Who do I work with?
I specialize in working with adults who are deep feelers, sometimes referred to as highly sensitive persons (HSPs), navigating the challenging emotions that arise during times of transition, grief and loss, and physical pain and illness.
What is the Highly Sensitive Personality Trait?
Do you ever notice or experience…
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Feeling like you easily absorb other people’s energy, especially negative energy
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Feeling exhausted from being in large groups or crowds
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Startle easily or bothered by noisy places
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Finding it hard to fall asleep after an exciting day
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Feeling especially sensitive to physical pain
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Difficulty performing while being observed something you could do perfectly on your own
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Feeling misunderstood or different, like you didn’t quite fit in but were unsure why
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Being told you were too sensitive or needed to toughen up
If so, you may also be a deep feeler. And it’s ok. You’re in good company.
Deep feelers tend to be:
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Creatives: artists, writers, musicians, actors
Healers: therapists, nurses, veterinarians
Dreamers: inventors, entrepreneurs, small business owners
While feeling deeply may be overwhelming at times, I’m here to tell you that it is actually a superpower. It’s a superpower, because you are using more of your brain at once in any given situation than the non-sensitive individuals of the world. While yes, this can lead to feeling more easily overstimulated and overwhelmed more quickly than others, it also leads to:
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Making more acute observations and connections
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Seeing the bigger picture of not only how things work but how they could work for the better
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Asking deep, thought provoking questions to understand things
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Connecting more easily to innate strengths of creativity, intelligence, and humor
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Being very attuned to others and thus very empathetic
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Connecting easily to practices that help calm the nervous system
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Being more naturally intuitive to what’s going on within yourself as well as what you need
In an Art Therapy session, we can learn more together about how feeling deeply affects you as well as ways to respond to help.
How can Art Therapy help?
Art making is naturally calming to our minds and bodies. Participating in creative acts helps soothe our nervous systems, showing us how to access states of ease and restoration.
Art making is naturally informative. Artwork we create can tell us a lot about how we’re feeling in the moment, giving us important information into how we’re affected by the moment and how to respond.
Art making is naturally an act of kindness and compassion. It allows us to express ourselves without judgment or criticism. It allows us to see what’s present for ourselves, and it shows us what we need as a result.
Art Therapy combines these benefits giving us the experience that we can face difficult emotions from a place of feeling grounded and thus able to both learn what these feelings have to tell us and choose how we would like to respond.
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A credentialed Art Therapist has extensive education and training in mental health and the science of creativity to be able to guide individuals in creative ways to meet their specific needs and circumstances.
With this unique expertise, our work together could support you in:
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Learning exercises for grounding and calming your nervous system
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Expressing emotions that feel challenging to put into words
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Digesting and learning from these emotions and their connections to past experience
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Fostering self-awareness and feeling more connected to your true self
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Creating personal definitions and pictures of wellbeing based in what is uniquely important to you
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Learning self-acceptance and self-love and creating a kinder inner voice
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Feeling permission and choice to set your own goals and work at your own pace
Art Therapy is an evidenced based profession, meaning the field has been extensively researched and shown to be effective for a wide range of mental and physical needs, regardless of one’s experience level with art making.
What happens in a session?
I start by listening. Your session is your time and your space. So, I start by listening to your concerns, your hopes, your interests, and your preferences. I then suggest exercises in therapeutic art making, brainspotting, meditation, and/or yoga, and you can tell me what sounds most helpful for you.
These exercises may help you:
Resource: discover ways to calm your mind and body, think more clearly, and access states of deep rest and recovery.
Build Awareness: discover insight into current emotions and how they relate to past experiences as well as what is truly important to you and what you need to move forward.
Learn Compassionate Responses: discover ways to respond to your experience that are kind and loving and ultimately promoting your success and wellbeing.
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After the exercise is practiced in session, we will then process what the experience was like for you. This means talking about your experience and exploring what you noticed for meaning and insight.
The intention for every session is to learn helpful information about yourself while also learning practices you can take with you to do regularly on your own as you need them.
An ideal start to our work together begins with what I like to call Intensives — 6 to 8 sessions scheduled at your pace to dive deep into learning and developing these skills for yourself. After this foundation, we can then discuss and schedule maintenance sessions as needed.
