Kailyn Lowry Breaks Her Silence: “Teen Mom Never Showed the Real Me

Cameras captured everything, but it wasn't always exactly how it seemed, the podcaster tells PEOPLE

Kailyn Lowry's time on reality TV wasn't always smooth sailing.

In a recent conversation with PEOPLE, looking back at 15 years in the public eye after opening up her life to the world on 16 & Pregnant, Lowry explains there were "frustrations" in watching how her story was told.

Lowry noticed small errors in her episode of 16 & Pregnant that initially upset her.

"Isaac's name was spelled wrong, and when they put the lower thirds up and it said the timeframe, they were a little bit off. I remember being frustrated by that. Like, 'I just gave up my whole story. I filmed my entire pregnancy and some of the details were wrong,' " she shares.

"But it was kind of also nice to have some of the stuff documented, so I had something to look back on. And I still remember when we watched it, when it aired. Isaac was born in January of 2010, and then the episode didn't air until four months later. And I remember being like, 'Wow, is that me on TV? Is this national?' I don't think that it fully had sunk in yet."

Before Isaac's first birthday, Lowry had agreed to join the cast of Teen Mom 2. As the show started taking off, Lowry remembers feeling that she was "being pigeonholed."

"It was like if I specifically made a mistake, that would sort of become my storyline instead of it literally being a mistake. There were some frustrations," she admits.

"You have to remember that we were filming for weeks, and then it has to be edited down to just a few minutes. When it gets edited down, it's so that it makes sense and it's digestible for the viewers. Nobody really prepared us for that aspect of it, and that was really frustrating at times for sure."

Viewers of Teen Mom 2 have never been afraid to weigh in on choices, whether they come from production or the cast.

"When I was feeling like my full story wasn't being told in the most transparent way or full picture kind of way, I would pull back and not want to give certain things. It's like at the point that I'm giving it to you and it's not airing in the way that it should, then why share?"

"For example, I finally got my bachelor's degree, the only one on the entire franchise, and it played out over one minute. Out of 13 years, it played for one minute. So to me, it felt like a slap in the face," she says.

"Then there were other times where I was being so transparent and I noticed that somebody else was getting a more picture perfect edit. I think that that's not just a complaint amongst the viewers of the show, right? We felt it within a cast as well."

While Lowry didn't feel pressure to modify her behavior or lifestyle based on viewers' feedback, she did feel like she was trying to portray her story in a certain way that, over time, made less and less sense to keep up.

"I think closer to the time that I decided to leave the franchise, it was more of like, 'I am making very calculated decisions and sharing only certain things or making myself available at certain times for certain reasons.' It made it very difficult for production to create a full picture and full story for me on the show," she explains.

"At that point, it was like, 'If I have to think about how it's going to play out for the viewers and that is how people will perceive whatever it is that I'm going through or doing,' that was really, really hard for me. That was hard for me because I wasn't the same person that I was when I started, or even in the middle of the 13 years that I was on TV."

Still, there isn't any regret or bad blood between Lowry and the show or MTV. In fact, she made a recent cameo on Teen Mom: The Next Chapter as she worked with Catelynn Lowell Baltierra and Tyler Baltierra on getting their podcast off the ground.

"I actually loved going back in the capacity that I did this time, just for that quick cameo, because it wasn't about my story. It wasn't about me. I wasn't asked to share anything about myself. And so it was kind of nice to be back in the presence of everyone in production, because at the end of the day, I loved the crews that we worked with," she shares.

"But it was nice to not have something riding on my storytelling and what I'm willing to share. I had told Cate, I said, 'I'm here to help you if you need me to pop in, but if you don't want me to, that's fine too. I'm comfortable right where I'm at.' And so if they needed me to make cameos on anyone else's segment, I'd be down to do it."