walk with them side by side. They’re not going to have to try to navigate or figure them out themselves. They don’t have to take it on all at once. They can wake up and just take it day by day, a step at a time, and it’s okay to go at their pace. You’ve got to have trust and rapport.”
Traditionally, more attention has been paid to physical health than mental health, and even with mental health getting more attention in recent years, for Gipson, the two go hand in hand.
“They’re connected,” she said. “The mind, the body, the soul, all of it’s connected, so if you’re taking care of your mental health and your emotional health, a lot of times, your physical health is going to improve too.”
Gipson said by taking care of either mental or physical health first, the other is immediately taken care of, but still, patients cannot just focus on one of these aspects.
“You’ve got to do both at the same time,” she said. “It just overlaps, and they both start to improve.”
Gipson said both mental and physical health carry equal weight, and one is not necessarily more important than the other.
“It’s different, though, because if something’s physically going on with a person, you can see it,” she said. “People tend to be more understanding and empathetic, but if it’s something mental and you can’t see it, it doesn’t get the same kind of understanding and compassion.”
Gipson said she also does not feel people realize how much mental health affects physical health or how hard it can be to navigate mental health issues.
“Our body keeps score,” she said. “If we don’t process our trauma or stress, it affects our heart, our weight, our life expectancy.”
Gipson’s decision to come to Heartland’s Hope came as she was finishing her schooling when she met with CEO Dr. Tera Robinson.
“I met with a few places and decided to do my internship and practicum here, and she offered for me to stay on when I was done with school, which I was pretty excited about because this was the one I was hoping for,” Gipson said.
Gipson said she finds her work very rewarding.
“It is an honor to help people through the most vulnerable times of their life,” she said. “It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.”
Gipson said those going into the mental health field will work hard not to get burned out.
“You’re going to take on a lot day to day and hear some things and be empathetic, but not let it break you or take it home with you and weigh you down,” she said. “You’re going to have to be really good at self-care as well and setting boundaries, but by all means, do it because there are a lot of people who need help.”
Gipson too has seen the uptick in awareness and education about mental health, and she said people are not as afraid to talk about it as they used to be.
“I think why people are so afraid and there’s a stigma is because we’re afraid of what we don’t understand or what we can’t see,” she said.
Like other similar fields, Gipson said those in mental health have continuing education they are required to keep up with every year.
“If we want to get other trainings and certifications, we can also do those,” she said. “We’ll take courses. I’ve taken relationship courses, and right now, I’m taking a narcissistic abusive training to keep my license. We have ethics training. There’s a number of things we have to do to keep our license and renew it every two years.”
Gipson said there is nothing she would be rather doing with her life than her current career path.
“I don’t know what else I would be doing other than being a mom and raising my kids,” she said. “I love coming to work, and I love helping people. I like being here. All the people I work with are amazing. I love it, and that pretty much just sums it up.”
Gipson said she feels privileged to be able to help people, and she knows not everyone gets that opportunity.
“I don’t take it for granted that people are letting me do that with them,” she said. “They can choose anybody, and they talk about what they’ve never told anyone. It’s a privilege and an honor if you think about it. They’re trusting you, and that’s not to be taken lightly.”
