The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and this is the third video in a series where I share information that I think EVERY therapy client should know.  The first 3 videos in this series I call my “TED Talk” -- every single one of my clients will hear this little speech from me eventually.  It helps to frame my philosophy about therapy, emotions, and the nervous system and gives us a common vocabulary for our work together.   In the last couple of videos, I talked about the nervous system, our brains, and how we tend to respond to threats -- both physical and psychological.  Now let's talk about the Window of Tolerance This is a way of thinking about what our nervous system is doing throughout the day.  Normally, we are walking around doing our thing, and our nervous system is pretty calm.  It's in this green resilience zone -- Dan Siegel calls this the window of tolerance.  We might have little things that happen to ...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and this is the second video in a series where I share information that I think EVERY therapy client should know.  The first 3 videos in this series I call my “TED Talk” -- every single one of my clients will hear this little speech from me eventually.  It helps to frame my philosophy about therapy, emotions, and the nervous system and gives us a common vocabulary for our work together.   In the last video, we talked about the nervous system, the hand model of the brain, and what happens to our brains when we sense a threat.   Physical Threat = Psychological Threat But the thing is -- our brains and our nervous system -- can't really tell the difference between a physical threat and an emotional or a psychological threat.   Here are some examples of emotional threats: Being reprimanded by your boss Not getting an invitation to a party Having a loved one betray you Being called ugly by...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and this is the first video in a series where I share information that I think EVERY therapy client should know.  The first 3 videos in this series I call my “TED Talk” -- every single one of my clients will hear this little speech from me eventually.  It helps to frame my philosophy about therapy, emotions, and the nervous system and gives us a common vocabulary for our work together.  We talk a lot about emotions in therapy.  And we tend to think of emotions as entirely thought driven -- I'm sad or I'm anxious or I'm angry.  But we now know that emotions are actually full-body physiological responses.  And more and more, I'm starting to view emotions specifically and mental health in general as simply byproducts of our extremely active nervous systems -- or said differently -- a core part of our neurobiology. x Nervous System Let's talk about our nervous system for a bit.  Our nervo...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll share how I deal with personal and work calendars. I recently started a new job at a place that used Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook.  Since every other place I've worked has used Google Suite, it has taken me some time to determine how to manage my work and home calendars with this new job. Just to give you a lay of the land, up until now I have had essentially two calendars -- my family calendar that all of the members of my family can view and write to and my personal calendar which my family members can also view, but they usually keep turned off since the appointments are when they are at work or school.  And that is usually how I determine where appointments go -- if it happens on evenings and weekends, it goes on the family calendar -- even if I'm the only person affected.  That way, everyone can see that I'm busy and what I'm doing.  If the event happens ...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use the html mail codes for the iPhone (and iPad) to send regular reminder emails for client sessions from my mobile devices. In my last video, I showed how to send regular client session reminder emails using Gmail's templates.  Unfortunately, that all has to be done from a browser since templates aren't a feature in the mobile version of Gmail.  So, I figured out how to do this from the mail app on the iPhone.  It takes some doing to set it all up, but after that I actually find it easier and faster than using Gmail templates.  So, basically, I'm taking advantage of 2 things: 1) the "mailto" code that can be inserted into any html on a website that generates an email message when you click on the link.  Here's an example of a "mailto" code on a website.  Push it and you bring up a new email in your mail client.  The other thing I'm ...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I send email notifications or the same email text multiple times using Gmail templates. The non-profit counseling center that I used to work for did not have a system that sends automatic email reminders to clients for upcoming sessions.   As a therapist, I like to give people a heads up since it is helpful to know in advance if someone needs to cancel.  And, since we have a 24-hour notice policy for cancelations, it is also a nice courtesy to our clients.  For this reason, I send out my own email notifications one day before sessions.  Obviously, it would be great if these went out automatically, but I couldn't figure out a way to do this without having to pay for a subscription service, so I end up using Gmail's templates.  You can use Gmail templates to resend any email that has the same text and that you might want to send multiple times.  This ma...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  And in today's video, I'll show you how to use your iPad to draw on a whiteboard or a PDF and share it over a video call. I'm a mental health therapist who started seeing clients during Covid lockdown exclusively over telehealth.  Now, I'm in person a couple of days, but I still see the majority of my clients using a video call platform.  Since I'm a visual person, I like to share images and drawings with my clients to help explain concepts.  It was important for me to figure out how to do this even when seeing clients remotely. Okay -- here were my requirements: I see most of my clients through Doxy.me , but a couple over Zoom, so those are the main platforms I'll be discussing.  These methods should also work for other video call apps. Although I use a Mac laptop for video calls, I wanted to be able to draw on my iPad for a whiteboard.  I hate having to use a mouse to draw when I could...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll tell you the two words that a lot of therapists love to use that I actually hate -- particularly in the context of relationships.   The words are "Need" and "Hurt." I'm doing an intensive training in couples therapy and it is really clarifying for me where relationships start to break down.  And this pertains to relationships of all sorts -- not just to romantic relationships.  Now this might be a controversial take, but there are a couple of words that many therapists encourage their clients to use that I absolutely detest.  The first one is Need As in "I really need this from you."  or "I need you to do this for me."  What people really mean is -- I WANT.   "I want this from you." or "I want you to do this for me."   First let me tell you why therapists and clients really like the word "Need."  Two of the most imp...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you all of the products and steps I used to create a sink with running water for my Minivan Camper. Recently, I converted my minivan into a camper that sleeps two.  I have a three part video series that describes that conversion.  I didn’t have quite enough time in those videos to give all of the specifics on how I put together the sink with running water, so I thought I’d do a separate video on that. Because the bed occupies so much space in a minivan that sleeps two, my kitchen only uses a little less than two feet in the back of the van, plus some of the great outdoors.  When cooking, I keep my cooler, cabinets, and stove outside the van and use the back part of the van for counter space and access to storage.  The sink hangs off the van and pumps water from a storage container that is stored underneath the bed. First, let’s talk about the Sink I knew I wanted the ...