Healing the Sensitive Child

I see people ages 12 and up in my practice, and while most of my clients are adults, I am almost always dealing with a child’s mental health. Sometimes, I am helping a parent understand why a child of theirs is struggle, figuring out what they can do to support them, but we also spend a lot of time paying attention to their inner child. We reflect on times when we were younger where our needs weren’t quite met, our sensitivities are minimized rather than attended to, where we were made to feel like there is something wrong with us for having such strong feelings. Dr. Elaine Aron has published and described at great lengths about people that are more sensitive than others, calling them Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), normalizing this experience and sharing study findings about how to help these people thrive. In her book, The Highly Sensitive Child, she goes onto describe Highly Sensitive Children like this: “HSCs are often even more distressed than other children by unfairness, conflict, or suffering; for example, they may be deeply sad about the loss of the rainforests, racial injustice, or the mistreatment of animals.” So, in even thinking about your own healing, did you ever notice yourself caring a lot more about the world around you than others your age? How was that treated by the adults around you? Did you ever feel like you “felt too much”, and had a hard time “not being such a baby”? Do you still carry that perception of yourself that there is something wrong with you, your emotions, or the way you see the world"? This is what we explore in therapy to help move and change the way that you feel.

“HSCs are often even more distressed than other children by unfairness, conflict, or suffering; fr example, they may be deeply sad about the loss of the rainforests, racial injustice, or the mistreatment of animals.”

~ The Highly Sensitive Child, by Dr. Elaine Aron