Episode #47: Healing Through Consciousness and Rewiring the Mind-Body Connection for HSPs with Kathrine Anker

How highly sensitive people can reconnect with their bodies, regulate the nervous system, and use consciousness to support healing, self-trust, and authentic living.

Welcome back to The Happy HSP Podcast. I’m your host Kimberly Marshall, and today I’m joined by mind-body practitioner and nervous system educator Kathrine Anker.  

We explore the power of our mind-body connection and how highly sensitive people can heal through consciousness. We talk about the benefits of being present and aware, how the nervous system plays a role in chronic stress and illness, and why so many of us have learned to override our natural intuition.

So, if you’ve always wondered whether your sensitivity was working against you or trying to communicate something deeper, then this episode is for you. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Kim: Kathrine, thank you so much for joining me. It’s great to see you.

Kathrine: Yeah, great to see you. Thank you.

Kim: So, can you first share with me how you found out you were highly sensitive and what brought you to awareness around this trait?

Kathrine: Yeah, it’s been a long journey, but I think actually when I was very young, a teenager or even younger, I think from about seventh grade, I started to feel misaligned in life. And when I look back at it, I understand that I learned to override actually my natural perception. And I experienced depression and sadness. 

I don’t know, maybe it was from I was 14, 15 or something, and there were years when I felt really heavy and really depressed. And so over time, because I was a nerd, so I already started researching why am I feeling this way and psychological explanations and all kinds of other areas that could be relevant. And so I educated myself and started to understand that there was so much inside of me that wasn’t getting any kind of expression and that this was actually the root cause of my depression.

So, I sort of helped myself and then I had to open up to all the sensitive capacity and understand myself in a new way in order to heal myself gradually, if that makes sense.

Kim: Absolutely. What kind of ways were you learning about your trait and the healing journey? What kind of connected for you?

Kathrine: I think I read a lot of self-help books at the time and read about depression. And I also had, I guess also from the teenage years from about 16 years of age, I was interested in psychology. I spent one year as an exchange student in Oklahoma actually, and I had a course in psychology in the high school that I attended, and that was the one point that totally caught my attention. And so, I became very passionate about this, and it moved into more widely. As the years went by, it moved into interest in consciousness, overall consciousness. And I guess that is my life passion. It still is.

Kim: Yeah. Can you tell me about that? Because I was curious, when I read that in your biography, I wasn’t sure what you meant by consciousness, and I know you do some coaching in that. Can you share what consciousness is and how you would explain that?

Kathrine: Yeah, it’s very broad, but in a way I feel that it is actually sensation. It is like being conscious in your everyday life, or when you are being present, you are conscious, and you receive all this kind of information from your own insight and also from the external world. And it’s a way of being present that is consciousness. And that is also part of how we get information from the outside world and how we interact with the outside world, but also how we come to understand ourselves and whatever moves inside ourselves. 

So, I guess the way I understand being highly sensitive is like having a very broad bandwidth, always getting so much information, and it’s both connected to sensations inner and outer, but also to emotional data and emotional reactions to relational circumstances you can say, or meetings or situations. And I found out, I guess I knew intuitively that I had to take time off, you can say, to process all of this, but I had to hide it from my surroundings because nobody acknowledged it.

There wasn’t a language for it. It wasn’t popular. It was popular to be extroverted and constantly active and always having external projects. And yeah, so I guess fundamentally I didn’t feel that it was right for me to be this way. I just knew that I was this way, and I gradually found out how to live my life with this highly sensitive personality or being, body, actually. But it’s only after many, many years that I found some kind of peace in it and found out that I can say this out loud. And I would say even today, my own family don’t even know that I’m HSP. Even if I say it, it doesn’t resonate with them. I don’t get

Kim: They don’t get what you’re talking about.

Kathrine: That’s what I experience anyway. I don’t feel recognized. I don’t feel that it’s received well, and it’s like, oh, we’re all sensitive, so we can all be stressed. But, I don’t see also in the way of living our lives that it’s the same.  

Kim: It’s a different level.

Kathrine: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Just like other people can have other capacities that I don’t have. I mean, also being able to be more extroverted because a sensitive person, in my view, can be both, but to be very extroverted, to be very much always on the move, and so many social connections and not having to process so much alone, that is another ability that is just as good. So, to me, it’s not about giving anything better value than the other.

Kim: Right.

Kathrine: Yeah.

Kim: Right. It’s not a better trait. It’s just a difference. It’s just a ... Yeah.

Kathrine: Yeah, that’s what I think.

Kim: So, how would you say being more conscious will help us? Why is that important to be more conscious, would you say?

Kathrine: Yeah, because if you are conscious, you have the possibility to be more connected with this higher bandwidth. Is it correct of me to call it higher bandwidth or larger bandwidth? So, if you’re conscious of it, then you can stay present with it. Because what I experienced in myself when I was young, and I think I see in others, and also sometimes in clients, no, actually not sometimes, but often, is that there is a disconnection between this natural higher sensitivity, highly sensitive part of themselves and self-realization because for so many reasons it can be suppressed. I think it can both be in the family, but also in culture at a broader level. Now, I also have cultural studies behind me as part of my educations and something like discourse theory and approaches where you can look more broadly in the way that there is communication in society.

So, from this point of perspective, you can say that there hasn’t been a proper language for being highly sensitive and the way this can be very subtle and in a way, also perhaps feminine to be this sensitive. 

So, if there isn’t a language and then it isn’t easy to communicate, and you may be a little bit of a minority in a workplace or study surroundings, but you can’t really tell people, and you can’t really say, I need to retract myself a bit. Don’t take it personally. I think maybe it has been taken personally and has been interpreted in ways that did not, to me, feel true, misinterpreted in a way a lot is what I experienced. Now, I don’t know if that answered actually the original question.

Kim: Well, you’re making me think that we kind of dissociate from the sensitivity, so we’re not really not only aware, but embodied and we’re just out there pretending that we don’t have this trait. This is what you’re making me feel. When if we were conscious of it, more aware, more plugged in, we could get the information that we need and make grounded decisions and from more awareness was what I was getting

Kathrine: Yeah. And also integrated it into our cognitive processes and what I call our day-conscious mind so that it becomes an open part of who we are. And I call it a day conscious mind because there’s the whole subconscious, unconscious parts that are also part of all of this, but yeah, so draw it more into the day-conscious mind. 

And I also, in my experience over the years, because I had a sort of inner drive for this, I think I managed to integrate it more and more into my cognition so that they became balanced over time. But I think it was a process to have this sort of balance and integration making me also more authentic. But also in some situations, I just had to live with this not being popular. That’s over the years what I found out because I have to be true to myself, otherwise my whole body will not thrive and will not function properly, actually.

Kim: That’s such a great point. It’s really hard to be authentic when most of the people around you are not like you and send you messages that there’s something wrong with you or that makes us even question who we are even more. And like you said, but when you’re in awareness and you’re conscious of your trait and accepting of it and just being who you are, it’s easier to stand up for your needs. It’s easier to be in your own strength and power and live a life that’s meant for you.

Kathrine: Yeah, that’s what I feel. I had many years also of very low self-esteem, and I think it came from this not actually being able to be myself and unconsciously always feeling that what I was wrong and was not really welcome. So that has been a journey. And then in the end, there was also this journey of transformation of my sensitivity being subconscious to making it more and more conscious, and then moving into a research field later on in life that to me, my whole project was also about finding academic validation. And I had to use a transdisciplinary approach to be able to form narratives that could take this whole sensitivity and the power. I’m not sure if I like that word, but yeah. 

Kim: Like personal power? Empowerment.

Kathrine: Like personal. Empowerment and ... Oh my God, I’m lacking the word, but talents, I guess. The talents that lie within this sensitivity, because I found out that in my case, there was this growing connection of the sensitivity and my cognitive abilities, and I started to become very clearly good at system thinking and pattern recognition in connection to all of this. And I found out that I have great talents in some areas that rely upon my sensitivity if I release it and integrate it, and that there’s also huge empathy and ability for feeling, not a hundred percent, but feeling it very much into other people’s situations. 

So, it’s much easier to be compassionate because you can somehow feel their feelings. And that is a talent and a quality, I think.

Kim: In and of itself. Absolutely.

Kathrine: Yeah. Yeah. That can help other people. So yeah.

Kim: What did you study?

Kathrine: Well, it was also a study of consciousness, but I explored consciousness from a transdisciplinary perspective with humanities is what you call it in America. In Denmark, we would call it human sciences ,also. There isn’t the distinction between natural science and human science, but from humanities, methodological at the base, and then drawing in upon different disciplines so that to integrate also biology into the field and getting an embodied perspective on the overall consciousness and also studying mind and making more connections. 

Then we come to the mind-body connection, the natural mind-body connection, so that the physiological is not disconnected from the psychological and the mind and energy awareness actually. So, the whole overall picture, and I called it narratives so that it didn’t have to be framed as exact science, except my examinator was extremely angry that I called it narratives that I even was defending a PhD with something such as narratives, but they were very complex and well-researched narratives.

Kim: Wow. So, tell me about, and I want to get into the mind, body, that connection, but did you also explore consciousness in terms of meditation and the quantum end?

Kathrine: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the quantum part was central. It was essential. That’s why I made ... Oh, it’s difficult to explain, but I made also three ontological narratives in the end of my PhD so that when you had read the whole thing, you would have to move back and read it again after we had explored the quantum part and the way, and also something about metaphors and meaning making, and understanding that we also generate metaphors on the basis of our material experiences, and they also connect to the quantum level. 

So, it’s quite complex, but it was to create ... Because I felt that the overall frameworks for understanding human subjectivity, they were too narrow and they were too drawn away in the different disciplines. It was so fragmented, it was not connected. And through my HSP, actually, I found the interconnection before I even did this research.

So, I feel like I was thinking that I can’t be the only person in this world to feel the mind-body connection, so this would be relevant for more people than myself. And when it comes to meditation, I have also a whole path, individual path that wasn’t researched in that sense. So, my own path, I also went into meditation and energy work and body work and many modalities because I guess this whole path was my life passion and it still is.

Kim: It’s fascinating. Yeah. And in terms of energy, manifestation, and how the human body brain actually works to create our reality, there’s science behind what a lot of people have been sensing that are showing, oh, well, yeah, we can create our reality to some degree. It’s the way that our bodies are made to function and work.

Kathrine: Yeah, exactly. And that’s also why it was important for me. And then when I found out that I have these highly intelligent, integrative abilities, I wanted to use it to communicate with other people that this is actually a kind of reality and this concerns more people than only me because these stories are not told too well, is what I thought at the time. And for me, there’s something special also because the people in the public who have spoken such narratives, they’re usually, for instance, like Joe Dispenza, who is actually not a doctor, but he goes for being a doctor. So, it’s sort of like a doctor who has this authority in society is also integrating quantum philosophy, you can say. 

But in my part, I wanted to also have a validation for the human humanities, methodologies, something such as meaning-making and understanding and interpretation would also have to be integrated in the whole framework that the fact that we as humans also constantly interpret and we make sense out of things, it’s important in many, many levels, even in natural science, that’s also what I argued that even in natural exact sciences, in the natural sciences, you are also interpreting.

Kim: Wow. So, just to simplify this so that we can all wrap our minds around this, because it is complex.

Kathrine: It’s a lot.

Kim: What you’re saying is even though we have science that seems to prove something, we’re still just interpreting it and giving it definitions based on what we are thinking we know. Is that what you’re saying? 

Kathrine: Yes. 

Kim: So, we think we have certainty, but there’s also we’re giving it a definition.

Kathrine: Yes, that’s true. And at the moment in my coaching business, I’m working with long-lasting chronic stress-related symptoms in clients from a mind-body perspective. And here I find that it can be necessary to think in different ways about your own body and your own symptoms in order to help the body move into its natural self-healing capacity. And that’s where we have to work with metaphors and with a different kind of linguistic understanding of ourselves. And that’s where this actually also becomes really important work and it’s not to dismiss regular medical science because that has its place also, but this is the missing link in it all.  

Kim: Are you saying that when we’re healing, this is my understanding, and maybe you can help me clear this up, it’s almost like when we’re healing, we’re healing these limiting beliefs about ourselves, but again, they’re just definitions. They’re just metaphors of how we think. So, when we’re doing mindset shifts and healing around our wounds, we’re actually changing our definitions. Is that what you’re saying? We’re using to change how we think about the situation to change our definition of what that means, who we are.

Kathrine: Yeah, that’s like NLP, and that’s an NLP, neurolinguistic programming, but it’s more than that. When you work with symptoms, it’s actually also what happens in your body. So, you can say you have this what’s called POTS, for instance, when you have a ... Because I’ve been confronted with Myalgic encephalomyelitis, I might say it wrong even in English, but ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, where your whole body is depleted of energy. It doesn’t produce the kind of energy that you need for your regular functions. You can have your body can work and then you can do just a little bit outside of that. 

And then usually you’ll have digestive problems, you’ll have problems in the, not respiratory system, but heart and circulatory system, and the immune system. And so, either you can learn the medical terms and even you can get your diagnosis, which is also very difficult to get. But if you get it, you will usually also get the message that, “Have a nice life, this is how your life is going to be.”

But you can also change the whole perception of what is happening in the body. You can change your whole perception of a symptom. You can stop calling it “symptom.” You can stop calling yourself sick, for instance. You can call it sensations, and then there is a neuroplastic element to it all also, so that you can actually gradually ... Because I found out that it has a lot to do with a stress response that is locked in fight, flight, and freeze. In this condition, very much about freeze. 

There are some of the same mechanisms in other long-lasting chronic situations, fibromyalgia, for instance, but also can also be can even be headaches and pain and many other symptoms, actually. And then there’s an aspect of mindfulness you can work with, but because you have to work indirectly with allowing your body to let go of the fear involved in the situation.

Does it make sense? Because I’m moving into something also very complex.

Kim: It feels like you’re saying a lot of our illnesses obviously see a doctor, but a lot of them are rooted in our thoughts, in our feelings, in our fight or flight and nervous system. And a lot of times we can heal our bodies by healing our minds, but it’s all connected, and you have to work as one altogether.

Kathrine: Yeah. And it’s more than thinking. I mean, thinking in language is actually key, but it’s in a different way than the intellect works and different kind of logic. And sometimes it’s kind of like an indirect logic where if you’re very severely ill, the first step can be to actually acceptance as in Buddhism, a deep acceptance, even if it’s so painful and such an unwanted situation, and it can also be to have to let go of wanting to get well in order to get well. And also, that is contra-intuitive, and it’s not the words themselves, but it’s the way the words affect the signaling of the brain.

Kim: Right. It’s like, are you in a chronic state of peace and acceptance and flow, or are you in a chronic state of fear and resistance and conflict?

Kathrine: Yeah. And then it can be also this discrepancy between the autonomic nervous system and the functions of the autonomic nervous systems, and then the more conscious and the more modern parts of our brain that we can think something about ourselves and our state and condition, but our more primitive brain has actually made some different decisions. 

That’s why it can be so difficult to accept that there can be, for instance, an element of fear. And many times it’s actually also connected to the unwanted emotions that the modern spirituality has taught us to see them as very low frequency. And that’s a whole discussion because it’s not that we have to always live in anger or fear, but it is something that works in the more primitive parts of us, something that the way I see it and work with it, it needs to be processed and then we can get help from the mindfulness part to not identify while we process.

So, we are not the fear, we are not the anger. It just is a response of the primitive brain that we need to support our body of letting go. Yeah.

Kim: And detach from this fear, but it’s not me, or I have this thought, but it’s not who I am. It’s an experience, but there’s a level of detachment.

Kathrine: Yeah. And it’s pretty fascinating, I think, while people in these conditions are of course suffering, but very much actually. But at the same time, there’s also a potential for really deep insight and transformation.

Also, in these kinds of situations. No, if we also accept, I think there’s also an acceptance of, and this is for everyone, it’s not just if you’re sick, you can have other kinds of challenges where your body or your mind shuts down, but it’s also a kind of acceptance that my path is actually to reconnect with myself, with my true self really seriously. And I think I could even argue scientifically for that because I need to learn to understand how my body thrives no matter the criteria of success or what I should be at the social level. Does that make sense?

Kim: Yes. And I think we’re all like, I know I’m doing fine, or I know who I am. But when you really dig deep, there’s a lot to sort through. There is a lot of work to do to get back to who you really are, your authentic self, because you don’t realize how many layers of conditioning or, so like you said, social pressure that we’ve grown up around that there is to strip away. It’s a stripping away of who you’re not. 

Kathrine: Yeah, actually. And if especially if you’re very sensitive and it hasn’t really been a capacity that resonated well with your surroundings, there can be these layers even if you feel connected and you did your very best and there can be still more layers to discover and to take back into your day-conscious mind. And what I see in this connection is that symptoms are the body that screams, please take this into account. And then we have to learn the language of the body. The body to listen. Yes. Yeah. Nervous system language, which is something different than our regular language.

Kim: It doesn’t lie because we’re usually living in our heads and in our thoughts. When we’re dropping into our body and paying attention to when you talk to a friend and you get that tightness in your stomach and they’re not for you and you shouldn’t be hanging out with them. We don’t think that way. We’re all in our heads.

Kathrine: Yeah, very much. Because I also learned that throughout my life to more and more be in tune with what my body tells me also when it comes to friends and the relationships and to listen actually to the messages that my body is sending. And they can be very illogical sometimes. And, usually I’ve very much learned that it’s not about this person being, that there can be anything wrong with a person, even if I have to, for a while, retract from that person. It doesn’t actually have to be so that it’s because I hate this person or that I think that there’s something wrong. I can actually value people very, very much, but there can be a flow of sometimes we’re connecting, sometimes we’re not. And it’s like it’s nature is how I see it now.

Kim: Yeah. And especially for the highly sensitive bodies, we’re constantly, when you were saying picking up on the conscious part of it, we’re picking up on energy from our field, from the quantum field our bodies are, but we’re constantly in our heads. Like you said, it’s not always logical, but the body knows because the body is wired to sense the energy and the energy doesn’t lie.

Kathrine: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I find that so, so important because in that way you can say that the highly sensitive person, body, whatever you would call it, they have a particular, or we have a particular quality and perhaps mission without imposing anything on anybody that we can bring something to the table that is important in our culture today because maybe at a broad scale, we came a little bit far away from our authenticity. Maybe we want to make it possible in schools, educational systems and in workplaces to actually be able to be more authentic together in groups.

Kim: Yeah, right.

Kathrine: That’s what I’m thinking.

Kim: Yeah, that’s beautiful because we all just accept each other and march to the beat of our own drum, but it’s a similar drum.

Kathrine: Yeah. And so, to have more genuine connections with each other, I think also when you are more connected with yourself in these different levels and then you are able to connect with others also when it resonates, there is synchronicity and resonance, as I usually say. I feel that then you have a flow state. You have a flow state. You can work like this, you can dance or do exercise like this, you can be social like this, and it draws much less energy. That’s my experience. It draws much less energy, so we can keep ourselves more healthy this way.

Kim: Yeah, that’s amazing. So, what do you struggle with when it comes to your high sensitivity? What do you say is a challenge for you?

Kathrine: Yeah, like I say, it’s been this whole journey, and I have reached a high level of acceptance of myself, but I guess it’s still kind of like the deep emotions that I feel in all kinds of social relations and in relationships because ... And I guess I also have this very subtle feeling of predatory energy in the field. 

And sometimes, again, you can say that this predatory energy can be something that I detect that this relation could be predatory for me, but not necessarily for everybody. So, it’s like sometimes it can be a real predator. Sometimes it can be a person that our relationship would not be beneficial, or it would actually be overriding my integrity somehow, but I need to not integrate with it. And I think it is at such a subtle level that many people, that’s what I experience, that I’m with, do not feel the same, do not understand.

Sometimes it happens that they come after one year or two years and say, wow, I can really see what was happening there, then. But they didn’t ... When I said it, I sort of sound like ... I don’t know. They don’t understand what I mean.

Kim: Yeah. People who don’t use their intuition, who don’t pay attention to the body reactions because we’re so fine-tuned and it’s subtle and people think that we’re being illogical or weird if we’re like, “Ah, the vibe’s off, I can just tell.”

Kathrine: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

Kim: And it may not be a toxic person, but they may be toxic to you, like you said.

Kathrine: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I think one very important thing is to understand that when we are living like this or in this way as people, as a person, it’s not always a judgment on others. I think that’s important.

Kim: Yeah, you’re just bad for me.

Kathrine: Yeah, exactly. And it can also be in relationships when ... Unfortunately and fortunately in a relationship, I’m so tuned into my body that my body decides because I’ve been in a very, very beautiful relationship where at some point I started feeling less and less energy in this relationship. I started when I was going there and we were going to be together, I was feeling a lot of resistance and it’s not from old brain patterns. I feel like it was really my body communicating. 

And so, over time it’s sort of like there isn’t any more energy here for me. And sometimes it’s not at the same time as our partner. 

Kim: It’s tough. 

Kathrine: Yeah. It’s tough and you don’t want to hurt anybody and it could happen to me also, of course, the other way around. But in a way, there isn’t anybody guilty in such a situation.

It’s just that, I don’t know, the base for the relationship is just not there anymore.

Kim: Yeah. And you have to look out for your energetic body. You have to look out for what’s giving you that green light.

Kathrine: Yeah, I think so.

Kim: What do you love about your sensitivity? What do you think is a positive thing about the trait?

Kathrine: Many things, but what I think right now at this part of my life where I’m sort of beyond my reproductive age, and what I feel is that this is a time where the creativity that is in the ability to reproduce can be used for something else. And I think that in a positive world, women over, I don’t know, 45, whatever, 50 have huge potential. And especially with this kind of sensitivity, everything can be integrated, but it can go for all women maybe, but everything can actually be integrated if you have also worked on your own healing, there can be a kind of mothering that is kind of creative and not based on children, but based on giving. I think giving and pouring out from the wisdom that has been achieved at that time through both the sensitivity and lived experience, and that can be actually very creative at a new level.

And I guess feeling that more clearly comes from the sensitivity, if that makes sense. That’s how I personally feel it. Yeah, 

Kim: That’s beautiful. 

Kathrine: Yeah. So, I think that different ways, because then there is ... I don’t like to be either a political or these different fights, women’s rights and whatever, but I like to see that we did live in a patriarchy and masculine qualities can actually, if they’re attuned in the right way, can be very beautiful, but we need to also integrate the feminine aspects more. And one part of this is to actually not disregard females that have moved into a particular age, but instead ... Yeah, because we can also see ... I mean, my experience, when I was younger, I was fearing getting older. And when I met people, women who were 50 and after menopause and all this, I absolutely did not want to identify with that.

That was kind of like, I never want to be that. And what I found on the other side is so many very, very creative and talented women really, I found such a richness in the females that I have connect with, that I just wanted to emphasize that, that richness.

Kim: That’s a great point. We could use the masculine energy in a healthy way and the feminine energy in a healthy way, but especially from the older generations because we are more anchored in that and confident in that. And like you said, there’s a wisdom that comes with it.

Kathrine: Yeah, that’s what I think. And what I also like, when I learned to both be conscious of the sensitivity and to handle it, or if you can say it like that and use it, I like that I become my own research object also through my sensitivity and understanding also of the nervous system and embodiment of it, I feel like every experience is teaching me something, and that’s what I really like.

Kim: Yeah. And that groundedness and that peace that we often don’t have when we’re younger.

Kathrine: Yeah. Takes time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because I was also quite ... I had a temperament because every situation could be very quickly like into a ... Yeah, and I had to actually work on that a lot throughout my life. So, the more I understand it and I understand that it actually comes from my sensitivity, it becomes easier to handle and to also have an everyday life that takes that into account so that everyone can be as happy as possible. Yeah.

Kim: Yeah, as they are, but also in their own energy and peace and happiness.

Kathrine: Yeah. I mean, so that my close relations can also benefit from it and not be stressed. Because what I also experienced with my high sensitivity and getting two children who were very, very, very sensitive, even as boys, there were things that were difficult that I have only understood later on how sensitive they were, how much they soaked everything into them. Even as a sensitive person, I have only come to understand that because they actually remember a lot and very detailed, and they tell me, and so I learn. Even I thought I knew so much also about children, I’m still learning so much from them at that moment.

Kim: The learning journey is ongoing.

Kathrine: Yeah, it’s neve-rending. Yeah. Yeah.

Kim: What advice would you say to highly sensitive people who may be struggling with their trait?

Kathrine: Yeah. I mean, to be open towards just discovering what it is about and to be open towards integrating it and be courageous in staying with it and not trying to dissociate from it, not trying to mask, but also I guess to a lot of self-compassion and acceptance when you make mistakes or if you find out that you have repressed too much or you are masking too much, to have a lot of self-compassion also.

Kim: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people follow you on your journey? Where can they reach out if they’d like to?

Kathrine: Yeah, well, I have a homepage. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook. I write a lot in my own language on Facebook, but I guess it’s easily translatable. And on LinkedIn, I have a newsletter that is in English. I also have a Substack if you want to explore more wildly spiritual contemplations and insights in this overall theme and the body and consciousness and all of this and symptoms and also just regular healing processes. I guess that those are the best places.

Kim: Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure that the links are there in the show notes so people can find you. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was such a great conversation. I appreciate it.

Kathrine: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That was really nice.  

Thank you so much for listening in on my conversation with Kathrine. I hope it reminds you that when we learn to slow down and listen to our inner world, we build greater awareness of a new type of guidance. One of greater significance and deep inner healing that changes not only our bodies, but our lives.

Until next time. Take care!

About Kathrine Anker:

Kathrine Elizabeth Anker is a Danish Mind-Body practitioner and nervous system educator specializing in high sensitivity, burnout, and long-term stress patterns. With a background in transdisciplinary research and lived experience as a highly sensitive person, she helps individuals understand their nervous system “bandwidth” and transform overwhelm into embodied clarity and authentic living. Her work focuses on nervous system literacy, emotional integration, and supporting highly sensitive and neurodivergent individuals in reclaiming their inner wisdom.

Follow along on Kathrine’s journey:

Website: https://kathrineelizabeth.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KathrineELJohansson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7332390640216969216/

Substack: https://kathrineelizabethjohansson.substack.com/p/detoxing-from-the-matrix-of-stress

Free Sound Gift: http://mailklub.kathrineelizabeth.dk/aP8GGI

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About Kimberly:

Kimberly Marshall is an ICF-certified Energy and Intuition coach for highly sensitive people (HSPs) and host of The Happy HSP Podcast. After 20 years in the publishing industry working for companies like Time Inc., Monster.com, and W. W. Norton, she left her corporate career to pursue work that better suited her HSP needs. She now helps HSPs reconnect with their intuition, energy, and soul’s purpose so they can live gentle, heart-centered lives in alignment with who they truly are.

Through her work, Kimberly hopes to shed more light on the reality of living with high sensitivity and inspire more HSPs to embrace their empathetic, loving, and gentle natures.

• Hosted/produced by Kimberly Marshall

• Edited by Fonzie Try Media

• Artwork by Tara Corola