Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Diggs.
Hi Jon, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor at Mainspring Counseling and Training Services. My office is in Midtown, Atlanta, GA. I have over 15 years of experience in private practice. ” As a psychotherapist and clinical consultant, I leverage kindness to help individuals, families and businesses find their main·spring: something that plays a principal part in motivating or maintaining a movement, process, or change.
My intro, conversationally shared at conferences and cocktail bars is as synonymous with sharing my name. It’s an identity carefully crafted with the help of a brand manager and several practices in front of a mirror. Shout out to my high school and undergrad speech and debate teams. They provided tools to pitch an elevator speech on command and deal with the discomfort of speaking to a mirror.
Let me prep you. This next part can be triggering, govern yourself accordingly as I cook. A large part of how I got here and how I introduce myself doesn’t speak to my story. My success was based upon my relationship with suicide and self-kindness (full stop).
Suicide said, “reach for the stars, if you fail miserably, I got your back. We can always exit. Besides, for someone who feels this world isn’t for him, what do you have to lose?” This line of thought always felt safe to me. It offered me an out, a home that no failure, shame or adversity could compromise. I was surviving. One leg in this world and another with a one-way ticket out. This was life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Shifting into private practice was smooth until it wasn’t. Anyone that is constantly surviving will tell you that you get really good at it. I became anything you needed me to be. I could outperform, out produce and be more effective than my colleagues and counterparts. My practice was doing so well that I had a waitlist. I was effective, technically trained and I got results. But there’s a cost to that, especially when the success is curated from a place of survival. A cost that most therapist, athletes, leaders, pastors and CEO’s won’t share openly. A deep sadness and loneliness that comes with shapeshifting for praise, validation, acceptance and success. Eventually, one day you look at yourself in the mirror and no longer recognize you. You’ve become a caricature of yourself. Puppeteering on command.
The beauty of becoming a therapist is you will always meet a client that will hold a mirror up to you. I remember me asking a client one day, “Do you like you? Do you love you?” She asked, “What do you mean?” I followed up with the classic therapist lean in (and I got a lean in that’s so good, if you throw it up in the air, it’ll turn into sunshine),
“I mean, would you be someone you would hang out with? Would you enjoy spending time with you?” My smooth road paved with accolades, achievements, invites to rub shoulders with Atlanta’s upper echelon and technical training by some of the best couldn’t prepare me for what was going to happen next.
I asked myself these questions. I said, Jon, because that’s what I call myself, do you like you? Do you love you. Would you hang out with you? The response, NO!
Laughing out loud, later as I journaled, I said, “Hold up now, you answered a little too quickly. You been waiting for this question. Well damn!”
I’ll save you the details and get right to it. These questions set me on a path of kindness. Specifically self-kindness. You see, self-love felt out of reach. What was there to love? I asked this question the same way Mary (Monique) asked Mrs. Weiss (Mariah) in the movie Precious, “Who was going to love me?”
Self-kindness? It didn’t care about my past, who I wanted to be or that I lived a secret life with suicide as my friend and lover. It only cared about the now.
Self-kindness offered me care, consideration and gentleness; just because. This felt different than the burden of trying to love something I despised.
Then the quote hit me and I couldn’t put it down. I sobbed for days. I didn’t eat. Catatonically, I couldn’t tell my nights from my days. It was as if something was speaking to me from beyond, “Kindness creates a space for all you to be welcomed; even the parts that guilt and shame you.”
Much like you and your readers, love, probably felt evasive and were conditioned to believe it comes at a cost. Something that people describe, but don’t offer a road map in how to get there. Those that proclaim to offer it, author it, have also been the source of betraying it. And most importantly, once you get there, how do I know I’m capable of being loved? How do I know if I’m capable of giving love? But Kindness, yeah, I could engage self-kindness. I could offer myself the same non-judgement, considerate, attentive and gentle posture I offered my clients.
“Kindness doesn’t choose sides, it only seeks to understand. I owe it nothing.”
This was the awakening. This is when I broke up (well moved out) with suicide and started dating self-kindness.
We’d love to learn more about your work. What do you do, what do you specialize in, what are you known for, etc. What are you most proud of? What sets you apart from others?
I’ve been called many things. Among my clients, I’ve been called a mental health surgeon. I mean people have booked a session and said verbatim, “I want mental health surgery.” Others have called me a messenger of kindness; a lightworker and a Shaman. These expressions, while I’m grateful feel exaggerated and bloated. I’m clear that my story, my training and gifts give me a unique ability to sense feel and identify my clients’ dis-ease. Self-kindness is my anesthesia, as truth without kindness is brutality.
Who could you become? How could you benefit if you were offered gentleness, consideration, warmth (kindness) as you explore those things that keep you suffering in secret and in silence? Who could you become if space was held for you even in your shame, darkness and suffering? And to know that regardless of who you are, what you did or where you came from you are still worthy of time and attention.
When clients experience this for the first time I a liken it to the slow clap moment in sports moves. I don’t know about you, but every time I watch sports movies, I’m the person in the audience yelling at the screen. I’m about ready to run through a brick a wall at the film’s climax. I think we all need to experience the Remember the Titians moments in our own stories. I think we all need to experience the hail mary pass moment thrown by Shedeur Sanders to Leonte Wester in the 2024 game against Baylor. To be down, and have an internal dialogue that says, “I’m gone stick beside him” and win!
This is what therapy is. I think this is the experience I foster in therapy that sets me a part. From treating people with high functioning depression and anxiety, to inner child work, postpartum depression or working with people living with HIV/AIDS, most folks need to know that somebody’s sees their pain. This is what kindness allows us to experience. Seeing ourselves becoming and recognizing that today’s version of me did the healing. Today’s version sees me. Today’s version of me witnesses my pain, not some future healed performative self.
Further, the healing and the answers I seek are coming from inside the house. That’s what self-kindness awakens. It doesn’t create a new version of you; it simply nourishes what’s already there.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I think the piece is a little on the heavy side but is much needed. I wonder if I should go into risks. I think the sharing around suicide covers risk–the risk to stay alive lol….but I’m open to feedback.
Pricing:
- $125-$175
- Insurance Accepted
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mainspringcts.com
- Instagram: @mainspringcts
- Facebook: @mainspringcts
- Youtube: Mainspringcts
Image Credits
None
