For many of us, 2025 was a difficult year. It also continues to be a difficult time with all of the many things happening around the world.
So, how are you? Are you taking care of yourself in ways that are helpful?
As highly sensitive people, we can carry the burdens of others and our own. We often don’t share what we are carrying.
A question I usually ask in the first counselling session is: Who are you most likely to talk to when you are upset about something? And then the next question I ask is: How often do you open up to this person when you are upset?
The most common answer is “not very often”.
We can be quite good at taking care of others but not so much with taking care of ourselves. And what I see time and again in myself and the people I work with is we really don’t want to make the lives of others more difficult.
So we take care of others by not sharing what is bothering us. We take care of others by pretending that we are fine.
We are masters at containing our emotions. Before I started my own healing journey, I could stop my tears in a second.
Maybe 2026 can look different for you.
Maybe it’s a year that you explore ways to manage emotions without shutting them down. A year where you allow yourself to feel.
And I get it if this sounds like a terrible idea. When we are highly sensitive our emotions are intense. But what I see often with my clients is that when they allow themselves to feel, so much insight and growth happens.
That insight and growth then leads to changes in how they live and take care of themselves.
The other thing that I see often is that highly sensitive people are capable of in-depth healing. This kind of healing leads to sustainable changes in their lives. But this healing can only happen if emotions are felt and processed.
Are there new ways that you can take care of yourself in 2026?