About Us

A need is a natural result of the flow of life and what is required to continue to sustain it to any degree. You may not know how to meet a need. You may not be able to meet a need. Many humans think this means a need must not be important or might not even be a need if they have lived without meeting it on purpose up until now. Or they may even think it is too indulgent, selfish, or wrong to consider needs that others do not seem to consider.

Sensory needs and subjective needs of those who are not seen as real are also often seen as not real. Sensory sensitive bodies can be sensing so much outside of themselves and taking in so much that their ability to even orient inside of themself to find a preference or desire or want can be limited or difficult. And the identity of a sensory sensitive body may be based on not upsetting others and/or primarily satisfying others as a way to experience social value, avoid discomfort, prevent some or further harm to their body, and create a sense of control in an otherwise overwhelmingly out of control experience. All of this can be difficult to articulate and differentiate. What is discomfort and what is harm can be hard to distinguish as well as what is wanted or desired may overlap with things that may be overwhelming or painful. What is even possible or wantable can be difficult to know. Yet, amidst all of these ways to be and to find yourself and to orient — you have your own internal existence that is subjective and only accessed by you. You are the only one who can know your needs and you really do have needs that when met can support you in being you.

Needs will be met one way or another. Addiction makes sense when you haven’t had resources to be present with what is showing up and maybe everyone around you is acting like you have not been or are not hurting. Hiding makes sense when what is around you is threat. Restriction, bingeing, purging all make sense when self control felt like the only control in an otherwise unattuned and overwhelmingly out of control environment and life. Avoidance and preoccupation, anxiety and depression, over-control and hopeless shame all make sense when you could not face what is here.

You have always been doing the best you can. And your needs matter. Needs are real. You matter. You are real.

You may experience physical fatigue, burnout, bodily reactivity, connective tissue and/or circulatory difficulties, digestive challenges, food and chemical sensitivities, allergies, chronic autoimmune illness, illness that includes difficult to diagnose symptoms or that appears invisible to others, tension, and pain.

You may experience depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts, self-harm, disordered eating, substance dependence and addiction, traumatic flashbacks, panic attacks, dissociation, psychosis, mania, hypervigilence, armoring, freezing, insomnia, lethargy, withdrawal, fawning, and perpetual experiences of unsafety and fear—even if you think you have had a “normal” life that had no major trauma—and also if you know you’ve experienced and been wounded by trauma.

You may have a high level of sensory information you are experiencing or processing. This could be related to lighting, sounds, textures, smells, taste, emotions, electromagnetic frequencies, chemicals, changes in air pressure or weather, and anything stimulating. You may process this information very deeply and have an inner life that is rich, expansive, disorienting, and hard to track or takes time to track when asked to respond to your experience. You may experience emotional and sensory overwhelm which creates shutdown or zoning out, and then sometimes increased urge to control or panic about zoning out, shutting down, and trying to overcompensate for it. You may experience learning difficulties or notice significant differences compared to others in the way you learn.

Because of being so sensory sensitive, you may be more tuned into your environment than your own body and feelings. It may be difficult at times or all the time to know what you are feeling or how much something may be affecting you. Your attention may be other-focused as you may try to manage or take on all that comes at you, intentionally to some degree or unintentionally by default. You might be extra affected by actual, perceived, or anticipated social rejection from individuals you know or strangers. How others are perceiving you and what they think or say about you may be highly related to your sense of safety and may actually cause pain in your body to sense rejection. Socializing may feel confusing or a lot of work, and stressful. And even if you try very hard, you may feel disappointed by relationships and receive feedback about yourself that is difficult to understand or work with or do anything about.

You may identify with being neurodivergent, an empath, introverted, autistic, highly sensory sensitive, gifted, 2E (twice exceptional—exceptionally gifted and exceptionally challenged or disabled), queer, neuroqueer, having been diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, OCD, DID, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, or simply experiencing and self-identifying with obsessive compulsive tendencies, executive functioning challenges or dysfunction, distinct and different parts of your self or fluctuating states that come out at different times and different ways that may feel out of your control or awareness or in your control and awareness, hearing voices, difficulty understanding levels of reality or reality testing, dysphoria, and have had experiences of knowing your nervous system and brain seem to process differently than expected or assumed.

You may be gender non-conforming, sexuality non-conforming, culturally non-conforming, socially or behaviorally non-conforming, visibly and/or physically non-conforming to the environment and social atmosphere you live or grew in which then led to confusion, exclusion, aggression, oppression, harm, dissociation, shame, isolation, intentional and unintentional or forced masking, and/or lack of self emergence and/or self knowing.

You may know you are an artist and may have artistry as part of your identity, or you may be an unknown artist personally or professionally—to yourself and/or others. You may feel drawn to art and not feel able to access your own artistry. You may be secretly creative or unable to make or share your art.

You may know you are a healer or provide service for other beings in some way. You may do this in non-traditional ways or feel it without knowing how to do it. You may feel called to heal and address wounds. You may also feel overwhelmed by this calling.

You may experience an unsupportive or antagonistic culture with social confusion and lack of empathy as well as active harm. You may be or have been a part of a cult or high demand totalitarian organization or family that prioritized the rightness and power of the organization or organizational hierarchy over your own subjective well-being and personal experiences of health and empowerment to be you as you are—which in some ways could have felt like a relief to have someone tell you explicitly how to be, but then painful when it hurt instead of helped. Heightened sensory sensitivity can have genetic factors and may impact biological family members as well as chosen friends and family that you may feel drawn to. How all the people in your immediate family and social systems have experienced, coped with, and responded or reacted to their sensory sensitivity and resulting variables may also be related to how you have experienced your own safety socially and roles with others you depend on and care for. You may be a caretaker, you may have had to focus more on the needs of others to survive, you may have been hurt by the under supported sensory sensitive people in your life. Your parents or adult relatives may have encouraged you to mask rather than explore and understand yourself because they were also masking and also may not have felt free or safe to explore or share their own sense of self beyond a mask. You may be the target of active oppression, aggression, discrimination, marginalization, abuse, and institutionalized violence related to practices and norms of racism, sexism, cisgenderism, classism, ableism, ageism, sizeism, heterosexism, and more. And even if not directly targeted, you may be hurt by these systemic practices. This institutionalized violence toward bodies can amplify dissociation from one’s body and one’s sensitivity.

You may experience relationship enmeshment or estrangement, and possibly a personality disorder diagnosis or some kind of pathology diagnosis from family, friends, or medical professionals.

You may experience personal purpose confusion and frustration about the meaning of your life and what to do with it or how to live it; on a daily basis related to what to do this minute, hour, day, week, month, or year; as well as in a broader sense related to the bigger picture of your existence.

You may have great difficulty with the work you are engaged in for survival or inability to work, to provide for your basic needs, and may feel intense pressure about surviving another day, being too tired and overwhelmed to move in any direction—even if others in your life tell you that you’re doing great and seem to think or act as if all is well—or others may have given up on the idea that you could meet your needs and invest no effort into how you could live interdependently rather than co-dependently or completely neglected.

Time and how to organize your day may feel like watching a firehose shoot intensely in any and every direction, planning ahead or predicting how or what you can do at a future date may bring you to a blank state, and you may get to the end of your day feeling that there is always more to do and not have a sense of being in time with the flow of life or having done enough while also feeling there is not enough time to relax or care for you or enjoy life.

Alternatively, you may compulsively plan your day and week and life. You may obsessively work and complete tasks in order to decrease anxiety. You may be high achieving according to work standards, and yet you may feel very unsafe and as if you always need to do more or to keep yourself compulsively working without the ability to relax and exist as you are.

You may be full of ideas, inspiration, fantasies, and energy that you do not feel matched in your environment or know how to direct into meaningful containers or pursuits that could support you. You may be full of movement, excitement, and intensity of emotion may flow through you. You may express or suppress your flow of energy through body gestures. You may experience intense, repetitive movement that flows through you. It could be through sound, words, or vocalizations. It could be through any part or all of your body. You may experience what could be called stimming. You may experience what could be called trauma release that feels like earthquake tremors inside your body. You could experience what could be called kundalini energy rising through you. You could experience spontaneous postures, facial expressions, or hand mudras. You could experience intense levels of tension, armoring, or holding in your body.

Your sense of your identity may be fluid, undefined, adaptive, and unknown to yourself and others with aspects inside of you that do not seem to line up with external identities or definitions and any time you try to find yourself in any kind of assessment that can tell you what you can do it just seems to be more of the same and you are unable to get any traction with what could work for you.

All or some of this may be visible to those around you and they may be confused or passive about relating with you, they may have given up on you or may have been trying to fix you, or you could look to others like you are doing what is identified as good, well, successful, and adequate with all your challenges unseen and unacknowledged and not held…even if you’ve expressed them as clearly as you possibly can.

You may have one or two humans in your life who do attune with you and see you in some ways, which can sometimes contribute to further confusion when others do not. You may have no attunement in your life which can mean your sense of self may feel as if it truly does not matter.

The things listed above can all be aspects of having a subtle self that has been missed, you may also have other aspects you’re aware of. And you may not relate with everything listed. This work is not about fixing these things and controlling symptoms. This work is about believing these things and being with them to see who you are when you’re accompanied, witnessed, and attuned with. Then you can decide what you want to do from there with all that you are and with what is here.

Consent is important and goes beyond verbalizing asking for something. Consent means knowing that power is real and we don’t all have equal experiences with it, so we need to work directly with shared power intentionally. We need to name the context we exist in and power dynamics within that context. We need to name unmet needs, harm, and injustice. We need to value as real and important what has been minimized and ignored.

Once you stop striving, allow your struggles and injuries to be real, then you can slowly strengthen and lead yourself in directions decided by you in participation with life. You can finally meet your needs. You can make your own distinctions about your abilities. Everything is different when you meet your needs from when you do not. This is the difference we are working for. Simply believing in a need as real can take some time, let alone meeting it and being with it consciously and neutrally—without shame—and maybe even with pride, care, and tenderness. This is how we intervene with harmful power dynamics and explore what could be possible, to create new realities.

We acknowledge as practitioners of this work that we have professional licenses and higher education degrees through systems that are unfair and unequal in the access and support they provide, and can also be oppressive and harmful. We work with developing increased accountability and practice owning our ethics to hold this space within this power differential. There is always inherently a power differential in educational, healing, and communal work. And there are particularly constructed systems that are inequitable that support hierarchies within educational, healing, and communal spaces. The power differential of a vulnerable individual in need of care, understanding, and community and those who are leaders, practitioners, facilitators, and custodians of such spaces is fundamental to space being held for a vulnerable individual to process and work with their needs while those with greater power hold that space. The willingness of the providers to share power with the receivers of care is of utmost importance to this work. And we encourage the receivers of care to also share their power, though it is less power and very different power. It is power. And it is essential to this work and to you living your life. We know this is a tender dynamic. And we fully believe in the sharing of this power as central to your well-being. We have seen it and we experience it and we encourage you to explore it, even if not with us. We know you need a space to develop and share your power, and we believe you can. Your power is yours and is not the same as ours or anyone else’s and it does not need to be in order to be meaningful. It needs to be yours, to use for you and to share as you.

We also acknowledge that throughout this website and throughout this work we may use words or share ideas in a way that is negligent, problematic, or harmful in ways that we do not understand. We intend to educate ourselves. And we welcome your feedback, understanding that it is not your job to educate us on the places we may be doing harm or neglecting important areas. We hope you feel a communal responsibility and trust to support all of us in our collective accountability to do better when we know better. That communal responsibility is the spirit with which we create all our resources and this website. We welcome links to educational resources, tips, and constructive suggestions that assume we want to learn and do better and that we are limited in our understanding until we know better and more about areas we may not have known about. We want to make repairs, to change our behavior and wording once we know it may be harmful or problematic. This is a highly nuanced space and we have thought a lot about what we are doing and saying and why and how, and we continue to think a lot about that.

We also ask that you remember that we are individual humans too, with sensory sensitivity and our own sensory processing challenges, disabilities, and difficulties. We have our own histories of trauma. We are not a large corporation, nor do we ever intend to be. We will certainly make mistakes, miss things, and you will see our limits in our abilities and knowing. We kindly welcome accountability with sincere intent. We want to apologize when we have been hurtful. We want to do better. We know we can and we have made mistakes in the past that we learned from and apologized for, and continue to work toward repair in.

We chose to work in systems that hurt us to share some power within those systems to help shape the systems, access their resources, and participate in accountability, and we wish to extend that power to you. We do not wish to do what harm has been done to us and we also know the vulnerability of this position for any who enter it with us. We are all always learning. And we believe that there is no either/or with harm reduction. Harm reduction is both/and, it means that we both will make errors and we want to correct them to learn from them and do better. We hope you give yourself this grace too. We engage a growth mindset rather than a perfection mindset as it comes to power and the use of it.

We intentionally work with third order change primarily in this work. We work to be socioculturally attuned. These ideas come from systems theory and cybernetics. First order change is change to behavior that serves a purpose for a specific time within a currently operating system. We find that first order change is often what people think they want. A common metaphor used is that of a car, and first order change being changing the tires on the car once they are worn down or if one goes flat. This is solving a problem in functioning within the current frame. Second order change is change that goes beyond the current way of operating and changes the whole way that something is done. This could be like getting a new vehicle that operates by different rules, rather than simply changing the tires. It is a new way of seeing and understanding and being that addresses problems at one higher level than first order change. The new vehicle might not have tires or might utilize different resources than a car does, which might eliminate the need for even changing a tire. This is a more lasting change than first order change.

Third order change goes beyond first and second order change. The first two stay within ideas of operating that react or respond to current systems. Third order change is seeing the system within the system, it is a change in how one learns. This might mean looking at the reason for the use of a vehicle all together and rethinking how and why one might use a vehicle in the first place. We seek to hold space for why we have our current ideas and systems of community and healthcare to support the rethinking of how healing happens and how power is used, as well as why injury occurs in the first place. We wish to mentor and uphold and encourage new ways of communing as humans such that the damages we are experiencing through current systems might no longer be issues we need to heal from. This is a witnessing of power and accountability to the power we each have that is central to the work of leading with sensitivity.

Striving to be what you think you should be may seem like the answer. Believing in your own experience as real may feel wrong. And it takes courage to be a sensitive revolutionary.

Sensory experiences may seem invisible, and sensory trauma may go unnoticed or ignored. The ways you have been coping with sensory trauma, overwhelm, and a non-existent sense of self may be the focus. For instance, an addiction or anxiety or dissociation or inability to work may become the fixation and attempts to change those things may be where attention goes. It is true that those are real challenges to your well-being but if any of your symptoms gets more focus than your own subjective experience as the center of your being, then that communicates that you may not be real and may not be really doing your best to be you and that you cannot make your own decisions about how you want to live.

Sensory trauma often leads to relational and attachment trauma. Identity trauma can be in there too. Complex trauma is trauma related to power and how you experience your self in your daily life rather than a singular moment of intense distress. It can become a whole complex mess of burying yourself alive inside your own body just to get through the day. You need to know that you are real. Being told how to be tells you that you are not already being. Being accompanied and believed is a reflection of your realness, your beingness, your mattering.

The skill of attuning with feelings is one that many of us are deficient in. Many of us were not co-regulated with as children by emotionally mature adults and so we never had necessary help with nor learned how to hold such big feelings. Many of us decided that feelings were the problem because when unattuned with they led to shut-down and therefore hopelessness. It was an all-or-nothing experience. Developing the ability to be attuned with by another who is holding space for you, with you, to feel those big feelings increases empowerment at many levels. It allows you to differentiate the noise from the signals in your body, what to listen to and how. It allows you to know that you have power to make decisions amidst chaos, confusion, unknowns and that your body can be worked with and believed. It allows you to feel the meaning of your life and safety in your body as yours to make decisions with. It brings true confidence to be able to move into unknown situations and know that you can navigate them, you can respond to what arises in you. You can then also hold space for others, so that they can feel their big feelings with you. You increase intimacy and trust in your relationships as you can stay with each other at heightened moments to know that you will get through the intensity and also make decisions about boundaries during intensity that are in support of subjective and objective needs.

You can learn to do this with yourself. You can notice those moments when uncomfortable feelings arise and allow yourself to listen before compulsively acting or shutting down. And when you do act compulsively or shut down, you can come back whenever you can. You can develop trust with your body and coherence with your feelings. When you can accept what arises in you because you have developed your own abilities to respond to it, you get to make decisions from empowerment rather than fear. You work with yourself rather than against yourself, which moves you more and more toward your own center. Your own aliveness as your primary source of motivation can become ever more refined as you believe and work with your feelings as feelings, not as thoughts or circumstantial realities which usually appear as nightmares. Responding is not fixing. It is believing in one’s limits and learning about limits as we go, while also working with all available resources.

The places we exist in are incredibly relevant to how we exist. The systems and rules, implicit and explicit, that hold the space for our lives to develop shape who we are and how we function. Changing context can change how we live. There is no way to attribute broad and general suggestions to any or every context. Information, energy, and application are different in different contexts. Getting into context can help us get into greater empowerment to work with what we are in. Distance from context is often a control tactic. There is no one right way to exist, and there are some common ways we limit or hurt our existence. Yet, in each context is where we see what really works and what really does not work for that context and those in it.

None of this happens quickly or through fixing, it all happens one step at a time in supported spaces. Everyone is different and needs different things. For those who are in need of being able to orient more in their own sense of self with their sensory sensitivity, we try to provide supportive options to actually truly be able to relate with oneself and others as oneself.

This work is particularly for those who are sensory sensitive and have not been able to access their own subtle self. This work particularly centers on a theory of mind that is centered in sensory sensitive human development. There is a reason for your being and there is a reason you haven’t been held, your existence may be challenging and it may be easier than it is now.

We fully believe in your ability and need to choose services that support you. Sometimes that can be really difficult to do when you may be so far from your own sense of self and also be in so much need or desperation or pain or injury. Some or all of this work may not be for you simply because you do not want it and we want you to have the time and space to feel that out with as little pressure as possible and as much information and supported guidance as possible. There is a difference between not wanting something and not being able to access something that you do want or need but isn’t made available to you with your ability to access it. There is also a difference between going along with what others tell you to want and actually knowing you want something and why. We trust you to go at your pace and know what you know and we believe that different humans have different access related to ability.

We intend for this work to be accessible to all who want it and we are here to help you in sorting out what you want and how to help you access it, and how we can be as inclusive and accessible to all who want this work. We want you to find what works for you, even if it is not this. And we warmly welcome hearing about how we can support the needs of those with a subtle self even better and adapting to better support you.

We fully support collaboration and working within other specialized modalities that are in alignment for you and your needs. We are intentionally limited to the process of sensory sensitive human development, which can be a part of many other identities and presentations. We are limited in this because of the way self development can occur through working with one’s sensory sensitivity specifically and theory of mind related to sensory sensitive brains and their processing. Other presentations and identities may provide other information about other areas of care you need or want and are certainly not excluded, they are simply not our primary focus though they can be a part of the focus of your process and care. Gender theory, attribution theory, fundamental cause theory, double consciousness theory, double empathy problem theory, spiral of silence theory, race theory are also very relevant to sensory sensitive human development. How various bodies are socialized and seen as well as who sets the standards and why related to needs, care, limits, and subjectivity has relevance to the impact of the availability for and access to attunement with the subjective internal experience of the individual within and outside of a frame of cultural norms.

We are not specialized in providing care for ADHD, Autism, HSP, OCD, DID, schizophrenia, bipolar, autoimmune illness, addiction, eating disorders, dysphoria or any other particular diagnosis. Though we do maintain education and awareness of related points of research and diagnostic criteria relevant to sensory sensitivity and related presentations as we find a great deal of overlap with various diagnoses, and seek to continue our on-going understanding and awareness. We may make recommendations about including work with presenting symptoms and/or recommend supervised intervention for behaviors that require a more intensive level of care to reduce harm. And we find that many presenting symptoms can and do shift through doing this work though we are not necessarily specializing in or focusing on those symptoms.

Generally, when we use diagnoses for insurance purposes we use depression, anxiety, or PTSD because we see that when you’re experiencing such a loss of your own sense of self as real you will be depressed, anxious, traumatized, and under great stress. But we do not apply generalized treatments for anxiety, depression, or PTSD as the way to resolve your symptoms. We work with practices of believing you and orienting in you to support you to share who you are as you experience you.

Many people struggling with a loss of their sense of self who are very sensory sensitive are given many different diagnoses over their lifetimes in search of what might help them and what might be going on that they can’t quite get to. And in some ways there can be truth to all of them. But the diagnosis does not go deep enough into the complex trauma of not being seen and the diagnosis can perpetuate a harmful pattern of fixing rather than believing and attuning with the subjective experience of the sensory sensitive individual if the diagnosis becomes the answer to an absent sense of self. For instance, even the most gentle and positively intended mindfulness exercises that may have brought relief to millions, when applied to a sensory sensitive individual who is oriented outside of themself as a default and as a point of safety and is desperate for care while also trying to fix themself, can reinforce the environment as more real than the individual and be using otherwise supportive practices for something they are not meant for—trying to fix their basic existence.

One must feel that they are real and feel their own motivations for living to orient from there before they make decisions about treatment or supportive care. Otherwise any and all attempts at treating symptoms may in some way become self harm as well. You must experience your own sense of self before you can be treated as you want. No one else can tell you who you are. You can be who you are when you are in spaces that support you to be who you are. And for some, diagnosis can be a helpful way to find who you are. For some, this is not the case or it has been a winding and confusing process because of the very issue of not being seen and the confusion surrounding the reality of sensory sensitive lives. And some do not experience themselves as people, ever. Some do not want to.

Some humans want a neuropsychological evaluation or to get testing related to how their brains seem to be working based on an expert’s interpretation of researched testing data that then also produces official medical documentation that might be used in applications for necessary care or supports. And we are happy to support you in working with any diagnosis or criteria or services that align for you and any other needs you have that we do not meet. Some individuals want this information primarily for themself and find it very helpful to have, others need or want it in order to receive accommodations in work or school environments, or to qualify for specialized care or prescribed medication.

Some people want to work with medical providers specialized in particular diagnoses related to autoimmune conditions, syndromes, disabilities, diseases, and disorders. Some people want to work with prescribed medications, surgeries, and other physical modalities. Some people do not want this care.

For some, self-assessment may be the only or most accurate assessment you have available within your resources and access to care. Self-assessment can provide a lot of valuable information. You can see some self-assessment options listed in our resources.

In doing this work for many years and working with many individuals who both have had professional evaluations and those who have not, we find that many sensory sensitive individuals experience cross-over in many areas of diagnosis even if they do not meet full or singular criteria for a diagnosis. As an example, you may experience executive functioning differences or challenges, as well as sensory sensitivity, obsessive compulsive tendencies, relational reactivity, dissociative patterns, and hyper-mobility that includes body pain. And you could benefit or not benefit from the way ADHD, Autism, OCD, Borderline and/or Schizoid Personality Disorder, trauma, DID, and connective tissue disorder are addressed by various theories and models, despite not receiving any specific diagnosis or even if you have received one or many diagnoses. The care to address these things could be related to medications, diet, supplementation, exercises, as well as psychotherapy, and include a wide variety of understandings about how symptoms are generated and what to do about them — of which some may be really useful for you to know and understand and others may not be relevant to you. So we also happily utilize resources created by and for organizations that work with a particular diagnosis, even when we do not intend to imply or apply a diagnosis for any individual. And we also support you in using any diagnosis you have received as a piece of information that can support your care and to continue to orient in your own sense of what works for you rather than turning over your power to something that you are told should work for you. We also support you in letting go of anything that is not or has not worked for you, including a diagnosis if that is the case for you.

In summary, our focus is supporting you in what works for you and strengthening your own trust in your self and self-directedness and utilizing any and all resources that increase supportive care for you regardless of where they come from. Our aim is sense of self strengthening regardless of diagnosis, and we absolutely do work with diagnoses when supportive to you in your life and your sense of self or access to care you want and need.

We acknowledge that pathological terminology may not resonate for you and diagnostic terms along with how they have been applied have caused harm to many, especially related to sensory sensitive humans and this exact work that we do to value your experience as real rather than tell you to conform to models that may harm you. For some, diagnosis has been very supportive and helpful and aligns with meeting your needs.

We work with the neurodiversity paradigm, which simply means that neurology is diverse. Just like any other diversity in the world, our brains and nervous systems are all different too and there is no one right way for a brain to be nor is there one way every brain could be. And even if one human with a similar brain or diagnosis to you benefitted from a particular kind of care or treatment, it doesn’t mean it will benefit you in the same way or that you have to choose it. It is your life.

This is a nuanced space to allow each individual to work with themself on their ideas and understanding of how they want to live and are able to live. Whether or not you think you should be here as you are, you are here as you are. Even if you’ve received what may feel like or be the most intensely hopeless diagnosis, now what? You are still here and still have life to live. Our process is one of trust in the individual to self-determine the course they would like to take through supportive care, education, practice, and relational empowerment.

We acknowledge that in order to be on this website you must be able to read or listen to and process written word or audio recording in English, have access to a computer and the internet, and make decisions about what you’re reading. There is a lot that could be said about neurodiversity and ability. Some people experience their neurodivergence as disability and some people identify specific forms of neurodivergence as developmental disability. There are a lot of important and different opinions and experiences about neurodivergence, neurodiversity, and the paradigm and movement related to them.

We believe the experiences of the individuals we work with as most important to each individual, with any research used in support of empowerment of the individual. We tend to work with those who are right on a line of being able to mask to some degree to adapt to social norms with their heightened sensitivity, even if you did not choose to mask or want to mask or were able to fully mask. Some neurodivergent individuals are not able to mask their divergence or sensory sensitivity at all. The ability to mask is often a complicated ability to work with. And sometimes people “pass” as someone they are not based on appearance and what is projected on them culturally which then forces a mask that they cannot get out of even when they try. Many people who are able to mask or “pass” socially do not know explicitly that they are masking nor any alternative to it and reach a point of extreme burnout in adulthood due to the intense amount of labor that continuous masking is and the pain with inauthenticity in living. Injuries and trauma are also more likely when masking. And so discovering one’s ability to mask or pass socially so well can be both a relief and very painful as the realization of how little they knew themself or could access themself throughout their life becomes clearer, and the great need for missed supports, specialized resources, and specific care becomes clearer.

All of this is complicated socially, personally, culturally, and for our well-being individually and collectively. We acknowledge the trickiness of conversations about neurodiversity and finding shared language that is supportive and not problematic to all vulnerable beings and not just some.

We orient from a perspective of humans as a part of all nature, and all life. We do not operate from an anthropocentric perspective that sees humans as separate or superior to other forms of life or their functioning and their healthcare as separate or superior. Nor do we operate from a perspective that says there are only two types of humans. Ecology is queer, not binary. We have found that especially when it comes to sensory sensitivity in all humans—which is amplified in those who have heightened sensory sensitivity—anthropocentrism has created and perpetuated a great deal of trauma and distress in a variety of areas, including mental, emotional, and behavioral health of humans. When we consider nervous systems, we consider all nervous systems of all beings and how they regulate and co-regulate. We find this to be a central and important place to orient from as it allows a very “large” nervous system, or a very sensitive nervous system that has the capacity and tendency and reinforcement of extending well beyond the skin and physical body of the individual which may be taking in a great deal of information to process, to find a more functionally supportive place to orient from within the sensing of all life. If sensing is dissociated to only humans, this often perpetuates codependence and consumption without fulfillment. It can prevent some bodies from identifying their own sense of self with their own limits and preferences that are not human-centric if they are forced to orient only within the world constructed by humans.

When we say that nervous systems are diverse, we do not just mean human nervous systems and we do not just mean finding more categories for tolerating differences in humans. We mean fundamentally allowing oneself to benefit from broadening their sense of place in the world and in life and the vast diversity of all life which can reinforce curiosity as a way of life rather than knowing as a way of life. Life is bigger than humans and humans are a part of something bigger than humanity. And it’s all connected, it is all the same stuff articulated in different ways. We believe and experience the benefits to us all, internally and externally, to hold this space. And none of us are entitled to any particular version of life. It is all happening as it is happening now and we are working with the flow rather than a fantasy of fixing ourselves. That fantasy is one of control and domination that ultimately leads to more harm if acted on literally rather than responsibly. We believe that at the heart of that fantasy for control is a desire for self peace, safety, and pleasure. So we opt for more deeply owning and embodying our fantasies responsibly and practicing shared power based in self-belief to move toward having enough of what we need and want right now actually and honestly rather than continually externalizing our power in the hope or entitlement of some future reward from someone who is not us or hoarding, overworking, binging, restricting, and capitalizing out of fear.

This work can but does not have to include prescribed medication, supplementation, including or excluding particular foods from your diet due to intolerances/sensitivities/allergies/digestive challenges/systemic needs, following a particular nutritional protocol, meditation, psychedelics, biofeedback, psychotherapy, coaching, body work, physical therapy, somatic therapy, medical care, surgery, hormone replacement therapy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, yoga, Ayurveda, mindfulness practices, embodiment practices, body movement and strengthening practices, educational materials and courses, and many many more modalities and practitioners that you decide you want the support of and find to be supportive to you at any point in your life or on-going.

It may be that some of these modalities have not been helpful for you and may have caused harm for you, while other humans seem to find them beneficial. We do not provide all of these services and we will happily collaborate with other providers who do should you find them supportive. We do not apply a single best practice for every individual and we do have a particular philosophy and fluid model we work with as a process of strengthening sensitivity that may help you determine what you may want to try and how to know what is and is not working for you.

It is ok to guess and adapt as you go within functional (even if new or uncertain) parameters. We are all doing this for the first time, everyday. No one else is living your life better than you. None of us have lived this day before. None of us have been in this moment before. It is ok to be fluid. Life is a flow, not a fixed state. It is all happening now. And that is a lot, all the time. You are a part of this flow.

Our work is to help you believe you and to know what you want based on your needs, limits, and desires. What you want is for you. And when you have what you want, we get what we want too.

YOU.