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ABOUT: SHORT VERSION

HEALTHY MINDS build healthy lives. When we live better we lead better. When we live and lead better, we all do better. Let's get healthy. 

 

We are therapists in St Paul, Minnesota who guide individuals and groups out of the fog of uncertainty and into clarity in building their mental health. We hope that some day mental health activity will be as much a daily part of our lives as physical exercise and personal hygene. We envision a kinder, wiser, more compassionate world.

Healthy Minds. DBT Therapy
ABOUT: LONG VERSION

WE BEGIN, WITH YOU.

Therapy services offered at Health Minds focus on listening, asking a lot of good questions, then coming up with a collaborative treatment plan pinpointing your specific pain points with a map to where you want your life to go.

 

  1. We listen to you.
  2. We ask you a lot of good questions.
  3. We collaborate with you on a treatment plan.
  4. We create a roadmap to get you where you want to go in your life.

EMOTIONS ARE HARD to navigate. Did you know that your emotions tell us things?
When we feel anxious or fearful those emotions tell us that "we can't ______".
When we feel angry, it tells us that "we need to _________".
THESE MESSAGES ARE NOT TRUE.

Emotions and the thoughts they produce are hard to navigate, and you can learn how.

  You can learn how.
We teach that.

Hi. I'm Carin (she/her), LPCC
Founder, Psychotherapist &
DBT Specialist for LGBTQ+ folk

When I began this career, I began with a question: "How do people live good lives? Lives they enjoy and find meaningful, while others scrape and struggle to navigate life's scrapes, breaks, and bruises?" That question is still central to all the work I do.

A BIT ABOUT ME

I hail from a town in Eastern S.Dakota. First love was basketball. After knees wrecked, discovered art, music, and theater. Earned a BA in graphic design and worked in the advertising/marketing world for 10 years. Knew my world was small and wanted to expand; moved a lot throughout my 20's. During the last year+ of my design career, I struggled with performance anxiety around work. Pivoted careers and moved my artistic sensibilities from the visual world to the inner world. I creatively help weave my client's inner world—psychological spaces—together bringing what had been disparate pieces into an integrated tapestry. DBT is my main approach to better understanding who you are because when you can identify what distresses you, learn how to better tolerate that distress you can see more clearly into the deeper pieces of your workings. Then as you seek insight through learning how to regulate your emotions, you better understand the lenses through which you perceive your world. Then learning how to better engage communication with others brings your social self into the conversation. All three pieces of this work are built on the foundation of mindful awareness. To know yourself is the first integral piece to peace of mind and authentic living. I believe this is important work and I love what I do.

Before founding Healthy Minds I worked as a DBT clinician offering mental health services to marginalized people in Minnesota.

I am a neurospicy (ADHD), family woman with wife, son and two dogs (Tyson is often in office with us); musician, poet, cyclist and lover of coffee, black. I love being up north on our 27 acres of wild, hiking on the Cascade River and listening to the birds and small creatures  scurrying around.

I'm hoping you'll reach out.

 

Hi. I'm Jess (she/her), LICSW
Psychotherapist &
DBT Specialist for Young Adults,
Adolescents and their families

 

A BIT ABOUT ME

 

I resisted going into mental health initially, my sights set on practicing social work in the medical field. The question that started my transition out of medical social work was, “Why do the patients with the intense emotions get told they need DBT?”

 

My clinical internship at Mayo Clinic (Rochester) was my intro to the mental health element when my supervisor asked me to complete half the semester on the Complex Intervention Unit (CIU) for adults. I was not thrilled. I have a passion for young humans . . . adults? Not my vibe (as much). Throughout my time there I realized I wanted to help so much more than what medical social work would allow me to (in a hospital setting at least), so I applied to become a psychiatric social worker in the pediatric psychiatry unit after my internship was completed. I was hired. Over the next 4 years I learned about medicine, psychiatry, and mental health and soon found myself running into another issue: my patients often had very intense emotions that were treated quite strictly. These patients were discharged sooner, not taken as seriously, often "consequenced" on the unit or separated from the rest of the milieu with the recommendation that "they need DBT". What’s DBT?! That question started my transition out of medical social work. Since leaving Mayo I pursued becoming an adherent DBT therapist and I now enjoy both Stage 1&2 DBT work and general DBT skills therapy outside of an Intensive Outpatient Program dynamic, it’s a very good fit for me. Not all my clients do DBT, I have found a love for general psychotherapy as well. 

 A bit about me: I am a neurodivergent, hearing impaired (yes, I have hearing aids!), tattooed, "has trouble with their swearing" type of social worker. I flex my social work title as often as I can. Social workers ARE AWESOME. I completed my bachelors and masters degrees through the University of Wisconsin systems . . . so I am also a Packers fan. Do not fret! I am a born and raised Minnesotan—I love the Wild, Twins, and Timberwolves (in that order). I am a musician: enjoy playing the guitar, writing songs, and singing. I also have a passion for physical health and love my gym time, rock climbing, running, and hiking. 

 I very much enjoy listening to people's stories and being a present, non-judgmental human in life. I am so excited to be here and continue my journey as a clinician. I hope I can be a part of your journey as well! 

What Does Healthy Minds Do?

Work with two populations: Individuals and Businesses/Organizations 

 

WE SERVE THE INDIVIDUAL

 

State-certified DBT Program
—
General Individual Therapy
  

STATE-CERTIFIED DBT PROGRAM

Imagine: Mastering the life skills it takes to build the life you actually enjoy, aligned with your values, and moving continually, onward and upward.  DBT teaches skills to build that life. DBT is a 2-Part program: 1hr individual therapy/week and 2.5hr Class/Group ea. week. Healthy Minds provide adherent DBT programming that follows the Marsha Linnehan model. We are nationally accredited with and certified by the Minnesota Mental Health Division—Department of Human Services (DHS). 

 

individual Therapy at Healthy Minds

CLIENTS LEARN

  1. What to do to practice Mindfulness (and how to do it), the skillset that combats distractibility.
  2. When you are aware of struggle, how to effectively tolerate the distress so you don't make a very difficult situation worse, the skillset that combats a loss of meaning/purpose—because how do we build the long-game life we want when satisfying our short-game wants sabotage the build? Gotta learn how to tolerate distress.
  3. How to regulate emotions. So you tolerated the distress of the moment/hour/day/week . . . and still feeling super crummy. This skillset combats the negative self-talk and enables insight into yourself.
  4. How to have more effective and civil conversations around topics with high emotion. These interpersonal effectiveness skills come in handy when you have people in your life you deeply care about and intensely disagree with. This skillset combats loneliness/disconnection by increasing connection.

 

LEARN MORE ABOUT DBT
COME JOIN US ON