Why Highly Sensitive Leaders Stop Trusting Themselves
Amy Vasterling on the controlling model that silences introverted leaders — and what it takes to reclaim your inner knowing
If you’re a highly sensitive person or an introvert, you’ve probably experienced this: you walk into a room and immediately sense what’s underneath the surface — the tension, the unspoken dynamic, the thing no one is saying. And then a voice rises up telling you you’re overthinking. That you should just act normal.
Amy Vasterling has spent decades studying why that happens. Her framework — what she calls “the model” — names the controlling dynamic many introverted leaders have been living inside without ever having language for it. On one side: the authoritarian, who maintains position through boasting, telling, and proving. On the other: the enabler, who holds their place through worry, guilt, and rumination. Both are expressions of control.
Her son, who works in physics, offered an analogy that stuck with me: when a magnet is heated past a certain point, it disorders — it can no longer magnetize to its own field. That’s what this dynamic does to the people inside it. It leaves them confused, stuck, and blaming themselves for the gap. The self-doubt so many introverted leaders carry isn’t a personal failing — it’s the predictable output of a system designed to keep you questioning yourself.
Here’s where Amy’s thinking becomes genuinely useful: you can’t collapse this dynamic by fighting it. The power lives entirely on your side of the table.
She shares a story about a family gathering where someone had reliably pushed her buttons for years. She spent two months doing inner work — getting clear on what she could and couldn’t be for that person, without emotional charge. The next time they were in the same room, that person pushed everyone else’s buttons. Not hers. The work she did internally changed the dynamic externally. No confrontation required.
This is the distinction she draws between power and control: control is the performance — the boasting, the withholding, the rumination. Power is knowing when not to engage, and choosing truth over the comfort of maintaining the pattern.
The practices she recommends aren’t elaborate. Journaling until you move through the restlessness and reach stillness. Buying yourself time before responding — “I’ll think about that and get back to you this afternoon” — which models thoughtfulness and removes the pressure to perform an answer before you have one.
Her Conversation Compass offers phrases for exactly these moments, including one that’s stayed with me: when you’re asked something you don’t have an answer for — and don’t need one — try saying simply, “I can’t say.” Twice if needed. Delivered without apology. What it communicates underneath is: I don’t know — and I don’t need to, and neither do you.
Inner knowing got trained out of most of us before we were old enough to name it. Amy’s argument is that it’s fully recoverable.
Episode 63 of The Introverted Leader is live now. Amy’s book is called Know — and this conversation is a good place to start.
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