Ambitious professionals in particular often don't even know they're highly sensitive. They do feel the impact. They're drained after a full day, they lie awake churning over that one conversation, or they can't figure out why something costs them so much more than it costs someone else. And usually it's not the people around them who struggle with it. It's mostly you. That's why being aware of your high sensitivity is a real skill. Knowing how to use it mainly as a strength, and how to keep the hard sides small.
Let's first be clear about what it is. High sensitivity isn't a weakness and it isn't a diagnosis. It's a trait. About 15 to 20 percent of people have it, and it shows up in over a hundred animal species. Your nervous system is simply tuned to a higher resolution than average. And no, it's not just an introvert thing. Psychologist Elaine Aron, who put the concept on the map, found that about a third of highly sensitive people are extraverts.
Being highly sensitive doesn't make you a wallflower who blows over at the first breeze. Often it's quite the opposite: courageous people, with sharp intuition.
What high sensitivity is
High sensitivity doesn't look the same for everyone. In this blog we'll explore some of the ways it can show up. The basis is four traits:
- Deep processing. Your head doesn't take anything at face value. You see patterns, layers and meaning. That's also where your best ideas come from.
- Overstimulated faster. Because you take in so much, your system fills up faster. A busy day at the office costs you more than it costs your colleague.
- Strong empathy. You don't just notice that someone is stressed, you feel it. Sometimes before they've said a word.
- Picking up subtle signals. A shift in tone. A jaw that's just a little tighter. The mood in a room turning.
Maybe you recognise this too. You get restless when someone's words and body language don't match. Criticism lands harder than you'd like. You find it hard to let go of tension as long as you don't understand where it comes from. You lose your thread when someone interrupts you. And big decisions sometimes hang around forever, because your head wants to run every scenario first.
The paradox
The same depth that makes you rich also makes you overflow faster. You have enormous processing capacity, and at the same time a low threshold for overload.
What many people don't know: the biggest trigger often isn't noise or bright light. It's emotional stress. Unspoken tension. A situation that isn't clear. Waiting for something nobody explains.
Say someone is full of tension but doesn't say a word about it. You pick up that tension straight away. But your head has no information to explain it, and it finds that hard. So it starts inventing scenarios to fill the gap. More noise, in a system that's already busy.
Why regulation matters even more for you
Your body goes into alarm with every trigger. A difficult email, a tense colleague, a meeting where something is brewing under the surface. Normally you complete that stress by moving, breathing, shaking it off. If that doesn't happen, the tension stays and builds up.
As a highly sensitive person, this happens more often, and it lands deeper. So your bucket fills faster, and needs emptying more often. In my experience, it's precisely the highly sensitive people who try to push overstimulation away who burn out faster.
You can't switch your sensitivity off. You can learn to work with it. Regulation is your basic maintenance. Like charging: you don't wait until your phone is at zero percent either.
How to regulate: Spot, Feel, Lead
In my coaching I teach people many ways to regulate. These three steps are the foundation. For regulation and body connection they work for everyone, but for highly sensitive people they're extra important.
- Spot. Notice early that you're filling up. Your heart rate rises a little, your shoulders creep up, your head starts churning. The sooner you see it, the easier it is to adjust.
- Feel. Stay with it for a moment. What do you feel in your body, which emotion is underneath? And ask yourself: is this mine, or someone else's? Highly sensitive people easily take on other people's tension. That question alone gives you breathing room.
- Lead. Reset through your body first, and only then choose with your head. For example, look around calmly and name three things you see; it pulls you out of your head and back into the room. Breathe in twice briefly through your nose and out once, long, through your mouth, so your body recognises it can relax. Shake out your arms, legs and shoulders; that's how you complete the stress cycle. And notice the small moments when you feel just a bit calmer. They happen more often than you think.
A tip. When you're really full, more thinking stops helping. A shower, a walk, putting your thoughts on paper. A physical reset does more than another round of analysing.
Preventing overstimulation
Prevention is easier than repair. It starts with accepting that this is how you're wired, and that the modern workday is simply full of stimuli. Both are allowed to be true. Then you can start working with it.
Work with your environment. Headphones, a quiet spot for focused work, notifications off at set times. Plan a few stimulus-free breaks each day, without your phone or music. And set boundaries on what is and isn't possible. A day full of meetings calls for a quiet evening, and a full week for an empty Sunday.
A tip. Ask for subtitles. Sensing tension, but the words are missing? Just ask: "I'm picking something up, am I right?" It saves your head a lot of guessing. And if that information doesn't come, close the file on purpose. "I don't know, and that's okay." Then turn your attention to something physical.
And besides calm, do you also crave adventure and challenge? Those can go together just fine. Many highly sensitive people need both. Then choose small adventures, like a challenging course or a new hobby, over big leaps without a safety net.
The gift
High sensitivity also has a beautiful side. You see what others miss. You sense what's going on in a team, often before anyone says it out loud. You work with depth and care.
And many people feel calm around you. You listen without quick judgement and radiate calm, and the other person's nervous system settles with it. That's called co-regulation. A real gift. But it costs energy too, because the unrest you take in from someone else, you have to release again yourself. That's exactly why regulation matters so much for you. So you can use your gift without running empty.
What to take with you
Your sensitivity doesn't need to go anywhere. You get to learn to work with it, and that works best through your body. Five things to take with you:
- See it as a trait. You're not too much. Your system is more finely tuned, and that asks for a different way of handling stimuli.
- Regulate more often than you think you need to. Empty your bucket along the way, not only when it overflows. Small resets through your body work better than one big one at the end of the week.
- Ask yourself: mine or theirs? Not all the tension you feel is yours. Making that distinction gives you breathing room.
- Ask for subtitles, or close the file. Ask about what you sense instead of guessing. And if no answer comes, let it go on purpose.
- Work with your environment. Shape your day so you can dose your stimuli. Plan rest and focus as seriously as your meetings.
Do you lead a team? Then read leading with a fine-tuned radar: highly sensitive and in charge too.
How I can help
As a coach, I have high sensitivity too. And honestly, it feels like a true gift. My joy in life runs deep. I pick up on subtle things and process them all the way down, and that helps enormously to get to the core of something. But it is a gift I've had to learn to manage: throughout my career I've really had to learn to lead myself in a way that doesn't work against me. So when I coach people on high sensitivity, I do it from knowledge of the body, from science, and from my own experience. I know the challenges, and I know what works.
As a highly sensitive person, it's extra important to sink into your body. Your stress response switches on faster. And our most common response to stress, especially in thinking work, is to start overthinking. You go even further into your head. That calls for a counterweight: lots of body awareness, and actually training it. So you don't get stuck in your head, with all the downsides that come with it.
In my coaching we work with your body, not only your head. We look at what fills your system and what empties it again. You learn regulation you can use anywhere: in a meeting, at your desk, at home on the sofa. So your sensitivity becomes your compass again.
Feel it's time to approach this differently? Then I especially recommend my mini programme Out of your head. There you literally learn to get out of your head and into your body, to regulate, and to enjoy what you do more and more. Rather meet first? Book a free intro call, and we'll look at what you need together.