The Highly Sensitive Introvert's Path to Confidence, Resilience, and Leadership Success

Have you ever felt like you just weren’t meant to be in loud, fast-paced environments? And made to feel deficient because you weren’t enjoying these crowds, stadiums, dance clubs, and parties deep into the night, just like everyone expects you to? Well, for many highly sensitive introverts, this feeling is not imaginary, it’s real, and it’s powerful. Welcome to the Introverted Leader. A podcast helping introverted leaders embrace your underrated quiet strengths to get promoted and start earning what you deserve. I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience, and yes, I am an introvert. Today I’m joined by Nina Kuh. She’s a psychologist, coach, and a mentor for highly sensitive women. After discovering her own sensitivity, Nina describes it as finally finding the right user manual. Now she helps others turn that deep processing, empathy, and intuition into clear leadership advantages. In this episode, you’ll discover why sensitivity can be a leadership superpower, to how to build daily resilience, to prevent overwhelm and stay grounded in demanding environments, and three, how to use your voice with confidence, even when it feels uncomfortable. So let’s dive in. Here is my conversation with Nina. Nina, it’s a real pleasure to have you on the show today. Welcome. Thank you so much, Greg. It’s a pleasure to be here. Excellent. So, you know, you identify as highly sensitive. Can you walk us back to the point in your life when you realized this first? Oh, wow. Yes. So bizarrely, even though I have a degree in psychology, and I’ve done lots of personal development work, it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I discovered that I’m a highly sensitive person, and it was purely by chance. So I have two daughters, one of them at the time, was about seven or eight, and we were really struggling to get her to school on time. And the funny thing was that we lived literally just a hundred meters away from the local school. So it was like a one minute walk, and there was no excuse for us to be late. And yet sometimes we were very, very late because my daughter would be just having a full lone tantrum. You know, often I would think, okay, she’s had breakfast, she’s in her uniform great, she’s just gone upstairs to brush her teeth, and then the next minute I’d be hearing whales and screams from upstairs, and I’ve got stairs and find her arriving on her bedroom floor, pulling at her uniform, complaining about scratchy labels, seams in her socks, and she’d be ripping her uniform off, and my heart would sink. And there were times where my husband sort of slung my daughter over his shoulder, and I ran behind them with her rucksack just to deliver her to school on time before the bell would ring. And this happened often enough that I started to feel like an absolute failure as a parent. I was thinking, how can I live so close to school and not even get my child to school on time? There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with my child, what’s going on? I need to get help, and after one particularly stressful morning when we finally dropped my daughter off its goal, I went across the road to a friend’s house, stood on her doorstep, rang the doorbell when she answered, I just burst into tears because I was just so stressed, and she did the very British thing of, come in, let me make you a cup of tea, so she made me a cup of tea, and she handed me Dr. Renee and Erin’s book on the Heidi Sensitive Child and said, I think you need to read this, and it turns out she has a Heidi Sensitive son, I read book of night, oh my goodness, I have a Heidi Sensitive daughter, who is just an overwhelm on the morning so she has these tantrums, she’s not a mobster, there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just a Heidi Sensitive child in overwhelm. And then as I read more of the book, I was like, gosh, okay, but that’s me as well, I’m Heidi Sensitive, and it was like all these light bulb moments went off, suddenly everything that happened in my life made sense to me, and it was almost like finding the missing jigsaw piece puzzle to my life, or like finding the right user manual for me, and because it made such a huge difference to me and my life, and obviously then understanding my daughter and actually both my daughters turn out to be Heidi Sensitive. It’s had such a huge impact just knowing about it, that I decided to focus on raising awareness of the Heidi Sensitive trait, and at the time, ten years ago, there were obviously Dr. Elaine, Erin, there were a few other people working in the field, but it wasn’t as prevalent as it is now, and so that was a lot of my work was telling people that it existed, that it was a real thing, and what it was. Yeah, that’s a fantastic piece of luck that you happen to know somebody who turned out to be a friend, somebody you trusted, who had the key, had the manual for you. Yeah, absolutely, that was just a stroke of luck. And actually at the time, both because my friend was a, as she is a psychologist as well, and I studied psychology, we decided to start helping parents and care as a Heidi Sensitive children, so we designed a few programs and did a little bit of work around that area, because that’s where we came from, we were struggling with our Heidi Sensitive children, and we thought, well, if we’re struggling, there must be others who are as well. And then from there, I went back to my roots, which is coaching, I’ve been coaching for about 20 years now, and so I wanted to support Heidi Sensitive women in particular. So yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a windy, windy root. So for people who aren’t familiar with the term, could you give just a quick breakdown of what being a highly sensitive person is? Yeah, so the first thing I want to say off the bat is, Heidi Sensitive, known by different terms, so the scientific term is sensory processing sensitivity. Some researchers are now calling it environmental sensitivity. I think it’s been referred to as well as high sensory intelligence, which is a much kind of way of saying highly sensitive, because there’s so much stigma attached to being sensitive in the West, especially. But for ease, let’s call it the highly sensitive trait. It’s been around forever. It’s an evolutionary trait that founded an over 100 different animal species. There are five key characteristics that all highly sensitive people will share. Now, most people will have one or two, but if you have all of these to some degree, then you are highly sensitive person. And they go by the acronym D-O-E-S. So D stands for depth of processing. Highly sensitive people have a brain that takes in more information and processes the information more deeply all of the time. And they’ve actually shown this through FMI study, so they’re not making it up, it’s actually a thing. And so this very active, busy brain can lead to the O, which is overstimulation and overwhelmed. So I think of it a bit like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. So if you’re processing lots and lots of information and then suddenly something else comes along and it’s just like, okay, now that’s too much and you go into overwhelm. So the E stands for two things. It stands for empathy. So when highly sensitive people are in overwhelm, they have an amazing capacity to be able to pick up on what other people are thinking or feeling. E also stands for emotional responsibility, which just means that highly sensitive people are genuinely more deeply than those who are not sensitive. And so this has positive things and negative things. And finally the S stands for sensing subtleties. So highly sensitive people tend to see things that other people miss. And this could be anything from sensory things, so it could be the lights are too bright or they’re flickering or it could be strong smells or it could be textures or scratchy labels in your clothes and seams in your socks like my daughter was noticing or it can’t even be no-thing information. So I used to sit in boardroom meetings many years ago when I worked for an investment bag. And I’d think, okay, why is nobody else seeing that there’s no way we’re going to reach this deadline? And because everybody else in the boardroom was usually much more senior than me, I’d just sit there and be quiet. And then I’d kick myself afterwards because sure enough we wouldn’t hit the deadline. So I was noticing information and making connections because of my highly sensitive brain that other people in the room weren’t making. And so if you have all of those that depth of processing, the overwhelm of stimulation, the empathy, emotional responsibility and the ability to sense subtleties, you’re a highly sensitive person and highly sensitive people are also very good at seeing the big picture. So if you have all of those, you’re a highly sensitive person. So fantastic design that nature evolved. So you have a subset of your population who was focused on the big picture, noticing all the subtleties and really attuned to the environment. It’s obviously fantastic survival trait for a species. Absolutely. So one of the terms that people use for highly sensitive people is the canaries in the coal mine. But I kind of prefer to think of us like meerkats. You know, the first sign of danger and we’re out there looking around, you know, elerting everybody else because of course the canaries and the coal mine don’t have a very good outcomes. So rather than being a victim to our sensitivity, I’d like to see it as our greatest strength in a way. So it’s like we are the first alertions. We are naturally leaders because we are leading in terms of the way we’re responding to our environment and to the things in our environment. And so when I talk about leadership, you know, it’s very much from that sense as well that as we are physiologically wired differently as highly sensitive people, we are wired to lead in our responses. So I, this is why I think we are born to lead. But also I believe we need more highly sensitive leaders in a traditional sense, you know, people are making these amazing well thought out decisions that work for the long term rather than just for short term because this is the way the highly sensitive brain works. So I do believe we need to support more highly sensitive people to step into the positions of leadership because I think they’re going to redress the imbalance in our world. I very much agree. Before we move on, I wanted to go back into your past one more time because obviously this time in investment banking informed all of this and you saw all of the opportunities for leadership during that time. Could you walk us through your early career and the time you spent there and then how you moved into psychology? Oh, so I kind of fell into things in my life, Greg. I fell into my psychology degree. I didn’t know that I wanted to study psychology, but it’s kind of where I ended up and I’m so glad I did. I loved learning all about the brain and neuroscience and all the different areas. And then I kind of fell into my time in the investment bank. I wasn’t one of those people who knew that I always wanted to be a doctor or dentist or a lawyer or an investment banker. I ended up there through chance. And at the time, I didn’t know I was a highly sensitive person, which is possibly why I struggled and ended up burning out. I sort of went in just doing admin, temporary work for them and then I ended up being offered a permanent position, worked on the year 2000 project. This is how long ago I was there. And really? Yeah. I really enjoyed it. And ironically, it was it was in a technology department of the investment bank, even though I have and had no technology experience. But I was working sort of on project management, project coordination, sort of walking around, talking to people, getting updates. And that was something I loved doing and it was because I’m a highly sensitive person. I would pick up on nuances. So somebody was telling me something and I’d think, okay, that’s not quite the reality and then I’d be able to dig deeper, build the rapport, build up trust with the person. So I actually got a very good idea of what was going on at ground level. And then I was able to relay that to the management team. So I worked quite closely with the chief technology officer and he’d always sort of say, okay, Nina, tell me what is actually going on because his managers would tell him one thing and he was clearly seeing that wasn’t the case. So he’d come to me and say, what’s really going on? And because I had a good rapport with all the developers, I was actually able to say, okay, so this bit’s not really working so well. You know, needs a bit more communication here. And so I didn’t realize at the time that I was actually using many of my highly sensitive strengths and I really wish I had known that I was highly sensitive at the time because I might then have stayed and progressed in the company. But what happened was I didn’t know as highly sensitive. It was quite, it was a slightly toxic environment in some respects. And so I ended up actually working long hours. You know, there was a real strong culture of presentism, etc. And I burnt out and I needed to take a year of traveling around the world to recalibrate my nervous system and come back to, you know, a healthy state to heal myself from that. Present here is a meaning they expected you to be there in the office all hours. Yes. So it was very much, it doesn’t matter, you know, if you’re sitting at your desk, surfing the internet or messaging your friends, it’s like you need to be seen to be at your desk working. Yeah. And that didn’t, of course, be a highly sensitive person with a strong sense of justice that didn’t sit well with me either. No, that type of environment is not great for probably most people, but in particular people who are highly sensitive. Also introverts is there opportunity to recharge and rest, which is critical for your productivity. Yeah. They’re pretty hostile environments. Yeah. And also the other thing that’s occurred to me Greg was because I didn’t know I was highly sensitive at the time. And this has been a pattern throughout my life, you know, in school at work, it’s like being in meetings and being too fearful to speak up to say when I’m noticing, it’s that whole, okay, I’m not, I think at the time I had quite no self esteem because I didn’t know I was highly sensitive. I thought there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t do things the way other people could because you’re highly sensitive. You’ve sensed this. You’ve sensed that you’re different, but you don’t know why you’re different. So when I was in meetings, I wouldn’t speak up. And that’s partly I think what held me back because you can’t progress in a company, you can’t do well if you’re not willing to share what you’re noticing and you’re not willing to speak up and speak up for yourself. And so I think that really held me back. Yeah, absolutely. It’s the critical thing, which is much more challenging for introverts or highly sensitive people. We’re not naturally sharing and speaking up. We’re not naturally thinking aloud. And that’s, that is one of those leadership skills that you do need to develop. You gotta let all of this brilliant insight in your brain out into the world and share it with people. Yes, absolutely. For me, my journey has been very much one of healing the little tea traumas people refer to it as. You know, as of being a highly sensitive person in a world that doesn’t value sensitivity, and inevitably you’re going to be told you’re too sensitive or why are you still thinking about that that happened ages ago? And so you start thinking, okay, that there’s something wrong with me because I’m not operating in this world the way that everybody else is. And so a lot of it has been this sort of process of uncovering what’s happened and healing and is a process of really understanding my physiology, understanding my blueprint and my user manual. What works for me? What doesn’t work for me? Why things haven’t worked for me? And there’s process of healing and also a big part of that has been learning to own my own voice and value my voice and to be able to speak, speak up. I used to be terrified, public speaking, you speak a huge challenge for me. Even speaking in small groups of moms having coffee would be quite a challenge for me. But I went through various programs and neuro-linguistic programming myself. I studied that and now I use it in my work. All these tools and techniques and healing processes to be able to get me to the stage where I can actually speak to a large audience and share about the highly sensitive trait and about my work because we need to be able to speak up in order to make a difference. Yeah, I love hearing that. It’s a theme I hear often that people start out with lots of fear of speaking up even in small groups or larger groups and then you end up public speaking. It’s something that is very much available to anyone who does suffer from those fears today. And I did want to ask you more about neuro-linguistic programming and LP. I had heard about it. I think first heard about it through Tony Robbins. He touched on it in his earlier work. I know it was rooted in a lot of early psychology. Could you walk us through a little bit about that in the history and then how it came to help you and then how you use it in your practice? Yeah, sure. So NLP, I think it was, I think they might be having their 50th anniversary this year, actually. That would have been in the 1970s or so. So it was Bandler and Grinder. And I think they actually were technologists, ironically, who created neuro-linguistic programming or NLP. And basically the way I see neuro-linguistic programming, it was a collection of tools and techniques and therapies that worked. So Bandler and Grindler basically went in and modelled the therapists at the time who got great results for their client. So you had a Milton Erickson with it, hypnosis. They went in and watched really closely what he did, deconstructed what he did and then modelled it. And so they did this with various, very successful therapists at the time. So NLP is like the ultimate toolkit of therapies, communication techniques, and everything that really helps get results. And so I fell into neuro-linguistic programming after my stint in the investment bank and then my year out traveling around the world to heal myself. I came back to London, which is where I was living at the time and thought, okay, so now what do I do? Because I’m not going to go back into the environment I was in. And so one of my sisters actually, she was an NLP master and she kept saying to me, Neely, you should study NLP. You’ll really find it useful. But because I’d studied psychology, I was like, no, no, I’m sure I know all of it anyway. I don’t need to do it. So after traveling around the world and coming back and needing something for me and for my own personal development, I decided to go and study NLP and I’m so glad I did because I went in to heal myself through NLP and it was phenomenal. It really did help. And then I thought, do you know what? If it’s worth so well with me, why don’t I become a coach using NLP and help others? So I went on to study various different levels of new and legacy programming including coaching with NLP. I’ve kind of seen my entire personal development journey as an extension of NLP. So it’s like finding tools and techniques and processes that work and heal me, that work for me as a highly sensitive person now and then being able to share that with my clients. It’s interesting that you mentioned that was developed by technologists because the entire approach kind of seems like the whole machine learning or AI approach right now. You develop a model based on all the best models that you had in the past, all the best training data that you had in the past and they came up with something new or it was them. It was in the machine metaphor breaks down a little bit. But that’s really fascinating. And I do have some experience with NLP more recently. I’m going to be interviewing somebody on my show. She runs the MindTRAX app. It’s grounded quite a bit in NLP where this guy, Dr. Paul Shealy, they read scripts to you on both sides of your stereo headphones and one is targeted at your conscious mind, one is targeted at your subconscious, but it incorporates a number of these techniques. NLP is definitely one of them. The types of phrasing that are going to be most beneficial because you’ve maybe just given example for the audience of how it might work. Oh, how? Not the MindTRAX. NLP in general. Okay. So there’s some very powerful processes that help you this something called timeline therapy, which can help with the trauma we were speaking about the nipple T trauma. So it’s basically taking you back in time. It’s hypnosis. A pulmonary hypnosis or guided visualization where the NLP practitioner will take you back in time to find the significant emotional events that happened in the past that have caused the challenge that you’re having in the present. And so by going back and healing those by noticing them, healing them and finding the root cause really of what’s going on, you can very effectively and very quickly heal certain troubling events. So if something’s been stopping you for perhaps from speaking in public, you know, if you have this traumatic incident in your past that has stopped you from speaking up, then you can use something like timeline therapy to go back and heal that. So that’s just one of many, many, many techniques. Thanks. It’s a good example of a lot of us have these things and it sounds like a helpful way to get at what is holding you back in those types of situations. Yeah. It’s incredibly powerful. A lot of people have likened it to cognitive behavioral therapy. So it’s kind of, you know, it’s not like traditional talk therapies that kind of go into, okay, what is the root cause and you discuss it and you talk about it at great lengths and NLP tends to be much faster. So it’s a very powerful, the powerful tool. You know, do you focus specifically on coaching women who are in leadership? So really my focus is working with highly sensitive, in particular, highly sensitive women and when was the last time you felt in control of your business finances expenses tracked invoices sent taxes ready. That’s where found comes in found brings your banking bookkeeping invoicing and taxes together in one simple app, manage expenses, invoice clients, send payments and prep for tax time right where you back join the hundreds of thousands who have already streamlined their finances with found. And a found account for free at found dot com. That’s F O U N D dot com found as a financial technology company, not a bank banking services provided by lead bank member FDIC. Shifting the mindset from okay, sensitivity is a problem. It’s something that’s holding me back to sensitivities actually your greatest leadership asset. If that is the way you choose to go and I think I mentioned earlier, I believe we need more sensitive leaders. We need more sensitive female leaders just to address the balance. So for me, it’s working with female entrepreneurs or women in business who might have felt held back much of I was when I was in the corporate world and didn’t know I was highly sensitive. So it’s about really showing them that okay, you might be a sensitive person, but it’s a good thing and look at all these incredible things that you can do that other people can’t do that. That’s the processing, the seeing things others miss, the relating them to the big picture, the empathy that you have with your colleagues. And so it’s really getting them to shift their mindset to know that their sensitivity is a good thing. It’s not something they need to be ashamed of or try and overcome or try and hide, but it’s really about embracing it. And also it’s about really getting them to understand what is whole thing about resilience because burnout is so prevalent in the modern times that we’re living in. It’s about really getting them to understand that building resilience is something that you need to do day. So it’s about really paying attention to the environments that you create, the environments that you choose to spend your time in because being highly sensitive people with highly responsive nervous systems, we will react to toxins in our environment before others will. So it’s really paying attention to put on your body, what you put in your body in terms of food, making sure you take high quality supplements, really paying attention to your body and your health because this is one area that I sensed people can struggle with because we are the first and others. Also, it’s getting them to reconnect with their bodies because I think it’s highly sensitive people with these incredible brains that are so busy the whole time. We can sometimes do touch with the rest of our bodies like we live so much in our heads, we forget we have a body and also, you know, there’s something called multiple brain integration training that I use, which is break based on the premise that we have brain cells in our heart and our guts as well as in our heads. These are just the concentrated areas because actually they’re found that we have brain cells throughout our body, but it’s about not just using our head brain, but it’s connecting with our heart and our gut brains and especially for highly sensitive people, I think that’s a very powerful way to make decisions with integrity, to really embody what we want to do. So yes, I use various different techniques. I use something called near movement, which is a beautiful form of, it’s a form of exercise, but it’s much more than that. It works on the mind body spirit, emotion levels. So it’s based on the martial arts, the dance arts and the healing arts. So it’s a really beautiful practice that is especially powerful for highly sensitive people to reconnect with their bodies and to make sure that they’re in optimum health. I use essential oil as well because I really believe that nature has everything we could possibly ever need if we only just pay attention to what is offering us. And so for me, using essential oils and supplements derived from essential oils and from nature is working with our highly sensitive systems and maintaining our nervous system health. So it’s for me, resilience is about building resilience daily. It’s not just a spa day once a month. It’s really paying attention every day to what we’re doing with our bodies. Sounds like a very complete holistic approach to that. And I’m wondering if you’re working with somebody a lot of times we don’t have control of our environment. Like you said, your office might have expectations that you’re there. There’s travel. There’s networking meetings, things like that. What if someone’s saying, look, I’m doing all these things, Nina, it’s not enough. How do you coach them through that? So first of all, I’d find out exactly what they are feeling challenged by, what they’re doing in their daily lives, whether they’re incorporating enough downtime because a learn time is essential for highly sensitive people. And there are many ways that even if you are on a busy train or a busy bus, everybody at the moment seems to have earphones. So it’s actually the highly sensitive person’s greatest tool is to have a set of headphones that you can just block out any noise. I was on the train coming back from London yesterday and I had forgotten my AirPods. I was kicking myself as I was missing to the wailing children around me. But yeah, headphones, you’re really thinking about the things that will bring you more comfort that will help you feel safe. Sometimes we don’t have control about where we need to spend our time, but we can take things on with us to help us feel more in control, more comfortable. So if a highly sensitive people who are more sensitive to temperature fluctuations, it’s bring layers and bring a jumper, you know, things that you can easily take on and off. It’s always have a snack with you. It’s have a wee water bubble with you. If you use essential oils, have your roller balls or one of essential oils that you want to help you feel safe, one top tip I’ve found is if you’re in a very busy place, if you put a drop of tea tree in the crooks of your elbows, that builds an energetic boundary and so that helps you feel much more able to cope with the busyness around you. So doing things like that and even if you are in a networking meeting, it’s finding ways to excuse yourself for a few minutes if it’s all getting a bit too much, stepping away for a minute or five minutes, getting some fresh air and then coming back in. It’s about being realistic about what you can actually usefully do and just focusing on, okay, I’m going to go and talk to three people in the meeting, rather than thinking I need to speak to everybody that’s here. Be more focused, be more intentional. Like with your physiology with your nervous system and so I think one of the key things for Heidi Sence to people, again coming back to this analogy of the user manual is really understand your physiology, understand what makes you a Heidi Sence to person, understand what your common challenges are going to be over stimulation, overwhelm, procrastination, perfectionism, that self-critical and self-judgmental part of yourself, people pleasing, these are all common challenges that Heidi Sence to people can have because of the way we are wired, but also acknowledge your incredible strengths. So it’s just, it’s really know yourself, know yourself inside out and know what you will need to be able to thrive in any situation. And if you do find yourself in a completely awful situation like you’ve had the commute from hell coming back from work, it’s just, and nowring yourself the decompression time once you get home is like saying to your family, I’m really sorry I’ve just had an awful journey, I just need to take half an hour to go and sit in the garden or just sit and read my book or sit and have a cup of tea or something and then I can engage. So it’s being very intentional and very aware of your own needs because the problems I think come from when we’re Heidi Sence to, but we don’t know we’re Heidi Sence to or we’re not acknowledging our needs and we’re trying to just push, push on through. That’s when everything starts to fall apart. And then that impacts yourself a steam because then you feel like there’s part of you that doesn’t feel valued or taken care of and in a sense you let yourself down if you get into that state and so it’s really important. And this has been very much a part of my own journey. It’s like rather than being a victim of my sensitivity, it’s almost like forming that leadership mentality has like had the self awareness. It’s that whole self actualization thing. It’s like really understanding what you need and taking responsibility for that, not waiting for others to notice that you’re feeling a little bit out of thoughts or uncomfortable. It’s like no, you need to know that. You need to know that and then take action. So it’s like being a leader to yourself first and foremost and then that how you actually happen to the incredible gifts that your sensitivity brings. That’s great. Yeah. And for me, realizing that and developing the resources gives you resources in all kinds of challenging situations that you might be in, I have noticed that sometimes even when you are resilient, you have your energy, there are certain situations that are naturally challenging. So let’s say there’s confrontation, things that can lead to emotional overwhelm and these types of situations come up relatively frequently in a leadership position. So what advice do you have for your clients in these situations? So there’s a wonderful thing that we can all do when we’re faced with something that challenges us. Just to pause, they’re rather than diving straight in and being triggered. It’s building in a pause. So it’s taking a breath. It’s like, whoa, somebody’s just said something really negative to me. It’s like, take a breath, pause and then engage your frontal cortex and go, okay. So what was their intention in saying that? And then I don’t know if you’ve for many of you with martial Rosenberg’s work on nonviolent communication. But it’s a beautiful process of trying to find the common ground and agreeing. So it’s about confronting conflict in a very non-threatening way and going, okay, so you’ve just sent that to me. What was your intention through saying that? That it’s always about building in that pause because if we are highly sensitive, we’re going to feel things very deeply. That’s just the way we’re wired. But it’s like, if we know that that’s going to happen and we build in the pause, then we can start to think, okay, knowing this person, do they really, do I believe they really intended to be hurtful or say something like that that would hurt me? And so it’s just by not having that knee jerk reaction, I think, is going to help. So build in a pause before you respond. That’s a great suggestion. It sounds like that’s one of a set of tools that you can develop to carry with you into any kind of confrontational or maybe chaotic situation. Yeah, that’s very simple, but not always easy to remember to do. But it could just practice. You’ve got to keep practicing. And the thing is, if you forget to do it and you come back with an immediate response that isn’t helpful, don’t beat yourself up. It’s like, okay, next time I will build in a pause. So it’s being kind to yourself and to everybody else, I think, really helps. Hey, man, I wanted to ask, what do you observe in terms of the overlap between introversion and highly sensitive people? Because estimates of introversion, 30 to 50% of the population, HSPs are smaller segment. My understanding is that’s not 100% overlap either way. How do you think about that? It’s a very interesting thing thinking about introversion, high sensitivity. And then of course you have other neurodivergent people. Everything’s a spectrum, I believe. I think the statistics, the reasons statistics on high sensitivity are that they’re finding it in up to 30% of the population now. I know Dr. Elaine Aaron says 15 to 20%, but it is creeping up. Can I think whether you’re an introvert or highly sensitive? And of course some introverts are highly sensitive. We’re all on a spectrum. And I’m sure you’re familiar with the spectrum of sensitivity where you’ve got the highly sensitive, they call them the orchids at one end, the non-sensitive dandelions at the other end, and then there’s sort of moderately sensitive tulips in the middle. So it’s 30%, 40% in the middle, and then 30% at the other end. So we’re highly sensitive whether we introverts, whether we have some sort of neurodivergent thing going on, we’re all on the spectrum somewhere. And much in the way that I believe that nature has created everything to live in symbiosis and everything is there for a reason. I believe we are all there for a reason. So whether we’re introverts or highly sensitive or extroverts or high sensation seeking, high sense to people or anything in between, I believe we’re perfect the way we are and we are all living in this world and have something to contribute and that everybody’s contribution is essential. Yeah, definitely agree. Whatever your exact wiring is, it’s important for you to understand it and accept it and work with it. And you’re describing a lot of different ways for people to take care of themselves. I think those can be helpful for introverts even if they don’t identify with some of these characteristics that you’re talking about. Because I think what ends up happening is the wiring is slightly different, but people end up showing up in similar ways in work environments, things like that where it is not a very supportive environment for a lot of introverts and for similar reasons. It is more difficult for introverts to speak up in situations and perhaps for slightly different reasons than some highly sensitive people. But the net effective, this one size fits all environment where it’s really only suited for people who are really loud and boisterous. It doesn’t work for a lot of people. Absolutely. And I think well, I’ve been out of the workplace for a long time, but I believe in some traces, it’s becoming easier for introverts and highly sensitive people to be in the workplace. I think the corporations are becoming more aware that we have a very diverse work, populace and that the environments that they are creating for their workforce is very important. There’s something called bifurcic design, which is bringing nature into the interiors. And this is a perfect way to create environments for highly sensitive people in introverts, I believe, because of course nature is very healing. And I might talk about highly sensitive people a lot, but what works for the highly sensitive person is going to work for the rest of the population because we are the first alert of the canary than the coal mine. So if we create environments through bifurcic design principles that work for highly sensitive people in introverts, it’s going to actually benefit the rest of the workforce as well. And so I think a lot of companies are employing interior designers who bring bifurcic principles into the spaces that they create much the same as town planners do as well. They’ve done so many studies showing that just having some sort of natural space in a concrete jungle is going to make a huge difference to people’s wellbeing. And I think they really need to bring these principles into the educational context as well because I don’t know what it’s like where you are Greg, but certainly the fastrooms in the UK, some of them are just really not conducive for introverts or highly sensitive children to do the brightly colored, they’re very bright with the lights and there’s lots going on in their crowded spaces. But some of the more progressive schools, of course, are creating quiet corners and more sensory places when they diffuse the central world and they have nice big cushions, but that’s not common. So yeah, I think we need to pay attention to our environments more. Yeah, I don’t think the schools have caught up, certainly not in the US, even in progressive Portland where I am. And that’s such a, it’s a shame because if you think about it, it’s 30% of your classroom are highly sensitive. That’s a lot of children who are not fulfilling their potential because they are not in an environment that’s conducive for them. And I know in some of your other interviews, you’ve spoken to highly sensitive people who’ve pointed out how the highly sensitive population are actually, they’re very responsive to positive training programs, et cetera, this whole concept of differential susceptibility. If there are positive inputs, the highly sensitive person will actually thrive. And so it’s just a little bit of thought and a little bit of design that works. The HSPs is going to benefit them immensely, but it’s also going to benefit everybody else as well. Nina, what advice would you have for the younger sensitive individual who’s maybe, they see the potential, but they don’t have the courage or the resources to step in and bleed and make a difference? I would say find a mentor, find somebody that you look up to who is highly sensitive, who is using their sensitivity in a positive way and taking the NLP principle of modeling, speak to them, talk to them, model what they do, you know, read inspirational autobiographies of highly sensitive people. Gandhi was highly sensitive. There’s so many people in history and who are living now who are really creative, amazing highly sensitive people. So really find books, find mentors, find coaches, there’s so many programs, there’s so many highly sensitive experts out there, you know, that you can do your research, read about it and reach out to highly sensitive people who inspire you because I’m sure they would be happy to help or point you in the right direction. I’m sure they’d be delighted to help and you know, don’t be scared. See your sensitivity as one of your biggest assets and really take the time to understand it and find the tools and techniques that help you manage the overwhelm, that help you manage the energy crashes, that help you start to use your voice and to speak up because that’s so important. Highly sensitive people are the ones who are noticing all the things that are going wrong. So you need to be able to speak up about that and tell everybody else what you’re noticing. Really embrace your sensitivity and look for what’s going to help you and what’s going to help you use your sensitivity as a positive force in the world. That’s right because the world needs you. Thank you. Yeah. And so if people want to find out more about you and your work where can they go? So the best place is to go to my website, which is neanecoup.com or I’m also on late in. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram. But yeah, my two main places are my website and LinkedIn. Thanks so much for being on my show. Today was really a pleasure to talk to you. Well, thank you. Greg, it was my pleasure. All right. Let’s take a moment to recap what we covered with Neena. Number one, sensitivity is a leadership superpower. It’s not a problem. It’s your blueprint. When you understand your wiring, you’re unlocking strengths that most leaders lack. Depth of thinking, intuition and the ability to see what others miss. Number two, build daily resilience. Start noticing the moments when overwhelm starts to creep in, not as a failure, but as a signal. Sensitivity requires daily resilience, not just occasional recovery. And the more you honor that, the more you honor yourself, the more grounded and effective you become. Number three, start using your voice with confidence. Begin practicing the courage to voice what’s in your head. As Neena shared, highly sensitive people are often the first ones to sense what’s going wrong or see what’s possible. Leadership starts the moment you decide to share what you’re seeing. If this episode has helped you rethink your sensitivity in a more empowering way, take a moment right now to follow this show. You’ll get new stories and insights each week to help you rise in leadership and lead authentically. I’m Greg Winder. Keep leading quietly and I’ll see you next time. The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up. Large man is here and MLB is almost back. Every day there’s a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you’ve got to see for yourself. That’s why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it’s about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. The Bleacher Report app today, so you never miss a moment.