TMS During Quarantine
Thank You, Lincoln
Why We’re Essential
Mindfulness During Quarantine
Nostalgia and Looking Backward

TMS During Quarantine

Businesses are closed. Many clinics and health facilities don’t see patients, or greatly limit the amount. There are restrictions on movement or places we can go, how close we can be, and even which directions in aisles we can walk down. This can feel suffocating; for someone with depression, it can make it worse. Life during quarantine takes a lot of adaptation. So how do we help those people who need it during this crisis?

Alivation is still open and offering TMS, the same as we always have. We find it’s more of an essential service than ever before. For those suffering with depression and lacking adequate treatment options, there just isn’t a substitute for TMS. For those who require the social or personal interaction with our techs and treatment family, there isn’t any other way. We’re proud to be able to offer this when it’s needed most.

So many of our TMS patients tell us how happy they are that they can continue in-office treatment for their depression or OCD. They tell us we help them more than we can ever know, and during COVID it’s especially useful. We want to be that outlet for them, and to see them for their challenges. No one should feel like they’re dealing with all this alone, or that they don’t have help or hope. They have both at Alivation.

We still offer Ketamine and Spravato treatments in-office as well. Our great techs still come to work every day, prepared to do whatever it takes. We’re committed to a treatment framework that never ceases to serve the patients we’ve come to know so well. We can’t imagine not being here to provide care, or setting aside our duties. People rely on us, and we won’t let them down now.

We set out to help all people achieve Next Level You, and that doesn’t have an expiration date or a timetable. Treatment is a journey that requires work and vigilance not only for the patient, but for their treatment team. We take it seriously, and offer TMS during this quarantine to achieve our goals and the goals of our patients. When you book an appointment at Alivation, you’re taken care of. When you need us most, we’re still there. When you’re depressed or anxious, we’re the ones you can always turn to.

Thank You, Lincoln

We strive for exceptional care. Always.

As a result, we were surprised, humbled, and incredibly honored to win Best Behavioral Health Care in the Lincoln Journal Star’s Lincoln’s Choice Awards for 2020. We’ve received a lot of honors over the years, but this marks the first time we’ve won. We’ve always been proud of our quality of care, and of how Lincoln has responded to what we do. But it marks a terrific first for us, and we’re saying thank you.

Thank you to everyone who voted for us, and thank you to everyone who trusts us to partner with them in their care. We’re grateful we get to be with you on your most important journeys, and it reminds us of why we take such a passionate approach to everything we do each day. Thank you for letting us be with you, and thank you for believing in us for something so personal. We’ve seen many thousands of patients, some who believed they were unreachable. Thank you for letting us help you see another way.

The name Alivation is fairly new. We started as Premier Psychiatric in 1998, and only changed our name to Alivation Health in 2017. Since then, we’ve worked hard to spread awareness not only of what we do, but of how we do it and how we can help. Our public outreach has been devoted to making sure the name Alivation is synonymous with expert care, and providing assessment and treatment options that can’t be found anywhere else. Our commitment to redefining patient care allows us to help all people reach Next Level You. We want that to mean something.

We’re thankful we had such tough competition this year. There are many great behavioral health providers in Lincoln, and we all share the same mission: to help people live their best possible life. We’re grateful others believe in our mission as much as we do, and work to better all people. We truly shared the nomination with the best of Lincoln. We live in a terrific, caring community.

We’re thankful to the Lincoln Journal Star for organizing an event meant to honor the businesses of Lincoln, and helping us find a platform to spread the message of hope. We believe everyone should know their options, and especially know how we can help and how others have been positively impacted by our care. It helps new patients find us, and helps new mental health journeys begin.

We’ll always continue to provide the best care, and to wear our win with humility and gratefulness. We’re ecstatic that after a few years, the name Alivation is truly becoming publicly synonymous with terrific care, and that others are spreading the message and voting for us. It’s to those people that we always strive to live up to our message and our mantra. We’ll continue to do it for as long as people need excellent care.

Thank you, Lincoln.

Why We’re Essential

It’s never been a secret that we view ourselves as an essential business. Even before COVID-19, we would discuss the need for mental health services, ending stigma, and the great benefits to an integrated model of care. We’d tout our great team, our expansive facility and excellent technology, and we’d discuss the many benefits to taking mental health seriously for everyone.

We’ve stayed open during COVID-19, and we’re open now to the public to continue receiving treatments. We aren’t a hospital, although we do have a Primary Care division onsite. We’ve been asked often: Why? Why stay open during this? What’s the need for mental health during this time? Isn’t it all Coronavirus testing, quarantines, and lockdowns? Shouldn’t we just do telehealth and remote services and call it good?

We support the quarantine, and we’re working hard to help flatten the curve and end the COVID-19 situation as soon as possible. But we’ve been classified an essential business, and we stay open. The short answer is because no one does what we do, and no one can provide the much-needed services now that we do. COVID-19 is causing any number of problems, but the mental health challenges it poses to the world are, frankly, unprecedented.

Now more than ever, people need to know someone is there to take care of them. Help isn’t far, and the services they’ve come to rely on, both for mental and physical health, can still be found at Alivation. Whether you make your appointment remotely or choose to come in to our physical location, we won’t abandon anyone now in their time of need. TMS, EEGs, checkups, and appointments and services of all types are still available. We won’t let mental health fall by the wayside.

We have team members working from home, or quarantined if they’ve showed any signs of symptoms. We wear masks, and gloves; we wash our hands thoroughly, and use sanitizer. We clean door handles and rooms, and direct our patients and our team members on where to go and how to use the building to decrease infection risks. We’re taking extraordinary steps in this extraordinary time to limit the exposure while providing top-of-the-line, expert care. We want everyone to feel safe when they’re at Alivation.

If you’re struggling with a mental health challenge or a physical ailment, don’t hesitate to call us. We’ll take all necessary steps to ensure your safety while you’re on the premises. If you’re uncomfortable coming into our facility, we understand. Please visit our website to set a convenient and easy telehealth appointment with many of our wonderful providers, working from home to protect themselves and the patients who rely on them for their care. We share the responsibility with other essential businesses of providing needed services while limiting risk.

We take being an essential business very seriously, and we’ll live up to that promise for every patient. No matter your need, we’re here for you.

Mindfulness During Quarantine

These last few weeks have been difficult. For businesses, for individuals, for everyone affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. Our social paradigms have changed. Norms and services we took for granted are changed, and in some ways gone. We stay home more than we ever thought we would. We have a lot of time for self-reflection.

One thing we can do to help get through this time is to be mindful, and to practice looking inward and personal examination. We can take stock of what we have, and how lucky we are. We can cherish our friends and families and find hope in our journeys. We can think of ways to support businesses we care about while respecting quarantines and social distancing. We can reach out to friends we haven’t seen for years, or take up new hobbies.

A key is to just breathe, and to think about the good things. Mindfulness takes many different forms for many different people, and however people choose to do it is okay. If they want to look back on good memories, and to remember things fondly, that’s a potential positive. If they want to practice self-affirmations and look at their good attributes and acknowledge their skills and positive traits, that’s another. If they want to envision everything they’ll do in the future, or think about the good ways this will change them, that’s also potentially helpful.

We can also be mindful about our communities and our families. We can find ways to help others while social distancing, and to think about what we like best about the people in our lives. We can tell them how we feel, and why they’re important to us. Nothing is wrong with reaching out to people in this unique time, and finding ways to express gratitude when people can use it most. It can be a boost just to know you’re thought of positively by someone, and that you’re loved, and that you’re important.

Keeping a strong, active mind is essential to getting through this difficult time. We need to stay vigilant and healthy while also working with what we have. The COVID-19 situation has the potential to unearth many new mental health challenges for many people, and finding ways to be prepared or to work through those can only benefit everyone. With the right mindset, and the right positive influences in our lives, we can not only work through this crisis, but potentially come out the other side stronger, happier, healthier, and better off than we were before.

If you find you need more than you’re able to give yourself right now, don’t hesitate to call Alivation at 402-476-6060. You’ll find a caring, compassionate, relatable team happy to help you.

Nostalgia and Looking Backward

It isn’t controversial to point out time is forever going forward.

However, it can still be unpleasant to acknowledge this. Despite our lifetime of experiences and collective human history, aging has never been a happy priority for most of us. As humans we can’t help but be wistful and romantic about the past. The things gone can never come back, we say, and we look back on it fondly for what it once was. This feeling is called nostalgia.

The idea of nostalgia is prevalent in our culture today. Everywhere you look, Hollywood is remaking movies and TV shows from bygone eras. People talk about the “good old days”. We’re reminded time has past, and change is the one guaranteed facet of life. Trying to recapture youth and good experiences can be a consuming pastime, if we let it.

Nostalgia can be terrific. When we try to make others happy by reminding them of good memories or times from the past, or when we help children have great holidays and birthdays because we want them to experience the joy we felt at that age but might not be able to recapture for ourselves anymore. Nostalgia can be powerful when we use those memories to love each other more, or work to improve society. When we use nostalgia for common good, and let it guide us correctly, then it’s a potentially wonderful thing.

Is there a danger to nostalgia? It’s certainly possible. When one gets too hung up on the past that they can’t enjoy the present or even derive any joy from the possibility of the future, it’s a problem. If common past attitudes we now consider abhorrent, such as racism or prejudicial standards, are nostalgically regarded, this is also a serious problem. We can’t accept the ways of the past simply because they are in the past. We can’t refuse to live because we can’t escape past pleasantness.

The key seems to be managing our nostalgia and managing our expectations. Things weren’t perfect in the past. There never was a genuine Golden Era, any more than there is one now. The way we compress our memories is a psychological trick, an adjustment strategy that convinces us we should have remained where we were rather than going forward. If only we’d had the choice. Sometimes time seems like a trick, and life a burden. This is normal. If we help ourselves realize it’s good to keep growing, and moving forward isn’t our enemy, we can overcome even our emotional commitment to remaining in an idealized past long gone.

But the future can be great, too. If we make it great, it can be better than the past, and give us, and future generations, something new to be nostalgic for.