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 the SHACKLES of 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 who 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 Stress© and Sensitivity Shame© — terms I coined to describe the debilitating and distressing blocks and blindspots commonly experienced by HSP— are the result of internalized neuroformative standards and pressures to perform and produce to earn entry in a social group. When we fall short, we blame ourselves for being "troubled," "a loser," "abnormal," and "flawed" and become terrified of imagined and real social rejection. We have trouble seeing the big picture - that we're carrying an extra heavy load of (societal) baggage that needs to be put down first.
THE TRUTH: HSP are prime scapegoat targets because our sensitivity is threatening the collective shadow and status quo. Our sheer existence pokes at deeply buried shame around our human vulnerability that's rooted in centuries of imbalanced patriarchal norms and toxic masculinity. These forces are doubling-down and pushing back hard because of the fear our power and light evoke.
THE RESULT – Not only do HSP experience all feelings, especially shame, more intensely and deeply than most, we are also more self-conscious and "shame-prone" according to Elaine Aron compared to non-HSP, around a whole rainbow of issues. What's worse in my opinion, we have adopted a distinct and very sophisticated flavor of shame –sensitivity shame© – that specifically attacks and sabotages our core self and authenticity - and makes us believe that we are doing it to ourselves. If anyone wants proof how crazy and volatile we are, we got boat loads.
HSP often grow up being the scapegoat or the black sheep in a family or a social group. Our intuition may cause us to unwittingly or clumsily expose the shadow in others in defense by pushing buttons, ruffling feathers, or playing devil's advocate. We hoped that calling out the problem would make it stop but our unskilled efforts were often not well-received.
Throughout our lives, we receive explicit or implicit messages that we are "a hot mess," "overreacting," "too intense," "dramatic," "stirring chaos," "too much or not enough," and "over-the-top", bombarding our brain with beliefs that we are bad, abnormal, defective, and inherently unlovable or inadequate. All this gets woven into our sense of self. Consequently, we become distrustful and even begin to hate our true nature, and sometimes completely abandon our natural genius to fit in.
A different outcome only becomes possible when we realize that being highly sensitive is a super power and offers us many more gifts than challenges but these need to be carefully unpacked, understood, and integrated in alignment with our authentic self, our fullest potential, and the wonder-filled uncertainty and mystery of life.
Our self-advocacy becomes a layered and complex 3-D puzzle that we start working on long before we can say the word "oppression" and understand why we feel bad for experiencing healthy and normal human emotions. Fortunately, our emotions and energy are more stubbornly linked to a truth that can puncture and see through the illusion of patriarchal sucker punches and low blows. We feel compelled to follow and honor this truth because of the instant relief that reconnecting to it offers. It's the reason why so many of us are tripling-down with tools and resources to support the potent potential of our sensitivity as a super power and bad ass change catalyst (Brené Brown's TED TALK - the Power of Vulnerability).
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 their fullest potential.
Soul Authority composts and transforms debilitating Sensitivity Shame© and Sensitivity Stress© into fuel that energizes our path of liberation. By honoring healthy anger and grief associated to the loss of our true nature and authentic self, we are able to realign our energetic boundaries, first as an inside job, then with all the energies around us. This greatly reduced our proneness to Sensitivity Shame© and Sensitivity Stress© and cultivates the agency and audacity we need to reclaim our true HS self and Own our Natural Genius Zone®.
SOUL AUTHORITY TIP: When sacred anger and energetic boundary work is avoided, it grows into an insurmountable block that makes HSP very susceptibility to manipulative "love bombing" or "admiration bombing" (feasts and famine of this) by narcissists, who are well-known for being the least interested in transforming their own shame and ego-defenses and struggle with grandiosity. Because of sensitivity shame® (lack of self-trust), self-blame, and bleeding-heart tendencies, they are also prone to having a hard time discerning between carrying vs caring and often end up taking (grandiose) responsibility for other people's unhealed wounds and/or being taken for granted.
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 trying 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.
