The CalmWithDom Podcast
Hey I'm Dominik, an Emotional Intelligence Coach for highly sensitive women ready to break their cycles of overwhelm to cultivate stronger relationships (both with themselves and others).
On this show, we do deep dives into how to best understand and leverage your sensitivity to thrive with tools such as shadow work, emotional intelligence skills, and more. My approach is psychospiritual because I truly believe we work best with all the language we can.
We're letting go of overwhelm and stepping into an unshakeable love of self over here, so I'm glad you've joined us!
From my sensitive soul to yours, I hope this helps.
The CalmWithDom Podcast
What You Need To Know About Receiving Criticism As A Highly Sensitive Woman
Join the CalmWithDom Academy to start harnessing your sensitivity today: https://calmwithdommentoring.getlearnworlds.com/home
Here's How I Serve👇🏽
FREE:
For proactive pattern-interrupting during times of overstimulation: Grab your Free Emotional Intelligence Self-Reflection Workbook here💙
PAID:
Click HERE to learn how to become deeply grounded in yourself as a highly sensitive, highly intuitive woman by learning how to protect your energy effectively.
Apply To Work With Me 1:1! For those of you ready to embody your sensitivity for relationships that fuel you (with me as your guide in your back pocket).
Leaving a rating and review is how you directly support the show - and how your comment can be included in an episode!
Go for it, sensitive soul - I can't wait to connect with you.
MORE INFO:
Website: www.calmwithdom.com
Instagram: @calmwithdom
Read The Blog: https://calmwithdom.com/blog/
Email Me: dominik@calmwithdom.com
Hi guys, welcome back. We need to talk about receiving criticism as highly sensitive women. This is a big struggle for us, truly, and I know that my clients struggle with this. I've struggled with this. I think I still struggle with this. What is this? It's receiving criticism. You are a really emotionally intelligent person. As a highly sensitive woman, you are extremely intuitive. You pick up on cues, subtle cues, social cues. You pick up on what's not said. I've said this millions of times. And you have an innate emotional intelligence that can only take you so far. And I think as highly sensitive people, we pride ourselves on the level of communication that we can have with other people. We really seek depth in every conversation. Whether you appreciate small talk because it means something more to you, just the concept of connecting with other humans is a beautiful thing for you and you relish in the opportunity, or you despise small talk as a highly sensitive person because you just want to get to the good stuff. You want to get to the good stuff, the deep stuff. It's the beautiful part of our sensitivity, but we need feedback. You can only be so self-aware on your own to have that self-awareness serve you within your dynamics. It looks like being open to receiving feedback. That can be hard when the quality of your connections isn't the greatest. And I think one thing that happens a lot with highly sensitive people in general is we are so misunderstood for the way that we navigate the world, the way that we process it and perceive it. We're usually treated so differently, especially in Western society. I think more so now we are finally shifting that perception, that connotation. But it's hard when you struggle with that growing up, navigating experiences where you are too much and you always have to defend yourself where you feel like you have to defend yourself. And if that's too exhausting for you, you self-isolate. That makes it harder to accept feedback from the people you love because you have to break through that defensiveness. And it's very human. We're not the only ones who deal with this. But I want to talk about in this episode the different types of criticisms that you can face in daily life. What's constructive, what's instructive, what's destructive, and then how to go about responding to these types of criticisms in a way that honors your sensitivity. Because that's what that's the whole point of this show is to have us honor our sensitivity and not use it as an excuse to not grow us people. If we do it the right way and we're grounded in our sensitivity, it can be our leverage to being the leaders that we kind of need to be in at least in our own lives. So welcome to the Calm and Down Podcast, where I help you harness your sensitivity to overcome your energy leaks and improve your relationships with yourself and others and your coach dominant. Let's get into it. So, as a highly sensitive person, you're probably someone who really prioritizes honest communication within your relationships. You truly appreciate vulnerability. You kind of need that rawness, that depth in your connections to feel close. What I find is that highly sensitive women do not struggle with constructive criticism. But we usually don't know what constructive criticism means exactly. So I'm gonna go over a couple of definitions for you. Constructive criticism, it serves a group's objective. The key with this type of criticism is that the responsibility doesn't fall solely on one person, right? It falls on a group. This is where when you build and you cultivate your own community, it becomes everybody's responsibility to progress, to reach the shared goal or goals of the group. So, hey, Sally, if you get better at this, it's gonna help this person get better at that. And the system that we have in our group flows better. That's very easy to grasp. It feels collaborative because it is. I think when we talk about constructive criticism, generally speaking, we see it as a helpful, positive tip, a piece of advice, feedback. But there is a difference in constructive criticism and instructive criticism. I think we struggle more with instructive criticism. Instructive criticism is aimed at one person, and that person has sole responsibility for making that change because they're really the only person to benefit from said change. The focus is to help you in your life, you reach your goals, and it really doesn't have anything to do with other people. It's almost like if I were to give it a name, it would be radical accountability, right? You need to have radical accountability over whatever changes need to be made in your life, in your whatever area of your life. That means that the person giving you instructive criticism, of course, they can benefit from you making set changes. Maybe the dynamic gets better, but ultimately they cannot do the work for you. And so support looks a little different. They can't change how you respond to things, they can't change how you view things and perceive things. They can try, but ultimately you have sole responsibility and power over yourself. So they really have no stakes in the game of instructive criticism. It's just about being honest with you and hoping that you can receive that honesty and do something with it. Do something productive with that kind of feedback. That is the kind of criticism that I find highly sensitive people struggle a little more with, even when you're seeking it out. So, like imagine if you are paying for therapy sessions, you go to therapy frequently, or you hire a coach and you work with a coach in a coaching container. You can pay people to just give you instructive criticism. Tell me how to get from A to B, tell me how to get to this transformation that I want to see in my life. It's truly not up to the person giving you the instructive criticism to get you the result you want. You have to be able to receive that instructive criticism and do something productive with it to get to your goal because it all truly falls on you. I've been on both sides of that dynamic. I've been both the person receiving and the person giving the instructive criticism, and it's harder all around. As a coach, I would struggle with even giving instructive criticism in the very beginning of my career because of how hard it was. I would see clients shut down and it's difficult, it's difficult work. I all I've also been on the side of receiving instructive criticism and not being able to sit with the discomfort of it because honestly, they should feel like loving, honest call-outs, right? Especially if you haven't seen for yourself how that you even needed the criticism. I think we all wish that it could be easy, and as soon as someone tells us, we can our immediate reaction is like, oh my god, you know what? I've thought about it, and you're so right. I've I do this and I didn't realize. Um, I think this happens because I perceive this thing this way, and it triggers a response in me. Um and that comes from when I was young. Unfortunately, that's usually not our immediate reactions, right? It it takes time and being highly sensitive. We need a lot of time to process the information that we receive. Of course, we're definitely gonna be talking about the last final definition of this episode is destructive criticism. That is straight hater energy. That is criticism that does nobody good. That is criticism that that only serves to tear you down and harps on insecurities, your fears. Definitely an energy leak, an energy drainer. So unfortunately, we're gonna have people in our lives where who you are and your sensitivity is going to trigger them. You will rub people the wrong way just for being a highly sensitive person. They'll think you being quiet is you being bitchy or uh arrogant. They will misunderstand you sometimes on purpose. Sometimes it makes them feel better to do that. And I'm also going to be talking about in this episode how to respond to that kind of criticism because that can also rattle us. We have such rich inner worlds that when someone on the outside can't get in, so to speak, it can feel shocking, it can feel unjust, which is another thing. We have a very strong sense of a justice, but that becomes hard when you're faced with that and you feel like you didn't deserve that kind of treatment. A part of you know having more exposure to different types of people, different types of energy, to harness our sensitivities, we kind of have to become desensitized to that kind of overstimulation. The overstimulation that comes with being around people who just aren't good for us. We need to know how to respond to those types of people so that we are protecting our energy without hiding from the world, right? The world needs highly sensitive people to be participants. We just have to do it in a way that honors us. So it's gonna look different. Little spiel over. Let's get into how these different types of criticism affects you as a highly sensitive person. Becoming defensive when you're receiving criticism, it's normal, it's human, but something that I feel like highly sensitive people do that maybe other people don't is they really beat themselves up about getting defensive. This is important for you to understand about yourself because you more than anyone else are negatively impacted by those kinds of negative emotions. Please don't presume that you're being an asshole for being defensive. There are ways to deal with defensiveness. Something that personally speaking, I do often is I keep quiet. Um, it's hard. And it's okay that it's hard, and it's okay that the people around me understand and see that it's hard for me to receive, whatever criticism it is. It's okay to be defensive. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of receiving feedback, it's just a knee-jerk reaction instinct. Um, I think it's human for us for us to want to be understood. In my roadmap to self-grounding program, I have a whole lesson on allowing yourself to be misunderstood. That is something that will benefit everybody. I talk about it for highly sensitive people like us specifically, because we will benefit that much more because we're often misunderstood, and it can really, it can really be an energy drainer. It can really bring us down. It doesn't have to. It's just self-protection. Defensiveness is just self-protection, and it is a response and reaction that will pass. It can pass. Give yourself the time to let it pass. And the quicker that you stop beating yourself up about that, the smoother these kind of conflicts can be resolved in your dynamics. With that, you want to be mindful of how long you remain in self-protection mode. Because there is a point where now you are just not being receptive, and you you're not someone to have a conversation with, and you don't want to do that. So take your time. But sometimes, sometimes the best thing, at least for myself, that I've learned is in becoming quiet, acknowledging the quiet, sometimes saying, I feel really quiet because I'm just processing. That's it. Sometimes that is very reassuring for your person, your friend, your partner, your mother, your sister, your brother to hear. I do want to mention that you may suppress your emotions instead of just feeling them. I laugh because this was a huge struggle of mine for the beginning of my life, my early life, it was very much not embodying, not allowing myself to feel the emotions that that would come up from me because they were they were really strong. They were big emotions. It was easier to just logically process them and view them and kind of be like, uh, that emotion makes sense and that emotion does not. So stop feeling that emotion. You're a bad person for feeling that emotion, actually. And again, that's where this is coming from. It's it's not just my training in emotional intelligence coaching. It is my experience of understanding what it's like to be a highly sensitive child and be so afraid of overstimulation. I find a lot of highly sensitive women are so afraid of their own anger. They're so afraid of their defensiveness, they are afraid of their frustration, even your critical thoughts of other people. We get real down on ourselves for negatively judging others. And and it's a beautiful thing to hear, to say out loud. It doesn't make us saints, it makes us deeply rooted in shame. You get to be angry. What happens is when you suppress these emotions, uh they blow up. They blow up and and you become afraid of yourself for not knowing how to deal with it. In the Roadmap to Self-Grounding program, I do walk you through shadow work for this reason. If you know me, if you're not new to me, you know that I'm a big advocate for doing shadow work with proper form. That means doing shadow work while protecting your energy. I know that's a term that gets uh said a lot and it's overused and abused online. And I think protecting your energy, the whole concept has uh been truly been blown out of proportion and um has become almost a negative thing where people are doing it way too much unnecessarily, which is why I'm creating this episode on receiving criticism, because if you are protecting your energy so much so that you cannot receive criticism, that's not that's not protecting your energy. That is you becoming less tolerant for discomfort, generally speaking. And as a highly sensitive woman, you more than more than most people are often faced with discomfort, and your sympathetic nervous system doesn't allow you to reap the rewards of being exposed to discomfort. It's something that you can change and you can train, and it becomes a beautiful thing when you are regularly exposed to overstimulation and discomfort. That being said, there is so much value to protecting your energy while doing shadow work and in that program. I walk you through that, what it looks like, what I even mean when I say that. The point is actively working on your negative emotions, working on the way that you experience them is going to change your life. And that's not an exaggeration. You want to get better at receiving criticism, stop being afraid of your negative emotions, stop being afraid of your anger, stop being afraid of your defensiveness, stop being afraid of your frustration, and you can just allow yourself to be human and process the way that you can most comfortably do so. How do you get more comfortable with these negative emotions? I find that the key difference in experiencing negative emotions as a highly sensitive person is when you worry about these emotions. When the emotions come up and all of a sudden you're afraid, you try to calm yourself down almost frantically. The signs of anger, of upset, getting choked up, getting flush. I get flushed, my my cheeks go red, my face gets red, your throat tightens, whatever it is for you, you start to shake. I know, depending on the emotion that comes up, I can start trembling. The adrenaline is just spiking so high so quickly in your system. The worry when that happens is something that I would want you to just notice. Simply notice it happening. And if you can approach yourself differently, sometimes noticing is all you need to do to relax, or at least use those physical sensations as an indicator that okay, that I need space. Taking a break is gonna be really important. And I know I know that's hard to do when you're faced with the difficult thing, whatever the difficult thing is. But I promise you, if you give yourself time, you have time. Like the conversation doesn't need to be had right at this very moment, or it's gonna be lost forever. You know, like taking five minutes to just pause in that uh state of basically overstimulation. You were you are becoming very stimulated, highly stimulated. You're not in the best state to receive any more information, probably not in the best state to express yourself clearly. If that is the case and you notice that, instead of worry about it, meet the need. Your body is telling you, hold on. So tell whoever it is that you're with hold on one second. I want to hear you, but I feel myself getting A, B, C, and I think this is important. This is an important conversation to have, and I want to have it with you. Just let's take a sip of water, let's maybe go for a walk, maybe get some fresh air, or we can just sit in silence for a little bit. Also, quite literally soften. You need to physically soften because with negative emotions, the way that our bodies respond to it is potentially life-threatening. It can feel like a threat to the body when you're really, really tense all of a sudden, or you're getting really, really worked up, your shoulders are like up here, your chest is caked in, your knee is bouncing a mile a minute. If you find that you're doing all these things, soften. I've said this before in a previous podcast episode. That is definitely a process, it's a technique that I coach other highly sensitive women on often to avoid overthinking, to avoid anxiety, to just avoid the snowballing into overwhelm. Silence those thoughts, baby, and just drop down into your body, right? Just focus on your physical experience of the thing because your emotions are physical, they become mental later, right? The thoughts come afterward, but it is a very physical process. So that's how criticism can affect you and ways to deal with your responses to the negative emotions. I do want to talk about another common response to criticism that we have got to be aware of as highly sensitive people, and that is our strong sense of justice, like I mentioned before. I'm gonna let you know something. You highly sensitive soul, you. The power you possess in the spaces you occupy is great. Whether you have admitted this to yourself or not, this is the case. I promise you, this is the case. I am always shocked when I learn and discover this about any new environments that I occupy. It is something that you can easily forget. So I get that, but it is very, very true. And you gotta be very careful with this power. I believe the next next week's episode is gonna be on the shadow side of sensitivity, where we speak on this more in depth. But I bring this up in today's episode to talk about the fact that when you strongly believe that something is either right or wrong, it can manifest pretty poorly within your dynamics. This is something that I've seen with my clients. I've absolutely seen it with myself too. I it's why I've recognized this as a pattern with highly sensitive women. When you make the mistake of believing that you will be compensated for your self-sacrifice, or at least be given the acknowledgement you feel you deserve for what you do, that can be a very dangerous game you play with your sensitivity. And it's because you may be operating under assumptions, some of them unfounded. This happens easily because we are very comfortable with what is unspoken. We notice the subtleties. We notice the subtleties of communication in the spaces that we occupy within our relationships. That sensitivity can absolutely bite you in the butt if you are not careful. I cannot tell you how many times the highly sensitive women that I've worked with have literally uttered the same words to me over and over again. Uh, am I the crazy one? How did no one else think of this? Why wouldn't other people see it this way? And they take it personally. This sets you up for a lot of disappointment when you are operating in a reality where other people receive the same information as you. You are a neurodivergent person, you have a neurodivergent mind. The way that your brain processes information is very, very literally different than non-highly sensitive people. So when you expect other people to process information the same way that you do, you do them a disservice and yourself. I can't tell you how many highly sensitive women are just so disappointed in the quality of their relationships and their dynamics. And it's why I do the work that I do to repair what's not working for the highly sensitive person. We can limit the potential of our relationships when we expect one person to possess all of the emotional and intellectual depth that we'd prefer. When instead we can appreciate the different relationships in our lives that offer us these things individually. It's a similar conversation to, you know, you cannot expect your romantic partner to fill all of your cups, whether you're a man or a woman. Like you cannot expect your partner to be everything, every important person in your life. There is so much value to having different types of relationships that are just as important that offer you different things, so that you're not demanding so much of one person. I've mentioned this in the episode What makes a sensation-seeking highly sensitive person. That defensiveness, the disappointment that we experience from the behaviors of others not matching our own, or blaming ourselves for having different reactions than other people. It's a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid confrontation altogether. The reality is we can skip out on a lot of that mental messiness by having the conversation, by simply approaching others with healthy, compassionate detachment. So make taking pauses normal in your negative emotions. When you are experiencing negative emotions, take the break, take the pause, step out for air, have a drink of water, be in silence for like 30 seconds and watch out for where you're having these expectations that cannot be met, these needs that other people cannot fulfill for you. I want to quickly talk about how to handle the destructive criticisms, all the hater energy, all the projections that people throw your way that feels unjustified. I'm going to just quote one of my many great mentors, one of my first mentors. That's my mama, my mom. She would always tell me listen to what people say and watch their behavior. Watch how they act. We tell on ourselves all the time. And it's really nice, actually, once you are comfortable with this sort of depth and honesty in your relationships and dynamics. They keep you grounded and they keep you aligned with your values and truly how you want to live your life. It's great to have people like that. Now, there are gonna be people who try to do that and they are not coming from a loving place. It's not safe, it's destructive. I think highly sensitive women can have a hard time discerning who is coming from a good place or not. And that is the advice that I'm going to leave for you in this episode. Just the advice my mama gave me, which is listen to what people say and watch what they do. Because if they do not align, that'll tell you most often than not whether they're coming from a good place. And it's a loving interaction, you'll feel it because the discomfort of receiving instructive criticism and any other negative emotion, right? Like, oh, this person feels like a threat, they're distinctly different. When you know you're having a hard time, usually it does come with a bit of shame, a bit of embarrassment to you to be called out, to be seen in a negative light. Not that you're being seen in a negative light, but there is a shadow that's being called forward by someone you love and who loves you. That's a completely different process to people who do not care about you and in fact are very triggered when you're thriving, when they try to project these misunderstandings about you. And when you're being misunderstood, you're being misunderstood, right? Sometimes the people who love you the most understand where you're coming from and still need you to be accountable to your behavior, right? Because you can mean well and have the best intentions. But if there's a better way to communicate, to show up, then you know you want to take heed of that feedback and discern what you're gonna do with that information, how you're gonna best integrate that information if you feel like you need to. Listening to what people say and watching how they behave is a great way to practice your discernment. That's how you're gonna get better at discernment, which is also a lesson in the roadmap to self-grounding program. Are we coaching you? If you are my client, I would have you ask yourself, what does your relationship with this critic look like? Is it consistent? Is their equal give and take? Is it a harmonious relationship? Do they genuinely enjoy your company? Do you genuinely enjoy theirs? Honestly, you'll know it's destructive criticism when the answer to any of those questions is no. And once you realize what you're receiving is a projection and destructive, I advise you to emotionally detach. That's an energy leak right there. And you will continue the unharmonious exchange by becoming emotionally enmeshed and wrapped up in this. Something that I see a lot of my clients do actually is they get caught up in trying to defend themselves to this person, trying to get this person to see their side and to be understood by the critic. That's a waste of time. People who are destructive towards you do not want to see your point of view. They want you to become emotionally exhausted and less grounded so they feel better, right? Because that's the intention behind their criticisms to get you to prove their point. Whatever the Point is whatever projection they're making. And this is a great segue to talk about how I receive criticism without falling into victimhood. You don't want to be a victim. We're not doing it. A lot of highly sensitive women just they do not want to be victims, especially the ones that work with me. The ones that work with me, they do not claim victimhood. And sometimes we learn behavioral patterns from young. That kind of puts us in victimhood, but it's what we had to do to sort of survive the dynamics that we grew up in. I had a client tell me, like, hey, to be honest, I didn't know how else to respond to conflict other than passive aggressiveness, because that's the only tool that I was given when I was young. That's how my family communicated with each other through passive aggressiveness, indirect comments, keeping score. And so sometimes you cannot help the tools in your toolbox. You can only add more tools. And so in our containers, we add more tools to their toolbox. So they don't use the ones that don't work. Victimhood is not one that works for the highly sensitive woman looking to cultivate true soul tribe and embody their sensitivity. Victimhood is not an option, it doesn't work. When I am receiving criticism, it is very important to me to understand the truth that is being shown to me about me. Discernment is key here. We all experience the same things very, very differently. So when I am receiving criticism, I have to discern what is mine and what's theirs. You need to have a discernment in what part you can work with, what part of this feedback you can utilize to become the best version of yourself. And what parts of this criticism is not up to you. And it's actually not in your control. Because instructive criticism is about what you can control. It's radical accountability, radical responsibility. It's not taking responsibility for what is not yours. That's the first thing you need to do. You need to have discernment. You need to make space for yourself so that you can process what's yours and what's not yours. And as highly sensitive women, it can take us time. It can take days, it can take weeks. I mean, I've even experienced friends of mine mention a conversation we'd have like months before. And the point is, whether you're the one bringing it up or it's being brought up to you, it's to have space. Create space for the conversation to be reopened. I think that's one thing that we can struggle with, especially if we're dealing with patterns that aren't the healthiest, like keeping score and passive aggressiveness and you know holding grudges and resentment. You can take that defensively. But truthfully, if it's a safe container, if it's a safe dynamic and you are both operating in love, we can have old conversations and continue to learn new things from the experiences we share together. That is the point. That's what our relationships do. One of the many things that our things that our relationships do for us and how they serve us, right? If you're not learning anything, I mean if you're not growing, if you're not learning, if you're not able to reflect and be your deep self, I challenge you to think about that. Just how important is this relationship? What exactly is it doing for you if it's not if it's not doing those things periodically? That's part of cultivating soul tribe that I personally love. The foundation to success bundle that I have, that's like my first offering, my lowest offering. That's what we focus on. We focus on cultivating your ideal environment. It's making those changes in real time. Because you need to take stock, you need to take inventory of the quality of your relationships with yourself included, if you're gonna start this journey of embodying your sensitivity. I believe that was everything I wanted to say about how to receive criticism as a highly sensitive person, as a highly sensitive, highly intuitive woman. I hope that this landed with you well. It's such an important conversation, and I feel like this is probably one of my longer ones, but at least recently coming back to the podcast, but it's still working, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface, honestly. Um, it's a pleasure. Text me your thoughts. Uh, you can email me your thoughts, you can hand me your thoughts. However, you want to connect, contact me. All of the links will be in the description below. I'll see you next week.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
