Jordan’s Story
Jordan has used therapy services throughout his life — whether going through big life transitions or experiencing every day struggles. Therapy has made a huge difference in improving his boundaries and self-worth, and he encourages everyone to try it!
Jordan’s Story Transcript
I’m from, originally, Madison, Indiana. I moved to Nashville when I was about 15. From there I guess I moved to Arizona, and then I spent a year in Washington state, and then I moved back here in 2019.
I spend a lot of time volunteering. I’m a part of Nashville Pride organization, I’m on the board for that. I am also on the board for Middle Tennessee Transgender Alliance. It’s been a really large part of my life. So I do a lot of volunteer work after work. I keep myself busy a lot. My wife says that I keep our social calendar very full. And then also, you know, I spend time with family and friends. I have a little niece that I very much enjoy watching her grow up.
I’m a big proponent of mental health in general, like, advocating for therapy, regardless of, you know, whatever it is that you’re doing – transitioning, not transitioning… going through massive changes in your life or not massive changes in your life – just because I think that there’s always something that we can work towards or that we’re working on. I always feel like I need that external sounding board, right? Like somebody that’s outside because I feel like, you know, our friends and our family are always kind of partial to, you know, whatever we think or believe, and so, having that external source to help us work through something, that may see something that we don’t, is always good.
I was just looking at different counselors and seeing what they work with. I wanted to make sure that each counselor that we had or that I had, whether it was couples or individual, was that they were open and accepting to the LGBTQ community just because that’s the community that I’m in. Trauma work was really important to me. I just needed somebody that was going to be compassionate and empathetic and then just kind of down to earth because that’s the type of person that I am and that’s the type of person that I connect to.
I express a lot of my thoughts and process emotions through music. He was very intuitive, and when he realized that, we kind of started each session with playing whatever song that I had been repeating that week, and then we would kind of discuss, you know, review that song, which ended up helping me a lot. Because we would figure out why that song was on repeat, and that ended up helping me process a lot of emotions that I was feeling.
Boundaries, self-worth, self-esteem… Those were the biggest things for me. I have a really hard time setting boundaries and saying no. I’m a people-pleaser in a big way, and to this day I still have a really hard time with it, but I am better. Ten times better than I was. I would definitely say that my self worth is improved SO so much.
I encourage everyone to seek counseling! You’re going to get somebody that’s trained in different things and helping you deal with different situations, in whatever may be occurring in your life, whether it’s something traumatic or even just something mundane, right? It doesn’t have to be anything massive going on. Sometimes you just need a sounding board and sometimes you’re dealing with something… Sometimes you are dealing with something massive, and either of those things is okay. But you having someone there is crucial.
Sometimes I’ve heard, “Well, I can’t afford it,” and absolutely you can! Whether you have insurance or not, there are places that do sliding scale – Insight is one of them. I have used that. When I started it Insight, I didn’t have insurance myself, and I took advantage of the sliding scale process. You know, mental health is just… it’s a taboo topic in society a lot of times, whether it involves therapy or whether it involves medication. And so I challenge those stigmas whenever I come across them because I think it’s important to talk about. Otherwise, that’s how we lose people.
Whenever I come across anyone needing recommendations, I do recommend you guys. I’ve used three different therapists and have had three different great experiences, so I just hope that you guys continue to do the awesome work that you do.