← Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People (HSP): Inner Work and Strategies for Coping with Stress, Overwhelm, and Negative Emotions
Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People (HSP): Inner Work and Strategies for Coping with Stress, Overwhelm, and Negative Emotions
#240 | Why Giving Criticism Feels Overwhelming for Highly Sensitive People — And How Inner Work Can Help
00:17:53
Can Giving Feedback Really Feel as Hard as Receiving It? If you're a highly sensitive person (HSP), you already know how painful criticism can feel—but what if giving it feels just as overwhelming? You’re not alone. This episode dives...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll discover why giving criticism can feel overwhelming for highly sensitive people and how inner work can help you speak with clarity and care without carrying the guilt. Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I'm your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I'm a highly sensitive person myself. In this episode, you'll discover why giving criticism can feel just as emotionally loaded as receiving it, especially for HSPs. How your past experiences with criticism may be shaping the way you hold back now, and a gentle inner work approach that helps you speak honestly without overwhelming yourself or others. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person. I used to think the hardest part of criticism was receiving it. The sting of being told I'd done something wrong, or the shame, the overthinking that would sometimes spiral for days even. But then I realized something more. Someone once asked me for feedback on a presentation she gave, and I had noticed that her message wasn't quite landing. It was a bit scattered and the flow kind of felt like, hard to follow. But instead of saying that clearly, I tiptoed around it. I said things like, you have such good energy when you present, or it's clear you care about the topic. And I thought I was being kind, and maybe I was. But the next time she presented, nothing had changed and she seemed confused. She still didn't understand why people weren't getting it, why people weren't engaging. And that's when I realized that I hadn't actually helped her. I'd softened my message so much that she didn't even know what wasn't working. So the reality of this situation is that I thought I was protecting her, but what I was really doing was protecting myself. I was afraid that she'd feel hurt or take it the wrong way or that it would ruin our connection. And what actually happened is that it kept me disconnected. She didn't benefit from what I could see, and I didn't benefit from being real with her. So what kept me from doing that is imagining what it would be like if I was receiving feedback. And I tend to be sensitive to feedback. It tends to be hard for me. And so I imagined that it would be for her. And so out of self protection, in this kind of weird way, I watered it down and watered it down and watered it down until there was really not much content left. And so this is the fear of being honest, the fear of being vulnerable, of actually showing up and sharing my location, my awareness of what I see in that situation and can be very helpful. People often really do appreciate feedback. But if you're sensitive, you may think that other people are going to have a hard time taking feedback. And we get so quickly into other people's business and it's fine to be sensitive, but to be stressed by feedback is something that can be questioned, something that can be worked with, and there's a lot of room for growth in that area. I've experienced this myself and it's something that I continue to grow in, but I find that feedback is much less of a challenge for me and it's less of a challenge to give it. So let's look at why HSPs tend to have a challenge either giving or receiving feedback, but in this case we're focusing on the giving of it. HSPs are wired for empathy. We feel with people, we notice how they feel, we predict how they feel. And we also don't like conflict, we like harmony. And so we tend to go the extra mile to tiptoe around something that we think would rock the boat or cause some kind of hurt in someone else. Now this is coming from a good place. It is good to not hurt people. It is good to be kind, be gentle. There's room for that. It's important. But what happens is we take this too far and this is where we can lose touch with the actual capacity of, of people to understand, take in and appreciate feedback. And we also lose touch with our ability to be kind, even when we're being honest. It's almost like we make ourselves choose between being kind or being honest. Can't do both. So have to be one or the other. And in reality it is possible to do both. We just tend to to forget that. The other thing is that for many people, especially HSPs, you may have experienced criticism as something that is shame inducing. In the past, especially in childhood or at any point in life, if someone gave you feedback and they didn't like something, it may have actually had tones of being like a judgment, may have felt like they were judging you as a person, they may have been judging you as a person, or they may have used really strong words that come across with a big bang for a sensitive person that may not have been intended to be as hurtful as they ended up being. And so there's almost this little, little minor traumas around getting criticism that make us scared of it, make us think, oh my gosh, this is, this is. People judge each other. People can hurt me and I can hurt other people. And we get super cautious about criticism. So when we give criticism, our brain can pull up these old emotional memories and then project them onto the other person. And then we are like, oh, put the brakes on, we better soften this. And the problem there is we soften it too much and we end up missing the opportunity to give something constructive, constructive criticism. So how can we move towards giving feedback with clarity and compassion? How do we do this in a real way that can be helpful to the other person, kind to them, leave us in a place of feeling peaceful, but at the same time staying real? The first thing I like to do is to notice my resistance thoughts. What am I resisting here when I want to give feedback? What am I afraid of? What am I needing? Those kinds of things, if you can find them, can be very helpful and I like to write them down. So for example, I need them to be okay with the feedback. This is a big one. I have often expected people to say something like, oh, okay, no problem, thank you so much, like with that kind of light tone. And if they don't receive my feedback with that kind of lightness and open heartedness and graciousness, then I feel bad, I feel guilty, I feel shut down, I feel like I failed. And the problem is you can't always, first of all, you can't control what another person, how they react. But second of all, for someone to take in feedback, it's usually something they're not thinking of. It's going to require possibly an about face, a turn, a change for them. They may have to realize that they're going in a direction that's not working and have to change their approach. These are big changes. And so for me to expect someone to just say, oh, no problem, thank you, that's fine, you know, really good, like that is unrealistic. When I think even of myself, if somebody gives me feedback, I'm going to really think about that. I may even feel a little bit of shame or a little bit of like, oh, I've failed. I may have to go through some emotions before I actually engage and take the feedback. So I'm mentioning this because it's a stressful thought, right? I need somebody to be okay with the feedback I'm giving them. That limitation can end up preventing me from actually giving the feedback. Similarly, things like I need them to like me. I need them to see that I'm being vulnerable. I need them to honor my courage. See, I'm really making it all about me. I want them to like me. I want them to still be connected. I want them to be happy. I want everything to still be smooth and comfortable. But feedback is going into a vulnerable place. It's bringing up something that may be challenging to look, look at, challenging to think about. And if I'm open minded and if I'm not too attached to needing them to be a certain way, it can actually be a very intimate experience. So noticing what your resistance thoughts are and putting them down on paper is a huge first step. The next step, and it's very specific to each time you have a situation like this, is to question these thoughts, literally question. I need them to be okay with the feedback and see if you can find another way of seeing it. My favorite way of questioning is the work of Byron Katie. It's a way to really thoroughly question something that you're attached to and find opposites that balance that. So once you've done a little work on the thoughts that are holding you back, then it's time to begin to engage with the other person. And what helps me is to use clean language, use facts, observations, share how it impacts me. And instead of using character judgments or assumptions or making it too general or that kind of thing. So for example, if I say you never listen, I'm making a kind of a judgment on the person's character and I'm making it really broad and really, it's hard not to take that personal. But instead you could say something like when I was speaking, you were looking at your phone and I felt like you didn't give me your full attention. So this is a little more focus on myself, my experience, I'm staying a little more in my business, but I'm also being really clear about what wasn't working for me. Sometimes you may also have to adjust the strength of your words to the person you're talking to. Different cultures, different people have different comfort levels with direct speech versus very like nice speech or speaking around the subject or being indirect. And some people, if you're indirect, can't hear you at all. Some people, if you're too direct, can't hear you at all. And so it's important just to be aware of who you're talking to. That may make a difference in terms of how you, what words you actually choose. I mean, if you're speaking English and the other person understands Spanish, it's going to be very hard to communicate unless you learn a little bit of Spanish. One of my favorite ways of giving feedback to people is just the simple phrase that, that didn't work for me, or that this would. This worked for me or this didn't work for me. And it keeps it very objective, and it is not a character judgment, and it's just about the facts. So when all else fails, I use that simple statement, yeah, that really didn't work for me, or this would work for me. It's very much about my experience. And with my experience, I'm the one who knows it, and so I have the authority to share it. And then finally, stay with yourself. Don't go into their reaction, because if you start managing their feelings, then you're out of your business. That's not your job. And so what happens if you do that? You're going to be on very shaky ground. It's going to get stressful, and you can't stay grounded in your own clarity and your own kindness. Just trust their ability to handle the truth and give them your honest experience and let them process. In this episode, we looked at why giving criticism can feel just as emotionally loaded as receiving it, especially for HSPs. And we saw a lot of that has to do how we imagine the other person is taking it. We also looked at how past experiences with criticism may be shaping the way you hold back now. And so if you have experienced criticism as a. As a character assassination, a judgment, something harsh in the past, then it will make you more hesitant to give feedback because you associate that with that. You assume that all criticism kind of subconsciously is something mean and it's not actually the case. And then finally, we looked at a gentle inner work approach that helps you speak honestly without overwhelming yourself with others. And I think the key to this is identifying what are the thoughts that you're believing, you know, what are the thoughts that are causing you to hesitate to give honest feedback? And they often are things like, I need them to be okay with the feedback, I need them to like me, that kind of thing. So the feeling that I have coming away from this is that feedback, scary as it may seem, is a chance for vulnerable connection. It's a chance to meet somebody, to share a piece of yourself that is real for you, that you may be hiding or may see but are not talking about, and to bridge it over to another person where they may receive it and may be touched by it. And so it's a very intimate thing. And if I see it that way, it actually fits in with one of my values as a highly sensitive person for connection. So thanks for listening. It's fun to explore with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Join me next time for Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom. Ready to reduce overwhelm and find more peace? Visit trueinnerfreedom.com and complete the HSP Stress Test. You'll discover if you're a highly sensitive person and gain valuable insights into your current levels of anxiety, depression and stress. It's the first step on your journey to true inner freedom.