Podcast Transcript
Amanda Hey, my friend. In today’s episode, I want to start with a story, and it’s a story about myself. Hey, friend. Today’s episode, I want to start with a story, and this is going to be a story about me.
Amanda I’m rewinding back to when I was in my early thirties. I was a young mom to a toddler and a baby and I was struggling. I was a few months postpartum. I was a few months postpartum. had a C-section that got massively infected six weeks later. I never slept more than two hours at a time and I had mastitis that felt like fire. And while that was all going on, I was still trying to be a super mom.
Amanda cleaning my bathrooms twice a week, walking my dog with a baby strapped to my chest, my toddler in tow, obsessing over losing the baby weight. I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. I felt like a failure everywhere I looked. And then one day while I was standing in my baby’s room, as he was screaming on my chest, my emotions completely overtook me and I had no control.
Amanda And the truth is, after that moment, the experts failed me at every turn. I went to my doctor who diagnosed me with postpartum depression. So I went on antidepressants and I didn’t feel overwhelmed anymore, but I also didn’t feel anything. I felt numb. And then I went back to say, I don’t feel sad, but I don’t feel alive either.
Amanda and he told me it meant my depression was worse, so he put me on a stronger one. And then, at the urging of a friend, I finally went to a psychiatrist who told me in less than an hour appointment that I didn’t have depression, I had a personality disorder. Fun. And none of it was true. The experts just got it wrong. And I suffered for way, way too long.
Amanda But there are two good things that came from that whole ordeal. Number one, I finally got off the antidepressants and began to feel like myself again. And number two, I found a coach and then created my own process that helped me and my life has never been fucking better. Because here’s what I discovered. The world is not set up for women who are sensitive.
Amanda And the mental health machine really isn’t either.
Amanda Here’s what I finally realized. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t broken. I was sensitive. And nobody ever told me what that actually meant. When you have a sensitive nervous system, the world can feel like too much. Your emotions are louder. Your empathy runs deeper. Your body reacts faster to everything. But instead of being taught how to work with that sensitivity,
Amanda Most of us have learned to fight it. We have learned to get over it, to calm down, to be more logical and to toughen up. And really that’s where the misunderstanding begins. Sensitivity isn’t a flaw to be fixed. It’s a language that needs to be understood. Sensitivity is not weakness, it’s data. It’s information about how…
Amanda deeply you’re attuned to your environment and your emotions. So the rest of this episode, I want to break down what sensitivity actually is and what it’s not. Because when you finally understand your own design, you stop trying to fit it into systems that were never built for you. You stop searching for the next expert to explain you and you start becoming the expert on you.
Amanda So let’s just start with what sensitivity is. Sensitivity, number one, is biological. So sensitivity isn’t imagined. Your nervous system literally processes stimulation more intensely. You feel sound, light, tone, energy, emotions. All of it hits deeper and stays longer. Number two,
Amanda Sensitivity is emotional intelligence turned all the way up. Think about taking a dial on a stereo and moving it all the way to a 10. That’s you. You notice shifts in mood. You notice micro expressions. You notice the energy in a room. You’re not making things up. You’re simply perceiving more data. Your radar brings in more. Number three, it’s relational awareness.
Amanda Sensitive women are often deeply connected to the emotional wellbeing of others. It’s why you sense conflict before anyone names it. It’s also why you sometimes absorb energy that isn’t yours. And number four, sensitivity is creative and intuitive. Sensitivity allows you to imagine, it allows you to connect, it allows you to create at a level that most people can’t reach.
Amanda but that same depth makes you more vulnerable to overstimulation and burnout. Now, I want to speak about something that I see all the time. A lot of sensitive women hear what I’m saying here and think, wait, this sounds a lot, wait, this sounds a lot like ADHD, or I’ve always wondered if I might be on this spectrum, or my therapist mentioned sensory processing.
Amanda or emotional dysregulation and look, those labels can be incredibly validating. For some people, they’re life-changing and they bring language and understanding to their experiences that have always felt confusing. But what I see, especially with sensitive women, is that sometimes those labels become another way of saying, something’s wrong with me. When the truth is what you’re describing might not be a disorder at all. It might be a sensitive nervous system that’s been overloaded
Amanda for a really long time. Our culture loves categories, but sensitivity doesn’t fit neatly into any of them. It can look like ADHD because your brain moves fast, notices everything and struggles to filter. It can look like ASD because you’re attuned to energy, details and patterns and it can look like it can look like ASD because you’re attuned to energy, details and patterns that other people miss.
Amanda It can look like anxiety or depression when your system has been running beyond capacity for too long. But none of that makes you defective. It makes you deeply responsive. And when you start honoring that responsiveness instead of fighting it, you stop pathologizing your sensitivity and you start partnering with it. And that’s when everything begins to shift. Now let’s talk about what sensitivity isn’t.
Amanda Sensitivity is not emotional instability. And I just want to repeat that. Sensitivity is not emotional instability. Feeling deeply doesn’t mean you’re unstable. It means you need the tools and safety to move through your emotions instead of reacting or suppressing them. Instead of reacting to them or suppressing them. Sensitivity isn’t a weakness. You don’t need to toughen up. You need environments that honor your capacity for depth.
Amanda empathy and truth. You need to become the person that creates that for yourself. Sensitivity, my goodness, sensitivity is not something to fix. Please hear me. You are not a self-improvement project. Sensitivity isn’t a disorder or a defect. It is actually a powerful human variation that needs support, not shame. I like to joke with my
Amanda my clients. I like to joke with my clients and say, you’re a wizard in a muggle world. Number four, sensitivity isn’t all or nothing. Being sensitive doesn’t mean you’re fragile. You can be both soft and strong, tender and tenacious.
Amanda Let’s talk about what you actually need when you’re sensitive. Now you may know all about the nervous system and know all about nervous system regulation, or you may know nothing at all, but almost every sensitive woman that I know has tried one off fixes. They have tried breathing techniques. They have tried grounding hacks. They have tried meditations. And what happens is they wonder why it doesn’t last.
Amanda And it really doesn’t last because sensitive women don’t need a one-time fix. They need a foundation.
Amanda We need a way to create safety in our bodies. We need a way to expand our emotional capacity and we need a way to rewire how we see ourselves. And that’s what true healing looks like. It’s not managing your sensitivity. Instead, it’s partnering with your sensitivity. It really starts when you stop apologizing for how you feel and instead start learning to advocate for your sensitivity.
Amanda instead of explaining it away. You don’t need more tools to calm down. I can’t tell you how many times somebody has come to me asking me how to be calm in a moment when the answer is we need to change the whole foundation. That the freak out is just a symptom of a much bigger problem. You need to support
Amanda You need support to build safety from the inside out. Safety that lasts through real life. Safety that lasts through real relationships and real emotions. The world is complex. Life is not slowing down. But we must learn how to be there for ourselves. And this is possible. Too often, what I find is sensitive women being gaslit into believing
Amanda that there is something wrong with them that they need to fix and that then their life will feel satisfying and peaceful and okay. And it’s actually just not true. We don’t need to fix you, but we do need to teach you how to work with you. And I noticed that there is a plethora of information out there built by people that are not sensitive themselves. And what I want you to know is from one sensitive person to another,
Amanda There is a way to do this where you feel unshakable, where you feel powerful, where you feel like you are the person that knows how to deal with you and the things that go on in your life that is available to you without you needing to be less sensitive. So if this episode spoke to you, if you’ve spent years trying to fix what makes you different,
Amanda I want you to know that your sensitivity isn’t the problem. It isn’t. It’s your guide. And if you’re ready to start learning how to trust that part of yourself, how to feel safe, steady and supported in your own skin, I would love to talk with you. You can book a free discovery call at amandahes.ca forward slash book a call. This is a calm, honest conversation.
Amanda where we can start untangling what’s been heavy and help you begin building the foundation that actually holds you. Because my friend, you deserve a life that feels good to live, not one that just looks good on paper. All right, my friends, this is what I’ve got for you today. It is something that I’m deeply passionate about. If you wanna have a conversation with it, if you wanna have a conversation about it, come on over to, if you wanna have a conversation about it, come on over to Instagram.
Amanda The Amanda Hess. Send me a DM. Let’s talk about it. Bye for now.
