Elston Psychotherapy PLLC

10/19/2026

When Big Feelings Take Over: Help Your Child Find Their Way Back to Calm 💛

When a child becomes overwhelmed, reasoning, correcting, or giving a long explanation may not be what they need first.

Start with connection and regulation.
🌿 Get on their level. Use a calm voice and gentle presence.
🤍 Stay nearby. Let them know they don’t have to manage the moment alone.
🔇 Reduce stimulation. Lower the noise, activity, and demands when possible.
🌬️ Model slow breathing. Rather than demanding that they calm down, show them what slowing down can look like.
💧 Offer simple comfort. Water, a hug if they want one, or a familiar sensory tool may help.
🏡 Create a quiet reset space. A calming space should feel supportive—not like punishment.
🧠 Regulate yourself, too. Your child can benefit from experiencing a steady, responsive adult alongside their big emotions.
💬 Connect after the storm. Once everyone is regulated, that’s the time to talk about what happened, listen, problem-solve, and set appropriate limits.

Connection and boundaries can exist together. Helping a child regulate does not mean ignoring behavior. It means choosing a better time to teach.

At Elston Psychotherapy, we help families understand the emotions underneath behaviors and build healthier patterns of connection, communication, and regulation.

10/15/2026

We are so excited to welcome Michelle Green, LSW, LMSW to the Elston Psychotherapy team! ❤️

Michelle brings a warm, laid-back, and down-to-earth approach to therapy. She believes therapy doesn’t have to feel intimidating or overly formal. Instead, she strives to create a safe and welcoming space where clients can show up exactly as they are—messy, complicated, real-life stuff and all.

Michelle enjoys working with young adults and adults navigating:

✨ Grief & loss
✨ Life transitions
✨ Relationship challenges
✨ Trauma
✨ Anxiety
✨ Depression
✨ The unexpected twists and turns of life

Her approach centers on helping clients feel heard, seen, understood, and supported while they process difficult experiences, learn more about themselves, and continue growing into the people they want to be.

Michelle is licensed in both Illinois and Iowa, and we are incredibly happy to have her joining the Elston family!

Welcome to the team, Michelle! We are so excited to have you here! ❤️🌿

10/15/2026

**Your Brain Doesn’t Need More Criticism.
It Needs a Safer Way to Change.**

We often believe that being hard on ourselves will motivate us:

*“I should be better by now.”*
*“Why do I keep doing this?”*
*“What is wrong with me?”*

But harsh self-criticism can reinforce feelings of threat, shame, and emotional distress.

**Awareness works differently when it comes with compassion.**

Instead of asking:

*“What is wrong with me?”*

Try asking:

*“What is happening inside me—and what might I need?”*

Healing does not require ignoring behaviors that need to change. **Self-compassion is not avoiding accountability.**

It means learning to look at yourself honestly without becoming your own threat.

When we notice our patterns with curiosity rather than shame, we create more room for emotional regulation, new responses, and meaningful change.

At **Elston Psychotherapy**, we believe healing isn’t about attacking the parts of yourself that learned to survive.

It’s about understanding them—and helping your brain and body learn something new.

**Awareness without shame creates space for change.**

10/15/2026

10/14/2026

**You Don’t Have to Earn Rest, Love, or Belonging.**

People pleasing often begins as more than simply wanting others to be happy.

Sometimes, it develops when we learn early in life that connection, safety, or approval depends on how well we can meet the needs and expectations of others.

You may have learned to:

• Keep the peace to avoid conflict
• Monitor everyone else’s emotions
• Say “yes” when you wanted to say “no”
• Be helpful, easy, successful, or agreeable
• Hide your feelings to protect a relationship
• Feel responsible when someone else is disappointed
• Earn approval instead of simply receiving connection

These patterns may have helped you navigate relationships when you were younger. But in adulthood, they can leave you exhausted, disconnected from your own needs, and unsure where kindness ends and self-abandonment begins.

Healing can involve learning a new message:

**I can care about others without abandoning myself.
I can disappoint someone and still be safe.
I can set boundaries and remain worthy of connection.**

At **Elston Psychotherapy**, we help clients explore the experiences underneath their patterns—not with judgment, but with curiosity, compassion, and an understanding of why those patterns developed.

10/13/2026

**Your body isn’t giving you a hard time. It may be telling you it’s having a hard time.**

Sometimes stress doesn’t show up as a thought that says, *“I’m overwhelmed.”*

Sometimes it looks like:

• Feeling exhausted but unable to relax
• Irritability over seemingly small things
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Muscle tension or feeling physically restless
• Trouble sleeping even when you’re tired
• Feeling disconnected, numb, or shut down
• Becoming overwhelmed more quickly than usual
• Feeling like you always have to be doing something

When your nervous system has spent a long time adapting to stress, slowing down can sometimes feel unfamiliar—even uncomfortable.

**Healing isn’t about being calm all the time.**

It’s about building the capacity to notice what’s happening inside you, understand what your body may need, and find your way back to regulation without judging yourself for becoming dysregulated in the first place.

At **Elston Psychotherapy**, we believe mental health and physical well-being are deeply connected. Our psychotherapy and wellness services support the whole person—not just the symptoms.

**Your reactions carry information. Learning to listen to them can be part of healing.**

10/12/2026

**Honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day**

Today, Elston Psychotherapy recognizes and honors Indigenous peoples, communities, cultures, histories, and resilience.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is also an opportunity to acknowledge the lasting impact that historical and intergenerational trauma can have on individuals, families, and communities.

Healing does not happen in isolation. It is shaped by **culture, identity, connection, community, and the systems surrounding us.**

In mental health care, cultural humility means:

• Listening before assuming
• Respecting lived experiences
• Recognizing the impact of historical and systemic harm
• Understanding that there is no single definition of healing or wellness

Today, we encourage space for **learning, reflection, listening, and respect.**

We honor the strength of Indigenous communities, the importance of cultural identity and connection, and the generations who continue to preserve traditions, knowledge, language, and community.

May mental health care continue moving toward greater understanding, accessibility, cultural responsiveness, and respect for every person’s lived experience.

— **Elston Psychotherapy**

10/09/2026

**Healing Sometimes Looks Like a Pause.**

Not every sign of healing is dramatic.

Sometimes healing is the few seconds between **feeling** and **reacting**.

It’s noticing:

🌿 “My body is getting overwhelmed.”
🌿 “This feels familiar, but this situation is different.”
🌿 “I don’t have to respond immediately.”
🌿 “I can feel this emotion without letting it make the decision for me.”

Emotional regulation isn’t about never becoming anxious, angry, hurt, or overwhelmed.

It’s about developing the awareness and skills to recognize what is happening inside of you—and creating enough space to choose how you want to respond.

Over time, that pause can become powerful.

Instead of automatically repeating old patterns, you begin creating new ones.

**The goal isn’t to never be triggered.
The goal is to become more capable of finding your way back to yourself.**

At Elston Psychotherapy, we help individuals understand the patterns beneath their emotional responses and develop healthier ways of navigating stress, relationships, and difficult emotions.

**A healthier you. A brighter tomorrow.**

10/08/2026

**Parenting After Trauma: Sometimes You’re Parenting Your Child—and Reparenting Yourself at the Same Time.**

Parenting can bring parts of our own childhood to the surface that we thought we had already moved past.

Your child’s crying may activate you.
Their anger may feel overwhelming.
Their defiance may feel personal.
Their need for reassurance may stir up needs that were never met for you.

When you grew up around instability, criticism, emotional neglect, or other difficult experiences, parenting can challenge the ways you learned to protect yourself.

Healing doesn’t mean becoming a perfectly regulated parent.

It can look like:

🌿 Recognizing when your own history is influencing your reaction
🌿 Pausing before responding when emotions are high
🌿 Repairing after you lose your patience
🌿 Allowing your child to have emotions you weren’t allowed to have
🌿 Setting boundaries without withdrawing love or connection
🌿 Learning to offer yourself compassion while developing new parenting skills

One of the most meaningful shifts can happen when we begin asking:

**“Am I responding to what my child needs right now—or to what this moment is bringing up in me?”**

You can acknowledge the impact of your past while intentionally creating something different for the next generation.

At Elston Psychotherapy, we help individuals and families understand how past experiences can influence present-day emotions, relationships, and parenting patterns—and develop healthier ways of responding.

10/07/2026

**The goal of nervous system healing is not to feel calm all the time.
It’s to stop being afraid of how you feel.**

Healing doesn’t mean never feeling anxious, angry, overwhelmed, sad, or activated again.

It means learning that you can experience those emotions **without immediately believing something is wrong or that you need to escape them.**

Nervous system healing can look like:

🌿 Feeling anxiety without panicking about the anxiety
🧠 Recognizing a trigger without judging yourself for having one
💛 Allowing uncomfortable emotions to exist without immediately trying to fix them
🌊 Letting feelings rise and fall instead of fighting against them
🤝 Learning that activation does not always mean danger
✨ Trusting yourself to move through discomfort and return to a sense of safety

The goal isn’t **“I need to calm down.”**

The goal becomes:

**“I can feel this, and I can stay with myself through it.”**

Your nervous system doesn’t need to be perfectly regulated. It needs experiences that help it learn that emotions can be felt, understood, and moved through.

At **Elston Psychotherapy**, we help individuals better understand their emotional and nervous system responses, build greater capacity for difficult feelings, and develop a safer relationship with themselves.