Listen, Lucy’s Founder Is Breaking Down Mental Illness Stigmas Through Awareness And Action

From well being issues to monetary instability, 2020 took an emotional and bodily toll on many people. There has been a pointy enhance in nervousness and despair on a world degree which is worrisome given its impression on an individual’s well-being. Karestan Koenen of Harvard T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being equates Covid-19 to the physical and mental effects sustained by other types of trauma corresponding to sexual assault or pure disasters. 

Jordan Corcoran is intimately acquainted with a number of the psychological well being points dealing with individuals as we speak. She understands the lasting results of untreated nervousness and despair and has made it her mission to assist others struggling with these issues. In 2013, she launched Listen, Lucy, a psychological well being group that makes use of lived experiences with psychological sickness to finish the stigma that discourages people from receiving remedy.

At 19, Jordan was recognized with generalized nervousness dysfunction and panic dysfunction. “As we speak, I see how a lot I used to be struggling previous to my analysis. When trusted individuals in my life instructed I search assist for nervousness, I used to be so embarrassed and humiliated I refused it for 2 years,” she says. Jordan perceived her psychological well being signs as weaknesses relatively than sicknesses. 

When she started faculty, Jordan’s situation escalated. “Issues went from unhealthy to insufferable. I used to be having panic assaults each day. When I wasn’t having a panic assault, I used to be combating off one other assault with each fiber of my being. I misplaced weight and couldn’t sleep. I used to be out and in of the hospital usually, taken from my faculty campus on a stretcher in an oxygen masks. I used to be scared, lonely, misplaced and sick.”

A candid dialog along with her boyfriend (now husband) inspired her to start remedy. Throughout remedy, Jordan discovered coping methods that set her on a path of therapeutic. Reasonably than concern it, she started to perceive her thoughts and pinpoint stressors that induce panic assaults. With the instruments she gained, she slowly discovered the way to curb her nervousness. Recalling her days earlier than remedy, Jordan says it was messy and terrifying. “I used to be indignant for therefore lengthy and couldn’t determine out why my life felt so laborious.” In remedy, she accepted this as a a part of her life, and made the option to cease feeling like a sufferer and be a survivor. 

Jordan determined to share her private journey with debilitating nervousness and panic assaults in her faculty newspaper. The response she obtained was overwhelmingly supportive and empathetic. Jordan realized she wasn’t alone in the emotional turmoil she had skilled for therefore lengthy, and determined to create an area the place others might obtain the identical help she did from sharing her story. The feeling of connection was desperately wanted with the intention to heal. From this, Hear, Lucy was born. 

For 7 years, Jordan has been public talking to finish psychological well being stigmas and assist others out of isolation to reclaiming their lives. She has addressed psychological well being organizations and was a keynote speaker for conferences held by main psychological well being organizations such because the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Having skilled nervousness as a teen, her outreach extends to center colleges, excessive colleges and faculties. She has appeared on internet hosting panels with Broglie Box founder Julia Broglie, Kate Spade’s social impression group, Carl Radke from BravoTV’s Summer time Home and the Heart Advocate’s Ta’LorPinkston. “Whereas these large names have been moments in my profession when I’ve needed to pinch myself, a number of the most impactful impressions had been quieter occasions working with the unimaginable children at Holy Household Specialised Studying in Pittsburgh, children lining as much as share their tales with me after an meeting, an older gentleman telling me I gave him the braveness to talk up for the primary time. These are the moments I’ll take with me for the remainder of my life,” she shares.

Jordan has written three books, together with Little Lucy and the Little Butterflies, a image guide for teenagers ages 5-8 that approaches nervousness in a conversational and colourful method to cut back the trepidation adults might really feel introducing these matters to them. 

When the pandemic hit, Jordan’s public talking got here to fast halt. Panicked, she started making use of for public relations jobs. At one interview, she was informed “to take out any point out of psychological sickness on her resume as a result of individuals might not need to rent somebody who had a nervous breakdown.”

That incident reminded Jordan why she beginning Hear, Lucy: to handle misconceptions round psychological well being and forestall hiring managers from discrimination. She pivoted her work and conceived a inventive media hub solely for the psychological well being trade. “There are such a lot of unimaginable tales, triumphs and missions that have to be shared with the world so everybody is aware of how widespread it’s to battle together with your psychological well being. These points don’t imply we can’t obtain. We should always not must be afraid of our employers discovering out if now we have a psychological sickness.” 

Whereas rising Hear, Lucy, Jordan is launching a brand new PR company, The Corcoran Collective this month, itemizing Hear, Lucy as considered one of its prime shoppers. Her purpose is fast enlargement and a comeback country-wide talking tour in Could 2022. “The work shouldn’t be achieved and neither am I,” she says.