Dancing with the Stars judge Camilla Sacre-Dallerup is open about being a highly sensitive person (HSP). Photo / Supplied
Dancing with the Stars judge Camilla Sacre-Dallerup is open about being a highly sensitive person (HSP). Photo / Supplied
Dancing with the Stars judge Camilla Sacre-Dallerup is that friend who will ask you to leave her house by 9pm.
"It took me till my forties to be able to say to my friends, 'Hey, I love you. And I love your company, but please leave before midnight'," she jokes.
We see the Strictly Come Dancing alum dressed to impress on the judges' panel on Sunday and Monday nights, delivering her verdict as Kiwi celebrities compete on the dance floor. But what we don't see is what happens when the show's over and she heads home.
"I am loving every moment of it," she tells the Herald - "however, when I come back and I wake up the next morning, I literally feel emotionally hungover."
The dance pro and life coach needs a full day to recover from sensory overload - something she only realised she needed when she hit burnout at the age of 35.
"I was on holiday with my husband and I suddenly just burst into tears," she recalls.
"And I said, I am tired beyond tired. Like, I can't even explain to you how tired I am. And that was a turning point for me because I needed to start understanding why I had got myself to such a tired place where I actually lost all motivation."
But it turns out she needed to reach that breaking point to realise there was a name for the reason she felt so drained.
The Dancing with the Stars judge needs a full day to recover after two days of filming live shows. Photo / Supplied
"I would struggle with how I was feeling and wondering if there was something wrong with me - why I couldn't be in these highly intense environments with sound and overloaded visuals and why I had to feel so exhausted after."
When she learned that she was a highly sensitive person (HSP), it all started to make sense.
High sensitivity is a personality trait belonging to around 20 per cent of the general population, also known as sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). HSPs can't cope with violent movies, excessive noise, or too much visual stimuli - if you've ever been told you're "too sensitive", then chances are you are one of them.
"You feel more deeply," Sacre-Dallerup, now 48, explains. "You almost feel physically unwell. Some people feel it more like angst in the chest, and some people feel it like full-blown anxiety."
In 2008 she began studying linguistic programming, mindfulness, and hypnosis - not only so she could understand herself better, but also because she wanted to help others look after their mental health.
Now as a life coach, the first thing she tells her clients is that they need to learn to take time for themselves. While that may seem like a luxury in our fast-paced world, she argues that it's essential. "If I'm not okay, I cannot give."
Sacre-Dallerup judges on Dancing with the Stars alongside Lance Savali and James Luck (Elektra Shock). Photo / Supplied
When she's preparing for filming the live shows, the first thing she does is ask herself what she needs to be okay. "We ask each other, how are you, but we forget to ask ourselves. When we abandon that, we don't feel good and things slip in life. We start to feel low and not good in ourselves, and it affects our mental health."
For Sacre-Dallerup, adding a day off to her busy schedule is non-negotiable. So are her 10,000 steps a day, time spent outside, hot baths, meditation, and eight hours of sleep a night.
"Whatever jobs I do, I make sure that I can put these boundaries in place that I know I need to be okay. And I'm not going to feel guilty for it. I've worked through the guilt. When other people want to say, 'you'll be fine' - I'm sorry. I know me and I'm not going to be fine."
And when she started sharing more about her sensitivity on social media, she was overwhelmed to see just how many people resonated with her experience.
"I was positively surprised by the private messages that I've had saying 'thank you, I feel seen, I feel heard, I thought I was the only one that was like this'."
Sacre-Dallerup has been there. And 13 years on from the moment that changed everything, she's determined to keep talking about it.
• Dancing with the Stars airs Sunday 7pm and Monday 7.30pm on Three and ThreeNow.
