← 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
#255 | 2 Ways to Bring More Joy, More Calm, and Less Burnout Into Your Life as a Highly Sensitive Person
00:19:29
Are you a highly sensitive person struggling to make time for what truly matters—without burning out? If you're an HSP who often finds yourself overwhelmed, disconnected from your passions, or consumed by the demands of others, this episode offers a...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll discover two time management shifts that can help you protect your energy, lower overwhelm, and finally make space for what you actually want to do. 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 the hidden reasons why HSPs abandon what lights them up and how to gently return to it. Two time management strategies that protect your energy and rekindle joy, and how choosing the right rhythm for the task can help you stay inspired, grounded and burnout free. 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. In this episode, you'll discover the hidden reasons why HSPs abandon what lights them up and how to gently return to it. Two time management strategies that protect your energy and rekindle joy, and how choosing the right rhythm for the task can help you stay inspired, grounded and burnout free. 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, it is challenging for all of us human beings to do what we love. And as highly sensitive people, we have some extra special challenges that come in and I want to look at those today. One of the issues that can come up for anyone but is a little bit exaggerated or can be with highly sensitive people is the desire for approval from others. So if someone else isn't interested in what I'm doing, then I may abandon what I'm doing. This is actually putting the other person first and kind of discrediting my own desire, even though I'm aware of it on the inside. This is not actually a part of being a highly sensitive person. This is an overlay of thinking that can be kind of a trap for us, but we can fall into that easily because we are naturally so empathetic as highly sensitive people. So that's one thing that can get in the way. Another is that we are interested as highly sensitive people by nature in subtle long term projects and things that actually take a lot of patience and tenacity to fulfill. We tend to go for depth. That's our nature. We like things that are interesting over a long period that have subtleties to them. And so this requires a lot of support, a lot of continuous effort over a long period of time in order to actually arrive at the goal that you are holding. And then another issue that can come in for highly sensitive people is that we can end up getting distracted, even against our own best wishes, and lose momentum when overwhelm hits because we have a easier time, like a quicker. We reach overwhelm quicker than other people given the same amount of stimuli. That means that we can end up getting into that place of not feeling focused, not feeling interested, and getting stressed in the moment of when we're trying to do something long term. So this happens to everyone, but for highly sensitive people, it tends to happen a little quicker. And that can also be a distraction for us doing what we actually want to do. The advantage, on the other hand, is that as highly sensitive people, we are very conscientious and we are able to hold long term goals. We see the big picture, we are tenacious actually, and we are interested in the depth that long term practice can give. So in a lot of ways we have advantages that match the challenges that we face. So one of the most important things I find for coming back to what lights me up and for making sure that I'm going in a direction that I want to be going on, going in, and I'm actually continuing to stay on that path, is to check in with myself. And for me, this means that I need to be alone and I need to be unpressured. And in that time or space, or it might take several days or longer, I am checking in, asking myself like, what is it that I really want? What is it that I'm interested in? What's the direction I would like to go? This is like stepping back and asking a deeper part of myself, why am I here? What am I doing? What is my interest? And this gives me, begins to give me access to a bigger picture of what actually interests me and what actually is something that I want to pursue, something I want to bring from within, out into the world. What we're doing here is by introducing the big picture, we start to find some clarity. The problem is we get lost in the parts. We all do. And the big picture gets lost because the parts are very compelling. They're usually. We're often reacting to things or we're just getting distracted by whatever those details are. But if you can take some time to come back to yourself and ask yourself, what is the big picture? What is my interest? How do I want to live? What is important to me? It can give you clarity so that you can begin to move into fulfilling that and actually creating what you want. So this brings me to a little bit of time management. And these are some strategies that you can use to actually execute the plan or the desire that you've identified when you've stepped back and given yourself time to think about it. Basically what has to happen is we have to carve out some time in our lives for what is important to us. And if we don't, then life will just fill it with all the things that are not as important to us. And while that's fine, it's not nothing wrong with that. There's something special about carving out time for yourself in doing things that are actually meaningful and beautiful to you. It's a form of self expression. And for me, it's something that gives me joy and through me can give joy to other people. And so it's a gift to the world, it's a gift to ourselves. And carving out time for that, for me is important. So 2. There are two distinct time management approaches that I like to use when I'm trying to fulfill some inner desire, something that I want to express and bring out into the world. One is a kind of daily drip and the other is a more intensive immersion. The daily drip means finding a spot in your daily routine that allows for you to do this particular thing. For me, when I started studying French, I spent 15 minutes a day and that was my little time for French. Or when I, because meditation is something that I really value, then I have time in the morning and I have time in the evening for meditating. And that's like a part of my day that is built in and I made that something that I want to do on a regular basis, on a daily basis. A variation of this is a weekly kind of drip, or twice a week or once a month. There's kind of different variations, but the same idea is there's a regular routine. The advantage of this is when you are doing something regularly, the time slots, the way I like to think of it, the time slots kind of go together. So I had one 15 minute session today and I have a 15 minute session tomorrow and then I have another 15 minute session the day after that. Internally, inside of those 15 minute sessions, when you string them all together, there's an infinite amount of time. And I love that feeling like, oh, I don't have pressure, I don't have to do anything to like on it. There's no deadline. I just keep stringing these 15 minute moments together and suddenly I have all the time in the world. And that's how I learned French. Took me a number of years, but I speak not too badly for never having gone and immersed myself in, like, in another country where they spoke French. But that brings us to a second approach, which is intensive immersion. And that is also super valuable. It has its advantages. It means that in that immersed time, you can go all out, and that can be very satisfying. And it also can allow you to very quickly build a lot of skills or make a lot of progress in the direction that you want to go. So, for example, if you're writing a book, if you took a month and were just writing that book, or even just a week, it could be. It could be amazing. On the other hand, you can get caught in an immersive experience and may end up like, oh, my gosh, I've got a month of writer's block. That. That also doesn't work. So these two things, the daily drip version and the intensive immersion, can be used in conjunction with each other. They can complement each other so that you can maybe be starting to make some progress. And then now I want to do an intensive and really see if I can go faster with that. So what are the types of. Of exercises or interests that apply to these different types of time management? For example, if you're learning a musical instrument, would you rather do a daily drip or would you rather do a more intensive immersion? Well, there's some advantages to an intensive immersion. You can make a lot of progress quickly, but if you stop, then it only goes so far. So my leanings would be to be more doing the daily kind of practice, and that's what you usually find with that kind of learning. Same with learning a language. It's a little bit of a daily thing that makes the big difference. Same thing with inner work. If I'm doing a little bit of inner work every day, I'm staying ahead of my stress, and I'm digesting my experiences. And through that, my stress is not building up as much. And when big things happen that stress me out, I'm already. I already have a practice. I already have a way of digesting those experiences as they come up. However, there can be a lot of value in going on a retreat, for example, where you immerse yourself for a whole week or a weekend, and just each step of exploration leads to another layer of exploration. And with time, you may uncover some really deep things and make a lot of progress as well. So, again, sometimes there's advantages to both approaches. Same with meditation. I love to meditate Daily. I remember when I was growing up, my. My dad got me into meditation. I was about 6 when I learned. And my dad and I used to have a routine every day after school. When he came home, I guess it was a little later, before dinner, we would do a little bit of yoga together, and we'd light a stick of incense and we would sit down and meditate together. And it was the sweetest experience. Like, I have such fond memories of those meditations with my dad. And meditation has been something we've shared a passion for our whole lives. And I. I just love that, that feeling of doing something on a daily basis. It's how it's one of the ways we connect it. But there's also value in going in, going on a meditation retreat. And I actually lived in an ashram for a number of years, and I was just really focused on meditation. Doing it for many hours a day, and that was also amazing. Or just going for a weekend here and there can super deepen your experience in meditation. Being around are also practicing, learning from others can be a very powerful process. So you get the idea. There's a little bit of value to each approach, and it's something that you can play with. It takes a little bit more discipline to do the Daily Drip because interruptions will come and things will try to get in the way. The intensive immersion allows you to just turn everything else off, go focus on one thing, and then come back to, you know, crazy life. I think another thing that is important to look at here is that time is limited. And no matter how I approach it, I'm never going to be able to do it perfectly. I'm never going to be able to perfectly reach my goals. Because goals, even goals are kind of. They're kind of nebulous. There's always levels of goals. You can go further and further and further, and there's always something beyond that. So accepting a certain limitation there, I think is super helpful for stress. It's like, what can I be satisfied with? And also choosing which things I'm going to go more deeply into and which things I'm going to leave as sort of peripheral interests that are not going to be where I spend all my time and just accepting that I'm never going to be that great at those things, but they still interest me. Another couple tips for doing the Daily Drip kind of approach is to connect any new habit with another solid routine, something that's already established. Like breakfast, you know, okay, I'm gonna meditate right before breakfast. And it fits in or I'm going to work out right after work and it just fits in. So you can have these solid, established parts of routine that support any new routines that come up. And then finally doing it with other people is a huge benefit. It just brings an extra level of fun to it, an extra level of accountability to it. And if you want to go further, having a coach or a mentor to help keep you inspired and keep you learning and then keep you showing up can also be super helpful. And finally, when inconsistency comes in, just know that that's okay, that's the way it is. And check back with your big picture. Check back with your interest again. Get in touch with the feeling of why you were wanting to do this in the first place. Gain some clarity and roll with the punches. Because there is no way to do it perfectly and inconsistency is also part of it. What is it? The exception proves the rule. So the feeling I'm left with today is that you are the creator of your own world. And I love this feeling because our worlds internally are beautiful. There's a lot of creativity inside of us and there's a lot of interest, there's a lot of spark, there's a lot of love. All of these things are within us and to bring those out into the world is an extremely beautiful thing. In this episode, we looked at the hidden reasons HSPs abandoned, what lights them up, and how to gently return to it. We looked at two time management strategies that protect your energy and rekindle your joy. And we saw that not only do we need to go back and find out what it is that we're interested in, find clarity and give ourselves space to find what that is inside of ourselves. But we can use a daily drip strategy or an intensive immersion strategy to make progress towards those goals. And then finally, we looked at how choosing the right rhythm for the task can help you stay inspired, grounded and burnout free. And that means listening to what you're interested in and fitting it into a schedule that works for you and not being too rigid about it. So thanks for listening. It's always great to explore these ideas with you. 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 towards inner freedom. Tired of feeling overwhelmed by everything all at once? Take the HSP stress test@trueinnerfreedom.com youm'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. Sam.