199: You're Not Too Sensitive. You're Just Dysregulated

You’re Not Too Sensitive — You’re Just Unregulated

If you’ve ever whispered to yourself, “I’m just too sensitive,” this episode is going to change everything.

Crying at the slightest tension. Replaying conversations in your head. Feeling guilty for saying no. Shutting down in conflict. Overexplaining. People-pleasing. Walking on eggshells so no one else feels uncomfortable. Sound familiar? 

What if your sensitivity isn’t the problem?

In this episode, I’m breaking down the truth about being a highly sensitive person (HSP) and why the real issue isn’t your deep emotions — it’s nervous system dysregulation. I’ll show you the difference between suppression and regulation, how emotional reactivity leads to self-betrayal, and what it actually looks like to turn your sensitivity into your greatest strength.

Because your sensitivity is not a weakness. It’s a superpower — when you know how to regulate it.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why highly sensitive people are often mislabeled as “too sensitive”
• The difference between emotional suppression and emotional regulation
• Signs of nervous system dysregulation (fight, flight, freeze, fawn)
• How people-pleasing becomes a form of self-abandonment
• How to increase your tolerance for discomfort without shutting down
• The cost of staying emotionally reactive (burnout, resentment, anxiety, indecision)
• How to act instead of react in triggering situations
• Why upgrading your nervous system is the key to healthy boundaries and emotional maturity

The Truth About Sensitivity and Emotional Regulation

Highly sensitive people feel deeply. That’s not the issue.

The issue is that most of us were never taught how to process what we feel.

And because only about 15–20% of the population is highly sensitive, many of us grew up in environments where our depth wasn’t understood — and sometimes wasn’t welcomed.

But here’s the shift:

Regulation does not mean feeling less.
It means feeling safer as you feel.

It means:

• Experiencing sadness without drowning
• Feeling anger without exploding
• Noticing guilt without turning yourself into the villain
• Staying present in discomfort without self-abandoning

Suppression pushes emotions away.
Regulation stays with yourself through them.

What Emotional Regulation Looks Like in Real Life

Emotional regulation isn’t about being calm 24/7. It’s about recovery time. Capacity. Integrity.

It’s learning to separate your emotions from your actions.

Because when your emotions run the show, you betray yourself.
But when you regulate, you act in alignment with who you want to be.

If You’re a Highly Sensitive Person, Hear This:

You are not broken.
You are not dramatic.
You are not weak.

You simply require a different set of tools.

Work With Me

If you’re tired of:

• Emotional reactivity
• People-pleasing
• Overthinking every interaction
• Feeling guilty for having needs
• Shutting down in conflict

My 12-week coaching program is designed specifically for highly sensitive people who want to:

• Act instead of react
• Set boundaries without guilt
• Express needs without anxiety
• Stop self-abandoning in relationships
• Build emotional resilience and regulation

Click here to book your free clarity call, and let’s see if coaching is the right next step for you. https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

You don’t need to feel less. You need to feel safer as you fe

Transcript

0:18

Well, hello and welcome back. My name is MaryAnn Walker and I help highly sensitive people learn how to exist in a world in a way that really honors their sensitivity, because I truly believe that your sensitivity is a superpower, not a weakness. And maybe as you're hearing that, you might even be thinking, no, but my sensitivity is the problem I've been told again and again and again i'm just too sensitive. And so now. I can just see all of the ways that I am too sensitive. I cry easily. I often shut down to the slightest hint of conflict. Some days it feels like they're just tears constantly in my eyes, or my feelings are just under the surface and I'm constantly wondering if I'm too much or if I'm too little. If I've said or done something wrong. I'm overthinking. I'm over feeling. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells, just trying to make sure that everybody else feels okay and make sure I haven't offended anybody because if I have offended somebody, I just don't know what I would do. I'm too sensitive. And I wish I weren't. Now, if that sounds like your internal dialogue, let me be clear that your sensitivity is not the problem. In fact, I believe that in the world as we know it right now in our current reality, we actually need more sensitivity, not less. I think that would actually help to solve a lot of problems. So we need you and your sensitivity. The actual problem is not your sensitivity. The actual problem is that you're feeling unregulated. And this is because as a highly sensitive person who does feel things more deeply, your nervous system requires a different set of tools than the rest of the population When you are a highly sensitive person who is able to regulate their own emotions. Do you know what it looks like? It looks like having a nervous system that is able to recover more quickly. It looks like having deeper emotional processing, the capacity to process on a deeper level. It looks like a higher attunement to both the environment around you and to other people, and not in a way that drains you, but in a way that really creates this conscious awareness and actually helps you to show up in the way that you would like to in the world. When you're a highly sensitive person that is unable to self-regulate, it might look like having a heightened fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. This might look like breaking down into tears at the slightest conflict. It might look like overexplaining yourself to other people or people pleasing. That's the fawning is the people pleasing. It might look like having these emotional Spirals and overthinking after small interactions. Feeling guilty after saying no, or needing a little bit of extra reassurance from other people, but at the same time, feeling too ashamed to ask for that reassurance because you think, but I should be okay. I should be able to navigate this on my own. It might also look like shutting down completely or disassociating from your emotions. Now again, if that list feels a little bit too familiar to you, I want to say it again that these are not character flaws. These are protective responses from a nervous system that really is doing its best. And once your nervous system knows better, then it can do better. You can start to act rather than react emotionally. So let me share a little bit about my personal healing journey. Before coaching, I would've absolutely considered myself to be too sensitive. And my way of being too sensitive was attempting to people please so that everybody else would be happy and that I'd never have to have internal conflict. Right? And so this really showed up for me in very interesting ways. What I have learned over time, and what I can see in hindsight is that when I wasn't acknowledging my emotions, when I wasn't fully processing my emotions, they would come out in very interesting, unexpected, and sometimes embarrassing ways. We can't actually suppress our emotions. They're going to come out eventually. So they can either come out intentionally or unintentionally. And let me tell you a story about when it came out unintentionally. I remember one day when I was at a parent-teacher conference, I adore this teacher. This teacher adored my student. It was going to be a pleasant conversation, but as I was sitting in that chair having this conversation, I noticed that my eyes were really welling up with tears, and it was to such a point that I even stopped and told the teacher, sorry, my eyes are just really watering today. But here's the thing, that wasn't the whole truth. Yes, my eyes were watering, but I could feel in my body, I could feel it in my chest that I was actually having a nervous system response. I had suppressed my emotions so much that now they were just popping out in these really kind of embarrassing ways and it didn't feel really good. So that's how I used to show up through my sensitivity. And then there's the me after coaching. I was recently invited to a favorite things party with a bunch of women that I don't know. I knew one of the women. I didn't know everybody else, and I was really excited for this party. I wasn't told a budget, I was just told, okay, we'll bring three gifts and it'll be fun and the only other favorite things party I'd been to was when I was living in a different area and the gal that hosted she'd host every year and she'd, oh yeah, I'll just bring three$10 gifts and that'll be great. So in my mind, that was my default setting was, okay, I'll just bring a couple of$10 gifts. Well, the first gift that was exchanged was a Marble charcuterie board, and when I saw that, I realized that, oh. That's a lot more expensive than my favorite face oil. And old me would've been a little bit humiliated in that moment. I would've maybe over apologized. I would've probably silently vowed that, oh, I can never show my face around these ladies again. This is so embarrassing. But because of coaching, I was able to self-regulate. In that moment, I was able to remind myself that, hey, no harm, no foul. Like I wasn't actually given a price range, so it's okay. I still showed up with a gift and while it was a little bit awkward to have brought the cheapest gift to the party, I thoroughly enjoyed those ladies. We laughed. We got along. It turns out that we have a lot in common. One of them I could see, oh wow, look, we're pretty aligned politically. Another one I realized, oh wow. She really likes meditation. I do too. That's awesome. And then there were a couple of ladies sharing about their breath work experience, and I thought, ah, I love breath work. I could realize as the evening went on that. These people were my people and that that would be so much fun to spend more time with them. But if I hadn't learned how to manage my own nervous system, I might have shut down. I might have snuck out early. I might not have given these ladies a chance at getting to know them, and that would be a missed opportunity when it came to relationship. So yes. My remaining unregulated, it could have caused me to shut down. It could have limited my worth to one small part of our interaction. But now that I'm able to self-regulate, I'm really looking forward to getting to know each and every single one of those ladies on a deeper level as we meet up, not only for, you know, meditation and breath work, but I also plan to meet up with them once a month for their book club, and I'm really looking forward to that. So why does it sometimes seem as though highly sensitive people are more prone to dysregulation? First, I wanna say you're not actually more prone to it, it's just that you require a different set of tools as you learn to navigate those emotions. Most highly sensitive people were never taught how to feel their feelings without fixing things, right? We wanna rush to the fixing part. We wanna be done with it. They were never taught how to remain present with discomfort rather than pushing it down or people pleasing in an attempt to self-regulate. They were not taught how to self-soothe without self abandonment. In fact, most times they were taught the opposite because those around them were not necessarily as deep feeling as them. They were told that they were too sensitive. They were told, just be pleasant because you're now creating negative emotions for me. So many highly sensitive people were taught that caretaking others and people pleasing is the best way to manage their own emotions. So that's what they try to do. They people please and they placate others, believing that eventually their kindness will be reciprocated, their thoughtfulness will be rewarded. That because they're going through life essentially helping everybody else to regulate their emotions, that if they have an emotional upset, other people will jump in and be willing to help them to regulate. But that's not always their experience. I mean, yes, maybe there is a chance that if they are in relationship with another highly sensitive person that has the same conditioning, somebody who is also super sensitive to other people's moods, wants and desires, then there's a chance that their needs will be met. But seeing is how only 15 to 20% of the population is highly sensitive. The odds are actually more likely that rather than experiencing reciprocation, you're experiencing burnout. You're feeling like you have to justify your feelings rather than just having your needs met. You might be experiencing a lot of compassion fatigue. You don't feel as seen or as heard or as connected as you would like because you just simply have a different operating system from the rest of the planet. But that doesn't mean that anything is wrong with you. It just means that you require a different set of tools for self-regulation. So what does it mean to regulate your emotions? You might be a little bit disappointed to learn that. It doesn't mean that you're going to magically feel calm all the time. It also does not mean that you're now numb or detached from your emotions, even though for many then that's what they think would be the best solution. It doesn't mean that you just stop feeling so much. Instead, learning how to regulate your emotions means increasing your capacity to tolerate emotions. It means that you can learn how to feel sadness without drowning. You can experience anger without exploding. You can feel guilt without over identifying as a problem and letting that rule your life. Suppression is pushing emotions away. Regulation is staying with yourself through the emotions. And if you are still listening to this episode after this long, you probably already know what it feels like. You already know the cost of remaining unregulated. The cost is burnout, resentment, anxiety, indecision. It's repeating unhealthy relationship patterns. It's feeling unsafe in your own body and that constant self-doubt in the back of your mind, that is what an unregulated nervous system feels like. But I want you to remember that the goal is not to feel less, it's to feel safer as you feel. It's recognizing that having feelings is not the problem. Regulation simply means learning to act rather than react emotionally. It's learning to pause and identify what's coming up for you and what the underlying need is before we emotionally react. It is increasing your tolerance for discomfort and recognizing that, yeah, okay, discomfort is a part of life. This part's uncomfortable. It's going to be okay. It is accepting that yes, there is going to be some discomfort that comes from making improvements in your relationship, suffering a loss, achieving a fitness goal, working through a conflict to actually get to the point where you can have resolution. And sometimes then it feels really uncomfortable and that kind of discomfort is okay. It's a sign of growth. Regulation means learning to separate out your emotions from the actions that you take. Meaning that if someone cuts you off in traffic and you're seeing red, you do not start driving like a maniac in order to teach them a lesson. It means that when your feelings get hurt, you don't immediately cut the other person off, but instead you think about what might be needed in order to make a repair and proactively deciding what it is that you want to do and how you can continue to show up in your integrity. It's practicing self-soothing without betrayal. Now going back to my traffic example, I saw a clip recently where this guy was driving down the road and he was shaking his fist and his middle finger at another driver while he was yelling expletives out the window, and then all of a sudden, guess what? You guessed it, his car went off the road and he crashed. He was all by himself. There were no other vehicles involved in this crash, but this was absolutely a self betrayal because he did not know how to manage his emotions, his emotions were managing him, and he was not getting a good result. In fact, it cost him an entire vehicle. Right? And maybe it shows up for you as road rage, or maybe it shows up in smaller ways. For example, maybe you react with harsh words to a comment that was made to you at work or in your partnership, and you're wanting to be professional. You're wanting to be a kind partner. You're wanting to be the bigger person in all of these scenarios. But when you choose into emotional reactivity instead of emotional regulation, then it has now turned into an act of self betrayal. emotional regulation may also look like seeking support while you rewire old patterns. It looks like having somebody outside of you that can help you to identify where you're out of alignment so that you can make the changes needed in order to better align with your values. And because many of our emotions happen because of interactions we've had in the world, it's good to note that regulation is learned in relationship, not isolation. I've been listening to the book by Jay Shetty, titled, think Like A Monk. And in that book, he talks about a day when he was at a meditation retreat and they asked everybody, okay, we're gonna get on this bus, everybody meditate on the bus while we go to this new location. And he said, no, it's okay. I'm used to meditating in silence at the Ashram, so I'll just wait until we get there. And that led to a very interesting discussion between he and the meditation leader, where they kind of talked about, okay, well, in your day-to-day life, how much of your life is like the ashram, peaceful, quiet. And how much of your life is actually like the bus, busy, crowded, distracting. And they also discussed how learning how to meditate even in less than ideal circumstances, that's when you're actually going to be able to benefit from the full experience of meditation. And I'm gonna say that the same thing is true for our emotions. There is benefit to dedicated space. So yes, write in your journal, take that time to yourself. And also the more you practice feeling and processing your emotions, the greater your capacity will be to honor your emotions and to live in this world without being triggered. Many of my clients come to me saying, well, I wanna be able to articulate my needs in the moment, but my emotions are so loud, it makes it really hard for me to think, let alone speak. If this is you, please, let's jump on a free clarity call and see if you might be a good candidate for coaching. I think with coaching you'll notice probably faster than you think, that as you learn how to navigate your emotions, your processing time will speed up. It's gonna become more effective, and you're going to be better able to articulate your emotions in the moment with other people in relationship. So no, you are not broken. You just process emotions differently. So the self-regulation tools that you've learned up to this point, they might not be serving you in the way that you would like. You are not too sensitive, you're just unregulated. This means that you do not need a different personality. You just need to upgrade your nervous system to better handle your big emotions. If you're somebody who would like to be less emotionally reactive, if you've learned how to manage your emotions by attempting to manage everybody else, if you would like to upgrade your nervous system to better handle the depth and breadth of your emotions, come and work with me. I have a 12 week coaching package that will teach you how to act rather than react emotionally. Set healthy boundaries without guilt and make requests to get your needs met without the anxiety. You have got this and I can help. Just click the link in the show notes to book your free clarity Call now and let's see if we might be a good fit for each other. I look forward to working with you, and I hope you have a great week. All right, I'll see you next week. Bye now.