Therapy for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs)
HSPs tend to be naturally curious people who want to understand themselves and others and who enjoy the deep work of psychotherapy.
In a therapeutic relationship, HSPs gain consistent support and a place to sort out the complexity of their inner worlds. The container of therapy helps to hold all that you carry inside. Processing that inner content regularly can be bolstering, reassuring, and revitalizing. What a welcome experience it is to have a place where you and your emotions are not too much.
As many HSPs don’t discover the name for their difference until adulthood, therapy aids in the work of understanding personal history through a new lens. The differences of HSPs– the caution and slower decision making, the pickiness and seemingly finicky nature– are typically discouraged at best and shamed or punished at worst in childhood.
Being discouraged from having authentic responses, or shamed for them, sets HSPs up to feel wrong inside. Inadequate or not good enough– but also too much. How many HSPs heard as a child “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” or were pushed forward into groups and situations before they were ready to join in? HSPs tend to be slower to join and their emotions are bigger and closer to the surface.
Some of the work in therapy is knowing, more and more fully, how okay it is— and always was— to be the way you naturally are. Going back to those young parts of you that were deeply misunderstood and validating them, learning how to nurture them, is a path toward growing as an HSP.
While working on accepting innate qualities, there is also work regarding how to negotiate them in relationships. Healthy relationships require compromise. How can you best care for your needs while not disregarding the preferences of others? Socially there is a fine line between advocating for yourself and having the self-awareness that it’s not all about you. There is a loving way to do this work of building self-awareness in therapy.
Because of HSPs’ sensory sensitivities and cautious nature, they’re more prone to getting stuck. Therapy helps you avoid the pitfall of letting your life get smaller and smaller in your quest for comfort. In therapy, you and the therapist can come to a mutual understanding of just where your growing edge is. Where do you want to evolve and expand? In therapy, you have a partner who can skillfully and gently help you steer toward your goals; there is accountability, encouragement, feedback, and context that the therapist can help hold with you.
Therapy ultimately helps HSPs develop more trust in themselves and their capability. It can help you understand how to take care of yourself well, gain the courage to be your true self, and live in an intentional and fulfilling way.