Kelly Chase Says She Hired a Mindset Coach After Love Is Blind Season 1 Because She Was ‘Not in a Good Place revealing how she felt which “was very traumatic.”

The reality star appeared on the inaugural season of the Netflix show, where she turned down fiancé Kenny Barnes at the altar

Kelly Chase appeared on season 1 of Love Is Blind, where she turned down fiancé Kenny Barnes at the altar.
The Netflix star tells PEOPLE that, after going on the show, she hired a mindset coach who “brought to light a lot of the things I was struggling with.”
Chase says she tried to serve as a resource for future Love Is Blind contestants and reached out to them to offer support.

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.”