We are all born with different sensitivities to emotions. People who are highly emotionally sensitive tend to have a stronger response to their environments that affect their body, emotions, and social experiences. Highly emotionally sensitive people often have difficulty with emotional regulation and may engage in harmful behaviors. I work with clients to encourage a slowing-down and a focusing on using healthy coping skills when they are feeling emotional pain, as opposed to making things worse.
“Wisdom and freedom require the ability to allow the natural flow of emotions to come and go, experiencing emotions but not being controlled by emotions.” - Marsha Linehan
Emotionally Sensitive People
Being highly emotionally sensitive is a personality trait that has strengths of being empathetic, feeling deeply, being creative, and having strong intuitions. It also creates challenges when navigating the modern world, particularly when it comes to reacting disproportionately to what may seem like everyday situations. People who tend to be highly emotionally sensitive often describe:
Feeling emotions more intensely
Noticing more details and are hypervigilant
Spending more time processing input of all kinds
Becoming overstimulated
Having a slower return to baseline once they have become dysregulated
Engaging in self harm
Our work together will include developing evidenced-based coping skills that will guide you to living effectively in the moment, supporting effective decision making, cultivating healthy ways of coping with stress and challenges, regulating your emotions, and improving your relationships with others. These strategies will also introduce you to identifying your wisemind, which is an inner calm that helps you become aware of your automatic negative thought patterns and offers alternatives to impulsive behaviors. Collaboratively we can focus on:
Decreasing maladaptive/self destructive behaviors
Emotional regulation
Distress tolerance
Overstimulation
Interpersonal effectiveness