Gentle Career Transition Strategies for Highly Sensitive Women
Make a change while honoring your sensitivity.
For highly sensitive women in corporate environments, career transitions can be particularly challenging. Our heightened nervous systems often react intensely to the prospect of change, even when we’re moving towards work that is more fulfilling or meaningful. However, embracing our sensitivity, rather than fighting it, can be the key to smoother and more confident career transitions.
In this post, we’ll explore gentle strategies that allow you to honor your sensitivity while pursuing professional growth. Using an approach like this will help you make successful career transitions and ensure you don’t settle for less than you deserve. Whether you’re eyeing a promotion, considering a career change, or seeking more purposeful work, these insights will empower you to make your next big move with confidence and grace.
Sensitivity might be a superpower, might not feel like it when it comes to making career moves.
Do you feel like you’re meant for something more in your career, but you’re never make a move? Do you feel like it’s harder to make a move because you’re someone who is sensitive, quiet, or “shy”?
If so, you’re not alone. Even though I honestly believe that those of us who are sensitive are ultimately fortunate to have this gift, it can get in the way when it comes to our careers until we learn to navigate through our sensitive natures.
I was terrified to make a move.
As a highly sensitive person in a corporate career, I was terrified of any type of career transition – exploring opportunities at other companies, going for that big promotion, asking for a raise. Just thinking about what I’d have to do, the people I’d have to cold-call, the rejection I’d receive, gave me an anxiety jolt that froze me in my tracks. Linkedin still gives me the willies as recall hitting the send button on messages and applying for jobs.
That’s because I truly believed that I got to where I was, despite my quiet sensitivity. I felt that the people at work overlooked this tragic flaw and saw my value because they had known me for so long. I felt that a new boss would hire me for my accomplishments and then become quickly disenfranchised once they saw that I was not a fire cracker, but more of a slow burn.
So, it was a double whammy: 1) So hard reach out to others, 2) Having to deal with my future boss’s inevitable disappointment.
With my nervous system activated by just thinking about it, I rarely made a move I wasn’t forced into. This meant I stayed way too long in jobs that didn’t suit me; I put up with a lot of crap; and, in my work, I deeply felt the feeling of unfulfilled potential within me.
With sensitvity as a baseline, regular feelings seem to pile on.
Not only do we sensitives get all of this fun stuff, we also get regular strong emotions of uncertainty, overwhelm, and self-doubt piled on top of our “sensitivity fears”: “What if I’m not cut out for something new?” “What if I fail?” “What if I’m only good at what I do now?” These layers of fears and anxieties can keep us rooted in place, even when we’re itching to move.
This leads to us backing off that move, to avoidance, to procrastination, to depression. All because we’re seemingly unable to fully express that desire to move forward into work that is better suited to us.
Turn towards your sensitivity, rather than away.
When you’re yearning to make a move, turning towards your sensitivity might seem counter-intuitive, because it can be so activating. But, if you can turn towards it with curiosity, rather than judgement, it becomes more possible to find a path forward that honors your sensitivity, rather than ignores it or tries to push through it.
Let’s say, for example, you’ve seen someone speak at a conference and you’re really excited because you could see yourself doing the same thing – speaking in front of a large audience, sharing something profound, feeling so incredibly fulfilled by doing what you’re meant to be doing. But, when you go home and decide to reach out to the person who inspired you — you look her up, but you you suddenly feel that familiar feeling of, well, terror. A highly sensitive person can be stopped in their tracks by this sort of action. We can put it off until a day that never comes.
But, if you can slow it down and feel around the edges of the feeling, and turn towards the feelings rather than turning away, you will find your way forward. Here’s one way (there are many others):
Step 1 - Calm Your Nervous System
In career coaching, we use many tools and techniques. This is a little trick from Parts Work / Internal Family Systems.
- While we’re doing this, you can think back to something in your own experience where you knew an action would be a good one, but you found it too hard to complete. You don’t always have to “go there”; you can just feel around the edges of it. We zero in on what was happening and what particular thing that activated you.
- Notice the feelng that comes up for you. In this example, let’s say it’s anxiety. Notice your anxiety and the sensation in your body. As I mentioned, you don’t have to go fully into it. You can hold it off a bit or feel around the edges of it.
- Ask yourself, “How do i feel towards my anxiety?” See what comes up. Sometimes we can feel anger because here’s our anxiety again, blocking us from making a move. Also, now you’ve noticed that you don’t just feel anxiety, you also feel anger.
- Now ask yourself how you feel towards your feeling of anger. Take a moment to feel into this. I feel impatience towards my anger because it derails me. So, now we have anxiety, anger, impatience.
- You can keep going with this, or you can pause and check in on your anxiety. Often, it can feel a little bit less because we’ve created some space around it. Also, it’s good to notice that there’s a lot going on within us. No wonder we get overwhelmed. It’s not just anxiety but “a family” of feelings.
- Now that you’ve created some space, try saying, “A part of me is anxious.” See how that feels in your body. This can be a big shift away from how it feels when you say, “I am anxious.” “I have anxiety.” It’s subtle, but it takes it out of your identity. It also leaves room for the possibility that you have other parts that might step in, like courage, or compassion, or curiosity. Because even though you’re sensitive, it doesn’t mean you don’t have these wonderful attributes.
Notice how calmer you feel from when you started this. Even if it’s a tiny bit, it’s a win. With practice, you create more and more space.
Step 2 - Tiny Steps - No step is too small
Our brains like to lump everything together–e.g. reach out to this person who has inspired you. But, then you can’t. One way to overcome this is to break the process into a series of tiny steps and pace yourself. No step is too small. A sign a step is too big is if you can’t do it.
This means that maybe one day you make a list of the tiny steps. And then the next day, you look through the conference materials for any contact info, and the next day you look her up on Linked in. And, the next day you draft the email. Etc.
Your brain will tell you this is way too slow. But, if you took one of these tiny steps each day for 10 days, you’d get there. And that’s way better than never doing it because you think you need to put on your big girl panties and just message her, but never do it.
Step # - Hit the Send Button
Even with tiny steps, there may be a big moment when you have to hit that Send button. That can feel like a leap. But, if you go back to Step 1, and feel good about everything you’ve done in Step 2, you’ll feel more confident and find that it’s doable.
I like what Glennon Doyle says about this moment. She says you feel “scited”, which is a mix of scared and excited. It’s a good sign if you feel scited.
You can also use techniques like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping in these moments.
The more you do things like this, the more confidence you will have.
There are tools and techniques that help sensitive souls.
There are so many tools to help you if you are thinking about changing careers. These are just a couple.
As a Career Coach, if I had one message for you if you feel trapped by your sensitivity as you try to make a move towards more meaningful work: Just because you’ve been stopped in the past, it doesn’t mean anything about you. It just means that you have yet to discover the tools and techniques (e.g. Internal Family Systems, Tiny Steps, and EFT) that help you navigate a move into more meaning.
As a highly sensitive woman, you don’t have to be held back by your sensitivity. You can discover your own way forward and make your move into a career that truly suits you.
Stay sensitive.
P.S. I work with highly sensitive women, helping them make smoother career transitions to meaningful work. Are you ready to Plot Your Escape?
