EleMental Healing & Coaching

07/05/2024

Hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday.

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

-Adlai Stevenson

07/05/2024

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

-Adlai Stevenson

06/28/2024

Whew, this last week has been an absolute doozey for so many people, it seems! 😞

If you're feeling tested in a big way, just know you're not alone. 🌎

There seems to be something happening in the collective consciousness (at least with the many people in my sphere). 🙃

My prayer and hope is that you can lean into safe support as you navigate any challenges you may be moving through. 💚

Sometimes, just not being alone in the pain is just the medicine we need to get through to a brighter day. 🌞

Picture of me being done with my Invisalign. It is definitely a positive pole this last couple of weeks for me. It took forever, but I am on the other end, and that is a lovely metaphor for me to lean into at this time. 😁

06/27/2024

"This is a super handy image that we came up with merging Erick Erickson's Psychosocial Development Stages along with up-to-date understanding of attachment theory & neuroscience.

(We even drew a little from Synergetic Play Therapy Institute 's perspective on developmental tasks that show up in play therapy sessions.)

In our training, we explore how unmet needs happen during these sages and how they can manifest later in life.

We further look at how to meet/resource previously unmet needs and/or trauma in a way that allows for the brain and body to rewire around the given developmental stage."

This month in our PEER (Providing/Parenting Education Empowerment & Resource) video, we do a deep dive into developmental stages and needs.

This is a super handy image that we came up with merging Erick Erickson's Psychosocial Development Stages along with up-to-date understanding of attachment theory & neuroscience.

(We even drew a little from Synergetic Play Therapy Institute 's perspective on developmental tasks that show up in play therapy sessions.)

In our training, we explore how unmet needs happen during these sages and how they can manifest later in life.

We further look at how to meet/resource previously unmet needs and/or trauma in a way that allows for the brain and body to rewire around the given developmental stage.

06/18/2024

Feeling grateful to be named "Top 3 Best Rated" for 3 years in a row now. 💚

04/27/2024

Secure relationships (aka secure attachments) arise from consistent quality responsivness.

This goes for quality responsivness with our loved ones of course - AND - most importantly, with ourselves.

The invitation is to consider that relationships are not a destination but an ever-unfolding journey.

When we can learn to cultivate a better quality of responsivness within ourselves, it helps us to relate with others in that way from a more embodied place.

One day at a time, one step at a time. One moment at a time. A little more gentleness and understanding changes lives.

04/19/2024

Put simply, secure attachment is the experience that relationships are stronger than any given emotion.

In early childhood, it starts with our primary caregivers, and that informs the way we relate to ourselves.

Safe relationships with others help us to build these internal bonds with ourselves. From that place, we can further foster it in others.

04/12/2024

"The key to change lies in learning to tolerate the guilt or shame that comes up for us. Seeing these feelings as part of the change process, not an enemy of the change process. We need to make friends with these feelings because they are as signal that we are making progress."

04/08/2024

👉The only approval I really need is my own. I am learning to feel more deserving of approval, happiness, love, peace, freedom, and anything else I desire.👈

04/05/2024

"When you shut down emotion, you are also affecting the immune system and the nervous system.

The repression of emotion - which is actually a survival strategy - becomes a source of physiological illness later on."

03/18/2024

"Our bodies will not allow us to relax if we believe the feelings inside us are overpowering and threatening. The wider the range of feelings we can regulate, if we can manage the frustration, disappointment, envy, and sadness, the more space we have to cultivate happiness."

-

03/15/2024

👉Caring for & loving myself is the most loving thing I can do for my loved ones.

Not only do I have more to give, but I teach through demonstration how self care looks & feels.👈

What helps me is knowing that the healthiest thing I can do for others is model healthy, myself. Having healthy boundaries are probably the number one way to be healthy, IMO.

Having a solid, loving but serious "no" on board takes some real work - and - it does wonders for all who are in your sphere.

Loving me is the most loving thing I can do for me and my loved ones. Folding only teaches them how to not respect themselves or not respect someone else.

We typically only believe self-sacrifice is love because of unhealthy early developmental patterning.

REAL LOVE is being able to recognize and honor our own boundaries while doing our best to be considerate of others (without sacrificing our own).

It isn't our job to keep people happy - this includes our children and/or partners.

It IS our job to get through hard things and help teach our children how to get through hard things.

It is our job, if we want to be as secure base, to demonstrate that we can get through hard things together (as partners, as a family, etc.).

And when we do this, THAT is what creates more availability to experience more happiness.

This tends to be much more of a journey than a destination if we are having to learn this as adults.

I see you, dear one.

You're finding your way.

And you dont have to be alone in this.

💚

03/11/2024

👉More & more now, I am aligning with the people, places, thoughts & feelings that bring out the best in me. Every day, in every way, I am learning to love & accept myself with more ease & effortlessness.👈

03/08/2024

We tend to unconsciously shut down in others what was shut down in us. When we can become more conscious, we can create more understanding and grace; both in ourselves and in others.

The invitation is to let this in, even if just a little: You, more than anyone, deserve your understanding.

03/04/2024

Completing fight, flight, and freeze can inherently feel resourceful and even good IF it doesn't get overlayed with other experiences that register as intolerable or unacceptable.

03/01/2024

Gentle reminder:
It is NOT our feelings that are the issue. It is our inability to regulate the feelings.

02/26/2024

Nervous system regulation and nervous system healing are just as much about learning to experience, tolerate, and integrate feelings of comfort and goodness just as much as those of discomfort and pain. A nervous system can not be truly regulated without both.

👉My body & emotions are worth listening to. I am learning to integrate the goodness & the discomfort, which is bringing my body, mind & spirit back to equilibrium, more & more now.👈

02/23/2024

Things that create Nervous System Healing & Resiliency:

✅️Allowing anger to be felt (in digestible/integratable amounts)

✅️Allowing anger & sadness to be expressed

✅️Allowing grief to be experienced w/o hindrance

✅️Being witnessed by another safe nervous system (co-regulation)

✅️Recognizing & honoring when your body needs rest.

Even choosing just one of these to gently deepen into can go a long way for your health & wellbeing long-term.

02/16/2024

5 Tips for Healing:

✅️You can't heal what you don't feel

✅️You can't fully feel what you're trying to 'manage'

✅️You can't repair what you won't be accountable for

✅️You can't teach what you don't experience and display

✅️You can't be understood if you're not willing to understand.

Remember, you don't have to do it alone.

💚💚💚

02/14/2024

YOU are the love of your life
💚💚💚

02/12/2024

"If frightening sensations are not given the time and attention they need to move through the body and resolve or desolve, the individual will continue to be gripped by fear."

-

This is why it is so important to emotions to be experienced in effectively tolerable & digestible amounts.

THIS is foundational to all integrative Trauma healing.

Feeling is quite literally healing.

👉I am allowing myself to feel emotions in digestible amounts, which is allowing me to experience deeper and integrative healing more & more now👈

02/09/2024

The goal of healing, regulation, co-regulation, etc. is to recognize the emotion, allow for it to move through, and then come to completion in a way that feels safe & manageable. It is NEVER to stop the emotion.

Did you know an emotion's organic cycle is only 90 seconds? The remainder of it is due to our grappling with trying to manage the emotion.

When we track with it, that can give it the space it needs to come to completion.

02/09/2024

Boundaries are a big topic among parents (and in all relationships, for that matter).

vs. is our PEER Group topic for this month and is one will be deepening into.

The most important thing to start with is:

A boundary is for the individual and what THEY are available for, not about how the OTHER party responds.

Let's consider the IFS notion of Multiplicity in which BOTH experiences can be true at the same time. For instance, a child can be misbehaving AND still be good inside (more on this in 's book Good Inside).

Lack of regulation & impulse control are like developmentally appropriate. Children have a downstairs brain (emotional & primal instincts), and parent acts as the stairs to help build their upstairs brain (executive functioning) through demonstrating .

In other words, children are designed to have emotions and big experiences, and we teach them what to do with it.

As always, it is important to consider neurotypes in regard to developmental capabilities/needs as well as child trauma/unmet needs.

Boundaries are a big topic among parents (and in all relationships, for that matter).

vs. is our PEER Group topic for this month and is one will be deepening into.

The most important thing to start with is:

A boundary is for the individual and what THEY are available for, not about how the OTHER party responds.

Let's consider the IFS notion of Multiplicity in which BOTH experiences can be true at the same time. For instance, a child can be misbehaving AND still be good inside (more on this in 's book Good Inside).

Lack of regulation & impulse control are like developmentally appropriate. Children have a downstairs brain (emotional & primal instincts), and parent acts as the stairs to help build their upstairs brain (executive functioning) through demonstrating .

In other words, children are designed to have emotions and big experiences, and we teach them what to do with it.

As always, it is important to consider neurotypes in regard to developmental capabilities/needs as well as child trauma/unmet needs.

02/08/2024

Do you have a chronically picky eater? Here's some tips & tricks.

02/02/2024

"I have come to the conclusion that human beings have an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that healing can be a catalyst for profound awakening - a portal for opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation."

-Peter Levine

01/29/2024

👉I am releasing feelings of struggle while honoring my healing process. I am sending love, compassion, gratitude, and vitality to each and every cell of my being.👈

01/26/2024

Dr. Karyn Purvis says, "The goal is to see the precious child that exists beneath the SURVIVAL STRATEGIES and to let them know that we see them."

Read this again & replace with 'MY precious INNER-CHILD' & 'I'

If we really want to show up for children and loved ones in a SAFE & SECURE way, we MUST not abandon ourselves in hard moments.

Seeing the precious child or adolescent that exists beneath old survival strategies, which were developed during our formative years, is the most integrated way we know of to learn HOW to show up in this way for others.

Do our children deserve it? Absolutely. Equally, though, do our inner-children deserve to finally be seen.

01/25/2024

Play Therapy for the win!!!!

Let them play! It's not frivolous, it's not indulgent... it's vital.

Play will likely look different for each child. For some, it will simply be digging in the dirt!

**play

01/22/2024

To REPARENT ourselves, we must understand that what we often NEEDED as a child was to be SEEN, HEARD & UNDERSTOOD. NOT to be FIXED.

As parents and partners, it is paramount that we heal the places within us that wants to FIX THE OTHER. This starts with WITNESSING & HONORING those tendencies that impressioned in our formative years.

"I don't need fixing. I am worthy of being seen, heard & understood in all experiences, and I commit to honoring my own needs."

01/19/2024

"Discipline is helping a child solve a problem. Punishment is making a child suffer for having a problem. To raise problem solvers, focus on solutions, not retribution."

-L.R Knost

I purpose we consider this not just for children, but for ourselves, our loved ones, and all we are in community with.

The more we focus on trying to help ourselves solve a problem without punishing ourselves, the more model problem solving and solutions in our relational field.