Caasi O’Day on Being “Too Much,” Somatic Healing, and Treating the Clients Others Avoid

Licensed clinical social worker Caasi O’Day, founder of Las Vegas practice Polarized Parts, shares her path from being a “lost cause” teen in a small Iowa town—angry, self-harming, using drugs, and distrustful of therapy—to becoming a clinician known for radical honesty, dark humor, and working with clients often judged or labeled “treatment resistant.”

She explains why she centers nonjudgment, authenticity, and self-disclosure, and outlines DBT’s four modules (mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness) alongside internal family systems and somatic work. The conversation explores intimacy, attachment, rejection fears, her fast engagement and later divorce (requested June 2024), and her practic ...