Foundations Counseling Center, Inc.

09/05/2025

Year 5… the fifth year of Light Up The Darkness Event & Car Show, but also five years since my father-in-law has been gone. That’s five years of moments my husband and his sister, Kylie, haven’t been able to share with their dad.

This year’s clothing collection is especially meaningful, both to honor the five-year milestone of LUTD and to remember why Kylie and I started this event in the first place: su***de. And our ongoing drive to make mental health visible, normal, and supported. As it should be.

You’ll see one of this year’s designs features the traditional green ribbon, a symbol of general mental health awareness. The second design showcases a semicolon, representing su***de awareness.

For those unfamiliar with the semicolon, it’s a symbol that someone has chosen to keep going, even when they may have felt like ending their story.

So this year, that piece is dedicated to everyone who has been impacted by su***de, in any form.

This is for you.

With love,
Jess

Order your LUTD clothes here:
https://light-up-the-darkness-25.spiritsale.com/

08/14/2025

DORSAL REST: The Most Important Polyvagal State for Coping with On-Going Trauma

In basic introductions to polyvagal theory, we learn about 3 nervous system states - safe and social, fight/flight, and freeze/shutdown. The safe and social state involves the Ventral Vagus nerve, the fight/flight state involves high activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and the freeze/shutdown state involves high activation of the Dorsal Vagus nerve.

From this simplistic explanation, it is easy to assume that engagement of the Dorsal Vagus nerve is something to be avoided. I have received emails asking “Is Dorsal the bad one?” and “What can I do to get out of Dorsal activation?”

I realize that some of the ways I have presented polyvagal info in the past contributed to this misunderstanding, and many of the sources I have referred people to have further solidified this false idea that Dorsal is bad.

In this post, I want to honor the Dorsal Vagus for its fantastic ability to multi-task, and I hope that by the end, perhaps your view of this nerve will have shifted.

DORSAL REST is a state of dorsal vagus activation that is supported by ventral vagus activation. The activation of the ventral vagus moderates the activity of the dorsal, so that the body system does not go into a freeze/shutdown state.

In this mixed state, we feel low energy or immobilization that is tolerable and not distressing. This state allows the body to rest and rebuild after injury, to properly digest food and absorb nutrition, to access meditative or spiritual states, and to sleep. With the help of the ventral vagus, the dorsal vagus offers us restoration, rejuvenation, and healing.

This is possibly the most important vagal state to know about for long-term trauma recovery, for long-haul covid recovery, and for coping with sysemic traumas that push us towards burnout. Our bodies require regular activation of the dorsal vagus to heal from normal wear and tear and more frequent activation of the dorsal vagus to heal from trauma.

When we run on high tone sympathetic energy for a long time (months to years), our adrenal resources become depleted. When we eventually crash, we flip from high energy anxiety and hypervigilence to exhaustion and loss of interest in high energy activities. If we cannot access safety at this point, we will become depressed, and the depression will last until we are able to access a sense of safety or refuge somewhere.

Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves or each other about being low energy are the biggest danger cues in our environment. Our society has labeled being low energy as lazy, incompetent, childish, and dysfunctional. When our self-talk is blaming or shaming us for being low energy, our bodies are less capable of using that low energy time for healing. Self-talk is of course not our only barrier to safety, but it is one of the few that is within our control.

Embracing Dorsal Rest has allowed me to better cope with PMDD, a cyclical type of depression that involves severe mood drops just before my period. Those 5-7 days each month still suck, but they suck a little less now that I understand low energy phases are a natural and normal part of my body’s self-healing process. I find that shifting my self-talk changes my experience of how distressing these low energy phases are for me. Thus I have been trying to reframe “sickness behaviors” as “healing behaviors.”

Here is my current list of 100% healthy “healing behaviors” which I find necessary when I am immobilized by my Dorsal Vagus…

Nesting & Naps
Comfort Food
Time and Space Alone
Low energy activities - listening to music, watching Netflix, reading, coloring, meditation, visualizations, breathwork, prayer, yin yoga, constructive rest, visiting with internalized others (inner mentor, inner child, etc)
Sensory Defences - shades drawn, headphones on, humidifier, soft blankets, temp set to a comfy range, etc etc
Doing “nothing” - day dreaming, spacing out, losing time

If I shame myself for any of these, I quickly find myself out of DORSAL REST and into DORSAL FREEZE.

I hope that this post gives you some permission to be slow and restful and know that this is exactly what your body needs.

Do you want to add something to this list? What other traditional “sickness behaviors” would you name as healthy and healing?
📆This text was first shared in 2021. PMDD is not part of my experience after HRT but I still use this list for other chronic illness flares.

📚 Free Infographics about Trauma, Nervous System, and Neurodiversity: linktr.ee/TraumaGeek
🧠 Blog: https://www.traumageek.com/blog
🌠 Want to learn more with me? I’m hosting an 8-week course focused on the big picture understanding of the nervous system, including connections between systemic trauma and chronic illness. We begin next week. https://traumageek.thinkific.com/courses/2025-summer-study-group

08/01/2025

FREE ON THE 1st: TODAY OUR BOOKS ARE FREE
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At Piplo Productions we believe that...
There are a lot folks looking for mental health support for their children.

You can embed core mental health principles into children's books.

Children's books can support family mental health.

No matter what changes, we are committed to sharing care and healing, and one way we can do this is through our Free on the 1st Program: https://piploproductions.com/free-on-the-first/

07/20/2025

On days when my words are mostly all done- a picture.

Kids do well when they can (Dr Ross Greene).

Em 🌈

07/04/2025

07/02/2025

Registration is now open for Trauma-Informed Caregiving: Supporting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma.

Join us for this eight-session workshop designed to help caregivers better understand and support children impacted by trauma. https://go.wisc.edu/s7cn6p to reserve your spot.

06/29/2025

06/29/2025

06/12/2025

We are told to praise children for being easy, quiet, obedient. For doing what they’re told without question. For not making a fuss, not speaking up, not challenging the rules.

But think about what that looks like in adulthood.

When adults are overly passive, compliant, or disconnected from their own needs — we call it a lack of confidence. We call it people-pleasing. We call it burnout.

We wonder why they can’t speak up in relationships, why they don’t know what they want, why they struggle to set boundaries.

The truth is:
Some of the very traits we reward in children are the ones we end up trying to unlearn in therapy as adults.

Because the goal of childhood isn’t to raise a “good” child by society’s standards.

It’s to raise a whole human.

One who knows their worth.
One who can speak their truth.
One who can say no without guilt and yes without fear.

So when your child challenges you, asks questions, asserts themselves — pause before you shut it down. It might be inconvenient. It might even be uncomfortable. But it’s not bad.

It’s growth.
It’s voice.
It’s exactly what we hope they’ll have as adults.

Let’s stop confusing obedience with goodness.
Let’s raise children we won’t have to help recover later. ❤️

Follow for more

05/30/2025

Is this my child’s lack of gratitude, or is it my grief?

There are times I catch myself thinking my child is ‘ungrateful’ for the life they have the privilege of having.

So many of us will recall being told as children we don’t know how lucky we are - how our parents and caregivers had it so much worse than us. And that is not necessarily untrue.

There are times we don’t know our fortune or privilege, because the only experience we have is the one we’re having. We can absolutely learn from others about their lived experience, but that will never be the same as being ‘in’ the depths of the same hardships, or being ‘with’ the same emotional experiences that accompany those experiences.

When I truly reflect on my idea that my child is not grateful, I so often come to realise that the truth causing a pang in my heart is my expectation of them to be grateful for something they don’t have another experience to compare this one to, and that’s not their responsibility.

Being with whatever rests within me, whether it be sadness, grief, loss, is not for my child to be concerned with.

As I walked along, feeling the crunch of autumn leaves beneath my feet, breathing in the fresh, free air and feeling into the immense gratitude I have for my life, my freedom; I realised that my child is not having the same childhood I had.

My child is grateful. But they don’t feel the same depth and intensity of gratitude for such simple things as I, because it has always been available to them. They’ve had the privilege of knowing they are PDA, autistic, from early childhood and embracing this. They’ve known how to self advocate and that their no is a no.

And that same child, in what might seem oblivion, is also the person that will out racism, sexism, ableism, will take a stand for others unapologetically and without reservation. They’ll call out unacceptable behaviour from others (including me) and hold fast to their boundaries, no matter what threats loom.

When I think my child is being ungrateful simply because they don’t take in some aspects of life in the same way I do, it’s helpful for me to reflect on whether this experience is something I can bring back to me to be grateful for.

It’s okay for me to feel grief over a childhood I didn’t receive and to celebrate the one I am able to provide to my own children.

And it’s okay to allow my child to have the experiences they need in order to continue becoming the person they are supposed to be.

We are, after all, separate people.

KF

05/28/2025

05/23/2025

🌟 TOMORROW: Playful EMDR Gets Even More Relational 🌟

Join us for the next FREE Playful EMDR HUB workshop with BJ Nichols, LCSW:
📅 Friday, May 24th
🕐 1:00 PM EST
💚Let’s Play EMDR: Resourcing with the Parent as Co-Therapist

✨ Watch a demonstration of a Phase 2 resourcing tool adapted to include parents—based on Elan Shapiro’s 4 Elements model.
-Great for nervous system mirroring
-Boosts co-regulation and child-parent attunement
-Simple, accessible, and powerful

Register now before we go live:https://playfulemdr.com/playful-emdr-hub/

See you in the HUB! 💛