What is Emotional Regulatory Healing, or ERH?

Crisis Ignites Evolution. ERH is Bold Evolution. If you are interested, please read on.

2006: A foster child arrived to the Alvarado home; 15 year old, 30 placements, multiple residential
stays and a chronically mentally ill biological mother. He had suffered every type of child abuse
and neglect that you can imagine. He was failing in school, had no friends, was defiant and angry.
At 6’ 5” and 250lbs he had developed the capacity to keep everyone away. Outcome: He was
nominated homecoming King of his high school and graduated in May 2010. He has been working
and independent, with a few setbacks along the way, for 5 years. This was no easy feat and his
story and healing through ERH is woven into all of our speaking and teaching engagements.

February 2012: Juli was asked to consult on a case with a 7 year old child who had experienced 32
child welfare placements, including a failed adoption. This child was prescribed 7 psychotropic
medications and had been hospitalized at the time of the referral. She was being restrained up to
10 times a day and the current team was concerned that she would become a ward of the state
through emancipation. Outcome: In March 2012 she was placed into an adoptive family with
intensive ERH training and support from our team. She remains in this family and is healing,
learning and growing successfully as of January 2015.

June 2013: A school in Ontario, Canada serving indigent, traumatized and at risk youth had lost
funding due to poor test scores. The special services liaison contacted our office regarding
training and coaching to bring increased regulation to the classroom with the objective of
improved academic success. Outcome: Juli spent a couple of days onsite observing and training
the staff in mindful and regulatory practices for the staff first, and then to implement in each
classroom and throughout the entire building. This was followed up with monthly consult calls
focused on specific needs. A sensory calming plan was put in place, silence and deep breathing
is on the schedule for the first 5 minutes of each day and at each transition throughout the day,
and support to families with children displaying extreme behaviors in school is in place. Outcome:
In November, 2014, the liaison shared with us that this school has been chosen by their school
board as an example of excellence and the staff we trained are now training schools across their
region in ERH. Test scores improved in the first year and we are anxiously awaiting data from the
second year.

April 2014: A wounded veteran contacted our office seeking help for her PTSD. Not only was she
experiencing the trauma of 2 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, she has been raped and brutalized by
others serving with her. Unable to work, sleep, relax or relate to her family and others, she was
losing what little safety she thought she had. Outcome: as of January 2015 she has returned to
living with her family who has participated in an intensive ERH healing weekend with Juli and her
team. She is working part time and receiving local support to help her manage symptoms of
PTSD.

November 2014: A new client, a foster mother, reports to Juli that her foster daughter, placed into
a residential treatment center for defiance and running, is being punished by the withholding of
food, unrealistic goals of command performance that a traumatized child is incapable of, and due
to an episode of anger and screaming was not allow to spend the holiday with her family. Instead
she was isolated and alone as her foster family grieved her absence. Outcome: January 2015, Juli
and this foster mother pulled a team together and with support of a local attorney, the child’s
CASA, and expert witness testimony by Juli, the child is being returned to this foster mother with
an adoption plan in place. This mother and child will spend an intensive healing weekend together
with Juli as soon as the placement occurs.

References are available for each of these cases. Please read on~

What we do in most cases of trauma and loss is not nearly effective enough to warrant its
continuation. The amount of money we spend, the resource we direct at therapies and hours
spent restraining, isolating and punishing those who have been punished beyond what most of us
can imagine, have not yielded the outcomes in either qualitative nor quantitative data. Yet much of
what we do today with clients of trauma and loss, we were doing long before the transformation of
Trauma Informed Care and what the new field of Neuroscience has brought to light.

The magnitude of information available and the speed in which this information arrives renders us
traumatized ourselves as we attempt to make sense of new research, peptide receptors,
neurotransmitters, mirror neurons, the amygdala and other important aspects of the human brain.

Simply put, trauma and loss change everything; change us; change the way we see and live in the
world; change the way we relate to others; change how we act and feel, how we think and learn,
and, if left unattended, trauma and loss change the way our brain functions.

Everything we do at the Alvarado Consulting and Treatment Group (ACG) is directed at mitigating
the negative impact of trauma and loss as we teach you how to put the pieces back together.

Emotional Regulatory Healing, ERH, is at the base of our organizational consulting, program
development, clinical practice and retreat work.

ERH is a trauma informed, global and mindful paradigm directed at the improvement of
organizational, social, emotional and behavioral LIFE. ERH is an integration of the most recent
research in neurodevelopment and ancient paradigms in the healing of mind, body and spirit
taught in simplified yet profound ways that impact the learner at the deepest level; the level where
evolution occurs in self, first.

At ACG we believe that emotions are valuable signals that allow for our survival and help us
thrive. However, when those emotions become dysregulated, our rational self goes off line
rendering impulsive decisions, illogical thoughts and outcomes that leave individuals, families
and organizations dysfunctional.

When we learn how to integrate our emotional and rational self wisely and to manage them under
stress we tend to make more effective decisions, connect well with others and find and follow our
purpose in work, life, love, family and relationships.

ERH is both an explicit paradigm for the healing of trauma and dysregulation through relational,
integrated and brain based interventions as well as implicitly always operating in the background
through who we become as ERH practitioners. As the leader, parent, or clinician becomes more
emotionally regulated, so too, do those in their presence.

We no longer assume that simply because we understand something intellectually, or think we do,
that we have actually realized it and can successfully practice it. Becoming an ERH practitioner
requires maturity and practice in both emotional regulation and emotional intelligence that are
called upon in the moment of crisis. We do not expect clients or staff to do what we as clinicians
and leaders are not willing to do ourselves. ERH provides a parallel process of recovery for the
organizational leaders, clinicians, staff and parents.

ERH outcomes result in recovery in a multitude of ways; less staff turnover, increased employee
satisfaction, a decrease in disrupted placements, failed adoptions and separated families, and
healing reported at the most profound level in those with whom we work.

Trauma Informed Care, Secondary Traumatic Stress, and Grief and Loss Recovery through ERH

ERH integrates core principles of neurodevelopment, grief, attachment and learning theories with
mindful healing into a comprehensive approach for the client of trauma and loss, their current
family or provider, and their broader community.

AT ACG we integrate a highly experiential component and teach your group the basics and the indepth
information needed to increase regulatory capacity for provider and client.

The experience of trauma is fear. The experience of grief is sadness. Recognizing and responding
to each in a timely and developmentally appropriate way is imperative for optimal healing.

The traumatic or loss event is only the beginning; the experience of the event as well as the
effects of the experience of the event that last long beyond the actual event become the basis for our work with all clients of trauma as well as their providers and the organizations who are called
to serve them.

ERH is being taught throughout the US and Canada in schools, child welfare, mental health,
juvenile justice settings and the VA.

As an intervention ERH is the framework used in our clinical consulting, life coaching, executive
coaching and family/individual therapy services, as well as our Simply Healing Retreats.

How was Emotional Regulatory Healing created?

There is nothing new. There are simply new ways of speaking it, experiencing it, or teaching it.

Humbly co-created by Juli Alvarado and the many who come before her, ERH is derived from a
combination of personal, professional, and clinical experiences. Juli’s personal history of, and
recovery from abuse, trauma and loss along with serving traumatized children for 15 years as a
therapeutic foster parent; her 20 years of professional/clinical training and experience at various
levels of responsibility in trauma serving organizations; and most recently Juli’s loss of her life
partner far too early to leukemia have provided the ground for required transformation of
mind/body/spirit. Moving through these life altering trauma and losses has given Juli a far deeper
glimpse into the experiences than any training course or degree she completed. The outcome of
her loss and the road to recovery are paved with helping others do the same.

Juli Alvarado is passionate about healing; not simply behavior modification or control, but deep
healing. Her paradigm is just that; a paradigm for healing life, not a model of therapy.

Life’s traumas and losses are not effectively healed in 50 minute therapy sessions.

ERH is based on a growing understanding of complex issues facing traumatized and grieving
people in today’s modern world. Utilizing a neurodevelopmental and trauma informed perspective
on emotional regulation and emotional intelligence has allowed us the opportunity to generate a
common set of concepts and principles based in neurobiology. This understanding of the etiology
of many problems seen in wounded people everywhere has helped us better understand how to
intervene and begin to heal the problems we see in these at-risk, maltreated and traumatized
children, vets, individuals and families as well as the organizations that serve them.

ACG provides an array of services for organizations, schools, individuals and families.
Introducing ERH as a trauma informed response involves a process of capacity building,
understanding and training for all levels of practice and care. We offer:

Full day Trauma Informed Care and Secondary Trauma Training in ERH

Three Day intensive, experiential training for direct service providers and parents
Five Day intensive, experiential, training of trainers
Case consultation and review (on-site and teleconference)
Executive and Life Coaching/ Home based therapy and intensive weekend interventions
Curriculum based training materials

Simply Healing Retreats for those who have experienced Trauma and Loss

For more information contact us in our Denver office at 720-284-4929.