Making an Appointment

Registration Forms

Therapy Starter Series (coupon)

Cultivating Your Marriage

The Use of Creative Expression in Therapy
Individual, Couple, and Family Therapy

Dr. Hovey uses a creative approach in working with her clients, in order to best address the unique needs and concerns of her clients. She works with adolescents, adults, and couples -- particularly those who live with stress, loss, ongoing health conditions and life challenges requiring the need to set new directions for healing and growth.

Appointments can be made by calling 651-470-4671.

Therapy to Enhance Life

• Marital & relationship issues
• Parenting challenges
• Stress management
• Finding life direction
• Living with the impact of chronic illness or disability
• Personal growth
• Traumatic events, PSTD
• Communication
• Depression & anxiety
• Loss & grief
• Caregiver demands and burnout
• Separation & divorce

Weathering Your Marriage Quiz:

http://aheartt.limequery.com/21918/lang-en

Making an Appointment

Times: Appointment hours are:
M: 10-5
T: 11-7
W: 9-6
Th: 10-7
F: 9-1
Other times may be available upon request.

Location: Appointments are held at aHeARTT's therapy offices, located at the Vadnais Heights City Center Medical Building, 3640 Talmage Circle, Ste. 210, Vadnais Heights, MN 55110. (Just off the corner of 35E and Cty. Rd. E behind Perkins).

Appointments can be requested by calling 651-470-4671 or by sending an email to diane@aheartt.com

Registration Form: Download our patient information form (PDF format) and complete it prior to coming (in order to save time).

Fees: Direct pay (cash, check, credit card) and Insurance plans (in network plans such as Aetna, MHCP, MA and Preferred One, and many out-of-network plan such as BCBS, Cigna, Medica, HealthPartners and more).  Rates are $125/50 minute session. I do offer a sliding fee scale based on the payee’s annual income.





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Cultivating Your Marriage

This is excerpted from aHeARTT’s bi-monthly newsletter.

A healthy marriage or relationship, like a well maintained garden, requires ongoing care and attention. There will always be challenges: uninvited weeds, too much or too little rain, pests, disease, and critters. If these challenges are ignored, your healthy garden will suffer and its appeal will diminish. Even a few short weeks of lack of attention will result in visible signs of neglect. This is no different for a marriage. And, the neglect of a marriage will have far more serious consequences and wide spread impact. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to push the needs of a relationship aside for other pressing demands.

Maintaining a Healthy Relationship

1. Identify the Weeds 
Some weeds are easy to identify. Dandelions and thorns make a show of letting themselves be known. But, not all weeds are readily identifiable. Since a weed is a plant that grows where it is not wanted you might not know this until it takes over. I've had a few of these in my gardens.  The obedient plant is one of my weeds. The first couple years it was a fine plant but then it wanted to be the only show in town. I renamed it the disobedient plant and dug it all up. It managed to find its way back a few years later. This time I'm not letting it take hold.  

What are weeds in your relationship? It could be the beer after work that turns into a six pack or the weekly outing with friends turns into the nightly outing with friends. Maybe it's taking on commitments whether they are for your children or your community that turn into an all consuming task with no end or break in sight. It could be humor that sours and starts to cause pain. Perhaps the relationship weeds are more complex as in depression or mental healthconditions that is not treated. Once you identify your weeds and agree on a desirable outcome, it is easier to manage them and to keep them in control. 

2.  Pest & Critter Control
Some pests and some critters are simply part of the garden experience. The yellowish-green, black and white striped caterpillar turns into the monarch butterfly. The baby bunnies are cute (unless they eat all my tulips!). However, some pests simply cannot be tolerated. Currently, my most detested pest is the Japanese beetle. It tries to look pretty with its vibrant metallic green color, but it defoliates my trees and grape plants and, worst of all, it eats my roses! That's where they really cross the line.
 
What are the pests or critters that cross the line in your relationship? They could be the relative that imposes on your hospitality, not knowing when to leave or where to draw the line. It could be a friend or friends that push themselves in-between you and your partner, demanding more of your time and attention than is reasonable. Perhaps it is a work associate who becomes your confidant, diminishing the need and desire to turn toward your partner for support and intimate conversation. It could be anger, cutting remarks, name calling or controlling behaviors that turn a lovable critter into a nightmare.
 
3.  Nourishment
Too much water can drown plants and provide the perfect environment for mildew and fungus to grow. Too little water will kill your plants allowing weeds to grow in their place.  Mulching and other natural fertilizers will enrich the soil producing healthier growth. Lack of nourishment will deplete the soil and stunt growth. 
 
In what ways do you nourish your relationship? How do you show your love? How often do you spend time together, confide your hopes, ideas and concerns? Caring for your relationship doesn't have to be complex or costly. It should be embedded in your day-to-day routines such as the way you greet each another, eating meals together, touching, sharing the load, and being available for the good times and the not-so-good times. It can be a candlelight meal or a smile across a crowded room. Just as lack of rain can kill growth, lack of caring in a relationship can kill the soul of a relationship.

4.  Planning  & Prevention 
The garden planted and tended without a vision, plan or at least some idea of what is hoped to be achieved, has little chance for long term success. That is, unless, one is willing to learn along the way, to make changes, and to put appropriate effort into its care. 
 
Planning within a relationship is not often given the attention it needs. It takes shared vision, values, hopes, goals or purpose in order to maintain the momentum required to remain a vital relationship. Consider your relationship; in what ways do you add color, texture and/or variety? Is it merely a ho-hum relationship or does it contain unanticipated joys? Do you anticipate the season changes throughout the year as well as over the course of life? Do you discuss differing visions while respecting the thoughts and ideas of your partner? Do you take steps to minimize anticipated challenges? 
 
5.  Maintenance
Maintaining a healthy garden requires the right tools. Makeshift tools can work for minimum or short term maintenance. However, practices that reduce the burden of maintenance and even make it enjoyable contribute to its long term success, beauty, desirability and enjoyability. Using a shovel to dig up a dandelion may do the job but it will be a messy burden. The right tool makes the job easier.  Borders or edgings to gardens help keep growth in its desired location.
 
Relationship tools included learning more effective communication, ways to manage stress, and ways to deescalate conflict. These skills can be acquired along the way. When something is not working well, learning new ways to enhance the relationship becomes part of its growth. It could be fun skills like learning to cook ethnic foods, taking dance classes together, or learning to hula hoop.  And of course . . . participating in a marriage enrichment program or couples therapy can be healthy for growth. Couple need not wait until the relationship is declared an eye sore.

Managing Overload

Do you live with unrelenting daily demands?  Living with this stress can be debilitating and is likely to impact your relationships as well as your work.  Although stress is part of life, when our bodies are under undue stress they respond through release of hormones, immune responses, and nervous system functioning – basically a complex domino effect that impacts our overall health.

For those who live with ongoing life challenges or demanding health conditions, whether you are a family member or the individual, stress complicates your ability to function and your health. I assist clients in giving focus to life chaos. I have been examining this issue for the past seventeen years and I have developed serious as well as playful ways to assist you as you address your stress.

Inspiring Change

Do you ever wonder "why" or "what did I do to deserve this?"  Or perhaps you live with a situation that people just don’t understand.

Making sense out of the senseless is a need of many of Dr. Hovey’s clients. That is why she uses methods that help move beyond the typical talk that seems so inadequate in trying to explain experiences for which words are not enough. Dr. Hovey assists you in moving beyond the patterns that consciously or unconsciously act as a block to change. She work as a guide to assist you in meeting your challenges and establishing a more fulfilling way of life.

More Information

Download an aHeARTT brochure for complete appointment information, directions, and more.

Overcome mind chatter: 

Creative forms of expression provide us with the ability to see constructive possibilities. Dr. Hovey’s creative methods, combined with traditional therapeutic approaches, inspire individuals and families with insight to the past and ideas for the future. We work as partners to set goals for growth and healing.

The use of creative expression in therapy:

Creative expression may at first seem uncomfortable, but it soon proves itself as a non-threatening way to turn life challenges inside out.  It allows us to see problems or issues from a new perspective, and opens our hearts and minds to our own wisdom and insight.

Try the simple exercise below for a typical situation:  taking on too much to do!

Stacking Life in a Better Load

Taking on too much to do has become part of daily life – even for young children.  We tend to get so caught up in juggling our loads that that we forget to step back and take a look at the load we carry.  Creative expression helps us to step back and view our load from a new perspective. For example, take a look at the photo of the stacked rocks.  You might laugh or you might shake your head at the absurdity of trying to do such a thing.  Now, think about what will matter the most in ten years from now. How much of your life is devoted to that which will matter the most?  More often than not this will get assigned to a little rock.  The daily "this, that and the other thing" often become the big rocks on which we balance life.  When you look at the rocks as a representation of how you are stacking the various aspects of your life, this is one way of starting to stack life in a better load.   Another creative approach is to use poetry as well as other forms of creative expression. Consider the following poem The Armful by Robert Frost: 

The Armful
For every parcel I stoop down to seize,
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with, hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.
– Robert Frost

After reading this poem, read it again while considering the things you pile one on top of the other, the things you hate to leave behind and when you simply need to sit down in the middle of them all.

The skill of the therapist is in being able to select creative ways to address your situation that have the potential to build understanding and healing.

Clients need only be willing to see and then act on the possibilities for change or growth that may unfold.  Creative skills are not required although they may be part of what unfolds.