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Thrive Therapy & Counseling provides high quality therapy to Highly Sensitive People and to kids, teens or adults struggling with anxiety, depression or self-esteem.

Blog

This blog is written by a therapist in midtown Sacramento and focuses on the concerns and struggles of highly sensitive people (HSPs) and of kids, teens and adults struggling with depression, anxiety or just trying to figure out what they want for themselves.  There's help and hope through counseling and therapy!

Filtering by Tag: HSP

A Healing Connection: How Pets Can be a Source of Comfort for HSPs with Anxiety

Ivy Griffin

As a Highly Sensitive Person, it is common to find yourself overwhelmed by everyday experiences in our highly stimulating and demanding world. While your empathic nature allows you to connect deeply with others, it also makes you susceptible to anxiety and emotional overload. However, there’s a furry four-legged (or scaly, feathered, winged, finned) companion you can always turn to - your pet. Our pets offer much more than just companionship; they can be a source of comfort and healing for HSPs struggling with anxiety. If you’re an HSP with a pet you adore or an HSP considering bringing a pet into your life, this blog is for you! 

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Appreciating Our Sensitivity

Ivy Griffin

Being highly sensitive definitely has its ups and downs. In a culture that often devalues vulnerability, we can get the message that sensitivity is undesirable or “weak” and we should try our best to suppress it. But as I always say, there are two sides to everything. Let’s look at the other side of the coin and see if it can help us to appreciate our sensitivity.

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Shame and Embarrassment for HSPs

Ivy Griffin

For people who identify as highly sensitive or empathic, intense embarrassment and shame might be particularly difficult experiences. Making a mistake can be followed by intense physical sensations and emotions: your face gets hot, your heart rate spikes, and sometimes you may even want to disappear. While this is normal and might even feel manageable for some, people who are highly sensitive may struggle to recover from these feelings. It can be such a shock to the system that they may ruminate for hours or days on the incident that led them to feel this way, trying to understand what happened or worse, being hard on themselves about it.

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8 tools to manage anxiety right now

Ivy Griffin

Happy New Year, dear HSPs! I wish you all the best that this year can bring, even as I know that we continue to live in a difficult time. As we embark on 2021, we may have conflicting feelings of hope, frustration, overwhelm, uncertainty, anger, excitement, or even despair. While there are some indicators of change for the coming year, there’s still a LOT we don’t know and can’t really plan for.

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Needing Things to Look Forward to

Ivy Griffin

We all know what a difficult year this has been. Our lives have changed in some ways we didn’t even realize was possible, our privilege or reminders of our lack thereof have been revealed over and over again, and the losses continue to add up. As highly sensitive people (HSPs), we may feel grief, confusion, anger, disappointment, frustration, sadness, disgust, overwhelm, and heartbreak. It’s a lot to cope with, and of course, we feel all of this very deeply and intensely.

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How to Release Tension

Ivy Griffin

We all know that being highly sensitive can really drain our energy. It makes sense that anyone who is highly attuned to their environment and the feelings of others would feel exhausted after absorbing so much sensory information. But, one of the things I’ve been paying attention to recently is the balance of input versus output. We take in all this information all day every day, but where does it go?

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The social hangover

Ivy Griffin

Imagine that you’re at a party or gathering at a friend’s house. As a highly sensitive person, you may have felt some anxiety or dread about going to the party and having to make small talk. Some of the folks in attendance are friends, and you gravitate toward talking to them. But, you notice a couple of people who hang back and don’t seem to know many others. Your empathy kicks in, and you decide to go chat with them to help them feel more welcome. While you’re talking, another person or two joins in the conversation and brings up a political issue you care about deeply. As you passionately discuss the matter, you add in how you cannot understand anyone who thinks otherwise. The person you initially approached quietly says, “I disagree” and wanders away. 

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