Depression, anxiety and other mood disorders are realities for many highly sensitive people (HSPs) that we may come to accept as the norm. While seeking out professional help is a huge and necessary accomplishment, the initial experience of therapy can actually be traumatic and terrifying — especially if you’re highly sensitive.

(Note: being an HSP is not a disorder, and is a healthy thing to be. However, many HSPs, like anyone else, can suffer from depression and other disorders, and therapy helps.)

It took several months of pleas from my desperate loved ones for me to see a specialist. For me, the very act of acknowledging that I needed help was difficult and scary. I was fine, I told myself. This was just a rough patch. A rough month. A rough year.

I’d get through it.

A lot of people have this reaction when they first consider therapy. But for highly sensitive people, it can be even harder to actually make that appointment, because we might see reaching out for help as a personal failure, a threat to everything we know about ourselves.

More than that, we fear judgement when we finally do open up, thanks to the criticism we’ve heard time and time again: “Stop being so sensitive.”

My psychiatrist diagnosed me with severe depression and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder within ten minutes. Although there was some relief in knowing this wasn’t something I’d have to deal with alone, it was also exhausting and draining to open up to a complete stranger — and shatter my facade of perfection, of “I’m fine.”

More weight crept onto my shoulders when she recommended that I set up a weekly appointment with a psychologist. That meant I’d have to go through the emotional process of “coming clean” and admitting my failures all over again — every week!

I wasn’t looking forward to it.

At First, Therapy Was Everything I Was Afraid It Would Be

The psychologist I found seemed perfect on paper. She described herself as empathetic, gentle, and compassionate.

But I should have known from our first meeting that we were a bad match.

Throughout my life as an HSP, I’ve become an expert at hiding my flaws for fear of criticism and judgment — even from myself. What I needed in therapy was somebody who would work hard to earn my trust and encourage me to share the parts of myself that I was so accustomed to hiding. Someone who would help me vocalize my fears, emotions, and deep-seated anxieties about never being good enough.

Instead, therapy appointments became yet another space for me to indulge my insecurity by criticizing myself. My psychologist told me I was “living my life wrong” and “needed to re-learn how to be human.” When I did vocalize some of my fears and feelings, she told me I was just “being silly” and I should “stop being so emotional.” She gave me mindfulness exercises to do at home, and gradually started postponing my appointments until I was seeing her once every two weeks, then once a month, then… not at all.

I felt completely invalidated. And if you’re a highly sensitive person, you know just how damaging that can be.

Ultimately, my therapy experience made me feel as though I’d been “faking it” the whole time. It was so easy for me to convince myself, once again, that I was entirely fine. I carried on with life, did my mindfulness exercises, and told myself I felt “whole” again.

If I had a “bad” day, where my emotions threatened to overwhelm me, I’d channel it into my work and try to ignore it. I was back to a life of pretending, of faking smiles and lying awake at night repeating the mantra that nothing was wrong with me.

Perhaps it was my fault for not explaining what I needed from her. But how was I supposed to know what method of therapy would work best for me?

Yes, There Is Such a Thing as HSP-Friendly Therapy

If you’re highly sensitive and you’ve had a bad therapy experience, you need to know:

This isn’t normal.

There are better options out there for you.

It’s only thanks to a different, brilliant psychiatrist that I was able to see that therapy is not supposed to be a quick solve, not sticking a band-aid of “mindfulness practice” on a problem that can be personality-deep. There are no quick solves when it comes to mental health.

(And to be clear, high sensitivity itself is not a problem — but for some HSPs, it comes hand-in-hand with anxiety or other conditions.)

She explained that, yes, my depression and coping mechanisms were “all in my head,” but that didn’t mean they weren’t real. “Your brain is still an organ,” she said, “and it acts like a muscle. We have to treat mental pain just like we would any other injury: sometimes with medication, but always with patience, care, and rehabilitation.”

In other words, therapy is supposed to be restorative, not destructive.

And when you find the right therapist, that’s exactly how it works.

How to Find a Therapist Who Understands Your Sensitivity

Although my first therapist left a bad taste in my mouth, I knew it was important not to abandon the process of mental healing. For an HSP, therapy is hard. Talking about your vulnerabilities is terrifying — even more so with a complete stranger (especially if you have a history of being judged as “too sensitive”).

Here are three steps you can take to find a therapist who is right for you — and to make the process of therapy itself easier:

1. Focus on the positive feelings therapy can offer.

Sure, opening up is tough. But it can also be incredibly freeing to know that you don’t have to bear the heavy weight of your fears and emotions alone. It helps to remind yourself of this — especially if you catch your inner voice talking negatively about the possibility of therapy.

2. Know what an HSP-friendly therapist looks like — and trust your HSP instincts.

We HSPs need somebody determined to earn our trust, patient enough to let us share at our own speed, and passionate about helping us navigate the labyrinth of a mental illness. We need somebody empathetic. Somebody who creates a safe space for us to express ourselves without letting us become too comfortable in our unhappiness.

As HSPs, we have a powerful ability to “feel out” people quickly. Use that ability when you first talk to a potential therapist (and trust it!).

3. Let your therapist know what’s working for you.

Therapists aren’t perfect, and chances are they’ll get a few things wrong from time to time. When something doesn’t feel quite right, we HSPs tend to blame ourselves. But it’s important to recognize this feeling and talk about it.

The easiest way to resolve this is to tell your therapist which of their techniques are helping you and which are harming you. A good therapist will be prepared to work with you to find the most comfortable way of approaching your mental illness and managing your stress.

(You can also find HSP-supportive therapists near you worldwide using this helpful index.)

The right therapist is out there. And if you, like me, feel disheartened by negative experiences, please keep searching. You deserve happiness and mental wellbeing. The journey will be hard, but you are worth it.

You might like:

• Why Highly Sensitive People React So Strongly to Criticism
• How to Overcome Shame and Self-Doubt as a Highly Sensitive Person
• How to Explain High Sensitivity to People Who Don’t ‘Get’ It

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The post Why Therapy Can Be a Nightmare for HSPs (But Doesn’t Have to Be) appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

I have always struggled to reconcile logic and emotion. As a naturally analytical person with a textbook Type-A personality, I often feel like I should be able to outreason my emotional impulses. But I’m also a highly sensitive person (HSP), and that means my strong emotions only intensify the inner battle I constantly seem to be waging.

For years, my strategy for any negative emotion was to isolate whatever was making me sad (or lonely, or irritable) and then think up a solution. I can stop feeling angry because this whole problem is meaningless, I would tell myself. Or I shouldn’t feel sad today because I had a really nice breakfast. And, more often than not: Be sensible! Nobody wants to deal with an emotional wreck right now. You have other stuff to deal with — focus on that.

It turns out, it only took one major upset in my personal life for that approach to completely fall apart. 

Ignoring My Emotions Left Me Blindsided

My most recent emotional “problem” came in the form of a nasty breakup. It had been a long time coming on my part — months and months of telling myself I was  “too stressed” to think of ending things, or that my growing resentment would disappear if I just ignored it a little longer. I think some part of me believed that going through the motions of a relationship I was no longer emotionally invested in made me strong, that to give into the feelings of anger and frustration and (let’s face it) exhaustion made me weak. 

Eventually, though, pretending everything was fine could only get me so far. He caught wind of my growing detachment and I felt compelled to end things over the phone. It was as though the facade of the relationship crumbled as soon as I acknowledged what I was truly feeling; I could no longer ignore the problem. 

After that, I did everything right. Or rather, I did everything the world tells us to do to get over someone. I put together a bomb breakup playlist. I called up my friends to rant and rave about how I was done with him. I unfollowed him on social media. I went out for drinks, looking hot, and played the part of someone who couldn’t be happier to be single again.

I wanted to be the amazing girl who could instantly move on with her life, who didn’t feel sad or hurt. The concern of my friends and family felt like a weighted blanket in summer. I needed to show them I was okay, that I could get through this. In all honesty, I would rather have seemed heartless and cold than be seen to care “too much.”

To be strong, I reasoned, was to keep pushing down those feelings of heartache and loss, and locking them away in a dark corner of my mind. What I didn’t realize was that all of those actions meant to gloss over my feelings didn’t put me in a better place. It’s only now that I can see thinking that way for what it is: a fear of feeling deeply. 

Feeling Deeply is Painful, But Essential

It took me three weeks to break down into tears about my ex-boyfriend. This overwhelming sadness came out of nowhere for me — one minute I was sitting peacefully on my bed, and the next I was sobbing into a pillow. The feeling I had been actively trying to ward off with positive thoughts and a poppy playlist overwhelmed my defenses, crashing through me with the force of a tidal wave. 

It felt like my heart had shattered. And no matter how desperately I tried to remind myself of the reasons I’d left him, or insist that I was doing better than ever, I couldn’t work through that feeling of utter brokenness. 

I called my dad — another HSP — and he gave me what sounded like the worst advice I’ve ever heard from another human being at the time. He said simply, “Sit with it for a while.” He encouraged me to feel that brokenness, to give in to the tempest of loneliness and guilt and heartbreak and unfiltered sadness. He told me about his first breakup and how he’d wept onto his best friend’s shoulder in the middle of a loud party. He reminded me that emotional pain, just like physical pain, demands to be felt before it can begin to heal.

Following his advice felt impossible. But I did it. I am still doing it. Because the truth is that for those of us who feel more deeply than we think we should, embracing that intensity is the only way forward. The world teaches us to be insensitive, to guard ourselves against pain – both within us and without. We learn to put up walls and compartmentalize because we are afraid of what will happen to us when we let that pain in.

But we forget that pain is not the only thing we are locking out. 

What surprised me about my experience of sitting in my pain (even just for a few days) is the clarity I gained. My intense emotional response gave me perspective on my breakup and a more nuanced understanding of what it meant to me and how I could move past it. 

If pain is a tempest blocking out the sun and destroying all things in its path, it’s also a storm that refreshes, renews, and washes away debris. Most importantly, the pain of feeling — and feeling deeply — left me with a sense of finality. 

My relationship was behind me, which meant I could grieve it. And only in grieving it — really allowing myself to feel it — could I move on. 

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Being Emotional Makes You Strong

Highly sensitive people are often misjudged for the emotional intensity they bring into (and out of) relationships. It seems to me like we’re constantly battling with ourselves to feel less, to show less, and to “stop being so sensitive.” But this mentality is particularly harmful when we’re going through a difficult stage in our lives. It’s easy to give into the pressure to pack away our emotions for later, so that we can confront them at a more convenient time that may or may not ever arrive.

For me, it took a major breakup with my college boyfriend to help me realize that my emotions aren’t something to be ashamed of. Not only are these feelings an integral part of who I am, but they’re also the source of my strength in a world that tells me to isolate myself, to shut up both verbally and emotionally.

In the face of this pressure to conform — to compartmentalize — the most important thing we can do is set those emotions free. It hurts. It makes us vulnerable. It may even cause others to think less of us. But it also gives us the power to press forward, to overcome, to seek out a fresh start and embrace a new challenge. 

Our emotions may not give us the same armor that detachment provides, but they make it so that we don’t need that armor anymore. When we dare to feel in an unfeeling world, those feelings move us to places we never thought we could go: a new job, a different country, a better mindset, a healthier outlook. 

I can see now that my emotions are not a sign of weakness. They never were. Sensitivity is a strength that comes naturally to HSPs. And I’m going to try my very best never to take it for granted again.

You might like: 

• Do You Feel Emotions ‘More’ Than Other People? You’re Not Alone
• 8 Ways to Survive a Breakup as a Highly Sensitive Person
• How to Love a Highly Sensitive Person

The post How I Learned to Stop Being Ashamed of My ‘Big’ Emotions appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.