http://www.elementalfreedom.org/

EleMental Freedom, Tempe, AZ (2025)

06/27/2024

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.

06/26/2024

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

This can manifest in ourselves & kiddos.

In our training, we explore how unmet needs happen during these sages & 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 & body to rewire around the given developmental stage.

P.s. check out or website if you're interested in this or other PEER Group & trainings!

04/17/2024

A balance of containment and fostering freedom leads to having the capacity to experience life with a sense of empowerment while also fostering secure attachment.

Here is what occurs when the scales are tipped towards *too much* Permissiveness or Control/Restriction.

Remember this journey and not a destination. As our children grow and learn we can grant ourselves grace and understanding that it is an ever evolving classroom of finding the balance for each child at different developmental stages.

04/04/2024

Neuroscience of Learning Through the FEAR Pathway vs. SAFETY Pathway:

When we experience learning via the FEAR PATHWAY, we learn, activate, and/or strengthen the following:

✅️Survival instinct & subconscious experience/neuroception of lack of safety in the world (limited brain accessibility)

✅️Constriction in physiology (chronic overtime)

✅️Stress-based & fear-based responses: Activates 4 F's (Fight, Flee/Flight, Freeze, and Fawn)

When we experience learning via the SAFETY PATHWAY, we learn, activate, and/or strengthen the following:

✅️Intellect, full cognitive functioning, problem solving

✅️Integration with use of the whole brain & body without constriction (sense of more ease)

✅️Security and self-worth

✅️The Four R's (Regulating, Relating & Reasoning) = Recalling/Recollection is strengthened
(Note: 3 R's is a tool we reference by )

This is why it is best if we teach, demonstrate, and utilize tools that foster learning and relating through a pathway that illicits safety and connection.

This provides the best likelihood to integrate the learning and recall the experience in a way that allows us to problem-solve using our reasoning and have access to our whole brain (vs only the parts that are associated with fear/stress response).

03/20/2024

Understanding the functionality of these three parts of the brain is imperative for understanding what does and does not work with human behavior. This goes for ourselves and those whom we are in relationship with.

We must feel safe to be fully available for integrated problem solving, learning & understanding.

Rational Brain (Neocortex): Governs reasoning & higher functioning (only fully accessed when there is a felt sense of safety).

Emotional Brain (Limbic System): Governs emotion & attachment (relationship with self/other).

Primitive Brain (Brain Stem): Governs our fear/threat response (fight/flight/flee/freeze).

When an overall neuroception (felt sense) of Capacity and/or Containment are out of balance, this creates a threat/fear response which results in neuroception of lack of safety which results in a threat response. Threat/fear response limits access to the rational brain, which hinders our ability to have/make healthy decisions & healthy boundaries, thereby limiting our access to secure relational attachment.

03/15/2024

A healthy balance of providing safe containment and fostering agency cultivates healthy boundaries.

Healthy boundaries expand capacity and ones ability to regulate their nervous system.

Capacity and regulation help us to foster secure attachment.

Secure attachment lays a foundation for healthy nervous system development.

Healthy ANS development further promotes emotional resilience and wellbeing.

Each of these aspects (Attachment, Boundaries, Containment) are deeply connected and interwoven with one another.

This is why we call them the ABC's of Healthy Relationships.

03/02/2024

The ABCs of Healthy Relationships:

A - (Attachment): Secure Attachment is cultivated by implementation of healthy relational Boundaries (vs. unhelpful Barricades)

B - (Boundaries): Boundaries create a healthy balance between Containment and agency w/ self & other, which fosters Capacity and resilience.

C - (Containment): Containment and Capacity are necessary to feel safe and secure. Safety and security are foundational for Secure Attachment.

02/26/2024

One of the topics we get the most questions about are challenges with finding the right balance between Control & Permissiveness

This is the sweet spot we refer to as Containment, which is what creates capacity for our children to experience both resilience and a healthy balance of self/other reliance.

Control oftentimes creates unhelpful restriction.

Permissiveness oftentimes creates chaos.

Containment, on the other hand, makes way for capacity.

What are some areas where you've shifted from Permissiveness or Control to Containment/Capacity?

02/21/2024

Communication & Social Media Manager & Website Manager (part-time work from home opportunity)

Duties:
⁃ Website management including publishing and managing digital products, design and edits
⁃ Content creation including presentations, infographics, and social media content using Canva
⁃ Management of social media including writing and publishing posts to social media platforms

Requirements (non-negotiable):
⁃ Well-versed using Canva software
⁃ High level of competence in managing multiple tasks
⁃ Extreme attention to detail
⁃ Familiarity and competence with website design

Preferred Qualities:
⁃ Experience with Squarespace
⁃ Experience with Acuity/Squarespace Scheduling systems
⁃ Familiarity/experience with management of professional social platforms including Instagram and Facebook

Ideal Candidate:
⁃ Ability to triage tasks effectively by order of urgency and due date
⁃ Effective communication with high level of proficiency in written and verbal correspondence
⁃ Solution-oriented
⁃ Ability to complete projects efficiently and independently, taking initiative to seek out support/direction when necessary

Hours: 5-10 hours per week (this is variable dependent on workload and business growth)

Please visit our website and Instagram to familiarize yourself with our brand, mission, and design preferences.

Once you've done this please reach out with any questions by directly messaging here or by email at: info@elementalfreedom.org

Note: We are NOT looking for an agency at this time. We are looking for a single individual. If you are an agency do not email us. We are not able to commit to more than 5 hours of work per week at this time.

02/16/2024

Have you ever been curious what activates our threat response?

Threat response is absolutely vital to understand for 'behavior management' strategies.

Lisa Dion from refers to "The 4 Threats"

The 4 threats give us an easy way to understand the complexity of how easily our threat response can be activated.

This is so important to bear in mind for those of us who are caregivers.

For instance, it is quite common for all 4 of these to be activated, literally on daily basis, for many children in school environments.

The more we can see things through the child's eyes, the more we understand their struggles.

The more we understand, the more we offer support to create more helpful environments.

The more helpful the environment, the fewer threats.

The fewer threats, the fewer 'unhelpful behaviors' we run into.

The fewer behaviors, the more we can enjoy our time together & BE in safe connection.

In other words, understanding The 4 Threats is paramount to creating better relationships with our children, with ourselves, and with the world.

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.

02/02/2024

"When we begin to know ourselves in an open and self-supportive way, we take the first step to encourage our children to know themselves."

-Dr. Daniel Siegel

01/23/2024

Let's talk BOUNDARIES vs. BARRICADES

Prentis Hemphill says, "Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously."

We like to give permission for the possibility of interchanging the word "love" with "respect".

Children & Adolescents need a healthy balance of freedom & containment. Insert navigating the line between a & a .

We have found that every parent we work with are always coming from a place of good intentions & considering long-term repercussions to a child's behavior.

In slide 2, we organized a few common challenges caregivers run into. We also included common punishments, as well as the intentions & misconceptions that caregivers have surrounding the course of action. Last, why that "consequence" actually registers as a "barricade" vs a boundary to the brain and body.

In slide 3, we outline ways that boundaries can be held in the same scenario in order to actually get to the same long-term outcome that aligns closely with our original intention.

The difference between Boundaries & Barricades...

Boundaries display & promote:
✅️Act of self & respect (for self &other)
✅️Connection
✅️Containment
✅️Safety

Barricades display & promote:
❎️Isolation
❎️Survival adaptations
❎️Ridgity
❎️Overwhelm and/or Underwhelm

01/13/2024

"Encouraging someone to be themselves is the loudest way to move them."

-Author Unknown

This goes for our kiddos.....our partners..our friends..and most of all.....OURSELVES.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤍

01/01/2024

We often get Parent questions about "Natural Consequences" in regards to how to hold boundaries.

Here's a simple image from one of our PEER Groups about holding a boundary with different ages related to Natural Consequences.

EleMental Freedom

06/27/2024

06/26/2024

04/17/2024

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03/20/2024

03/15/2024

03/02/2024

02/26/2024

02/21/2024

02/16/2024

02/09/2024

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