← 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
#243 | Why Being in an HSP Community Can Be So Healing — And How It Eases Overwhelm and Deepens Inner Work
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Ever wonder why you instantly feel lighter and more understood when you're around others who just “get it”? For highly sensitive people (HSPs), navigating the world can often feel like trying to tune into a radio station no one else hears. This...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll understand why being surrounded by other highly sensitive people can be so healing. And how the right kind of community can ease overwhelm, reduce self doubt, and support deep inner work. Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. Todd. 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 HSPs often feel out of place in typical group settings. And what shifts when they're surrounded by other sensitive people. How being part of an HSP community can ease overwhelm, self doubt and the pressure to fit in. And why a supportive, attuned space helps highly sensitive people go deeper in their inner work with more clarity and less fear. 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. My most vivid memory of being out of place in a group setting was my mother's and stepdad's Christmas party in New York City. It was a black tie affair and I at the time was living in an ashram. I'd come home for Christmas. I didn't grow up in New York, but my mom married my stepdad who's always lived there. And I would be standing around talking with people about trying to. Trying to fit in. Oh my God, it was crazy here. I was like, so what do you do? What do you do? Yeah, I sit, meditate. And like there was just like the eyes would glaze over and just be like, oh my God. So, you know, that's, that's like an extreme version of feeling out of place. And it can happen in many different ways and different levels of this. As a highly sensitive person, we as highly sensitive people tend to first of all be sensitive, maybe are quiet and like depth. And so not everybody is on that wavelength. And so it can be. Can make you feel like there's something wrong with you or that you're in the wrong place or there's something that you need to change. A lot of times we'll end up taking it out on ourselves and start thinking, oh, I need to improve or I need to up the pace, right? I remember thinking, I've got to find the one little sound bite that I can say to people, like, oh yes, I do, blah, blah, blah. And that would allow me to fit in so it's me trying to fix myself instead of just noticing that this may not be the perfect environment for me. Now that said, there are a million different environments and we HSPs and non HSPs alike are exposed to all of those different environments at different times. And it's good to be open to being uncomfortable and to being out of our depth or not in our perfect niche at times as well. But there's also value in seeking out environments that will be more conducive to the natural you're just natural trait. So other examples of environments that don't work so well for HSPS are like fast paced workshops, you know, chop chop, let's get it done. High energy networking events, aggressive feedback settings. You know, we are sensitive to feedback, we can take it well, take it in well. But we are sensitive to the energy and tone and we can also attack ourselves as a result. So there may be many different situations where, where we may not feel like we really fit in. And maybe that's a good thing. If you contrast that with the relief that can happen for hsps when we are finally around others who are sensitive, who do get it, who understand us because they're the same way. It's not that we have to always be around people who are highly sensitive to be okay, you know, that would be very limiting. But having that as a reference point is extremely helpful because it takes away this feeling of stigma almost that I'm weird, I'm different, I'm too quiet, too sensitive, too too deep or whatever. And just seeing that other people are similar and that I'm not alone is extremely empowering and allows me to accept myself as I am and also accept other people the way they are. We're all different and so that also makes life interesting. But when you're around highly sensitive people, like in a group of highly sensitive people, you may notice that you don't have to shrink yourself, you don't have to brace yourself, you don't have to explain yourself. I recently have been moving more and more towards only highly sensitive people in my events. And I did the spring virtual retreat last just recently and it was, it was like people I had never even met before were speaking in a way that just totally resonated with the way I like to be held and spoken to. I felt so safe and I just remember that feeling. I remember saying it's like, oh, it's so nice to just be around highly sensitive people. It's not that people who don't have this trait are some people. I want to avoid. No, not necessarily that at all. It's just there's something special when you're around highly sensitive people by themselves, because it starts to bring out and resonate the. The part of you that you may be protecting or not showing as much. Another thing that can happen with HSPS is that we start to internalize the belief that we are not enough or we're too much, we're, we need to change. And when you're around others who have the trait, then you may start to see that your tension eases because you start to see that you're not alone, that there's nothing abnormal about it, that it's okay to be the way you are. It's not like it's not just me, there's something wrong with me. Also, I find that being in a highly sensitive community is very helpful for when you're doing inner work. Inner work means going into the inner parts of yourself, the parts that you may not even be aware of, the parts that are on autopilot or have gotten stressed or are you're peeling the onion, as they say, and finding deeper and deeper truths of yourselves. In other words, you're going deeply. When you can do inner work in a community of people that are also highly sensitive, then it provides an extra layer of support because there's not going to be, you know, there's not going to be any criticism coming from others. There's not going to be a misunderstanding. We get it. We are sensitive. We're able to hold the space for you so that you can go into what is maybe even painful or uncomfortable and work through that in a way that can leave you feeling freer. So being in a community of people where everyone is doing inner work and everyone is also highly sensitive can really reduce that feeling of vulnerability that, that feeling of not being safe and can provide a very safe holding place for you to do your inner work. This is what I've created@TrueInnerfreedom.com where we have a community of people. We practice the work of Byron, Katie. And it's an amazing way of going in deeply and uncovering your stressful stories and then working through them and transforming them and expanding from there. And we have a community of people who are highly sensitive doing that. So it's like a really safe place for inner work. And that's why I love being in a community of highly sensitive people. First of all, highly sensitive people are interested in inner work. Secondly, we need inner work because we don't have a buffer. We can't just Cover it over like some people can, and just keep on functioning normally. We have to deal with our stuff because if we don't, it just shakes us and rocks us and we don't have any peace. So we're motivated to do inner work. And then when you're in a group of people that are also on the same wavelength and also super empathetic and sympathetic, it can allow for an extreme sense of of safety, for uncovering and exploring and expanding that inner side that is often covered up. In this episode, we looked at why HSPs often feel out of place in typical group settings and what shifts when they're surrounded by other sensitive people. And what we saw is that we may be just on a different wavelength. We're looking for depth and subtlety and other people are looking for energy and excitement, and they may just be two different things. We also looked at how being part of an HSP community can ease overwhelm, self doubt and the pressure to fit in. And that's because we start to see that we're not alone, that there's not something wrong with us for being sensitive, that 20% of the world's population is also as sensitive as we are, and that it's okay to be that way. So this can really reduce the self doubt and this pressure to change ourselves and the feeling of overwhelm, not to mention that we're being held by other empathetic people. And finally, we looked at why a supportive, attuned space helps highly sensitive people go deeper in their inner work with more clarity and less fear. And that's because of that safe container that is created by a group of highly sensitive people. And it's also created by doing inner work. When you do inner work with anyone and they're genuinely going inward, there's an increased willingness to be vulnerable and an increased empathy that happens between the people in the group. But this is even more when it's a group of highly sensitive people. So the feeling I'm left here is a feeling of how much safety is available when I am in a group of highly sensitive people. This can become like the cocoon or the home base. And I don't stay in the cocoon all the time, but it's really valuable to have one so that I can come back to it, find that safety, do my inner work, and then go back out into the bigger world and come back and forth. So thanks for listening. It's always great to explore with you the different strategies available for stress management as highly sensitive people. This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Join me next time for Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path toward inner freedom. Tired of feeling overwhelmed by everything all at once? Take the HSP stress test@truinnerfreedom.com you'll also find a link in the show notes. The test will reveal your unique sensitivity profile, including how your nervous system naturally naturally responds to stimulation, emotions, social energy, and more. You'll also gain a clearer picture of how stress might be amplifying that sensitivity. Take the HSP Stress Test now. It's a powerful first step on your journey to true inner freedom.