We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kaia Shea a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kaia, we are so appreciative of you taking the time to open up about the extremely important, albeit personal, topic of mental health. Can you talk to us about your journey and how you were able to overcome the challenges related to mental issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
You never really overcome the challenges related to mental health issues. You learn to live with them. You learn to understand them. You learn how to treat them and then other times you learn how to ride the waves until it has passed.
I have bipolar one, I have BPD or borderline personality disorder, I have PTSD, and I am ADHD. Most of the time I persist with these issues by forcing myself to get up and do what needs to be done. I remind myself of my dream and why I’m doing all of this. However, there are times where these issues win and I don’t go to a photo shoot, fashion show, or other events. Or I don’t post on social media, the way that we have to in order to remain relevant.
For normal models/influencers/artists it is extremely exhausting and is a full-time job itself to keep up with a social media presence. Then when you add mental health issues on top of it, it’s even harder. This is the part of the job that people don’t see or understand and it makes our jobs incredibly hard. This is especially hard when our art isn’t paying the bills so we also have to work a full-time job on top of trying to continue after our goals & dreams. The algorithms also make it extremely hard, because if we’re not constantly posting at the very very least once a day, we go down in the algorithm. Yes, we can monetize our pages as much as we want but there are goals that have to be met. We don’t get paid a lot and the ones who are making a lot of money on it have struggled to get to where they are today. And they became very savvy in how to manage everything and see what’s trending and what’s not and to find out what’s working and what’s not. Also the people really making money at that is their full-time job. You will have to have some financial cushion in order to make social media a full-time job. Especially in today’s economy most of us don’t have that. And then you have to look at personal tragedies. There are those of us who have mental issues already who get depressed and it makes it extremely hard to constantly post, but then a personal tragedy happens, and it’s pretty much impossible for us to post, and because of the way society is we take a break from this and we have to build ourselves all the way back up from the beginning.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I Model, dance, sing, and write poetry. What I feel is most exciting about what I do is never knowing what kind of events are going to be happening in the next month! There could be photo shoots fashion shows someone can need a dancer for fashion show or for music video. Someone could be looking for a vocalist to put on a song with them, Granted I haven’t gotten into that as much as I have wanted to for one reason or another.
Another thing that is equally as exciting is at any of these events, especially big events. You never know who you are going to meet. I am a natural worker. I am able to see where a professional relationship has the possibility to end up, It’s all about networking and collaboration.
What I feel is special about what I do is that there is always someone you are giving an outlet to. The arts is a way of expressing yourself without speaking. I love to be able to bring out emotion in my audience whether it’s through a photo, or through a dance, I’m performing, through my voice and the emotion in it when I am singing, or through written word in my poems.
I also think it is so special to show people that anyone can do something, anything, if they want it bad enough. It’s a lot of hard work and you will get rejections. You have to overcome And continue on past those rejections, past the haters, the people who tell you is a pipe dream. If you want it bad enough, you will put all you have into it. They don’t call us starving artist for nothing. It’s not enough to just want it for the fame or the money or the recognition you have to actually be passionate about it. If succeeding in this line of work were just about money for everyone no one would make it. You have to be passionate about what you do.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Three qualities or skills that were Most impactful on my journey were networking, being outgoing, and determination Or (Stubbornness). I was and still am constantly networking. Anytime I meet someone new, especially in the arts industry. I get a feel for who they are and what they do. I build a relationship and things take off from there whether it be Collabs or we tell each other what our main focuses are on and either one or both of us can either help or connect one another with someone we know that can help.
I got into modeling through my dancing and extra work by networking. I was and still am very outgoing, any type of work that had anything to do with my specialties were fair game. It didn’t matter whether these jobs were with the people I was already working with or if it was something posted on Facebook ( However, these days you have to be more careful Eyes there are way more scammers now than before and obviously you always want to do your due diligence before just randomly meeting with somebody you don’t know). Nothing was off-limits, I am a dancer who wanted to dance and music videos. I saw a post looking for music video extras, and even though it wasn’t dancing, it did get my foot in the door. This also allowed me to be able to do extra work in indie films as well. My determination or stubbornness has been extremely impactful as well. I keep going no matter how many knows I hear or what haters have to say. Determination is key. My advice would be to never let the naysayers win or deter you from your dreams. There’s a couple of sayings that we use in the industry and really any successful person has either heard or said, if you have haters, you must be doing something right and if you have haters, that means you’ve made it. Know it can be hard, but when someone has Hayden, take a step back from the hurt or embarrassment or whatever you are feeling at that moment and ask yourself“OK but where are they?” People throw shade to deflect attention away from themselves.
Yeah I might not have kids or a husband or make a lot of money like some of my family members, but when one was throwing shade not only did I ask myself internally this question but then I responded with, “well, how many magazines have you been in? Did you ever walk for New York fashion week in the middle of time Square?“
Also, even if an opportunity becomes available, that is not exactly what you want to do (direction wise).LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE!!!! I cannot stress that enough. Doing things that might not be in the plan might help you make connections that will lead you to what you want to do. However, I do want to clarify that I only mean this when we’re talking about direction so for example, I never really wanted to do extra work but doing extra work is what got me to the right people to do modeling. I’m not talking about anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. If you have an opportunity to do something, but it makes you uncomfortable. Don’t sacrifice that because you think it’s gonna get you to where you wanna be always listen to your instincts.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Right now the biggest challenge I am facing is my mental health. I am bipolar along with PTSD, ADHD, and BPD. Due to these disorders, the challenge I face most is depression, which has only been enhanced by the passing of my father late Last September 2023. And since then my life has pretty much fallen apart. This makes it incredibly hard to keep doing all the things I do and making all the moves. I need to make. My ambition has taken ahead, I am constantly exhausted.(Due to the depression), And it’s hard to find the joy in life again.
Right now, I am taking it day by day. However, somethings I am doing to overcome this challenge are forcing myself to go to events i.e. photo shoots, fashion shows, networking events, etc. Trying to mentally and emotionally prepare to be around a lot of people before going to an event, and on the days where I can’t motivate myself to go no matter how hard I try, I end up, beating myself up and being hard on myself. So I call my mom and my best friend to talk it out. They end up, reassuring me that it’s , OK to take time for myself and that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. That being said sometimes it’s reassuring because it’s true. We all do need to take time for ourselves to make sure that we are emotionally and mentally OK. However, other times I have to face the reality, and the reality for those of us in this industry along with influencers and honestly anyone else who needs a social media presence. And that reality is that if we don’t remain diligent, then we will become irrelevant.
This brings me to a big issue that I feel needs to be talked about more as I stated in this industry, there are models, Brandon, ambassadors, influencers, etc. and we all need a social media presence in order to remain relevant. To give a short breakdown of what that looks like we all know influencers we all have some of our favorite influencers. They are posting anywhere from 2 to 3 times a day every day. Now that might only look like a 20 second video to our audience so our audience and society will look at it and let’s say it’s three times a day and each of them are 2 second videos. They see it as OK so it’s only a minute out of their day right? Wrong! What our audience and what society doesn’t realize is that even though there’s a 22nd video or hell even if it’s just a photo it can take us anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours to post one post on one social media platform. Then you have to think there are a lot of us who are posting the exact same post on all social media platforms, but that’s because we spend so much time on that one 20 second video because we have to get a trending song to go with it. We have to make sure that the hashtags are trending # we have to make sure that we’re tagging the right people in order to get our video scene by the most people. It’s a full-time job in itself and a lot of us don’t make the money that the big big influencers are making, but not only that I am also learning that each platform has different algorithms so tags and certain posts that would be trending are different on each platform. Then there’s the algorithms again different on each platform and it’s always changing which means that we have to figure out what’s trending and how the algorithm is working in order to maintain what we’re doing and what works. it’s exhausting.
This is exhausting To a person who is just having a normal life, but then let’s talk about a few things here so influencers models anyone having to have a social media presents who has a mental or emotional disability or even one who doesn’t have that, but has a tragedy happen. Even if I didn’t have the disabilities that I have I had a huge tragedy happen. My father passed away. He was my best friend. He was my superhero. He was the person that I felt the safest around. He was the one person who understood me more than anybody else could because we are almost the same person only different genders. When my father died, a huge part of me died with him. Of course anybody who is dealing with that whether they have a mental or emotional disability or not that’s going to affect them. There is no way that anybody can post once a day let alone multiple times a day in that kind of situation.
People look at us and think our lives are so glamorous but at the end of the day, we are all human. We are all living the human experience. That being said we’re not perfect. Our lives aren’t “glamorous“ we may be able to do things that others don’t, but that doesn’t mean that we’re robots we suffer through the same things that “normal“ people suffer through. However, this day age, we have to have a social media presence and we have to post at least once every single day if we don’t we become irrelevant, and if you’re independent like I am , and that means not with an agency social media is how we get our jobs how we get gigs. The other way that we do that is by going out in networking. Both of those things require Us to be able to be in front of people or be in front of a camera and post or have a conversation with somebody. And during these times that can be just too much for us to handle.
The last thing I will say about this is that people are audience. Society likes the idea of authentic models influencers anyone with a social media presence authentic means being themselves, and showing every day lives and connecting and relating with them however, the reason our lives seem so “glamorous“ is because those of us who have tried to be authentic with our audience, unless it’s happy or something extravagant they’re not interested. As I’ve said earlier in this interview, I am a very expressive person and I’m very authentic so when I need to let something out, I let it out. My father‘s death has not been easy on me and even before that I get depressed And I post Sometimes dark or depressing things and I noticed a decline in my numbers and not only is there a decline in my numbers, but I’m also lower on the algorithm because no one wants to see someone who’s depressed but then what about authenticity? You can’t say you want authentic and then when we are authentic and it’s sad, you don’t wanna see it.
So right now, depression is the biggest challenge that I am facing. But it’s not just about that challenge. It’s much bigger than just what I’m dealing with. It’s what all influencers all models. Anyone who needs a social media presence is dealing with. There needs to be major change and what is expected from us in the industry. And what I’m doing to rectify, the situation is trying to bring awareness to it and part of how I am doing that is by talking about this in this interview. Hopefully this will be seen by a lot of eyes and it can start to change. Just because we’re highly known whether it be just locally or in a Hollywood type of way because people in Hollywood deal with it too. Either way just because we’re highly known doesn’t make us super human we all bleed the same. We are all human. We all deal with our battles and asking us to always be on top of our game and always be happy and always give the audience what they want. It’s just not humanly possible , we do try and we succeed a lot but our success our relevance shouldn’t depend solely on our social media presence.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @kaia_shea_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaytlin.mclaughlin?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/kaytlin-mclaughlin-233944119
- Twitter: @DevinaDevi83
- Other: Email: kmclau16@gmail.com
OF: https://onlyfans.com/devinadivine
Image Credits
Anjum Chaudhary
Mark Nowicki
Jaden Lane
Lifescenesphotography
Carlos Arturo Velarde
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