HSP Therapy Online in California and Maryland
Access your inner calm and confidence.
You feel overstimulated, overwhelmed and stressed often. You wonder if it’s anxiety, being a Highly Sensitive Person, or a combination, and either way, you long to feel more at peace in your life.
You are a deep thinker, a deep feeler, people and places leave you feeling overwhelmed and you need down time to recharge after. If you move from activity to activity you become frazzled. You may have been called “too sensitive” or “too much” growing up, or by partners, friends or colleagues. These words my have consciously or unconsciously followed you to this point in your life. You may believe there is something wrong with you, and you may hide parts of yourself in an effort to make others in your life feel more comfortable. The reality is that things affect you deeply because you are wired to feel deeply, and so boundaries, self-care and knowing yourself well are critical for HSPs.
When you set boundaries, you may feel guilty and second guessing yourself is second nature to you. You get in your head about how you said what you said, if you hurt their feelings, or came across in a way that you had not intended and this leaves you wondering, until the next similar incident happens. You find yourself in this attempted mind-reading position often. You identify as an over-thinker, you are an over-giver, an over-empathizer. There isn’t much left in you for you anymore. Let’s change that together.
You struggle with people-pleasing, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome. You may wonder if you are good enough at your job. You make a big effort to be a kind person, a good human, you try to get things as “right” as possible. You sometimes put off tasks because you know your own standard for how it should turn out is unattainable in reality. The way that you exist day to day has you feeling exhausted.
HSPs share many reasons why they want to begin therapy, including:
a desire to break patterns of chronic overwhelm
struggles with anxiety, social anxiety and depression
problematic dating and relationship patterns
experiencing or anticipating an upcoming major life change
struggling with a lack of connection in your romantic relationship
navigating complex grief, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of something meaningful in life
You have a tendency toward people-pleasing and perfectionism. You easily notice how people around you are feeling and you feel good when you can be helpful and giving. You naturally look out for loved ones, your boss, colleagues, strangers, pets, animals…and you are exhausted from taking the back seat, and you wonder when it will be your turn to receive.
You may want support for the anxiety that dating brings, as well as the frustration at repeatedly finding yourself drawn to the same type of unavailable and unresponsive person. You would like to dive in and understand your patterns, and then get busy breaking them. You may already know your attachment style, and you want to make changes so that you are no longer drawn to people whom you notice string you along with only breadcrumbs, take forever to get back to you, and will rarely let you in fully and consistently. You want to understand what happened in your life that brought you to this way of existing in love or even friendships, and then use that awareness and the coping tools that you’ve learned to stop painful patterns once and for all.
Imagine a life that looks different
Doing inner work can be incredibly transformative in many different areas of your life. Imagine readily nurturing yourself and feeling whole as you are. Imagine saying what you want and need in your relationships with a deep knowing that you deserve it.
Therapy can change how you think, feel, and engage with the world around you. You can be more calm, more confident, more boundaried, and increase and change how you love and care for yourself, resulting in changes to how you expect others to love and care for you. Imagine just knowing that you have to meet your needs before you can nurture others, and without all of the guilt. It takes work in and out of therapy, and you are worthy of your time and effort to get closer every day to a life that you love.
You can understand how you may go about desiring external validation to increase your feelings of self-worth, and now learn to grow it from within you. You can enjoy your own company and praise yourself internally; you may still enjoy words of affirmation from others, but you also can skillfully do it yourself.
You can develop strategies to calm your inner critic and have a greater awareness of what you are thinking about that makes you feel down, and so you can use strategies to challenge the thoughts that you are thinking that keep you in old patterns that are so painful. You can learn to embrace and love your sensitivity.
My approach is to get to know you and the pain points in your life that are getting in the way of your desires and living a life that you enjoy, and no longer just trying to exist much of the time. I work with you to get an understanding of what you would like to be different, and then, together, take steps to get you there. It does take hard work and a commitment to using the tools outside of therapy, and I’ve seen many people change their lives significantly in beautiful ways that they love.
In therapy with me, we get clear on what goals you have, triggers that occur in your life resulting in pain, teach coping tools and strategies for THINKING differently and DOING differently as an HSP, and understand how the ways that you grew up are still with you and showing up in your life today.
My style is a combination of therapy approaches -it is more present and solution-focused than it is processing the past, but understanding your past is also important. What happened to you in the past is relevant and meaningful information, and so is what’s happening to you right now, and understanding your plans and dreams for your future.
Undo old habits that are not working for you:
Break patterns of chronic overwhelm
Develop more self-care and self-compassion
Increase fulfilling and reciprocal relationships
Get clear on your unique HSP needs and wants in life
Speak more assertively and say what you mean
Set bigger better boundaries and follow through on them