Autumn Update
Glimmers, Scheduling, Resources
Jess Helle-Morrissey, MA, MSW, LICSW, PMH-C, CLD(CBI), CLEC
Hello, dear clients.
Even though the weather is still warm, the leaves are changing and the sun sets a bit earlier each day, so it must be fall, right? After a brief moment of hope this summer, this fall looks different than many of us had wished it might with regards to the pandemic. Kids are back to school in person, but with less “normalcy” than we might have hoped for. And the long-awaited approval for vaccines for the 5-11 year olds still has many holding our collective breath as we continue to wait. It’s hard to be a human sometimes in a world with so much uncertainty and so many ups and downs.
I’ve been talking with some folks lately about the concept of “glimmers”. I’ve got a whole blog post on glimmers coming up. But in a nutshell, if triggers are the things that send our nervous system into fight/flight/freeze/fawn or general dysregulation, then glimmers are what make us feel safe, calm, connected, peaceful. It’s important to know what our triggers are but it’s equally (more?) important to get to know our glimmers. This fall, practice engaging your noticing system to get familiar with your glimmers, and write them down when you start to familiarize yourself with them. Notice what happens when your attention is drawn to those things that make us feel peaceful or calm or safe in a world when these things often can feel hard to come by.
Scheduling Reminders
My schedule continues to be totally full and I have started maintaining a cancellation waitlist for existing clients for the first time in 10 years in practice. For those who don’t have a standing weekly or biweekly appointment, please log on to the client portal and self-schedule out a bit. With the ebbs and flows of the year, I always have more requests for appointments around the holidays so if it’s possible, please schedule all preferred appointments through the end of 2021. (I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it will be here before we know it!)
A gentle reminder, too, that sessions cancelled any time after 24 hours prior are charged the full fee. If at all possible, I prefer 48 hours notice since that will often give me a better chance to fill the spot with someone who is on the cancellation wait list. I have my client notification system set to send out a reminder email 48 hours in advance and a reminder text 24 hours in advance. If anyone is not receiving these reminders it’s because they’ve opted out or marked a reminder email as junk at some point. Please make sure to have added the address yourprovider@simplepractice.com to be sure these emails are arriving.
Also, looking ahead toward the end of the year, there are a couple dates where I’ll be out of the office around the holidays, so that clients can plan accordingly.
Tuesday and Wednesday November 23rd and 24th (Week of Thanksgiving)
Tuesday and Wednesday December 21st and 22nd (Week of Christmas)
Covid, Delta, Office…
Essentially, I continue to play things by ear and will look to CDC guidance on safe return to unmasked, in-person sessions for fully vaccinated individuals. As I write this, our current test positivity rate in MN is over 8%, which is quite high, but I carry the hope that that number will start to go down with higher vaccination rates and the peak of the delta variant. I’ll continue to monitor and keep everyone posted.
Resources
As always, I’ll end by sharing a few resources I’m particularly enjoying right now or that I think are helpful.
The first is a podcast called Beyond Trauma. It is a podcast by therapists for clients and it touches on some really vital, helpful, and profound topics related to mental health, healing, and wellbeing. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a person with a trauma history, I encourage you to give it a listen. I’d suggest starting at the first episode, What is Trauma?, and then skipping the episodes about “what is therapy like” (because existing therapy clients already know at this point!), and then jumping back in at Episode 6, Will I Have to Talk About It?
Another podcast, this time a standalone episode: Ezra Klein’s interview with Bessel Van Der Kolk is a wonderful hour or so that explains a lot of key components of how our past influences how we move through the world today. I highly recommend giving it a listen. Dr. Van Der Kolk wrote “The Body Keeps The Score” and is one of the leading voices/researchers in the world today on mental health and wellbeing.
The book Tapping In by Laurel Parnell is a real gem and dovetails beautifully with the EMDR work that many of my clients are currently engaged in. It uses the idea of resourcing, tapping in/installing resources as a self-help technique. The book is full of specific resource tapping scripts and scenarios that folks can use on their own. I highly recommend adding this book to your library.
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Anam Counseling
Practical Counseling with Heart and Soul
Jess Helle-Morrissey, MA, MSW, LICSW, PMH-C, CLD(CBI), CLEC
www.anamcounseling.com