My Story

My Story: weaving together spirituality and mental health

I was an extremely sensitive child. From a young age, I was able to sense to subtle energies around me that others couldn’t. Because of this, oftentimes the world felt like too much. I suffered from anxiety and depression and never felt like I truly fit in. Like so many other intuitive children, I was often misunderstood and labeled as somehow being “wrong” or “too sensitive.” At the age of 9, I was misdiagnosed with childhood bipolar disorder and was placed on an array of psychiatric meditations that caused me to feel spacey, withdrawn, and fatigued for most of my teenage years.

Having internalized the message that something was wrong with me, for many years I stifled my intuition and sensitivity, believing that it was more of a curse than a gift. I shut down this part of myself and rejected it almost completely. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties when I started a formal meditation practice that I started to access my intuition and sensitivity once again. I received my Masters in Art Therapy and Counseling, motivated to bring creativity, spirituality, and healing into the mental health field.

Shortly after this, tragedy struck my life when my younger sister Allison passed away in a hiking accident. I was devastated and relied heavily on my yoga and meditation practice to get me through this time. It was through utilizing my intuition and my spiritual support system that I was able to heal my heart from the trauma of losing my sister.

On my own healing journey, it has been my spiritual and intuitive practices—-the same ones that I rejected for so long—that provided me with an on-going sense of purpose, faith, resiliency, trust, and healing. In the world we live in today, these qualities are often overlooked or disregarded entirely by the mental health field. Many sensitive children and clients are labeled or misdiagnosed because of their sensitivity, just as I was. It is important to realize that sensitivity is a strength, not a weakness. Because of my own journey, I am passionate about weaving together the fields of mental health and spirituality in a way that acknowledges the wholeness of the individual.