Many people are worried about going for their first visit with a Psychiatric provider. They have all sorts of notions about what might happen from watching TV or movies, and those ideas are often completely inaccurate and maybe even a little scary. 

The truth about your session is much less scary! And, much more helpful!

Here's a roadmap for what to expect when you meet with our Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Mary Gillingham. Mary is a Board Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner with comprehensive training and experience in treating psychiatric and substance use disorders across the lifespan. She believes in empowering her clients and utilizing a holistic approach.

When you first reach out to our office to make an appointment with Mary, you'll probably talk with our Office Manager, Angie, or our Receptionist or Intern to make your first appointment. They will check your insurance and make sure to get all of your basic information entered in our...

The Winter Holiday season can be a time of togetherness, fun, ritual, tradition, worship, and joy. And, it can also be tremendously stressful. Especially if you have a chronic illness, such as depression, bipolar disorder, or chronic pain.

Here are some practical tips to help minimize the stress and increase the joy this season.

• Ask for help and support. Who are your support people? The people who will understand when you just don’t have the energy for certain things and also understand that you may still want to do those things. These are the people who will help you make accommodations so you can enjoy as much as is possible. Take a minute, and make a list of the people whom you can be completely yourself around.
• Remember what you love about the season. Prioritize the things you love. If you love gift giving but find decorating to be a chore, focus on the gift giving and skip the decorating! There are spiritual, traditional, and religious reasons to participate in the...

Work is one of those things that most of us have got to do. Even if you’re working at your literal dream job, it’s still work. There are still productivity standards to meet, people to interact with, and demands on your time. Here are a few concrete tips to help you get through your workday with a little more ease and a little less stress.

• Think about all of the pros of work in general and your job in particular. For most of us, the paycheck is one of the most important benefits of work, but it’s not the only benefit. Take a few minutes and write down the things you like most about your job. Common examples include: pay, benefits such as health insurance, structure, routine, sense of purpose, and social interaction. What do you like about work and your job? Write it down, and keep it on a notecard that you can refer to throughout your work day.
• Do you need reasonable work accommodations? Think about your work. Are there things that could make the job easier? If...

Yes, insurance is confusing. It's so confusing and reimburses so poorly for mental health care, that many mental health providers don't even accept it. At The Northrop Connection, however, we want to make mental health treatment as accessible as possible, so we take a good number of insurance plans, and we will work with you to the best of our ability to make sure that you can use your insurance to the highest available benefit.

Let's start out by walking through what happens when we register a new client who wishes to use their insurance.

First, we will talk with you about what your clinical needs as well as your insurance/payment capability, and we will match you to a Therapist/service that will best meet your needs.

Once we have identified your ideal providers, we will ask you to send a copy of your insurance card and to fill out basic information, including your clinical needs and relevant consent forms. Once we have received all of this, our Office Manager will check with your...

When we are born, we start out with a relatively blank slate. On the day of our birth, not much has happened to us. Not all births are peaceful, of course, but in most cases we are able to be born without any ill will directed at us. As we grow, however, stuff starts to happen.

Even in the healthiest of families, it is impossible to meet every single need and desire of everyone in that family. Chores are assigned, vegetables have to be eaten, knock off brands of clothing is purchased, feelings are hurt, permissions are denied, and more and more disappointments and even intense harm and abuse can occur throughout our lives.

How do we handle that?

In some cases, we forgive, are able to see it from the other person's point of view, and we let it go. This is certainly much easier to do when the other person's point of view was actually valid. For example, it makes sense that you would have to do chores. No one really likes it, but as long as everyone has chores in the family, so...

Sports have always been in my life. While I have a hard time identifying myself as an athlete, there are very few periods in my life where I’ve been completely out of sports. As a child, I grew up watching Florida State football with my family, going to the games and watching them on TV. I started playing soccer and softball at a fairly young age and settled on swimming as my primary sport. I continued swimming into college (club level) and even as an adult with “Masters” [read: old people] teams. As an employee of the University of Virginia, I was even able to compete in a few meets on their club team up until age 30, which was kind of cool. Now, I play tennis for my neighborhood team, and I’m a sports mom for my two sons and a sports wife.

This weekend, I had two experiences with sports that brought into focus some truths about sports, life, and business. On Saturday, my husband and I took our two sons to the basketball court, and on Sunday I was able to...

Many years ago, on the day of a time change, I was lamenting to my husband that I was tired or hungry or some other sensation that my biological clock was in charge of, and I remarked to him that my feelings were normal because it was “really” an hour earlier.

His response was understanding but emphatic.

It was “really” the time that it really was (accounting for the time change).

It didn’t really matter that my body thought it was a different time. It didn’t really matter that I had not been consulted about this ritual of changing time twice per year. It didn’t matter that I didn’t think that we should change time. It didn’t matter about any of this.

What mattered was that powers greater than me had changed time. They do it twice a year. There is really no sense in getting upset about it or having any feelings about it at all.

Initially, though, I was a bit irritated. It felt like my feelings and biological clock were not...

The process of becoming a skilled therapist is a rewarding but long and challenging road. You have completed at least 6 years of post-secondary education and at least 2 years of post-graduate supervised work. And, it’s not just the time. It’s the constant growth, learning, and personal development. We give so much of ourselves to become therapists and to maintain that profession.

I graduated from my MSW program in 2001 and have been growing and building my clinical skills ever since. It’s truly a never-ending process, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a really exciting time in the field of mental health. We are seeing the emergence of celebrity therapists like Brené Brown, Bessel Van Der Kolk, and more, and we’re learning ever more about how the brain, mind, body, and spirit interact.

Over the years, I have been able to continue my education by learning directly from supervisors, mentors, and coworkers, from continuing...

We are living in some extremely turbulent times. We are in the midst of a global pandemic. We’re all still trying to figure out what that really means. We are torn between protecting our health, protecting the health of others, and protecting our economy and personal freedoms. A health crisis has turned political, and many of us have felt compelled to choose a side. We long to “go back to normal” and enjoy our freedoms without fear of illness. In addition, we have seen civil unrest in response to police brutality that has not been seen in this scale in decades. Many of us are trying to learn more, to understand and examine our own prejudices. Again, a human rights issue has been made political. The “fake news” on both issues have ranged from misleading, to outright lies, to absolutely absurd. Again, we are seemingly required to choose a side. All of this along with the day to day inner workings of our homes and relationships can be so overwhelming,...

Having worked with clients with mental health or medical problems for around 20 years, I can tell you that something starts to happen to people in the late summer and early fall of every year. They start thinking about “the holidays”. They start thinking about all of the ways these days of the year have gone wrong or gone right, and they start putting enormous pressure on themselves.

Some people start worrying about all of the things they’ve got to do. They start thinking about cooking and cleaning and buying and hosting and every other thing that “has” to be done this time of the year.

Others start dreading how they will handle “the holidays” for an entirely different reason. Perhaps they don’t have family. Perhaps the family they have doesn’t accept them. Perhaps they’re grieving. Perhaps they have a family member overseas. There are a great many of reasons why some people don't consider this to be "the most wonderful...