You're not compulsive, you're highly sensitive

On nervous system overwhelm and the habits that save you

Feb 13, 2026

For most of my life, I thought I had an “addictive personality”.

Compulsion was the undercurrent of my life. How I did one thing was how I did everything. I’d wake up at 6am to sprint intervals on the treadmill, work for 14 hours, eat either 1,200 calories or 10,000, and slurp down a bottle of wine without blinking.

I thought this was just who I was. The kind of person who can never get enough.

One time, I dialed into a virtual Overeaters Anonymous meeting. We were lectured on how food addicts simply cannot have sugar or refined carbs. Empty eyes floated around the little squares on my screen. Everybody was beaten down by their fate. A life without pasta and pastries, ever again?

The meeting left me with a pit in my stomach. God bless twelve-step programs and the tremendous impact they’ve had on so many lives—but something about this didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what, back then, but many years of experience, research and education later, it is crystal clear.

For many of us, food is not the problem.

Alcohol is not the problem.

Neither are narcotics, or cannabis, or porn, or video games, nor any of the other things that quietly usher us into the hollow corridors of excess. Whether we fall into the bottomless pit of addiction or simply battle with unhelpful habits we can’t kick: our compulsions are not the problem.

They are the solution.

The solution to a sensitive nervous system that never learned how to feel safe.

sensory processing power is a real thing

I now eat everything, stop when I’m full, never restrict, and maintain a healthy weight. Alcohol has lost its appeal. Same with cigarettes, drugs, and grueling workouts. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I still throw myself into work, scroll mindlessly, or shop too much. Being very sensitive and very sober is hard.

Highly sensitive people are a different breed. We can’t watch violence on TV, small talk all day, and startle so damn easily. We absorb energy, get drained in crowds, flinch at noise, and love being out in the world to observe but can’t wait to go home.

We live an extraordinarily porous existence. This porosity can be as enriching as it can be unbearable. Until we learn to tend to our sensitivity like the delicate flower it is, we will rely on ways to escape our senses. Sensitives often become artists. Or addicts. Or both.

About 15–30% of people carry a trait called Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). It means deeper processing of sensory and emotional input, stronger emotional reactivity, and quicker overstimulation. It often shows up early in life and can run in families. Brain imaging studies show greater activation in regions linked to emotional processing, empathy, and threat detection. Physiologically, highly sensitive people often show stronger stress responses and sympathetic nervous system activation.

Being highly sensitive is not a condition of our imagination.

It is lived reality with real, physical roots.

the “window of tolerance”

Polyvagal theory offers a framework that can help illustrate this lived experience.

The “window of tolerance” describes the zone where your nervous system feels safe, curious, and focused. If you move above it and become “hyper-aroused”, surplus energy floods your system and leads you to become anxious, hyperalert, and uncomfortable. If you move below and become “hypo-aroused” you shut down and feel numb, exhausted, and checked out.

Everybody’s window of tolerance is different. If you’re highly sensitive, it’s noticeably narrower. It can feel like you’re navigating a single track trail on a unicycle, with cliffs going off to either side, while the rest of the world is cruising along on a four-lane highway.

You don’t necessarily know that you’re constantly tipping into fight, flight, or freeze. You just know that certain things help you feel less on edge, so you reach for the glass, the cart, or the cookies. It happens automatically and quickly. These behaviors numb you just enough to feel safe again in your body.

Unless you learn to be with the edges of your energy in your body (which most of us don’t because nobody teaches us anything about embodiment and nervous system regulation), you’ll be left with no other choice than to escape your direct experience. Throw in the effects of developmental trauma, and you may find yourself with a nervous system that is chronically dysregulated and has never developed a baseline of safety. Numbing agents become your lifeline.

If you only take one thing away from this article, let it be this: these habits, however unhelpful or destructive they may appear, are trying to protect you. You don’t have to feel grateful, but I hope this can help you at least feel less judgement and shame.

Compulsions are not a matter of choice. They are a matter of survival, driven by forces so unconscious you can talk to therapists all day long for the rest of your life and you might never reach the parts in charge. They don’t speak language. They speak sensation.

your survival brain (aka, why willpower doesn’t cut it)

Different parts of your brain process experience differently. The circuits responsible for survival and threat detection move much faster than your reflective, thinking mind.

The amygdala—part of your brain’s emotional processing system—continuously scans for danger. It reacts in milliseconds, long before your rational mind has a chance to weigh in. So while your prefrontal cortex can plan, reason, and make promises— your survival circuits don’t operate through language. They operate through sensation.

They respond not to what you tell yourself, but to the state of your nervous system. If your body feels overwhelmed, your brain will prioritize relief over discipline. It will reach for whatever has previously brought you back toward safety.

In addition, the brain responds not to objective but perceived threat, which can lead it to misinterpret internal overwhelm as danger. If your window of tolerance is narrow, that alarm system fires more often. No amount of willpower can override a nervous system that feels unsafe.

Many forms of conventional therapy focus primarily on cognitive processing: our ability to reflect, reframe, make meaning, and set intentions. Which is helpful but not sufficient. That’s why 70-80% of people with alcohol use disorder relapse within a year and half of the people with eating disorders never fully recover.

Compulsions only become redundant once you’ve established a baseline sense of safety in your body and learned alternative, healthier ways to return to your window of tolerance, over and over again.

To regulate your nervous system, you need to learn the secret language of your body.

tending to your orchid-nature

Psychologist Thomas Boyce developed a framework that categorizes children into dandelion and orchids. Dandelion children are resilient. They can thrive in any condition. Orchid children are the opposite. They are highly sensitive to their environment—emotionally, physiologically, and neurologically. They don’t just react to conditions; they absorb them. In perfect conditions, they can achieve excellence. But if needs are neglected, they suffer greatly.

Orchids are hard to keep alive. They need extra care.

This is the extra care you need to learn to give to yourself as a highly sensitive person. This care is two-fold: lowering stimulation from your environment, and expanding your capacity to self-regulate in healthy ways.

This doesn’t mean you have to go full Walden and move to the woods. Limiting stimulation starts with your media and news diet, your technology habits and boundaries, and your time and productivity management. You need less input, stimulants, and stress and more contemplation, stillness, and space.

To self-regulate effectively, you need to learn to read the early warning signs of dysregulation, so you can intervene before more drastic measures are required.

Signs of nervous system dysregulation (image created by author)

Some of my favorite means of intervention are breathwork, movement, shaking, grounding, humming, chanting, immersive music, co-regulation (20-second hugs!!), restorative yoga, somatic tracking, hot/cold exposure, and nature.

By signaling safety to your body, you expand your capacity to be with the felt sense, however it manifests. When you’re able to stay in your body, you no longer rely on habits that take you out of it.

Once you learn to ride the unicycle, life becomes enchanting.

You become the person who breaks into tears of joy in the most ordinary moments. You feel love pour into you—and out of you—more easily. The border between you and the world dissolves. You become attuned to those around you and can step into helping professions. You can observe the hidden realms of existence and give form to them through the arts.

You live life as fully as it can be lived.

A few years ago, I got a tattoo of a hummingbird and orchids on my arm. It marked my recovery and served as a reminder: as long as I honor my sensitivity, I remain free.

In the end, my pursuit to break free from compulsion gifted me much more than I could have ever imagined: not only the absence of certain habits, but the presence of everything.

I wish the same for you.

Thanks for reading you lovely fellow sensitive soul,