Hi there! I'm Loraine Van Tuyl. I am a Soul Authority transformational life coach - the natural offshoot of my roles as a clinical psychologist (CA Licensed PhD), shamanic eco-psychologist, spiritual guide, and certified Depth Hypnosis practitioner (CHT - DH is an integration of regression therapy, Buddhist and transpersonal psychology, energy medicine, and Earth-centered wisdom traditions). For more info about my unconventional past roles and career path, click About Me & My Big Why page.
I have 30+ years of professional expertise in helping gifted, neurodiverse, and high-achieving empaths embrace being born leaders and change catalysts. The first order of business usually is challenging Sensitivity Shame© and self-blame (often posing as impostor syndrome and self-doubt) with my Soul Authority secret sauce and popular reframes:
We can't prove ourselves if we're NOT TRUE to ourselves. Our TRUE NATURE unfurls from the INSIDE OUT and BOTTOM UP, not from the outside in or top down.
It requires TRUSTING and SURRENDERING to (instead of trying to outsmart) our INNER WISDOM and NATURAL GENIUS. Radical SELF-LOVE means breaking-free from the SHADOWS and SURVIVAL MASKS of SENSITIVITY SHAME© and healing our SHORT-CIRCUITED NERVOUS SYSTEMS from SENSITIVITY STRESS©.
It means following the call to recenter and ground your AUTHENTIC SELF in your SOUL AUTHORITY within the SAFETY and LIGHT of your inner SOUL SANCTUARY.
It means trusting that reconnecting to this SOURCE of POWER will protect YOU and your MIND from undigested PERSECUTION FEARS, oppressive PATRIARCHAL patterns, and INVISIBLE pathogens, just like your computer FIREWALL and IMMUNE SYSTEM protect you from viruses.
HEAL LOVE LEAD with SOUL AUTHORITY® is my ONE-STOP (not the same as one-size-fits-all!) transformational system for serious and sensitive healers and change leaders wh are:
- Loraine Van Tuyl
Many highly sensitive people (HSP) realize as early as in kindergarten (me) that something is not quite right. I shed more tears than my siblings, friends, and cousins combined, and was flat-out told that these tears were ‘crocodile tears’ and not real. Why? Because they lacked ‘good reason’ — as if feelings ran on logic. In grade school, HSP like me often get teased for being cry babies. I was even sent to the principal's office so she could address my excessive crying.
Sensitivity Scapegoating© and Sensitivity Shame© — terms I coined — are rooted in age-old persecution fear and modern-day mistreatment that scare HSP into self-sabotaging our power and scattering our energy. They are the result of pervasive neuroformative and capitalistic pressures to perform and produce according to social norms and standards of success that disdain our neurodiversity and sensitivity and regard them as weak, inferior, and fragile.
Sensitivity Shame© can disguise itself as SORRY, NO ACCESS or BREAK FOR YOU, as a deep-seated insecurity, social anxiety, self-consciousness, self-loathing, impostor syndrome, and/or fear and confirmation of failure, not deserving good, or rejection. It is hands-down the biggest confidence block, relationship blindspot, and opportunity cost that hold big-hearted BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color), HS healers, and women leaders back from realizing our fullest potential.
CLICK HERE: WHAT IS SENSITIVITY SHAME©?
A super empath© is a well-adjusted, self-actualized empath who's masterful at transforming stress and daily overwhelm into creative inspiration for personal and collective healing. Super empaths© are a lot like Mother Trees and Redwoods. They're spiritually mature, generous, and interconnected.
They're optimally wired to serve the greater good, but they're also very susceptible to Sensitivity Shame© and Sensitivity Stress© – absorbing tension, shadow issues, and negative energy that aren't theirs due to their empathic super powers, big hearts, and tendency to put themselves last.
They have trouble advocating for themselves because of their avoidance of conflict and risk. For that reason, they're under-appreciated and neglected (at best) and "endangered" (at worst) especially in top positions. They need and benefit from protection, support, and empowerment that compliment their unique strengths, mindset, and lifestyle.
Super empaths© thrive when able to set fierce, protective boundaries, resource from within, and use their gifts and super powers to create lasting transformational impact through their life missions.
Wondering if you may be an empath too? Take this 2-minute free empath test and learn about common challenges that trouble empaths. Find out if you're similar to the sensitive healers and leaders I work with to help determine if we are a good match.
AM I AN EMPATH? QUIZ
As a child, I cried at the drop of a hat because I carried a lot. I spent hours fretting about a harsh reprimand or mean look or tone. I preferred to be alone and play in the magical Amazon rainforest that covers 95% of my native Suriname, imagining that I was Mowgli.
After a military coup uprooted my family, we moved to the concrete jungles of Miami. I coped with the loss of my safe sanctuary and most trusted lifeline to my true self during the awkward middle school years by becoming selectively mute, pretending not to speak English. I didn't know how else to hide.
Decades later, my rigorous studies, certification, and extensive training in clinical psychology, shamanic practices, meditation and mindfulness fundamentals, energy medicine, Buddhist psychology, regression therapy, eco psychology, and Depth Hypnosis quantum leaped my healing. Despite these shifts, I continued to struggle with public speaking (and past-life persecution) terror and resisted stepping into my calling as a transformational healer and trailblazer.
Supported by my dream team of spirit guides, I wrote and shared my story in Amazon Wisdom Keeper: A Psychologist's Memoir of Spiritual Awakening in 2017. Since then, I have talked to audiences, big and small, online and in person, on podcasts and radio shows, at conferences, retreats, and book stores. I'd learned so much about overcoming crippling public speaking fear that I even became a WomanSpeak (transformational Toastmasters) group leader for a few years!
These transformations have allowed me to reach and empower hundreds of other spiritual and super empaths— sensitive experts, soulpreneurs, transformation agents, thought leaders, executive directors, coaches, psychotherapists, and academics—over the decades in fields such as mental health, medicine, social justice, law, engineering, conservation, the arts, business, community organizing, and integrative health.
They inspired me to design my signature e-course HEAL LOVE LEAD with SOUL AUTHORITY®, which draws heavily on my professional and personal experiences and offers struggling empaths the structured guidance, skill sets, and tools they're seeking and needing. My second book, Soul Authority: Liberatory Tools to Heal from Oppressive Patterns and Restore Trust in Your Heart Compass, emerged out of this intention and work and was published in April 2022.
This how-to book aims to offer super empaths additional guidance in transforming their biggest blindspot: sensitivity shame© and self-blame. The internalization of negative and oppressive patterns has lead to a lot of heavy and stressful "bleeding-heart carrying vs big-hearted caring" and "blind vs aligned action" over the generations. I believe that when we deeply heal on the soul level and feel our sacred central tree in our inner sanctuary having our back, we once again dare to trust our big hearts and honor our needs and dreams instead of letting our wounded feelings boss us around or try to outsmart our inner wisdom with logic.
in MindBodyGreen
If you were lost in the woods, would you follow a compass that was leading you in circles? Would you stay quiet if the guide you were with insisted that their compass was more accurate than the navigational clues you were picking up from the sun, the mountains, and the current of the river?
Of course not.
And yet, so many of us don't trust our sense of inner knowing on the journey through life.
in MEDIUM
Many highly sensitive people (HSP) realize as early as in kindergarten (me!) that something is not quite right. I shed more tears than my siblings, friends, and cousins combined, and was flat-out told that these tears were ‘crocodile tears’ and not real. Why? Because they lacked ‘good reason’ — as if feelings ran on logic. In grade school, HSP like me often get teased for being cry babies. We get in trouble for being too much or too little in comparison to the norm.
in Thrive Global
The Glitch That High IQ Can't Fix
Arianna Huffington’s signature “tough-love” intervention in her 2018 Open Letter to Elon Musk brings an important point to light. Lack of genius is not the reason why Elon’s leadership abilities are lacking and under fire (called it!)
Arianna is well-known for leading Thrive Global’s wellness revolution by challenging negative cultural trends, such as the 24/7 work ethic mass delusion and lack of sleep."
in MindBodyGreen
I was born and raised in Suriname, the most forest-covered nation in the world, with 98% tree cover. "Nature Deficit Disorder"—a term that author Richard Louv coined to describe how being disconnected from nature can harm health—was not something I needed to worry about growing up. However, it plagued me nonstop after moving to the concrete jungles of Miami, attending a middle school that had no windows, looked like a warehouse, and felt like a giant freezer.
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.
