Psychodynamic Therapy for Highly Sensitive People

Highly sensitive people are often empathic individuals who sense what others are feeling on an energetic, intuitive and somatic level. This can make it difficult to distinguish the emotional experience of others from one's own and know how to set appropriate boundaries, often leading to relationship challenges. 

In the absence of a healthy degree of differentiation, the highly sensitive person is likely to feel emotionally flooded and overstimulated by the world around them. 

Unhealthy coping habits including substance abuse, self harm and compulsive sex are often frequent short term solutions to a central nervous system that is suffering from chronic hyperarousal and disregulation. 

Incorporating elements of mindfulness, acceptance and change, DBT therapy can be a powerful and effective treatment for self destructive behaviors arising from challenges with impulse control.

Insight gained in psychotherapy brings a new depth of self awareness that is the first step in a dialectic between acceptance and change in DBT therapy.

Using mindfulness techniques to increase access to your own inner wisdom can help you locate a stable sense of self, root in your own resilience and cope with an unpredictable world. 

The ability to self-regulate and set healthy boundaries are two of the ways to improve the way you relate to the world that can have lasting impact on the quality of your life and personal relationships. 

The goal of BPD treatment is to find that critical balance between finding acceptance and creating change. Learning to make space for opposite and contradictory emotions, find nuance in these polarities, and work towards a holistic integration in which mind, body and spirit are in alignment are some of the most important elements of healing.

Like the sound of a precisely tuned instrument practiced with skill in just the right environment, the gifts of highly sensitive people can be exquisite. 

Sentient instruments that offer a wide range of information, your feelings are incredibly valuable indicators of the conditions that enable all living beings to feel safe and thrive. 

To the empath or highly sensitive person, it can feel like you are constantly experiencing the world in high definition with the volume on max. Whether empathic by nature or sensitized by trauma, there are times when your body may feel like a tuning fork resonating with the energy around you. 

Your role is invaluable.

Without safety in your external and internal environment, a heightened experience of the world can lead to hyperarousal, emotional disregulation, anxiety, panic - not to mention the litany of physical ailments that arise from a chronically overstimulated central nervous system.  

Your gift needs special care for you, your work and your relationships to thrive.

Join me in learning to transform your vulnerabilities into your most valuable assets. 

My psychotherapy clients are empaths and artists, writers and thinkers, scientists, innovators and dreamers - creative people who are deeply affected by the world and whose sensitivities are the source of both their virtue and their vice. 

Using a direct manner tempered by gentle loving kindness, I can show you how your sensitivity can become your greatest strength rather than a formidable limitation.  

It is my privilege to walk this path with you, embracing the shadows that allow your light to shine bright. You deserve to feel things deeply without being deeply shaken. The world deserves your gifts. 

My office is in Tiburon, CA with easy proximity to San Francisco. I see clients for therapy in person and online. Contact me today to schedule a free intake call.