About your guide to Singularly Sensitive:
Lori L. Cangilla, Ph.D., CFTG
Writer, Nature Nerd, Highly Sensitive Woman.
I've spent more than 25 years accompanying highly sensitive people toward having an impact on the world through lives that are as deep and nourishing as they were always meant to be.
Won’t you join me and the land to take your next steps toward becoming Singularly Sensitive?
I know this truth too well:There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being deeply sensitive in a world that rewards numbness, hustle, and always being on.
You know it, too.
The weariness from constantly justifying yourself. Of softening your perceptions and your opinions so they fit. Of contorting yourself to fit into in contexts that actively dysregulate you, and then wondering why you feel so depleted at the end of every day.
I’ve been there. For years, I did everything I was supposed to do. I built a clinical career I was proud of. I showed up fully for my clients. I was good at it. And, at the same time, I was quietly, persistently out of alignment with something I couldn't quite name. I could feel that. It wore me down.
The turning point didn't come from a new strategy. It came from slowing down. From walking in the woods. From letting the natural world do what it has always known how to do: hold me and help me settle into myself, without requiring anything of me in return.
That experience didn't end my professional life. It deepened it. And it fundamentally changed what I believe sensitive people need most: a profound relationship with the more-than-human natural world to hold our sensitivity as a sacred, essential part of who we are.
What’s Shaped Me as a Mentor
I’m a certified forest therapy guide (CFTG). I use evidence-based practices in which nature is not just a metaphor, but an active, co-healing presence. I’m trained to facilitate in-person and virtually, so you can start connecting to the rest of nature in your immediate vicinity and keep those practices going long after our walk ends.
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I'm a licensed psychologist. I bring curiosity, depth, and a genuine understanding of what it means to sit with someone in their most tender and complicated places while helping them make change. You’ll feel heard, encouraged, celebrated, and guided, even though this isn’t therapy.
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And I'm a highly sensitive person. Everything I teach is something I live. Every framework I offer has been tested in my own nervous system first. I intuitively get what it means to be an HSP in the world today, so you won’t waste energy trying to convince me what it’s like to be you.
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Together, these aren't separate credentials.
They’re an integrated identity, and they’re my way of accompanying sensitive people through change that is slow, deep, and makes a real impact on the world.
About the Singularly Sensitive Approach
Becoming Singularly Sensitive means living in genuine alignment with what your sensitivity, your context, and your season of life are calling you to be, so you can make your mark in a sustainable way.
You’re one of a kind, and I’m here to celebrate that!
I founded Singularly Sensitive on a conviction that only grows stronger for me the more I work with sensitive people:
Sensitivity doesn’t need to be managed, changed, or dealt with.
It needs to be the foundation on which the rest of your life is built. Your sensitivity is your greatest asset.
That foundation is shaped and reinforced by four kinds of relationships:
01Your relationship with the more-than-human world: whether you call it nature, land, Earth, Universe, Spirit, it’s here to hold our human experience.
03Your relationship with mentors: the formal and informal connections with people who have lived experience to support your growth and guide your journey.
02Your relationship with yourself: the authentic thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, goals, needs, history, and context that make you who you are.
04Your relationship with community: not just any people, true, deep connections with kindred spirits, the sensitive people whose journeys overlap with yours.
These four relationships aren’t niceties.
They’re essential to building a Singularly Sensitive life.
Our interconnectedness with the more-than-human world unlocks the safety and space to flourish in our relationships with others, with mentors, and with ourselves.
But it’s not always easy to discern our path forward when our thoughts are spiraling and our hearts are aching. We need something more: gentle joy.
Gentle joy is the compass I use to navigate these relationships amidst the noise of daily life.
When we work together, I’ll teach you how to use gentle joy as a tool to guide your own path.
The contentment, peace, and calm of gentle joy aren’t just pleasant feelings. Gentle joy is a powerful form of intelligence, an internal signal that tells you when you're in alignment with your truth and when you've drifted off course.
For sensitive people, learning to hear and trust that signal changes everything.
It’s the key to tuning out the noise (from outside, but more importantly, from the thoughts and feelings that twist us up inside) and choosing what makes your life right for you, starting at this very moment.
Gentle joy and the four relationships:
your keys to becomings Singularly Sensitive and making the difference you dream of for yourself and in the world.
A little more about me and how I live the four relationships….
When I'm not guiding others through a forest or a suburban landscape, I'm hiking the trails of western Pennsylvania with my family and our tiny dog, camera in hand, noticing what most people walk past.
After years of living in my head and on a screen, I’m committed to living in daily reciprocity with the more-than-human nature that surrounds and supports me and my work with kindred spirits.
Writing and journaling are one of my gentle joys, and you can share in them with my book, Wander and Delve, and my other guided journals.
I serve on the advisory board of the West View Urban Farm, where friends, nature, good food, and a vision of mutual aid share a common root system.
I’m part of mentoring groups that lovingly nudge me to be brave and work with a coach who knows that I can always go deeper in finding my authentic path.
And I believe that sensitivity is a foundation, not fragility. I believe that nature is essential, not a luxury. And I believe that the world genuinely needs what sensitive people carry — when we’re rooted enough to offer it in ways that make a difference, without burning ourselves out in the process.
Nature has always known how to hold you. Forest therapy teaches you how to let it. And I’m here to show you how gentle joy can be your compass to bring this wisdom into your life.
If you're feeling the call to connect with me,Choose Your Own Adventure:
Six months of private mentorship, forest therapy, and the full arc of ecological development. The deepest, most comprehensive way to work with me.
A community you can join at any time, with live gatherings, seasonal practices, and an intimate group of kindred spirits. The place you return to, across seasons.
Books, journals, guided meditation recordings, and all things from the Singularly Sensitive approach — a place to get oriented before you go deeper.