Grief Tending & Engaging with the Sacred for the Holistic Transformation of Highly Sensitive People

Highly Sensitive People are very attuned to their internal and external landscape and are more receptive to experiences of joy, awe, and beauty as well as despair, suffering and grief. We’re strongly impacted by difficult circumstances, and we often carry grief related to what we needed and didn’t receive as children; the parts of ourselves that have been rejected and shamed; sorrow related to the suffering we see in the world including the loss and longing for deeper connection and community. We grieve the destruction of ecosystems, the loss of habitats and our Mother Earth. Many of us struggle with a lack of belonging and feel like we don’t quite fit in. We grieve and long for a deeper connection to ourselves, others and the world.?

Grief is not a Pathology

Our grief is a normal and natural response to the amount of suffering and loss we are navigating as a collective and also to the pervasive disconnect that exists across society. unfortunately, many of us who are deep in relationship with the suffering and feel anxiety, grief or overwhelm because of it, have instead been labelled with pathologies or disorders - we are told there is something wrong with us. We’ve also been told we need to ‘get over’ or ‘fix’ our grief as quickly as we can so we can return to the required ‘normal’ levels of ‘productivity’. We have never been taught or told how to be with our grief and just how crucial this is. I have learnt that our capacity to go into the depth of our grief and engage with the shadow, is also deeply intertwined with our capacity to feel joy and fully thrive in our embodied human experience. Many Highly Sensitive People are called to engage in deep, transformative healing work, and what is helpful for many HSP to know is we have the capacity to transmute suffering not only for ourselves but also for the collective.

We’re often taught to resist and push away our suffering, sometimes we want to stop feeling so deeply and to try to numb ourselves from the pain. Unfortunately, this only takes us further away from our truth. We can deepen our capacity to stay in relationship to suffering, to face our shadow and to connect with our grief without being overwhelmed by it and in doing so we have the space to transform these energies and emotions so further healing can take place.?

The Importance of Shadow Work

If we only focus on the ‘light’ feelings or try to numb our ability to feel - we are limiting the scope of our capacity to transform. It is really important that we’re able to tap into the full range of our emotions and know that the shadow side of our human experience, or the moments in darkness, are just as necessary and important as our ascension into the light. As HSP we are driven very much by the workings of our soul, to stay connected to our soul we need to go deep, and to go deep means, from time to time, going into darkness. Our purpose as HSP is to hold the polarities of these opposing energies and draw them back together - to integrate. This is necessary for ourselves and for the wider collective, and as HSP, we must learn how to traverse the dark and the light and enable communication between these two worlds.?

Highly Sensitive People struggle with the superficial. We’re driven by the depth of connection, meaning, and seeking truth and purpose. When we connect and engage in soul work, we are engaging with the depth of our being. Any sort of psycho-spiritual transformation that doesn’t include the deeper aspects of ourselves, including the shadow, can be lopsided and lack the depth that our innate sensitive nature needs.

Thomas Moore, a Jungian psychologist who is famous for his book Care of the Soul, wrote, “The ‘Soul’ is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves.? It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance”. As HSP, we are driven to connect and operate from this depth of being and heartfulness.?

As HSPs we are also spiritual seekers, and I am passionate about empowering and guiding HSPs whose depth of processing, empathy, and sensitivity to subtleties has revolved around a life-long quest to seek truth and a connection to the divine or sacred; those who've been claimed by a soul calling to transform their personal suffering so as to become guides and healers for others; the wounded healers of this world.

HSP as Wounded Healers

Wounded healers tend to be those who have experienced significant challenges in life and appear to continue to experience a number of difficulties until often, they find alignment with their true calling in life. These challenges are therefore catalysts that propel the HSP onto their psychospiritual path of wholeness. As a result, many of us who are HSP often feel a deep soul calling to be guides, healers, or mentors for others.?

As mentioned, rather than pathologise the struggles that many HSP experience because of their receptivity to the environment, and label these struggles as illness or a disorder, it’s important to listen to these symptoms, as often they relate to a need to make changes to one’s lifestyle, or listen to a deeper calling in life. From this perspective, we can see the symptoms of grief as a natural response to loss or bereavement and also as symptoms of individual or larger issues in society that need attending to. This already gives a different meaning to grief and can encourage individuals to listen to their experiences and understand them rather than trying to fix or get rid of them.

My Journey

Over the past couple of years, I have been exploring and diving into shadow work and grief tending. A largely influential aspect of this work has been engaging in a 5-month training titled, ‘Entering the Healing Ground: Grief Ritual Leadership’ led by Francis Weller, Holly Truhlar, Erin Geesaman Rabke, Carl Rabke and Alexandre Jodun. This journey significantly expanded my understanding of grief, and exploring the 5 gates of grief (founded by Francis Weller) has become a foundational framework for my understanding of how highly Sentivie people experience grief. Through this process, I? have made some important connections between grief tending and the work I do as a transpersonal coach - recognising how many of us are grieving the parts of ourselves we have disowned and pushed into the shadow. Another part of this journey has been learning how to give space to process the collective sorrows of the world and realise this is not something we can do alone. For many hSP we need to learn to discern what is ours and what isn’t ours to carry alone - and learn how we can feel empowered to alchemise our collective grief rather than drown under its weight.

Going Further...

I’m so excited, after a long journey of inner exploration, to now bring my passion for empowering HSP together with the deep importance of engaging in shadow and grief work out into the world. I will be offering an online 3-month course starting in January 2025 to engage in grief tending, shadow work and empowering highly sensitive people on their psych-spiritual journey. The course is titled?“Shadow and Soul Work for Highly Sensitive People: Grief Tending and Engaging with the Sacred for Holistic Transformation. " There are limited spaces on the course, and signing up for the course involves an application process which you can complete?here.

About the Author

Jules De Vitto has a BSc in Psychology, MA in Education and MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness and Spirituality and is an accredited transpersonal coach, trainer and experienced educator. She is the founder of the Highly Sensitive Human Academy - a central hub that offers courses, coaching, articles and a podcast for Highly Sensitive People. She helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to navigate emotional overwhelm, step into their authentic power and align with their true purpose in life.

She is a published author and wrote one of a series of books on Resilience, Navigating Loss in a time of Crisis. Her research has also been published in the Transpersonal Coaching Psychology Journal and Journal of Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology.

In addition to her academic and coaching pursuits, Jules has spent years engaging in deep transformative healing work. She is a Reiki Master and Teacher and has completed Michael Harner’s Shamanic Practitioner Training through the Foundation of Shamanic Studies and a Grief Ritual Leadership Training with Francis Weller.

Jules is passionate about creating community for Highly Sensitive People and embracing the full spectrum of our emotional and sensory capacities rather than trying to ‘fix’ ourselves. Deepening the connection to our sensitivity enables us to open our hearts and form better relationships with ourselves, others and the world.