During Recovery Month, observed nationally every September, we remember the lives lost to the disease of addiction and celebrate with those who found the treatment they needed to get well. Here is one of those stories, as told by an alumnus of First Step Recovery of The Village: It was May 2015, and I was scared. My health was suffering with several short hospital stays for pancreatitis (too much alcohol for too long) and ketoacidosis (high blood sugars for too long). My career was in stress and legal problems had been the reason for several job offers being pulled. In short, I knew I was in [...]

What is the most valuable aspect of your organization? Often people respond with their building, technology, the service they provide, or the proprietary secrets that set them apart. Some may even say the people. All these things are good – and in many respects are keys to success – but they are not the most valuable aspects of the organization. The most valuable aspect of your organization is culture. The culture of an organization is the foundation of how its leadership sees people. It is the basis from which decisions are made, and it is the key component to maintaining a successful [...]

Nikki was a prisoner in her own bedroom. Her entire life she’d been abused. As a girl, she tucked herself into closets to hide from her mother’s cruel words. She couldn’t escape the sexual abuse she later faced by two people she should have been able to trust. Her 30-year marriage was filled with emotional and verbal abuse to the point she wouldn’t leave her room. Her children needed to check on her instead of the other way around. Then she found the help of The Village's IOP. Nikki came to the Intensive Outpatient Program and eventually found hope and healing. It took weeks for her to speak [...]

The world is changing and becoming more virtual every day, and life's stresses are unlike those we've ever known. That means it's more important than ever to stay connected with your therapist. For some people, it may be the first time they've felt the need to access mental health counseling or addiction treatment. For others, they may want to stay in contact with a therapist they've been seeing for a long time, but telehealth might be a better option than in-person counseling. Many Village services are now being provided online as well as in-person. Online appointments, or telehealth, have [...]

Many of us make New Year’s resolutions year after year. Why do we wait for a New Year to make positive changes? And how many of us succeed? A recent poll found 45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, 46% of resolutions are kept for at least six months, and 5% keep their resolution the entire year. You can make today matter by implementing some self-improvement no matter what time of year it is! Procrastination is alive and well each year; it does not wait another year to come creeping back. So where do we start? We start TODAY. Choose one thing today that you want to improve upon. Today [...]

When Molly* first came to The Village’s Moorhead office, she had no idea how much it would come to mean to her. Now she describes it as a “place of miracles,” where she feels safe to share honestly, ask questions, be challenged, break down walls, learn, and grow. Molly wrote a letter thanking her counselor, Joni Medenwald, MSW, LICSW. Here’s Molly's story, in her own words: I first met Joni at the end of 2012. In August of that year, I started a new job. I was very excited about the new position, but I soon came to realize that I was in way over my head. I was getting super stressed and [...]

It’s important to have the right tools for the job. You can build your own kit of mental health tools to help you thrive in difficult times and not-so-difficult times, too. In honor of May being Mental Health Month, Mental Health America is sharing a toolkit to increase resiliency, improve our mental health in times of uncertainty, and support our friends and family who may be struggling. While 1 in 5 people will experience mental illness at some point during their life, everyone faces challenges that can affect their mental wellbeing. “It’s important to recognize your emotions and own your [...]

At some point in our lives we all experience loss. It may be the end of a relationship, being let go from a job, losing a home, or the death of a loved one. You may have experienced a lot of loss in the past few years – upheavals to our routine, cancelled events, milestones we've missed. It's natural to grieve all these things, and it can be hard to feel any positivity after loss. By looking for opportunity in adversity or ­finding ways to remember the good things about who or what we’ve lost, we can help ourselves to recover mentally and emotionally. Mental Health America offers these 7 tips [...]

While we are in many ways still bound to our primal instincts, we’ve evolved as human beings. In times of conflict, we can communicate our complex thoughts and emotions. I believe we owe it to our ancestors to address conflict by communicating. How to Address Conflict It starts with defining the problem. A common mistake is to identify a person as the conflict rather seeing the choices, behaviors, circumstances, or the interactions as the cause of conflict. It’s easy to blame others. Blame distracts from our behaviors and removes our responsibility to make changes. However, habitual deflection [...]

The average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime. That is equivalent to 11,250 8-hour workdays. It’s safe to say that your job and workplace can have a considerable impact on your mental health and quality of life. If employees are experiencing a lot of stress at work, they're bound to be unhappy. In a 2021 Work Health Survey conducted by Mental Health America (MHA), they set out to provide an opportunity to better understand four different mental health challenges that employees face in the workplace. Mental Health Challenges Employees Face 1. Financial Insecurity With [...]