Therapy for Highly Sensitive (HSP) WOMEN in Calgary & Throughout Alberta, Nova Scotia & New Brunswick

This is the part of HSP counselling where we focus on understanding how you came to be where you are. The Psychodynamic approach prioritizes insight into yourself, your origin story, your relationship dynamics, and your defenses. It includes exploring with curiosity and compassion how these aspects of your story may even present themselves in therapy in your relationship with your therapist. The psychodynamic part can be, as is often the case, woven throughout HSP counselling.

This is the part of HSP therapy where we focus on helping you develop coping strategies to deal with stressors and feelings of overwhelm in your life. Coping strategies can involve ways to help your body calm down, ways to contain, ways to deal with distress, and ways to have healthy relationships. Coping strategies that I introduce come from these different approaches: DBT-informed therapy, Clinical Hypnosis, Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), Mindfulness, and Body (Somatic) focused therapies. Coping strategies can be prioritized at any time or, as is often the case, woven throughout HSP therapy.

The Trauma treatment and healing part of therapy for highly sensitive people is focused around helping you process and heal from unresolved wounds that led you to develop core negative beliefs about yourself and the world. Healing your core negative beliefs results in the removing of unconscious obstacles that may interfering with your being able to move towards the work, relationships, sense of self, or life that you want. Trauma treatment approaches that I use include Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) and Flash Technique. This part can be prioritized at any time or, as is often the case, returned to throughout the highly sensitive person.

The Existential therapy approach involves exploring the things that matter to you, how you see yourself and the world, and exploring the values that you hold. This approach is about understanding what suffering you are willing to endure, and what suffering you are not. The existential therapy approach is also about exploring what kind of life would feel aligned with those same values and understanding and identifying the pain points where your life feels out of alignment. This approach is about exploring what it means to be deeply human and confronting the human truths of our existence, our limited life, and ultimately our death. It’s also about what it means to witness suffering in the world as a Highly Sensitive woman and how to grieve and co-exist with this pain. All while also connecting with the hope within to take action in ways that are aligned with what is meaningful to you and your values.

Women are often caretakers in the family and physical, emotional and invisible labour is real. Many of my clients tell me that it is hard to squeeze a bathroom break sometimes let alone a whole appointment. As a working woman and a mom with a busy schedule I get it. But when we go until we collapse that’s not serving anyone and you matter. At IMatter I offer online therapy by video conference from the comfort of your own home (garage or parked car) to help make HSP counselling easier to fit into your schedule. If you don’t have to commute to an office and back, all you need is a private space that’s relatively quiet and a good internet connection. Because of this online therapy can more conveniently fit around your schedule.

I’m so sorry if this has happened to you. In Alberta, indeed across Canada, there are a wide range of different types of clinicians offering therapy (or therapy-like*) services. This includes counsellors, psychotherapists, life coaches*, GPs, Psychiatrists and Masters-level and Doctoral-level Psychologists.

Amongst these many different types of clinicians, only doctoral-level Psychologists (that means Psychologists who have completed a PhD or PsyD) go through the most rigorous and intensive training programs for providing safe, ethical, skilled and effective counselling and therapy. In addition, differing clinicians may have differing world views, ethics codes (or lack thereof) and ways of conducting therapy. Some of those ways may not have been a fit for you and your needs. It can feel so hard to have hope that things can be different. I understand how hard it is to start again with another new therapist and tell your story again. It’s an act of hope and of faith. Rest assured that if I don’t seem like a fit for you I want you to tell me so we can get you connected to someone who is a better fit for you.

Often clients come to me apologizing for not knowing what it is that the really want out of therapy. Did you know that this is absolutely okay? It’s hard to know where we want to go when we’re deep in the dark forest of our experiences and don’t know which way is out or even if we will ever get out. It’s hard to see the sky with our nose pressed to the bark. Yes, I am here to work with you on the goals you come in with, but I am also here to help you figure out what your goals are. Sometimes in therapy for highly sensitive women the key focus of the first few sessions is figuring out what you even want out of this process. You don’t have to do that alone.

This one is hard. The reality is that psychological services are not covered yet by the government (though Psychologists have been advocating for this since the 1980s). While life continues to get more and more expensive with mortgage rates and groceries and gas all climbing, it can be difficult to justify the expense of therapy. In some cases it just does not make sense to take that step into HSP counselling for sound financial reasons. In that case I would certainly recommend some low/no cost options in the community or through provincial healthcare. While there may be a wait to access such services and the clinicians may or may not have the same level of training as doctoral-level Psychologists, in some cases this is indeed the best and most logical alternative.

That said, often when women say to me that they don’t have the finances for HSP therapy what they really mean, however, is that they are not willing to prioritize the finances for therapy over, say, the cost of other optional goods and services. Such as eating out, or non-necessary shopping purchases, or alcohol, etc.

This is tricky, because those purchases bring immediate rewards, giving us an immediate dopamine bump, and temporarily distracting us from our struggles, our pain, and the hole we may feel in our heart and soul. This is in addition to the fact that when we choose to distract ourselves from the emotional pain or overwhelm we carry with such purchases, the suffering is not in fact gone. It is simply waiting for us when the the distraction loses its novelty, or when the credit card bill arrives. It is calling to us when the “high” wears off. We can spend an incredible amount of money (and time and energy) trying to outrun our pain.

HSP counselling is an investment that, yes, takes time but it allows you to confront that suffering while supported and heal that pain. That can also limit the cost of those unhealed emotions in other areas of your life, relationships and work. And it also saves you a lot of money (and heartache and other losses) in the long term.

Finally, on a purely pragmatic note, did you know that psychological services by a Registered Psychologist are also tax deductible? Most people don’t. Check with your accountant for how this may apply to your financial picture.

I hear this one often. When we have struggled for so long and have perhaps experienced judgement from others or even judge ourselves, it can be hard to imagine being met with kindness, with compassion, with acceptance. I understand. I am human. I know what it’s like to struggle with something and wonder if anyone will truly understand and be non-judgmental and kind.

In addition to sitting with and bearing witness to the stories of suffering of thousands of Highly Sensitive (HSP) women over my 20+ year counselling career, I myself identify as a HSP woman and have known pain and trauma in my life’s journey from which I have healed through my own therapy.

I know you are doing the best you can right now. I know you have survived by adapting to the circumstances you’ve been handed, even if those adaptations are now taking a toll. I am here when you decide that you don’t want to try to figure it out alone anymore and I will not judge you.

In the work I do as an HSP therapist, I am often reminded how much pain we women are capable of bearing. I see Highly Sensitive women exhausted and drained and taking on still more projects or tasks at their work. I see HSP women barely able to stop crying and still showing up to their kids games and shuttling them to activities. I see HSP women barely able to breathe between anxiety and panic and still picking up groceries and checking on their spouse. Additionally, I see HSP women caregiving their elderly parents while feeling overwhelmed and barely able to hold it together.

It is possible that you can continue to bear it, possible that you can hold on till the needs of others are satisfied – but the question I ask you is what is it that leads you to believe that this is the only option for you? Do you believe that you matter and your needs matter as much as others in your life? If not, what has led you to come to this conclusion?

One of the things that the Highly Sensitive women I work with tell me often is when they prioritized their health everybody they loved and that truly loved them benefitted in some way. The ripples that were sent out were all positive. Yes, some adjustment was needed, but the reviews all came back a rave. When you love yourself, others benefit. Others learn from watching you. So, while I do understand that it can seem tempting to bear it a little longer or put your needs off until others are okay first, I invite you to consider what it would be like if you also got to have the support and healing that you wish for those you care most deeply about.

I love this question, and I get it more often than you might think. A lot of the Highly Sensitive (HSP) women who come to see me, heck a lot of folks in general, don’t realize that when you work with a doctoral-level psychologist that psychologist is trained to ensure that they keep you within your window of tolerance.

Your window of tolerance is the zone in which you are challenged and slightly stressed (like when you’re learning something new) but it feels manageable and it doesn’t bother you too much. This is the optimal zone for therapy for highly sensitive people to be effective. When you are outside of your zone of tolerance you may be either hyper-aroused or hypo-aroused. If you’re hyper-aroused it means you are feeling anxious, angry, out of control, or overwhelmed and your body is sending you signals to fight or run away. If you are hypo-aroused it means you are feeling spacey, zoned-out, numb, or frozen and your body wants to shut down or disengaged.

Everybody’s window of tolerance is different, and if we have experienced trauma or overwhelming life experiences in the past (or are currently experiencing high stress) our window of tolerance may be small.

My job as your HSP therapist is, in part, helping you both stay in your window of tolerance as well as expand your window of tolerance. In this way you don’t experience HSP therapy as overwhelming, and perhaps begin to avoid it, and you also feel more able to cope with life’s challenges.