HSP therapy in Nelson, BC

Everything feels louder, brighter, more intense. You notice subtleties others miss—shifts in someone's mood, tension in a room, the hum of fluorescent lights that no one else seems to hear. You absorb emotions from the people around you, and by the end of a busy day, you're not just tired—you're depleted in a way that's hard to explain. You need substantial time alone to process what you've taken in, and without it, you start to shut down or feel overwhelmed by life's ordinary demands.

If you're highly sensitive—or identify as an HSP—you've likely spent years managing a nervous system that processes the world more deeply than most people's do. Maybe you've tried traditional talk therapy and found that while insights helped you understand yourself, they didn't change how overwhelmed you still felt. You're looking for approaches that actually work with how your nervous system functions—not against it.

Understanding high sensitivity through your nervous system

High sensitivity is a neurobiological trait affecting 15-30% of the population. Brain imaging studies show that when highly sensitive people encounter the same situation as others, their brains display significantly more activity in areas responsible for awareness, empathy, and detailed processing. This depth of processing means you're taking in and analyzing far more information than most people—picking up on subtleties, feeling emotions intensely, sensing environmental shifts others don't register. Eventually, that thorough processing exceeds your system's capacity, and overstimulation sets in.

This isn't a disorder or flaw in how you're built. Your nervous system does exactly what it's designed to do. The challenge is living in environments that rarely account for how you're wired.

What makes high sensitivity particularly interesting is that it's not simply a vulnerability—it's environmental responsiveness. Research on differential susceptibility reveals that highly sensitive people don't just struggle more in harsh conditions; they also thrive more in supportive ones. Your nervous system isn't fragile—it's highly responsive to the quality of conditions around you.

You were never "too sensitive." That phrase suggests the problem lies with you, that you need to toughen up or stop being so affected. Your nervous system processes deeply, senses subtly, and responds to environmental cues that others don't register. The mismatch isn't your sensitivity—it's a culture that doesn't make space for it.

Why body-centered approaches work for highly sensitive people

If you've done talk therapy, you may have experienced the frustrating gap between understanding your patterns and actually feeling different. You can articulate where your anxiety comes from, explain why you absorb others' emotions, describe your need for downtime—and still feel just as overwhelmed when you walk into a crowded restaurant or spend time with someone whose energy depletes you. Your body holds what thinking can't fully resolve.

If you're highly sensitive, your awareness of bodily sensations is already heightened—you feel tension, shakiness, depletion more acutely than most people do. This enhanced interoceptive awareness, which often feels like a burden, is actually what makes body-centered therapy particularly effective for you.

Somatic Experiencing® and body-centered approaches work directly with your nervous system rather than trying to reason with it. We track the physical sensations that accompany your experiences—the tightness in your chest when overstimulated, the impulse to withdraw, the way your energy shifts when you absorb someone else's distress. We help your system complete protective responses that got interrupted or stuck, teaching your nervous system that it can experience activation and return to calm.

The work happens in small, carefully calibrated amounts. We don't push you into overwhelm—that would only reinforce your system's sense that the world isn't safe. Instead, we move between states of activation and regulation, respecting your need for gentleness while gradually building your capacity to handle what life asks of you.

Craniosacral therapy offers another pathway particularly suited to highly sensitive people. Through subtle touch and deep listening to your body's inherent rhythms, it helps your nervous system shift into states of profound rest where healing happens without effortful processing. For people who absorb so much from their environment, this kind of receptive, wordless work can be deeply regulating. You're not trying to figure anything out—you're letting your body's own wisdom guide what needs to happen.

Both approaches meet you where your sensitivity already lives—in your body's felt experience—and work with your responsiveness as a strength rather than a problem to solve.

What becomes possible

The goal isn't to stop being sensitive. It's to move from constant overwhelm to having capacity for what matters to you. When your nervous system learns it can regulate—that activation doesn't have to spiral into shutdown, that you can feel without being flattened—you gain access to the considerable gifts that come with depth of processing.

You start using your perceptiveness as the strength it actually is. The same sensitivity that picks up on threat also notices beauty, reads emotional nuance with precision, generates creative insight, and enables profound empathy. You develop practical skills for managing overstimulation before it becomes a crash—recognizing your limits, setting boundaries that protect your energy, choosing environments and relationships that support rather than deplete your nervous system.

You learn that your sensitivity isn't something to manage into submission. It's a way of being in the world that, when given appropriate conditions, becomes a source of richness, connection, and depth that others struggle to access.

This approach is for you if:

You're easily overwhelmed by noise, crowds, bright lights, or intense emotional environments. You absorb other people's emotions and carry them without meaning to. You need substantial time alone to process what you've taken in, and without that recovery time, you start to feel frayed or shut down. You've maybe wondered if there's something different about how your nervous system works—if you're highly sensitive, or neurodivergent in some way. You've been told you're "too sensitive" and you know that's not helpful, but you're also aware that something needs to shift in how you work with your nervous system. You want approaches that respect how you're wired—that help you regulate without asking you to become someone you're not.

Getting started

I work with highly sensitive people both in person in Nelson, BC and online throughout British Columbia. If you're in the West Kootenay region (Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Kaslo), you have the option of counselling, craniosacral therapy, or both.

Learn more about counselling or craniosacral therapy, or read about working with anxiety and emotional regulation—common concerns for highly sensitive people.

Contact me to book a free 20-minute consultation, or get started to learn what to expect.