Therapy for the Highly Sensitive Soul
Imagine that you’re visiting your large family for the holidays and that you walk in the front door of a full house with a tuning fork in your hand. When someone laughs, it resonates. When someone sighs, it vibrates. When an argument breaks out in the other room, it hums with the tension, long after the sound has faded. The tuning fork doesn't have a choice in what it responds to; it's designed to absorb and resonate with the energy around it.
This is a good way to describe at least part of what it’s like to be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). An HSP doesn't just hear the world; they feel it. They are deeply attuned to the emotional and physical vibrations of their environment, picking up on subtleties that most people miss. While this allows for incredible empathy and deep connections, it can also be exhausting. They can't simply turn off their sensitivity; it's a fundamental part of who they are.
If you’ve ever noticed that you’ve felt emotionally flooded in a conversation that others seemed to breeze through, are more disturbed by violence or tension than others, or found yourself deeply moved by experiences of beauty, you might be an HSP. And if relationships—romantic, familial, or even friendships—have ever felt like both a refuge and a minefield, you may recognize the paradox that sensitivity often brings.
As a therapist who specializes in working with individuals with elevated perception and responsiveness to their environments, I want to offer a space where your sensitivity isn’t pathologized—it’s understood.
What Is a Highly Sensitive Person?
The term “Highly Sensitive Person” comes from Dr. Elaine Aron’s research on Sensory Processing Sensitivity, a trait found in about 15–20% of the population. Her work shows that HSPs tend to have many (but not necessarily all) of the below qualities:
Be easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or loud sounds
Enjoy deep conversations
Become easily rattled when they have a lot to do in a short amount of time
Have others sometimes tell them that they are good at understanding what they are feeling or thinking
Reflect on things deeply
Make a point of avoiding violent movies and TV shows
More easily notice or enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, or works of art
Have a rich and complex inner life
Be labeled as sensitive or shy as child
Neither sensitivity nor Sensory Processing Sensitivity is a diagnosis—it’s a biological trait that’s found not only in humans, but also observed in at least 100 other species including fruit flies, birds, fish, dogs, cats, and primates. Despite this, people too often have the wrong idea of what it means to be sensitive.
The word “sensitive”, as a dimension of human personality, has gained an unfortunate reputation. Over the past century or so in the US, it has wrongly become associated with weakness—a word too often weaponized to shame or belittle someone who shows emotion or vulnerability, or to invalidate their internal experience. Just consider the phrases, “Don’t be so sensitive,” “Kids these days are such snowflakes,” or “You need to grow a thicker skin,” and I think you’ll get what I mean.
The solution is not to "fix" your sensitivity (there’s nothing wrong with you to “fix” in the first place)—in reality, these shame-based definitions are not what being sensitive means at all.
It can be helpful to think of any personality trait as a double sided coin: it has its advantages and its disadvantages. While it’s true that a tendency towards high perception and responsiveness comes with challenges, these qualities also bring substantial gifts: depth, intuition, creativity, and emotional insight, just to name a few.
In fact, sensitivity has been linked to brilliance. According to Linda Silverman, the director of the Gifted Development Center, the higher a person's IQ, the more likely they are to exhibit the traits of a highly sensitive person.
Why Sensitivity Can Make Relationships Feel So Complicated
One fascinating fact about HSPs is that, while they may be more likely to be impacted by negative stimuli, they’re also equally influenced by positive stimuli. Similar to an orchid, HSPs thrive when well taken care of, but easily wilt in harsh conditions.
This naturally means that HSPs are much more likely to be affected by relational dynamics—both the nourishing and the painful ones. When relationships feel safe and attuned, HSPs thrive. But when there’s miscommunication, emotional distance, or criticism, it can feel overwhelming.
Some common relational struggles for HSPs might include:
Fear of rejection or abandonment
Emotional flooding during conflict
People-pleasing or over-accommodation
Difficulty asserting boundaries
Feeling misunderstood or “too much”
Having a hard time being vulnerable and trusting others
Deeply caring, but having a hard time letting others in
Longing for closeness but feeling not knowing how to connect
These patterns often stem from early relational experiences. If you grew up in an environment where your high perceptivity and responsiveness wasn’t met with attunement, your nervous system may have adapted in ways that now show up in adult relationships—sometimes as anxiety, depression, avoidance, or emotional reactivity.
How Therapy Can Help the Sensitive Soul
As an HSP-informed therapist with an understanding of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), my goal is to help you understand how your brain and nervous system are shaped by relationships.
In our earliest years of life, the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant. It’s responsible for processing nonverbal emotional cues—eye contact, tone of voice, touch, and facial expression. These early interactions form the blueprint for how we regulate emotions and connect with others.
For HSPs, this blueprint is often more finely tuned. The emotional center of the brain (especially the amygdala) may be more reactive to these nonverbal cues, and implicit emotional memories may be more deeply encoded. This means that even subtle relational shifts can activate old emotional patterns—ones that live in the body and nervous system, not just the mind.
Therapy offers a space to slow down, tune in, and begin to understand these patterns with compassion. In our work together, we may explore:
The radical strengths of your sensitivity
How your nervous system responds to connection and disconnection
What implicit emotional patterns may be shaping your reactions
How to regulate and respond with more choice and self-compassion
Sensitivity Is Not a Problem to Solve
It’s a strength to understand. Therapy isn’t about changing who you are—it’s about helping you feel safe enough to be fully yourself. Sensitive people often carry deep wisdom, but that wisdom can get buried under shame, overwhelm, or fear of being misunderstood.
If you’re a deep feeler, a deep thinker, someone who’s been told you’re “too much” or who struggles to feel seen in relationships—this work is for you.
