Resources for Highly Sensitive People
Being a highly sensitive person or empath can mean that you take in more than the average person from your surroundings and the people around you. You may have been told throughout your life that you’re “too sensitive.” You might have mystery symptoms because you’re picking up on what’s going on with people around you. You may have a special relationship with animals and nature that nurtures and grounds you.
Identifying these qualities about yourself can help you better recognize the ways you may be affected by how you take things in, whether in relationships or at work. It's also important to recognize and validate your strengths, such as empathy, perception, and intuition.
Learning to implement boundaries with people whose behavior negatively affects your emotional state is crucial for sensitive people. Therapy can help with applying techniques to develop healthier boundaries to protect your energy and emotional state.
Workers in helping professions such as therapists of all types and those in healthcare sometimes face feelings of “taking home” or continuing to carry too much of their clients’ or patients’ energy, symptoms, or struggles. Highly sensitive people and empaths can benefit from learning to set energetic and emotional boundaries in professional settings to be able to do therapeutic work in way that is healthy and sustainable. Working with helping professionals on self-care techniques of this kind is an area of focus for me.
If you relate to these descriptions of how highly sensitive people and empaths experience the world, please reach out. We can work together to explore more deeply how you understand yourself, and discuss approaches to help you live a more peaceful and empowered life. The following resources are a place to start exploring this topic if you'd like to learn more.
The work of Judith Orloff, MD, an intuitive psychiatrist and empath, has been instrumental in my own understanding of what it means to be a highly sensitive person or empath and I have completed multiple trainings with Dr. Orloff. She offers many resources free on her website and is the author of helpful books such as the Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People and more.
Clinical psychologist Elaine Aron, Ph.D., paved the way for the current understanding of what it means to be a highly sensitive person with her book The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Survive When the World Overwhelms You and other books tailored to parenting, love relationships and more.
I hope you find these resources helpful and look forward to talking with you if you relate to this way of experiencing the world.
