Therapy for the Highly Sensitive Person
You feel everything deeply. You struggle with boundaries, worried that you’ll hurt or inconvenience others. You feel misunderstood and overwhelmed and want to create balance and ease for yourself.
The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP for short) has an innate trait that enables the nervous system and brain to notice subtleties that others might miss. While HSPs may be viewed as too “sensitive” or “weak,” this trait enables you to experience the world with a rich emotional connection both to others as well as to your environment. While the beauties of the HSP trait allow you to engage in your world with a heightened sense of attunement, there are also stressors that come along with those strengths.
If you have been feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and misunderstood or if you struggle with low self-esteem or anxiety, therapy for HSPs can help. Let’s learn more about how you can get started today.
HSP Stressors
Let’s explore some common struggles for HSPs. These are some areas where many HSPs experience stress and that can be improved by working with an HSP Therapist.
Difficulty with Transitions and schedule changes
The HSP brain is wired to inhibit action, and the Highly Sensitive Person often struggles to make quick transitions and decisions (especially under pressure) or when their schedule suddenly changes.
If you’ve ever prepared for a trip, you might have it down to a science (and likely even have a go-to packing list). You may also find that you feel confident and at ease when you have enough time to prepare and to be intentional in your plans.
Let’s say, that your job asked you to attend a work trip and you’ve had months to plan. How would you feel going into it?
Now let’s shake things up a bit. Let’s say that you find out last minute that the budget has been cut and you’ll now be required to share a rental car and a room with a coworker. The transition from envisioning yourself along each step of the trip and knowing that you are prepared is suddenly thrown off. You may find that you feel stuck while trying to integrate and process this new information or perhaps you feel overwhelmed as you realize you won’t have time or space to yourself. How would you feel in this scenario?
Setting Boundaries Leads to Feelings of Guilt
As a Highly Sensitive Person, you may find that you struggle with boundaries and/or conflict. While the beauty of the HSP trait allows you to experience a high level of empathy, it can also lead you to worry about the impact of your no and the potential ways that it could hurt the other person. Similarly, when it comes to conflict, HSPs feel great concern for the impact of their words and do their best to avoid confrontation.
For example, you may notice that you’re quick to say no worries and I’m sorry or to let things go (e.g., if your order at a restaurant wasn’t quite right, if the money you get back on a return isn’t adding up).
HSPs can also tend to struggle with boundaries around their jobs. While the non HSP will take their daily breaks and balance out their own needs, the HSPs (especially those in helping and healing fields) often push themselves to work harder because they don’t want another person to miss out on care.
Minimizing Your own needs
Many of the HSP women I work with have shared that they tend to put others first and wind up feeling burned out, resentful, or misunderstood. It’s often hard being the reliable or dependable friend. The one who will go the extra mile to make others feel seen and special. HSPs ability to observe how others are feeling can be a strength in their friendships. You know how they might be feeling, what questions to ask, and what can help. There can be issues and relational strain, however, when HSPs are caught in a one-way dynamic of either not expressing their own needs or when others ignore or won’t meet them.
Needing to Withdraw/Recharge
Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert (yes HSPs can be extroverts!) it’s important that you get enough time to recharge. Even if you had an amazing time at that wedding or conference, you may notice that you’re physically and emotionally drained afterward. You may even find that it’s hard to get out of bed the next day, much, in the same way, you might feel after an intense workout. It’s important to honor your need to recharge and to plan to give yourself time and space after events that drain your battery and/or overwhelm your emotional system. If it’s hard to give yourself this time or if you feel guilty about doing so, therapy can be a helpful place to start learning to prioritize your needs.
Sensitivity to sensory stimuli
How do you feel after a long day of socializing? What about if you went to an event that turned out to have loud noises and bright lights? Or when you’re driving and an emergency vehicle races around a corner while blaring loudly? As an HSP, you take in your world in a unique and important way and you have specific needs in order to thrive within your environments. These may be skills you don’t have yet or it may be that you haven’t been practicing self-care lately.
Let’s chat about how Therapy for The Highly Sensitive Person may be right for you.
Therapy for The Highly Sensitive Person
Hopefully as you learn more about your unique traits, you notice that there are a lot of strengths. These amazing parts of you also leave you open to specific stressors. This is where many HSPs feel burned out, misunderstood, or start to believe the narrative that they are too much. As a therapist for the Highly Sensitive Person, I want you to know that you are beautiful, important, and very much needed in this world. Therapy for the HSP isn’t a space to fix you, to teach you to be “normal”, or to change anything about the special way that you experience your environment. Therapy for the highly sensitive person is a space to breathe, to learn to create balance, to prioritize your wellbeing, and to establish healthy boundaries so you can flourish.
What Type of Therapy Can Help?
Somatic Approaches for the Highly Sensitive Person
Mindfulness Meditation/SELF-COMPASSION PRACTICE
What do you think of when you hear the word mindfulness? A lot of the clients I work with share that it’s that thing that’s supposed to relax you, to learn to control your thoughts, or to stop feeling so anxious. So what is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment.
Our minds are hard wired to look for and solve problems and we can spend much of our time either focusing on the past (e.g., you know the “if onlys” and “I wish I hadn’ts") or playing in the future (e.g., the worst case scenario game of the “what ifs”) and critiquing or judging ourselves while doing so. Mindfulness places an intentional focus on paying attention to right now. While the benefits of mindfulness apply to everyone, HSPs can benefit from mindfulness by shifting their relationship with their emotions and giving themselves space to do so without judgment.
My HSP clients often share that they struggle with self-compassion. It seems counterintuitive - to be able to sense what others feel and to struggle to accept those same feelings themselves. These women share that the criticism from society and the push to “be normal” or to “be less sensitive” can become an internal narrative that’s hard to shake off.
How do you talk to yourself when you’re struggling with big emotions? Is it like a mean PE teacher (e.g., critical, out of touch, and insensitive) or like a soothing parental figure or friend (e.g., open, warm, and understanding).
If you notice you tend to show up as the PE teacher you may tell yourself things like, “get over it, suck it up, or toughen up” and we can bet that the tone you use when you say it, is anything but kind. What do you think the soothing figure would sound like? _________
Maybe something like, “Of course you’re feeling ____, anyone else would feel that way. I know it’s overwhelming and I’m here for you.”
Mindfulness can also enable you to become more aware of how your body reacts in response to emotional stimulation. Many of clients I have worked with share that being an HSP and experiencing big emotions can at times feel overwhelming, not only emotionally, but also physically. If you’re feeling exhausted by your emotional experience, therapy can help.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR therapy is a structured technique that encourages clients to briefly place their focus on trauma-based or difficult memories while engaging in bilateral stimulation, which is associated with reductions in the heightened emotional experiences related to stressful events. Want to learn more? You can read more about EMDR here.
Emotion Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)
How do you feel about your emotions? Do you label the majority as “bad” (e.g., anger, sadness, fear, and disgust) and the others as “good” (e.g., happiness and surprise). The early messages that we receive about our emotions set the stage for how we feel about how we feel (e.g., how do you feel about yourself when experiencing sadness or anger?).
What did you learn about your emotions?
Were they acceptable?
Were they inconvenient to your caregivers?
Did your family express emotions in a healthy way?
These early messages, whether explicit or implicit are woven into your current relationship with your own emotions. The Highly Sensitive Person experiences a vibrant and rich interaction between their environment and their emotions.
What messages did you receive?
Were you called sensitive, weak, or too much?
How does this impact how you talk to yourself when you’re feeling a big emotion?
Emotion Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) helps you to learn more about how you relate to your emotions and helps to create a new and healthier relationship to your own internal experience. Reach out to learn more how an HSP Therapist can help!
Start Therapy for HSPs in Los Angeles, CA
Do you think you could benefit from therapy for the Highly Sensitive Person? If so then Worth and Wellness is here to help you! In order to chat about starting Therapy for Highly Sensitive People, please follow these steps:
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
Make your first appointment with an HSP therapist
See for yourself how beneficial EMDR can be for your mental health
Other Counseling Services I Offer in Newport Beach, CA
At Worth and Wellness Psychology, I offer in-person and online therapy. This includes individual therapy for relationship issues, dating, and anxiety. In addition to therapy for therapists and women of color. Reach out to talk about how I can support you.
About the Author, An HSP, Anxiety & Trauma Therapist in LA and Orange County
Dr. Adrianna Holness, Ph.D., is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist at Worth and Wellness Psychology, serving clients online and in-person throughout California. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from Loma Linda University. As a trauma and PTSD psychologist, she specializes in creating space for healing and wholeness as clients take on the brave and beautiful work of addressing life’s hardest moments. She is trained in many evidence-based trauma treatment approaches, including EMDR. She also works with clients in the spaces where trauma intersects with your self-confidence, relationships, dating, anxiety, and identity.
Disclaimer:
This blog provides general information and discussions about health and related subjects. The information and other content provided in this blog, website, or in any linked materials are not intended and should not be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This blog does not constitute the practice of any medical or mental healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We cannot diagnose, provide second opinions or make specific treatment recommendations through this blog or website.
