← 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
#251 | How to Finally Stop Shaming Yourself for Resting So You Can Function at Your Best Again as an HSP
00:18:23
Have you ever felt guilty for sleeping in or taking a break—even when you needed it most? If you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP), could your downtime be more essential than you think? In a world that glorifies productivity, many HSPs struggle...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll understand why downtime isn't laziness for highly sensitive people and how embracing it can actually help you recover faster, think more clearly and show up as your best self. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why downtime isn't laziness for highly sensitive people and how embracing it can actually help you recover faster, think more clearly and show up as your best self. 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. My in this episode you'll discover how a missed morning routine spiraled into shame and why HSPs are so vulnerable to self criticism around rest. What neuroscience and inner work reveal about the true role of downtime in an HSP's well being and practical empowering ways to ask for the rest you need without guilt over explaining or feeling like a burden. Welcome to this edition of Self Compassion Wednesdays where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. In this episode you'll discover how a missed morning routine spiraled into shame and why HSPs are so vulnerable to self criticism around restrictions. What neuroscience and inner work reveal about the true role of downtime in an HSP's well being and practical empowering ways to ask for the rest you need without guilt over explaining or feeling like a burden. Welcome to this edition of Self Compassion Wednesdays where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. The other day I slept in. I usually get up around six and this time when I got out of bed and looked at the time, it was after 8 o' clock. This is on a work day and the first thought that hit me was oh my God, what a waste. I felt shame actually and I think it's a common thing for highly sensitive people to feel this way. Maybe for non highly sensitive people as well. We put so much value, at least in my culture for being productive and getting things done and even if it's doing things that are like taking care of myself. Like I have a morning routine which is not work work, but it's a kind of productivity. So for example, I do some stretches, I do my egoscue, I walk the dog, I prepare some breakfast. If it's my turn to do that and I meditate. And so that day I didn't get to do much of that at all. It was just like, hurry up, shower, get ready, eat something and get to work. And the feeling of shame in that comes, in my experience from thinking that I there's an ideal version of my morning routine, there's an ideal version of being productive in that particular way. And I'm missing it. And so as a result, there's something wrong with me. And it can quickly spiral. You know, I caught it pretty quickly, but it was starting to go there. And especially in that first, those first moments of getting out of bed, I'm like, oh God, you know, now it's already late, I don't even want to get out of bed. And that can just make it worse. So I think it's important to notice these cultural biases that we may have. And you may have family biases. I have that from my family, where we gotta get things done, you know, we gotta be productive and unproductive. Time, especially unplanned rest, can trigger shame and self criticism for many highly sensitive people. Another cultural bit here is the idea that we have to earn rest. And I think that's a really good one to challenge because we, if we think that we have to earn it, then we have to accomplish something before we can actually rest. And if we don't accomplish it for whatever reasons, and you can't always control those, then we may not be able to rest until that's done. And that's a common saying, right? Like I can't rest until this is done, till the work is done. So if I'm treating rest that way, then I'm minimizing its importance, I'm putting it low on the priority list. And it actually can make me feel like a failure when my body finally just screams and says, I need this rest. And I'm taking it. And I start to get into a kind of power struggle with my own actual physiology. So let's look at why highly sensitive people in particular need more rest. Everybody needs rest, it's essential. But as highly sensitive people, we need even more rest than the average person. For us, rest isn't indulgence, it's nervous system regulation. So for highly sensitive people, what happens commonly for us is we get overstimulated, we have too much going on and our mind gets easily overstimulated and this accumulates quickly. So in order for us to function well, we need rest to calm that back down, to process that when we look at Neuroscience, you can see really clearly where this comes from. Highly sensitive people process information more deeply and activate more brain regions when exposed to emotional or sensory stimuli. And research using the FMRI, studies like this, studies on FMRI show that highly sensitive people have heightened activity in areas like the insula, which is linked to empathy and self awareness, and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision making and reflection. This means that HSPs burn more mental and emotional energy during everyday interactions. We process things more deeply and we, as a result, use more energy. Even positive or neutral experiences can lead to overstimulation. And that means that making recovery time is essential for us. It's not optional. It's also important to play with the idea that downtime is laziness. It's a very common feeling. And of course there's a fine line where downtime can be lazy. But often for highly sensitive people, we're quite interested in a lot of things, we do a lot of things. But we may be judging downtime as, oh, that's again not productive or lazy. So for HSPs, downtime isn't disengagement, it's integration. It's where the brain actually processes and consolidates and makes meaning of what has been absorbed, what has been experienced. And without this space, HSPs are more prone to anxiety, irritability, foggy thinking, and emotional flooding. Inner work also reveals something about rest. And you know, my favorite way of doing inner work is the work of Byron Katie, which is a way of questioning thoughts. And there are thoughts like, I have to earn rest, or if I rest, I'm falling behind, or I'm being lazy, or I'm a failure or I screwed up, or there's something wrong with me. There can be many different kinds of thoughts around this, but if you question them, you may find that you shift your perspective on an experiential level. And that can make a big difference on how you view yourself when you do need rest. For example, if I question the thought I shouldn't have slept in, using that situation that where I did sleep in, and I really go through it and question it and sit with the emotions and be with that, I can start to see something else coming in and I start to see how much that affects me. And if I turn it around, I can find I should have slept in, it's like actually a good thing. Maybe I needed that, maybe that was the right balance for me. Or I can play with opposites, like I should have gone to bed earlier, right, and, and cut it on that side. So when you do your work, when you do your inner work, you often can see ways to find the balance between rest and being productive, between creativity and being balanced. And so if you can look for that, if you can find that, you may be able to create a life for yourself that has more balance in it. If generally you're tired a lot, then how is it that you may be doing more than you actually have to do? Maybe there's something you can cut, maybe you can go to bed earlier. Maybe there's a way that you could build more rest into your routine. One of the deepest forms of rest that I practice regularly is meditation. And there are many kinds of meditations, and they have this ability of giving an experience of depth of rest. I in particular, I use TM because it's been shown to give two times as deep a rest as deep sleep. Like when you look at oxygen consumption during meditation, it's 16% lower than waking state, whereas sleep is only 8% lower. And there's lower heart rate, lower breath rate, and there's like more brainwave coherence. So this is like a restful kind of alertness. It's a special kind of rest. So meditation is a tool that you can build into your day that can give you a little reset at different times in addition to regular sleep. So we need to reframe rest. We need to shift the story a little bit. Instead of rest being something that we try to fit around the edges. Rest is a form of nourishment. It's not just a nice to have thing. It's what you need to do to sustain your gifts as a sensitive, perceptive, and attuned human being. If you're not rested, all those subtle abilities become clouded. Your very strengths as a highly sensitive person become clouded, and they're replaced with the experience of stress. And that's no fun for you or for others. So rest is essential. It's not a reward. It's how I stay aligned with myself and offer my best to others. As highly sensitive people, we may need some permission to value stillness as a part of our strategy for life, instead of just trying to fit it in or feeling ashamed that we need more hours of sleep than other people. And I want to end by talking about language, how to communicate your need for downtime without guilt. Here are some possible things you can say that may give you ideas of how you can talk to others when you need extra rest. For example, I just need some quiet time to reset before I re engage. Or I've had a lot of input today I'm going to take some time to decompress or I'm stepping away for a bit to clear my head and come back fresh. Or maybe it's in a work context like your job and you may say something like to stay focused and do my best work, I build in short, recharge windows. I'll check back in after that, or I'm offline for a bit to regroup. That helps me stay on top of things sustainably. Or I'm taking some headspace time now so I don't run on empty later. And these, I love these because they give kind of show people why you're doing it. And it's not that you're justifying it, but it's actually a benefit to them because they want you at the top of your game. Presumably as well, you may find in more heart centered situations you can use thoughts like this or sayings like this. I want to be present when we connect, so I'm giving myself a little space to unwind first. Or I've learned that I'm more grounded and available when I've had a pause. I'm honoring that today. Or it means a lot to me to show up well and I found rest is part of how I do that. And you can continue on and on. You know, I've realized my system works a little differently. I need downtime to digest big conversations or full days. Or I've started protecting my recharge time because it actually makes me more connected and present afterwards. Any of these can give ideas of ways you can communicate that need for rest so that others can understand it and so that you can take it. In this episode we looked at how a missed morning routine spiraled into shame and why HSPs are so vulnerable to self criticism around rest. Partly it's because we need more than other people and so we start to judge ourselves. We also looked at what neuroscience and inner work reveal about the true role of downtime in an HSP's well being. And the true role is that it's not just a nice to have, it's a necessity. It's where we digest our experiences. So we have experiences, then we need time to digest them. Just like when we eat something, we need time to digest it. And we looked at practical, empowering ways to ask for your rest. Ask for the rest that you need without guilt over explaining or feeling like a burden. So what I'm left with today is the feeling that rest is what fuels your gifts as a highly sensitive person. Rest is the basis of how we can be our best self. And when we are our best self, we have the most to give to others and we get to enjoy being who we are. So thank you for listening. It's always great to explore with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person. In this episode we looked at how a missed morning routine spiraled into shame and why HSPs are so vulnerable to self criticism around rest. Partly it's because we need more than other people and so we start to judge ourselves. We also looked at what neuroscience and inner work reveal about the true role of downtime in an HSP's well being. And the true role is that it's not just a nice to have, it's a necessity. It's where we digest our experiences. So we have experiences, then we need time to digest them. Just like when we eat something, we need time to digest it. And we looked at practical, empowering ways to Ask for your rest. Ask for the rest that you need without guilt over explaining or feeling like a burden. So what I'm left with today is the feeling that rest is what fuels your gifts as a highly sensitive person. Rest is the basis of how we can be our best self. And when we are our best self, we have the most to give to others and we get to enjoy being who we are. So thank you for listening. It's always great to explore with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person. 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 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.