Online Trauma and Grief Therapy for HSPs

As a highly sensitive person, you naturally experience the world more deeply and intensely. So when you experience trauma, your sensitivity amplifies it. Trauma and grief reactions overwhelm your nervous system, and since HSPs are often more attuned to their bodies, you feel all the ways your mind and body get dysregulated.

You might also find that you have trauma reactions to things that most people wouldn’t consider to be traumatic. HSPs experience trauma differently (and more frequently!) because trauma has to do with how your brain encodes these intense memories.

Your family and friends don’t always understand how your high sensitivity impacts your experience of trauma. They are compassionate at first, but they get frustrated at how long it takes you to “just get over it” or “move on” from something they don’t see as a big deal.

You’re Not “Too Sensitive”

You might not be able to point to one particular trauma memory. Instead, you may have experienced chronic invalidation, misattunement, or negative attachment patterns throughout your life that leave you stuck in a trauma response. Many HSPs come from family systems that aren’t supportive for a young sensitive child. Your parents may have been well-intentioned but simply unable to meet your needs, or they may have been openly rejecting of your differences.

Your body holds onto trauma too. Your intuition is a valuable asset, but traumatic experiences can leave your body feeling vulnerable. You might feel a persistent anxiety, sense of doom, or perpetual overwhelm even when there’s nothing going on. Your body might show its discomfort in the form of chronic pain, chronic illness, or GI symptoms.

Trauma Therapy for Highly Sensitive People

Hi, I’m Jessica and as an HSP myself, I know how hard it is to work with a therapist who doesn’t understand your sensitivity or who sees it as part of the problem to solve. As a highly sensitive person, you need a different approach to trauma therapy, whether you are looking for talk therapy or EMDR.

Working with me, we’ll use your sensitive strengths as a foundation for your healing. As an HSP, your sensitive nervous system needs time and space to recover. For many HSPs, this means getting comfortable setting boundaries with unhelpful or invalidating people.

Through trauma therapy, you’ll experience healing in your mind and in your body that will allow you to enjoy your HSP deep connection to your intuition and the joys of the world without leaving you feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.

Grief Therapy for HSPs

Highly Sensitive people experience grief more intensely than most. Losses of all types affect you deeply, from the death of a loved one to relational ruptures. Other people around you may not understand how deeply you grieve, particularly with non-death losses.

Your grieving process may also last longer. Even when you are going through a loss with others, they may seem to bounce back faster than you, and they may even criticize you for still grieving after their grief is complete.

Your ability to create deep emotional connections means that you may grieve losses that other people can’t understand. The loss of a pet, missing life events, lost hopes and dreams, and the loss of friendships hit you harder than others. Your grief at these losses can feel intensified by other people’s dismissal or denial of your pain.

Heal Your Pain, Claim Your Sensitive Strengths

Working with a therapist who understands your high sensitivity can feel validating as well as healing. I’ve worked with many highly sensitive people to help them recover and reclaim their strengths as an HSP.

I’d love to help you too. Click here to schedule your free 15- minute phone consultation for trauma counseling online. Learn more about EMDR here and about me here.