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Many highly sensitive people are also neurodivergent, empaths, or carrying complex trauma. If you resonate with multiple pages, that's completely normal. These are lenses, not boxes.

You might also connect with: Therapy for Neurodivergent & Highly Sensitive People (if you're autistic, ADHD, or experience sensory overwhelm), Therapy for Healers and Empaths (if you're burned out from over-giving or people-pleasing), or Complex Trauma, C-PTSD & Inner Child Healing (if you recognize developmental trauma patterns).

What I Specialize In

I'm a licensed therapist in California specializing in therapy for Highly Sensitive People, those with deep sensory and emotional sensitivity who experience the world more intensely than most.

I work with people who:

• Feel everything — emotions, energy, sensory input, the mood of a room

• Are easily overwhelmed by crowds, noise, bright lights, or chaotic environments

• Need significant alone time to process and recharge

• Are deeply affected by art, music, nature, beauty, or suffering

• Have always been told they're "too sensitive," "too intense," or "overreacting"

• Experience sensory overload that leads to shutdown or overwhelm

• Are highly intuitive or pick up on things others miss

• Struggle with boundaries, absorbing others' emotions or energy

• Carry shame for being "different" or "too much"

• Need therapy that honors sensitivity as sacred, not something to fix

You are not too much. You are not broken. Your nervous system is wired differently, and the world wasn't built for it.

What Is High Sensitivity?

High sensitivity, also called Sensory Processing Sensitivity, is a neurobiological trait present in about 15 to 20 percent of the population.

HSPs have nervous systems that process information more deeply and thoroughly than others. This means you notice subtleties others miss, you're more affected by sensory input, you feel emotions more intensely, you need more time to process experiences, and you're more impacted by violence, suffering, or conflict even in movies or news. You're also deeply moved by beauty, art, nature, and connection.

This isn't a disorder. It's a trait. And in my practice, it's honored as a gift, even when it feels like a burden.

You Feel Everything

You feel the room when you walk in. The subtext beneath what people say. The collective grief no one else seems to notice. The shift in someone's energy before they say a word. The weight of the world in your body.

You might need hours or days alone to recover from social interactions. You get overwhelmed in crowds, malls, or loud restaurants. You're deeply affected by other people's moods. You know things you shouldn't logically know. You feel physical pain from emotional experiences. You cry easily, at beauty, at injustice, at connection. You avoid violent movies, news, or conflict because it stays with you for days.

This is how your nervous system works. And it's exhausting when no one around you understands.

The Cost of High Sensitivity

High sensitivity is a gift. And it has a cost.

You may have spent your life trying to toughen up or be less sensitive. Feeling ashamed of crying, needing alone time, or being too much. Overwhelmed by environments designed for neurotypical nervous systems. Absorbing others' emotions without knowing they weren't yours. Shutting down or dissociating to cope with overstimulation. Being told you're overreacting when your nervous system is just doing its job.

No one taught you how to filter what's yours from what belongs to others, how to protect your energy without shutting down completely, or how to honor your need for solitude without shame in a world that's too loud, too bright, too fast.

High Sensitivity & Neurodivergence

Many HSPs are also neurodivergent, autistic, ADHD, or both. The overlap is significant: sensory processing sensitivity, emotional intensity, need for routine and predictability, social exhaustion, feeling different or misunderstood.

If you're wondering whether you're neurodivergent, HSP, or both — you might be both. These aren't competing diagnoses. They're lenses that help you understand yourself.

High Sensitivity & Trauma

Many HSPs also carry complex trauma.

When you're highly sensitive, you're more vulnerable to emotional neglect when your needs for quiet, space, and understanding weren't met. Chronic overstimulation is traumatic. Being told you're too sensitive is a form of invalidation. Growing up in a dysregulated family system when you were absorbing everything, even what wasn't spoken, leaves a mark.

High sensitivity can be both a trait you're born with and something shaped by early relational trauma. Both are true. Both deserve care.

What We Might Explore Together

Sensory Overwhelm & Nervous System Work

Your nervous system gets flooded easily. Crowds, bright lights, loud sounds, strong smells, too many people talking at once — it's not just unpleasant. It's destabilizing. We explore what's happening in your system, what your thresholds actually are, and what it might look like to build a life with enough spaciousness for your nervous system to breathe.

Emotional Intensity & Empathy

You don't just feel your own emotions. You feel everyone's. You walk into a room and know something's wrong before anyone says a word. You absorb your partner's stress, your friend's grief, your coworker's anxiety. And you don't always know where you end and they begin.

This is some of the most important work for HSPs — learning to discern what's actually yours, and coming back into your own body and experience.

The Need for Solitude

You need alone time. A lot of it. Not because something's wrong with you, but because your nervous system needs space to process everything it takes in. Many HSPs carry real shame around this, feeling like they should want more, worrying they're letting people down, forcing themselves into situations that deplete them.

Your need for solitude is not a flaw. It's information.

Intuition & Spiritual Sensitivity

Many HSPs are also spiritually attuned. You may have psychic or intuitive experiences, feel connected to something larger than yourself, experience the sacred in nature or silence, or feel called to mysticism, energy work, or ritual. Your sensitivity isn't just sensory. It's spiritual. And it can be both a gift and overwhelming, especially if you're energetically open without protection or discernment.

Shame for Being "Too Much"

You've been told your whole life that you're too sensitive, too emotional, too intense, overreacting, too needy for alone time and quiet and depth. And you internalized it.

Now you carry shame for the very thing that makes you who you are. A significant part of this work is unlearning those messages and reparenting the parts of you that were shamed for existing as you actually are.

My Approach

This work is about honoring your sensitivity, not taming it.

Depending on what's alive for you, we might move through somatic and nervous system work, energy medicine and grounding practices, parts work and inner child healing, spiritual and archetypal exploration, or relational depth work. The goal isn't to become less sensitive. It's to learn how to live as a sensitive person in a world that wasn't designed for you.

Who This Work Is For

This approach is especially helpful for people who:

• Identify as Highly Sensitive People

• Experience sensory overwhelm in everyday environments

• Need significant alone time to recharge

• Feel emotions, theirs and others', intensely

• Are deeply intuitive or spiritually attuned

• Have been told they're "too sensitive" their whole lives

• Absorb others' energy and don't know how to clear it

• Carry shame for their sensitivity

• Want therapy that honors sensitivity as sacred, not something to fix

Related work you may resonate with: Therapy for Neurodivergent & Highly Sensitive People · Therapy for Healers and Empaths · Complex Trauma, C-PTSD & Inner Child Healing · Depth Therapy for Mystics, Healers & Spiritual Seekers · Energy Medicine · Somatic Therapy

You Are Not Too Much

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It's not something to fix, toughen up, or grow out of. It's how you were made.

You just need a space, and a life, that can hold it.