As an Introvert and Highly Sensitive Person, I understand the struggles of balancing self-care while supporting others. I want to help you reduce overwhelm and honor your Strengths as a Sensitive Therapist so you can feel fulfilled in your work again.
All tagged self-care
Winter can bring specific challenges for the Sensitive Therapist such as overwhelm from holiday obligations, financial anxiety and irritability from changes in routine. It’s difficult to manage the expectations to support our clients, run our businesses and maintain family commitments, all at the same time.
7 ways to honor our needs and calm down the overwhelm and exhaustion many Sensitive Therapists are feeling now. All therapists have been bearing the emotional toll of supporting clients as we ourselves experience a worldwide crisis, but Sensitive Therapists will have a unique reaction due to our heightened empathy, perceptive abilities, and need to process our experiences deeply. Going forward, we will need to reflect on what has already happened and give ourselves time to ease into the changes ahead in order to tame the overwhelm and exhaustion we’re feeling right now. Now more than ever we must go at our own pace, set strong boundaries in every area of our lives, and take time to rest.
When you look over your schedule for the next week or even the next few weeks, does everything feel sustainable or do you get an immediate sense of overwhelm and dread? Although it may seem impossible, there are ways to make your days run a bit smoother and to make sure what’s important to you makes it to the top of your priority list.
Our finely tuned nervous systems make Highly Sensitive Therapists more susceptible to the physical effects of overstimulation. Movement and physical self-care are essential practices to combat the effects of sitting and getting easily dysregulated.
Setting boundaries can be a very difficult but essential practice to avoid overwhelm, exhaustion, anxiety and burnout for Highly Sensitive Therapists.
As Highly Sensitive Therapists, we need to take our self-care practice to the next level to deeply nourish ourselves and prevent burnout.
The lure of social media can be problematic for Highly Sensitive Therapists who are easily overwhelmed and need more downtime than their colleagues. Is your social media use operating as a support or adding to your level of overstimulation?
Instead of burning yourself out each day trying to do everything perfectly, try leaving some fuel in your tank so you have the energy to focus on your self-care routine and personal responsibilities. This practice can help you maintain energy levels over time, get more done and feel more balanced.
How many clients should I see per week? As Highly Sensitive Therapists, we need to create a different metric for ourselves instead of comparing ourselves to our non-HST colleagues. We can be successful even when we see less clients.
As Highly Sensitive Therapists (HST), we have the capacity to dive deeply into the myriad of experiences that our clients bring to us - from childhood pain and trauma to romantic bliss. It can often feel like a “rollercoaster of emotions”, to quote a fellow HST, and it takes a significant amount of energy to go on that journey each day.
Our ability to process information deeply and make connections for our clients is a great strength as Highly Sensitive Therapists, but can lead to chronic exhaustion. Managing this depletion can be as straight forward as implementing more downtime into our day and setting up our businesses to match the needs of our temperament.
As Highly Sensitive People, we are deeply impacted by criticism and failure, therefore we set high (often impossible) expectations for ourselves in an attempt to be perfect. The pursuit of perfectionism is a straight path to stress, overwhelm and exhaustion.
As Sensitive Therapists, we use a lot of our energy caring for others which can leave little time and energy to tend to the administrative side of being a therapist. It’s easy to get burned out and overwhelmed. Creating a daily routine, prioritizing tasks and incorporating regular decompression breaks can make a huge difference in our productivity and energy levels.
