High Sensitivity in Dance, Love, and Life

Do you know that feeling of being so exhausted after one full day or after meeting many people that you just want to leave? The day, the meeting, it was lovely, but still all you want is quiet and to be alone. Even one more word would be too much. That sounds exactly like you've taken in too much. Too many people, too many stimuli, too many impressions. And now your inner battery is at zero.

This happened to me often. Especially at activities where I was interacting with a lot of people like dance festivals. Back then when I was still actively dancing and traveling across Europe as a dance teacher and dancer I’ve traveled a lot to festivals. While many fell into a kind of "post-festival low," because after an intense festival - after all the connection and the happiness hormones from dancing - they were suddenly alone again and back to everyday life, I needed something different first: a break from people, from everything. It felt like "the vacation after the vacation."

When the Filter Is Smaller

Highly sensitive people perceive more because their brain filters differently. There are areas in the cerebral cortex that regulate incoming information. In highly sensitive people, this filter is smaller. That means: simply more stimuli get through and need to be processed. That takes energy. A lot of it.

High sensitivity shows up in different ways - through feeling, hearing, smelling, seeing, or physical sensation. Alone or in combination, anything is possible. And modern life is barely built for this. We're all treated the same, all paced at the same speed. For highly sensitive people, that can be exhausting over time.

I see high sensitivity as a gift. A real superpower - once you've learned how to work with it.

Two Days of Festival, Zero Energy

I was dancing and teaching Kizomba/Urban Kiz for many years. Dance festivals with hundreds of people were part of that world. I never loved that life style - but I loved dancing so much that I went anyway. It's also simply part of being active in the scene. And back then I was very active, running my own classes, workshops, and events in the local scene in Stuttgart region. Sometimes I was booked at festivals to teach workshops or invited as a guest dancer. Sometimes I just wanted to go for fun, with no professional obligations at all. It's also worth mentioning: I did all of this alongside a full-time job - office, Monday to Friday, all day.

And I remember exactly how that time felt. Barely any sleep, because the nights were short. Hours of dancing, sometimes several hours straight without a break. Loud music. Crowded rooms. Physical closeness to people I barely knew. I absorbed all of it - and at some point my system was running on empty.

I used to never be able to say no to a dance. Dance teachers had taught me that you simply don't do that. And because I was still insecure back then, and had generally learned in life to always say yes - to everyone, to everything - it never even occurred to me to push back on a teacher or decline an invitation. Today I know what was really behind it. It was avoidance. People-pleasing. Not giving a no, to avoid receiving one. That had nothing to do with kindness - most of the time, anyway.

The dance teachers I had probably struggled with the same thing themselves. And the excuse I used to reach for back then - one I still hear today from many dancers dealing with the same issue - was a practical one: it just doesn't feel good to be told no.

At some point I started to pause. And to ask myself: is this really about the other person, or about me? What do I actually need right now?

What Happens When the Body Observes Too Much

I'm not a neuroscientist, but because I'm so fascinated by how the brain works, I've read quite a few books and talked to neuroscientists myself. Our brain works nonstop. We process information and stimuli around the clock, both from outside and within us. When too many stimuli arrive at once and the body can't keep up, the brain's alarm system switches on - the amygdala.

I find the smoke detector metaphor so fitting. Always active, always ready for any situation. The moment a threat appears - whether real or not - the amygdala (our internal smoke detector) it sounds the alarm. It evaluates whether a situation is dangerous, or rather whether we perceive it as dangerous, and prepares the body for a physical response: fight, flight, or freeze. Of course we're not actually in danger, but our system reads the situation as danger because it's overwhelmed. It sends us the signal: that was too much, stop!

I still notice it today: when I take in too much for too long - too many people, too much noise, too intense a smell, too bright a light - I can feel my body sound the alarm. My system has had enough. I get headaches, sometimes migraines. Light hurts. Noise hurts. The only thing that helps then is stillness. No stimuli. Simply nothing.

And this is exactly the point I had to learn: I don't need to push myself all the way to that edge in the first place. If I listen to my body early enough, I can steer in another direction - before it has to decide for me.

Setting Boundaries Belongs to It - in Dance, in Love and in Life

On my path to handling my high sensitivity better, one thing became essential: learning to set boundaries. That was, and still is, not easy. Precisely because I had learned to adapt and always say yes, it took me a long time to be able to say no without feeling guilty.

On the dance floor, it started small. After a dance, I'd take a break - just sit down, sometimes leave the room. If I had danced longer, I'd take a longer break, get a coffee, or go for a walk. I stopped dancing through entire weekends and started taking breaks on purpose. I learned to decline dances - sometimes with an explanation, sometimes without. I remember one evening, leaning against the wall, just watching - watching the dancers, listening to the music. A man came up to me, asked me to dance, I declined, and he asked, a little puzzled: "What, do you really just want to stand here and watch?" Yes. That was exactly what I wanted.

I also had to learn to take that same space in my relationship. My boyfriend, for example, loves trade fairs and big dance festivals. I dread them, because they can be exhausting for me. He also needs far fewer breaks than I do - he can apparently do all kinds of different things for hours, ideally surrounded by thousands of people. What helps here is communicating openly, giving each other room, and finding a way together that works for both of us, instead of automatically adapting myself to him or he to me.

Saying no to strangers turned out to be relatively easy for me in the end. With people close to me, it was - and still is - a completely different challenge, because so much more is at stake there: old fears, old beliefs, the worry of hurting someone or being hurt myself. As a highly sensitive person, you feel hurt more often, or at least the feeling is stronger and more frequent, simply because you feel more and feel deeper. It hurt the most with my partner and my family, and of course around things that mattered especially to me. A lot of it came down to not wanting to feel those feelings. My inner critic would kick in right away, and old, negative beliefs like "I'm not lovable" or "I don't matter" would surface the moment I received a no.

Boundaries and learning to say no are a topic of their own, one I'm dedicating an entire article to. (Coming soon)

High Sensitivity Is No Reason to Hide

I went through phases where I wished I weren't highly sensitive. Because it hurts, damn it, to feel that deeply. Because encounters with others often left more of an imprint on me than I wanted. Because I was exhausted after events, gatherings, and parties while others kept going for hours. Back then I simply couldn't handle it, so I saw it as a burden.

Today I'm glad to be this way. I've learned to work with it - and to see it as a strength, not a weakness.

Because high sensitivity also means: you perceive connection more deeply. You also feel other emotions - happiness, joy, fulfillment, calm - more intensely. You bring a sensitivity to relationships that many others don't have. In partner dance, for example, this is a real strength, because you truly feel the other person, and yourself. You're a good listener, and you pick up on things your counterpart never even says out loud. You're empathetic and bring a lot of understanding with you. That's probably why others often feel a deep connection to you.

I firmly believe that we highly sensitive people have an important contribution to make in this often fast and superficial world. That's exactly why I think it matters so much that we recognize how beautiful this gift can be - and that, precisely because of it, we need to show ourselves.

What Really Helped Me

If you're highly sensitive and recognize yourself in this: it's not about hiding, or using your high sensitivity as an excuse. It's about developing skills that help you stay grounded even in stimulus-heavy situations.

What has helped me:

• Planning breaks early and consistently - before your body forces them on you. Remember the amygdala: once your body is already in fight, flight, or freeze mode, it's definitely too late.

• Putting the phone away. Getting outside, into nature. Movement. Stillness. Whatever genuinely feels good to you in the moment. But aim for as few stimuli as possible.

  
  

If you, like me, find yourself at dance festivals and haven't found your own way yet, try a lot of different things. That's exactly what I did. You don't need to know the end result right away. For me, it started with simply taking more breaks - a break after every dance. Then I started wanting to go dancing later, with a coffee first, when the dancing began in the afternoon. Then I skipped an entire party altogether. Then, instead of a full weekend, I only went for one day and spent the other exploring the city instead.

As you can see, there are many different paths, and you're allowed to find and choose your own. What matters is that you keep checking in with yourself and asking: "What actually feels good to me right now? No matter what anyone else thinks." When you do something that truly feels good from the heart, it gives you energy.

I dance shorter and more consciously these days than I used to. I enjoy it more deeply. And I take breaks, and go home before I'm empty. That's worth more than any night spent dancing until the end. My relationships are also far more fulfilling and relaxed when I pay attention to myself and my need for rest, simply because I'm more relaxed and my battery is charged. And if that's the result of thinking about myself and my own battery once in a while, then I'm genuinely happy to do it. As they say: happy wife, happy life. Is there such a saying for men, too?

I hope you enjoyed this article, and if you recognized yourself in it, I truly hope it helped you. I'd be so happy if you shared this article and blog with someone who you think might find it interesting too.