How to deal with shame when you’re highly sensitive (without losing sleep over it)

Yesterday, I was in a bit of a fog. I woke up exhausted, my brain a complete mess, and I felt completely drained socially. I was doing my best to get back on track at work, just trying to get by. The aftermath of a weekend of non-stop socialising.

At 3.55 pm, my phone rang: “Yes, Coralie, I’m running late but I’m on my way!”

That’s when my brain clicked.

Bloody hell. My 4 pm appointment.

I missed my appointment in Lille. It was with a fellow entrepreneur I really like, for a project that’s extremely close to my heart.

What a shame. Such immense, heavy, suffocating shame...

I felt so stupid. So out of it...

I ended up rushing off anyway (an hour’s drive), and I arrived at 5.20 pm. I apologised again. Then we managed to make up for some of the lost time.

The old pattern: when hypersensitivity works against you

If you’re highly sensitive, or fit what’s known as an ‘atypical’ profile, you’re probably familiar with this old familiar pattern...

In the past, I would have buried myself alive under this shame... I would have:

• Tried to over-justify myself.

• Sent 20 messages to over-apologise.

• Spent the night going over it in my head: “What do I look like? I’m not professional. I’m useless. I should have done this. And said that like that.”

• I would have gone through yet another existential crisis: “I’m not cut out for this, what are they going to do with me and what am I going to do with my life”

It’s a vicious circle of over-analysing and dwelling on things… Our sensitive minds don’t just make a mistake; they turn it into a defining part of our identity: “I missed an appointment” becomes “I AM a failure”.

The turning point: breaking free from the battle against oneself

But yesterday, I did things differently. I refused to let myself get overwhelmed.

Instead of letting shame dictate the rest of my day, I took five minutes to gather my thoughts. I let go of the tension and emotions and reconnected with the facts and my values:

1. The fact: I’ve never missed an appointment in two years of travelling back and forth to Lille.

2. The value: I’m a hard-working, professional and reliable person.

3. The reality: Just because I mess up ONCE doesn’t define who I am. I’m human. I’m allowed to be exhausted and a bit out of it sometimes.

3 steps to managing shame (when everything feels too intense)

So you’re probably thinking, ‘Great, but how did you do it?!’

Actually, it’s simple. To stop my emotions from ruining my evening (and my sleep), I made sure to:

1. Physically releasing the pressure (without judgement)

I had a good cry. And once I was on the road, behind the wheel, I shouted out three or four times. I needed to let out the anger I felt towards myself. Emotions are energy in motion. If you suppress them, they fester. If you let them out (in a safe way), they evaporate...

2. Cognitive reframing (Facts vs Emotions)

I stopped listening to the “I’m useless” from my limbic brain and started listening to the “you’re usually reliable” from my prefrontal cortex. A mistake is an event, not an identity...

3. Stop making long-winded excuses and take action:

Apologising 20 times is indirectly trying to make the other person bear the weight of our own guilt. A simple “I’m sorry, something unexpected came up, I’m truly sorry” is enough... I admit, this one is still difficult for me. I still apologise 5 or 6 times... but once the apologies are made, what is left within my power to make amends for the mistake? What is my problem and what is the solution? We can't change what happened but we can change what will be next.

What if shame were just an emotion, not a truth?

The result? I slept well last night.

I didn’t let an emotion as powerful as shame ruin 24 hours of my life… But I took it by the hand so that it would leave me.

That’s what real emotional regulation is all about. It’s not about never missing an appointment. It’s not about never crying in a meeting. It’s not about putting on a brave face and striving for perfection.

It’s about knowing how to get back on track when you slip up, without being hard on yourself. Our emotions aren’t the problem. The way we talk to ourselves when they arise is.