Blog
The Top 4 Shaming Statements Highly Sensitive People Often Hear
One of the greatest challenges of being a highly sensitive person is NOT the sensitivity itself (which is a gift) but in how your sensitivity was responded to growing up - and even now, as an adult. As I've listened to the stories of my highly sensitive clients and...
Why the Time is Now to Commit to Your Inner Work
Highly sensitive people wrestle with deep questions from a very early age. We think about death, often to the point of anguish (see this week's Gathering Gold episode on The Fear of Death). We think about relationships and worry about the people that we love. We think...
Why Highly Sensitive People are More Prone to the Burden and Gift of Shame
Following up on my post from a few weeks ago where I talked about how intrusive thoughts both originate from shame and cause shame, I'd like to explore some of the root causes of shame. As I wrote about in the post: Intrusive thoughts also arise from shame as attempts...
This is the #1 Reason Why People are Terrified to Turn Inward
As much as you want to change and heal, as much as you long to feel more fullness, aliveness, calm, and well-being, as much as you deeply desire a way to navigate life with more ease and less attachment to control, as much as you ache to break free from your intrusive...
Breaking Free from Anxiety Hinges on this One Teachable Skill
One of the misconceptions about the journey of mental health is that once you "heal" (as if healing is a linear process and a final destination; it's not), you'll never feel uncomfortable symptoms again. This isn't the case. No matter how healed you are, you'll still...
This is How we Walked Through the Grief and Joy of Everest Turning 18
Many of you have been following me for years, which means you've essentially watched my children grow up. I started this blog when our oldest son, Everest, was five and half years old and Asher was just a newborn. They're now 18 and 13. I've written about their fears...
Our Fast-Paced Culture is Leaving Us Breathless but There is a Remedy
It's the theme of the week, the month, the year, these past two years. It's one of the messages embedded in covid. We're moving too fast. We can't catch our breath. We can't drop into our bodies. We can't find center. Everyone I talk to says the same thing, "I'm so...
3 Ways That High Sensitivity Shows Up (that few people talk about)
Over the years of working closely with highly sensitive people and raising our two beautifully sensitive sons, I've noticed three primary areas where the sensitivity shows up that are rarely talked about. What is not discussed tends to get tamped down into the dark...
This is One of the Most Healing Experiences We Can Have
I posted this short piece on Instagram a couple of weeks ago but wanted to share it here as well for those of you who not on social media, especially as a follow-up on last week's post on shame. *** Being understood is one of the most healing experiences we can have....
Is This the Leading Cause of Your Intrusive Pain? I’d Love Your Thoughts!
I'm endlessly fascinated by our inner world, and have been called to this path of helping highly sensitive people who struggle with intrusive thoughts to heal at the root. As always with inner exploration, it's a never-ending process of discovery; just when I think...
Intrusive Images Caught Me In Their Grip and This is How I Responded
June 29th, 2022 It’s 4:30am. My alarm is set for 5:00 but my body-psyche always knows when my son is going to fly early and I wake up well before my alarm goes off; it’s that built-in mom alarm that knows almost everything about our children. Everest has been training...
Anxiety screams, “Danger!” But it’s not what you think.
Anxiety insists, "You don't love your partner!" Anxiety declares, "You have a terminal illness!" Anxiety whispers, "You're going to hurt your baby." (Anxiety doesn't always yell; sometimes it's a quiet, convincing voice.) Your job is to say, "Thank you, anxiety. You...
The Time is Now to Learn How to Find More Grace Through Uncertainty
If there was ever a time to grow practices that help us become more comfortable with uncertainty, it's now. As we stand on this threshold of transition in our human and global history, we all feel the teetering, the crumbling of what we've known as we stand in this...
How to Engage Responsibly with the News When You’re a Highly Sensitive Person
2022 update on this post: This morning our younger son, who is 13 years, old told me about a headline he read on Apple news about the weather. We're having a very hot week here in the Denver/Boulder area and the headline caught his eye because it mentioned Denver. I...
Is it Possible that the World is Only Asking this One Thing of You?
At the intersection of global pain, midlife, children not so little anymore, work and marriage and friendship in more flow than blockage (for which I'm endlessly grateful), I find myself drawn more to slowness, to spaciousness, to real life and local connections, to...