Therapy for Highly Sensitive People, Empaths, and Creatives
Some people with sensitive nervous systems find it important to work with a therapist who understands.
Feel free to read about issues that may be important to you in therapy or reach out anytime to see if our work could be a good fit.
Have you doubted your intuitive knowing?
As a highly sensitive person, empath, or creative you may have had experiences of invalidation. This can look like someone minimizing your emotional experience, doubting your truths, or trying to problem solve for you when all you need in that moment is understanding. Sometimes this can lead someone to turn on themselves, to doubt how they feel, disconnect from their intuition, and turn away from their gifts. It can be very confusing inside if this happens. It can also lead to anxiety, depression, and heightening of trauma symptoms.
Some find that therapy helps them come home to their intuition and to their voice - to their embodied ability to feel into their unique truths, to speak them, and to follow them. This can bring peace inside. This is often a natural outcome of therapy working somatically and with parts work as it leads to becoming more embodied in the world. Some also find it helpful to work with what gets in the way of being able to say “no.” Some benefit from working with what happens in the body if they freeze up and go quiet when it is time to speak their truth. Some people also find it helps to bring compassion to different parts of the self that have conflicting needs and thoughts. Feel free to reach out for a consultation if this kind of support sounds like it could be helpful for you.
What was it like as a child?
Sometimes sensitive, empathic, or creative children are born into families with caregivers that do not “get” them and are not attuned to their emotional needs. The child is left feeling invalidated, misunderstood, and alone. Sometimes the sensitivity of the child creates parenting challenges that caregivers are not prepared to handle so they interact with the child in a way that causes harm, despite having good intentions. This may also happen with teachers in school systems. All children are inherently dependent on their early relationships for survival so this creates a very difficult situation - many end up disowning beautiful tender parts of themselves because there is no one there to see them and understand.
This is especially heartbreaking for children with exquisite sensitivity. It can lead to pain in relationships and other areas of life down the road. There may be wounding that gets in the way of being able to love and be loved. There may be blocks to manifesting one’s unique gifts in the world with confidence and intuitive knowing. Sometimes sensitive people may also be drawn to relationships that aren’t working for them but feel familiar to how they grew up. They may suffer with anxiety, depression, complex PTSD, or other issues. If any of this sounds familiar the right support might be helpful - our work in therapy may be a good fit.
Empathy
Sometimes children become very empathic by intuitively learning to read the energy of people or the energy of a room. If caregivers are inconsistent, they may develop sensitivities to pick up on what might happen in relationships. Sometimes they become very watchful of whether someone is going to hurt them. They may learn to sense whether their caregiver has been drinking or abusing substances. They may even hear a door close or footsteps coming down the hallway and be able to know what mood their family member is in.
This priming of their empathy and sensitivity in order to predict the world around them can be like a 6th sense or a superpower. For some, it can be both a gift and a challenge they want support with in therapy. On the one hand they have an amazing ability to tune into others. On the other hand they may find it very overwhelming to be around people because they pick up on too much information. Some really struggle to know their own inner truths and how they feel because the focus is on others. There may be confusion of what emotions belong to them and what emotions belong to other people - it might feel all meshed together. Relationships may not feel healthy or authentic at times. Caretaking, people pleasing, codependency, and submitting to the will of others can all stem from these kinds of adaptations and gifts. If this sounds familiar it may help to have warm support around these issues.
Creativity & Resilience
You may have been born into circumstances that were not safe in any number of ways - whether it was due to neglect, physical abuse, domestic violence, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, alcoholism, or addiction. Many children under these circumstances are not able to escape so they develop incredible capacities to escape into their own inner worlds - a place where creativity flows. Creativity and resilience go hand-in-hand. Sometimes it can be helpful to work with your creativity in the therapeutic process. Some really love working with art therapy for this reason - harnessing the power of creativity for healing.
My specialty in working with highly sensitive people, empaths, and creatives.
Special skill working with sensitive nervous systems with gentleness - trauma and neurodiversity informed
Healing power of the arts through art therapy and other expressive work
Somatic parts work: Internal Family Systems (IFS), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, EMDR and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT).
If wanted, cultivation of intuition and mind-body-spirit inner knowing in the healing process
Work can happen individually or as a couple with Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), or Couples Art Therapy.
Now accepting individuals and couples in California for online therapy.
