Telehealth Services

We continue to welcome new clients to schedule appointments with the best match within our group. All of our appointments are virtual: care when you need it, on your terms.

At Frey & Associates we have found that both our clients and clinicians genuinely enjoy, and prefer, telehealth services. Why telehealth? Click the button below to learn more about why we provide our services virtually.

Please reach out to see if we can be of help getting you scheduled with one of our clinicians, or if we can connect you to additional resources. We strive to respond to all inquiries as quickly as possible.

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melissa: podcasts about mental health

Looking for a new podcast? There are a lot of excellent mental health resources and podcasts, and it can be overwhelming to know where you might want to start. I’ve compiled a list of the mental health podcasts that tend to be cross listed on the top reviewed lists. If you want to look at the “top mental health podcasts” lists yourself, I’ve included some links below of four different resources. In the meantime, here are some of the top reviewed, chart topping podcasts:

Top mental health podcasts are listed, reviewed, and with talking points/pros/cons, in the articles here, here, here, and here.

Happy listening!

Copyright © Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2023. All rights reserved.

mindful moment

The only journey is the one within…

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

all of us: with gratitude

As this year comes to a close, we are wishing everyone a quiet and restful transition into the new year. We are so honored accompany our clients on their journeys of growth, healing, and wellness. We look forward to continue working with our current clients and welcoming new clients in the upcoming new year.

From all of us at Frey and Associates,

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2022. All rights reserved.

mindful moment

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

– Mary Oliver

melissa: seasonal symptoms

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” -Yoko Ono

As the weather cools down, many people begin to experience changes in their mental health. While some people embrace the cold, soon to be snowy days, others find themselves feeling more down and generally less energetic and motivated.

No matter what camp you find yourself in, the long winter days can be hard for us all and fall is the time to prepare for the upcoming seasonal changes. One place to start is by beginning to develop your winter routine: scheduled movement, a standing sleep/wake cycle, and sun exposure (whenever possible). Talking with your therapist, family, and friends can also help keep you anchored in managing these changes and to maintain a self care plan. Know that countless people find seasonal changes to be challenging for a variety of reasons and that there are always ways to develop a plan that works specifically for you.

Want a better understanding of how seasonal changes impact our mental health and ideas for coping? You can read more here, here and here.

Copyright © Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2022. All rights reserved.

mindful moment

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke

melissa: welcome autumn

September Midnight

Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them.

– Sara Teasdale

mindful moment

“I don’t mind falling. Every mistake is just a thoughtful decision in disguise. Taking bold steps into the future with purpose and intention is the same thing as watching both of your sleeves being pulled into the threshing machine. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do but watch. And if I stay as open as possible and feel as much as possible and I keep writing about it, I might as well be dashing around on the wet pavement with little to no walking experience. But I want to trust my instincts anyway. Tucking into a ball as you hit the pavement is a superpower. Getting up with a smile on your face is a superpower.”

melissa: what we’re reading

Therapists are almost always reading some sort of therapy book (in the background of their fiction pile), in my experience. We often are asked about books for specific subjects and love offering recommendations, so always ask if you’ve got a topic in mind.

In the meantime, here are some of the books our clinicians are reading now:

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

A very accessible book about every facet of love, including a working definition of the action of giving and receiving love.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

The cult following/classic about how the brain, mind, and body are connected in the framework of trauma.

Attached. by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller

Another very accessible book about attachment styles; extremely helpful to understanding one’s own attachment style, independent of any relationship status.

Copyright © Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2022. All rights reserved.

mindful moment

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.

– Mary Anne Radmacher

melissa: mindfulness exercise for painful emotions

As we find ourselves during a particularly difficult time with filled many emotions, I’ve been reflecting on ways in which we can open ourselves up to strong/painful emotions in a structured way. There is a “Gentle Practice for Opening Up to Painful Emotions” that you can find here both recorded and written, depending on your preferred modality.

As the writer of the practice, Rhonda Magee, writes, “Take a moment to pause with all of the news coming at us, especially if you are someone who seeks to move in the direction of the suffering, to work, and to alleviate it, through actions and engagements in the world.”

Remember to seek out support from loved ones, family, and friends as we seek to process the emotions and events we are facing and have faced.

Copyright © 2022 Melissa A. Frey, LCSW. All rights reserved.

mindful moment

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.

-Elizabeth Edwards

 

melissa: musing on resilience

Keep Going – Edgar Guest

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must—but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

mindful moment

Dance, when you’re broken open.

Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance when you’re perfectly free.

…Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

-Rumi

melissa: kintsugi + wabi sabi

During times that feel (and are) particularly challenging, as has often been the case in the past couple of years, we may be left wondering how to continue to find hope and healing.  One thought that comes to mind is the Japanese concept of kintsugi. “Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.”

In the West, the concept of kintsugi is often paired with the phrase wabi sabiLoosely translated, “wabi” is simplicity, whether elegant or rustic; “sabi” means the beauty of age and wear. While academics have varying definitions of this phrase, they all come back to a generalized concept of embracing that which is flawed, asymmetrical, unfinished, and imperfect. The etiology of these concepts traces back prior to the 14th century, when the phrases began to take a more “positive” feeling of noting the beauty in the imperfect and unfinished.  For Richard Powell, “Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”[6]

One can do a very deep research dive on kintsugi and wabi sabi and find some beautiful ceramics, theories, research, books, quotes, and more. As many of us tend to do, you can easily start your reading on Wikipedia, and take off from there, should you be so inclined. If you desire no further research or reading, then simply imagine yourself as a ceramic pot with a few cracks and breaks, assembled back together with gold, with light shining through. That unfinished, asymmetrical, lopsided, beautiful piece of art work is you, and it can always be repaired when, inevitably, it has a tiny (or large) crack. That, surely, is an endless source of hope.

Copyright © 2022 Melissa A. Frey, LCSW. All rights reserved.

 

melissa: free mindful apps

One of the questions we are often asked is regarding where to find useful mindfulness resources and apps for meditation and/or anxiety, sleep and mood. Look no further, mindful.org has compiled a list of free apps to consider and their descriptions. A list of those free mindful and meditation apps can be found here. Interested in books or journals? We’ve got our list here. If you’re looking for additional resources that are not listed here, let us know!

“Don’t search for anything except peace. Try to calm the mind. Everything else will come on its own.”

Baba Hari Das

Copyright ©Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2022. All rights reserved. 

 

mindful moment

There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.

There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine.

O traveler, if you are in search of that, don’t look outside, look inside yourself and seek that.

-Rumi

mindful moment

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

 

-Rainer Marie Rilke, “A Walk”

melissa: kind of coping

As 2022 marches on, I think we are all finding ourselves in the category of “kind of coping.”  We are looking for moments of peace, purpose, hope, and happiness and are managing to find it in small ways, in every day moments.  The New York Times has a good piece on How to Improve Your Mental Health in 2022, which you can access here. While there is no “one size fits all” bit of advice, there’s always something to point you in the right direction. The article outlines some tips on how to cope, and, dare I say, improve your mental health during even the toughest of times.

Copyright © Melissa A. Frey, LCSW 2022. All rights reserved. 

The blossom will always grow.
The seasons will always change.
People come and go,
Their shadows comforting and strange.

The flowers will always bloom
Once the darkness subsides.
When every corner is filled with gloom,
Remember the sun just hides.

Brighter days will follow.
Earth will keep moving.
Look for the brighter color.
Help lift the darkness looming.

-Jessica Bryan

mindful moment

Hope abides; therefore I abide.
Countless frustrations have not cowed me.
I am still alive, vibrant with life.
The black cloud will disappear,
The morning sun will appear once again
In all its supernal glory.

– Sri Chinmoy