Empath & HSP & Intuitive

• You feel and absorb everything around you within your own body. This may other people’s feelings, the energy of nature, the quality of events going on in the world
• When others are having a hard time, you feel anxious and compelled to help
• You often feel overwhelmed, drained, or used by your relationships and don’t understand why
• Sometimes you feel emotions that don’t feel like yours, and you don’t know who they belong to

You might be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) if…

• Others described you as “sensitive” throughout your life
• Small talk tends to feel draining, and you long for space to explore deeper thoughts 
• Crowds and larger gatherings can feel overwhelming
• You notice details and subtleties that others don’t pick up on

You may be an Intuitive if…

• It seems as if you often just know things, without knowing how or even choosing to know
• You are aware of and connected to energy within and around you and others. However, you aren’t sure how to create boundaries around this
• In conversations, you find yourself discovering things about the other person that you specifically don’t understand how you know
• You resonate with psychic practices and belief systems

Empath, HSP, and Intuitive are identity labels that describe a certain way of being in the world. This includes who you experiencing yrourself, others, and the world around you. These identities (and often do!) overlap and impact each other. They also are shaped by other formative experiences and identities we may hold.

Being an Empath, HSP, or Intuitive comes with tremendous gifts and painful shadows. Left unhealed the shadow areas can take over your life, further making your unique and sacred gifts into burdens.

Signs that your empathic, sensitive, or intuitive qualities are out of balance: 

• Experiencing other’s feelings as if they were yours
• Difficulty identifying, centering, and upholding your own needs
• A pattern of putting others first, even at the cost of your own self
• Overwhelm, depletion, and exhaustion
• Repeating harmful, toxic, or abusive relationship patterns (with friends, family, and lovers)
• Anxiety
• Feeling stuck around decision making
• Not trusting your own knowing
• Trying to be “less sensitive” and pushing yourself to do things in ways that don’t work for you
• Criticizing and blaming yourself for being “emotional” or “sensitive”
• Not being able to “turn off” or have a choice around when, how, and if you bring your gifts forward to the world

When you don’t attend to your needs as an Empath, HSP, or Intuitive, you may feel a sense of resentment, despair, or negative self-talk, depletion, and burn out. Because of this, you may even move into deep isolation. Or you may double down and try harder to heal, please, or uplift everyone around you so that they feel better instead.

When actually – you are the one who needs, and deserves, your own care.

If you recognize yourself in any of these patterns or descriptions – you are not alone. Many people who have these gifts experience high levels of stress, anxiety, confusion, and hopelessness. They may experience repetitive toxic relationship patterns without knowing why. It doesn’t have to be this way. Your gifts should be just that – gifts. But you need someone to show you HOW they are gifts – and not burdens. You especially need someone who understands your experience of the world! Somone who can guide you in reclaiming your vitality, peace, and connection.  

As a therapist who specializes in Empaths, HSPs, and Empaths – I know by experience that our way of experiencing the world is sacred.  And as with every sacred thing, you deserve safety, love, and belonging.

How can I heal as an Empath, Highly Sensitive Person, or Intuitive? 

Healing as an empath, HSP, or intuitive looks like stepping onto the Sacred Path of Self Love. It is a conscious, intentional returning to the most precious and sacred being in your life – your true home – you. Healing will bring you the freedom you need to truly embody your gifts, by finally cultivating the safety, love, and belonging you truly deserve.

I offer a variety of services in my Berkeley therapy office that can support you on your path to self-love and intuitive healing:

• For solo journeyers, I offer individual therapy. We will work together to identify the places where you are out of balance, in order to support you in reclaiming your sense of joy, self-love, aliveness, and self-knowing.
• For partners, I offer couples therapy. We will create a path of more clear and aligned communication, practices to get both of your needs met, and ways to deepen your intimacy with each other and your own selves.
• For groups, I offer Soul Sanctuary – a place of refuge for empaths, intuitives, and highly sensitive people. You will learn more about our gifts, explore your needs, and be supported by a group of others just like you. 
• For all, I offer support for LGBTQ and TGNC folx. I also offer online therapy, and various ways of working together including spiritual therapy, somatic therapy, and ecotherapy

After our work together, my clients throughout California report:

• An embodied understanding of their own feelings as different from the feelings of others
• Greater ease in identifying and meeting their own needs
• A new pattern of prioritizing their own needs, limits, and boundaries
• A renewed sense of energy and aliveness
• Feeling mutually uplifted, joyful, and supported in their relationships
• An increased sense of  inner peace and calm
• Clarity around decision making
• A deep and pervasive trust in their own knowing
• An appreciation and gratitude for their empathic skills, sensitivity, and intuition
• Newly embodied self-love and confidence
• A sense of loving, joyful understanding and choice around their gifts

If you feel ready to explore how to embrace your gifts with boundaries, choice, and joyful expression – please reach out to my Berkeley therapy office. It is a life-changing journey.

I’d be honored to walk it beside you.