Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Dresden and Natale Garrity
Hi Jessica and Natale, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We both attended graduate school together at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology where we became friends. Both of our training experiences included training in private practice. We then worked together in a private practice setting after graduating and receiving our degrees. We realized that we both shared the same vision of creating a business where we could experience “ life-work balance,” as it is important to have life come first. The work that we do can be hard, so we know that having balance both personally and professionally will help us show up in the best possible way for our clients. We also both wanted to create a space where ALL people feel seen, heard and valued, both clinicians and clients. Through this process we realized that we balance each other out, which makes us great business partners. Jessica can be more comfortable with risk and spontaneity, whereas Natale is very thoughtful and practical. This balance is something we joke about often and truly makes us a great pair.
We chose Mahtomedi as a location for our practice as Natale grew up in the area and knew that this area had limited mental health support. Prior to us opening Embolden You there were no mental health clinics located in Mahtomedi. After we opened our doors in 2019 we soon realized that there was in fact a significant need for more mental health support in both Mahtomedi and surrounding communities. This need then increased even more significantly after COVID hit. We could not keep up with this need so we decided to ask some of our former, incredibly skilled, colleagues to join our team. Since this time, our team of clinicians has grown solely by word of mouth and includes direct connections of ours (e.g., former co-workers, supervisors, individuals we attended graduate school with, etc.) or connections of current clinicians on our team. This has helped to create a very unique and fun culture at Embolden You! We are very proud of our incredibly skilled team.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We have been fortunate that overall, the road has been fairly smooth. However, like any business, there is a lot that happens behind the scenes, and there are a lot of moving parts. One thing that we have always strongly valued is being incredibly thoughtful with any decision or change that may happen at our organization. We probably actually think through things too much sometimes! We really care about our clinicians and providing exceptional quality care to our clients and therefore try to think through things from every possible angle when making a decision and when building our business. When we have experienced random bumps in the road we have relied upon and utilized our relationship, a foundation of friendship, to get through it. For example, this past year we (like thousands of other practices) were impacted by a cyber-attack on Change Healthcare, which is the platform we use to submit and process all of our claims. This was something that was completely out of our hands and yet had a very significant impact on our clinicians, clients, and us. This was incredibly stressful, and we were able to navigate and problem solve this to figure out different ways to get our clinicians paid and claims processing through for our clients. Our clinic office manager, Elise, was also essential in this process and helps to prevent and manage any bumps in the road that we may experience, and we are incredibly grateful for her as well!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Embolden You?
Our clinic is very unique in that we only hire clinicians who we believe provide exceptional care. When interviewing a potential clinician, our most important determining factor in a hire is whether or not we would feel comfortable with and trust them to see one of our own friends or family members. Like we previously mentioned, we also always have some sort of prior connection to someone we add to our team. We are also unique in that we are a woman owned business. Our clinicians work with individuals (ages 5-99+) experiencing a wide variety of diagnoses and challenges. Our primary specialties include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders, Trauma/PTSD, and grief/loss. We are one of the few clinics in Minnesota who have a large number of clinicians trained in evidence-based treatments for treating OCD (Exposure and Response Prevention [ERP] and Inference Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy [ICBT]), and also accept insurance (many clinicians who specialize in OCD are private pay and do not accept insurance). Our team is composed of one psychiatric medication provider, two dietitians, and 30 mental health clinicians. We accept most major insurance plans including Medicaid and Medicare.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Below are just a few of our favorite, most recommended resources that we find ourselves recommending often:
Children/Adolescents:
Dr. Becky (Good Inside) on Instagram
Big Little Feelings on Instagram
Eating Disorders/Disordered Eating:
Christy Harrison (Food Psych)
Intuitive Eating Principles: (https://www.intuitiveeating.org/about-us/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/)
OCD:
International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) www.iocdf.org
Self Compassion:
Kristin Neff, www.self-compassion.org
Shame:
Brene Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.embolden-you.com
