← 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
#259 | The Hidden Reason Stress Feels So Hard as an HSP and the 3 Pillars That Finally Help You Manage It
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Do you ever feel like your sensitivity is a burden—one that amplifies stress and leads to overwhelm? If you're a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), you’re not broken—you’re deeply perceptive. This episode unpacks why sensitivity isn’t a flaw,...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll discover how to stop treating your sensitivity like a problem and use the three pillars of stress management to create more clarity, calm and strength. 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 the hidden reason HSPs experience stress more intensely than others, and why it's not a weakness, how to finally understand your sensitivity as a strength instead of a liability, and the three pillars of stress management that help highly sensitive people prevent burnout and thrive. This is an edition of Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom. Most people assume stress is about too much to do, but for highly sensitive people, it's more about how your system processes every single piece of input. Not just workload, but it's what you naturally do as a highly sensitive person. In processing everything, that means the job itself. It means multiple pieces of a job, the interactions between those pieces, the sensory stimulation in the environment where you're working or where you're living. It involves emotional energy between people and any kinds of shifts like in the environment, little subtle changes that are something that you may be noticing and processing, and even your own conscientiousness, which is a natural part of being a highly sensitive person and can even have little overtones of perfectionism as well. So all of these things are aspects of the environment, of the job, of the situation that may not be on the to do list, but your mind as a highly sensitive person is taking those and it's processing them, it's working them out, it's optimizing, it's trying to find a way to do the job in the most effective way on many, many, many different levels at once. So this is a major advantage in many ways because we're able to produce things and to do things in a. In a very amazing way. Sometimes we can awe people with what we can produce because. Because of our attention to so many different layers in a situation. But when it comes to stress, it's not necessarily the task itself, it's how much you're doing underneath. Like, how deeply are you processing everything you're doing? HSPs don't just deal with stress externally. They process it deeply, internally, and at every layer and that means that even small amounts of external stress can feel much bigger and the stress can accumulate much faster. And it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means that your threshold for stress is different. Given a small amount of tasks, a highly sensitive person may experience a significant amount of stress because of all that's going on underneath the surface. So let's look at this sensitivity as a strength, not as a liability, as something that is valuable. Sensitivity is a survival strategy in nature. It's not a flaw. There have been over a hundred species that they've looked at in nature that show sensory processing sensitivity. And this trait evolved in nature for a reason, because it allows for deep observation, nuanced perception, and thoughtful decision making as opposed to impulsive reactivity. So sensitivity means that I notice more, feel more, and reflect more. And that helps me navigate life wisely. It also helps others in society when there are some of us who are able to reflect more deeply. Also, depth of processing, which is a key trait of being a highly sensitive person, allows you to connect dots that others miss. HSPs often are the ones who anticipate problems. They come up with creative insights or bring emotional depth to learn dynamics or relationships or decisions. And this is something that is a gift to any group that a highly sensitive person is a part of. So others may see the surface, but highly sensitive people tend to see the layers underneath. It's just our nature. As a result, because of all the layers that we see, we have more to process, and so stress builds up more quickly. We have to limit how far we go or how much time we spend in a particular direction because we need to come back and regroup and find some balance just through rest. Also, highly sensitive people feel more because we care more. It's. It's a form of moral depth, if you will. Like, we don't just sense what's happening, we care about it. And that care leads to compassion and ethical awareness and emotional intelligence. And so sometimes people can say, oh, you're just being codependent or something. But not all emotional connection or caring is codependency. And it's easy to just kind of say, oh, no, you're, there's something wrong with you. No, some of the caring is actually a very healthy thing and a very valuable thing. And so it's important to not judge that as a weakness, but as something that is an asset, something that brings value to relationships and can actually be an amazing support and even transformation inside of relationships. Also, your empathy as a highly sensitive Person makes others feel safe and seen. And so sensitivity to tone, to facial expressions, to unspoken emotions, all these things create a deep trust in relationships. As a highly sensitive person, you tend to bring presence and attunement and support to many people. And so we live in a world that rewards loudness. But healing often comes from stillness. Connection comes in stillness, and beauty comes in stillness. And finally, being overwhelmed doesn't mean that you're incapable. It just means that you're absorbing more input than other people and you're processing all of that. And so you just need more time to process it, to completely deal with all of the information that you're processing. And in that way, give yourself time to rest, to come out of it. So overwhelm is not a character flaw. It's just a cue to return to balance. And this is, this is why I created something called the three pillars of stress management for highly sensitive people. When I thought about it, there's many aspects to creating balance in anyone who's dealing with stress. And for highly sensitive people, I found that there are three main areas that are necessary to create balance. The first one is understanding yourself. And that's kind of what we've been talking about a little bit already, is that being hsp, being sensitive is not a weakness, it's a result of a depth of processing. There's a natural empathy, and there's just a natural heightened sensory ability. So when you understand yourself, that in itself can be healing. I had a client who had been thinking there was something wrong with her her whole life. And in just one hour, she understood that sensitivity is her nature and that nothing needs to be changed. She's not broken, and that she's wired for depth. And I remember the experience, she was so relieved, she was in tears. And just from understanding this, it changed her life, changed the way she experienced herself, saw herself. And so understanding yourself, don't underestimate the power of understanding yourself. And also we tend to think, oh yeah, I'm an hsp. I already know that there are many layers to understanding yourself as an hsp, you may understand, okay, yeah, I need more downtime. Like that's a great first step or I process things a little more. Okay, good to understand. But if you go deeper into it, you'll find that your self compassion will grow as you understand the nuances of what it means to be a highly sensitive person. For example, just understanding that the capacity of depth, for depth as a highly sensitive person means that you may process events long after they occur. And this is normal and this is good. And the, the drops of nectar wisdom that come out of that processing can be amazing. And so instead of like trying to shut down our processing or, or cut it off somehow or push it away, this is something that can serve us and serve others if we allow it to actually do what it's meant to do. There's a great analogy. The researchers that studied HSP had, I think they came up with this analogy. I've heard it from them. There was a paper written on it. They likened HSPs to orchids. And orchids are kind of a delicate flower. They don't do well in harsh conditions, but they do extremely well when they are supported, have the right amount of watering, right amount of light. So they're a delicate kind of flower. In contrast, dandelions can grow anywhere with almost any kind of situation, soil, light, everything. But they are not as complex, not as nuanced. And so there's just a different type of physiology. Some are delicate, some are sensitive, some are resilient, very strong, robust. And there's room in this world for both kinds of flowers, if you will. So this is understanding yourself. I think equally important are lifestyle adjustments. This is the second pillar of stress management for highly sensitive people. First of all, we need less input, we need intentional rest, we need recovery time, and we need to manage that and put that into our lives so that we have buffers, so that we can come back to balance whenever overwhelm comes in. This means that we may have to change our relationship with time, with our scheduling, with food, with media, with work, with exercise and with people relationships. We may need to prioritize beauty as a necessity for well being, not just a nice to have thing. We may need to balance our consumption of world news and social media with self protection and self care and quiet time. We may need to choose depth over quantity in social interactions, going deeper with a few friends instead of trying to be too much to too many people. Or we may need to learn to say no with kindness and without guilt. This is such an important skill to be able to say no without guilt and to do it with kindness. This means listening to myself and also using that skill of compassion to find ways of expressing that that are genuinely kind and inclusive. We may need to shift from high output to meaningful impact as a metric for success. In other words, why try to do tons and tons and tons instead of just doing what's most important and doing that really well? We may need to limit caffeine and sugar and alcohol, which can dysregulate sensitivity and we may need to prioritize regular adequate sleep and wind down routines. Even just the way our routines are. Like daily and weekly rhythms are important for highly sensitive people. Instead of tons of variety, which can make the mind keep thinking about what's the best way to do something and leave it in the space of decision making instead of being in a space of just acting and following the simple routine. So there are lots of lifestyle changes that can help. And this brings us to the third pillar of stress management, which is inner work and spiritual development. This is extremely helpful. It's something that's dear to my heart. I've always been into spiritual development. I learned to meditate when I was six and I've meditated my whole life. And I've learned ways of doing inner work in my adult life that have served me very well. Deeper work helps you unhook from shame, from perfectionism, from needing approval. It allows you to see through things and keep the broadest perspective. Meditation allows you to have deep rest so that you can heal some of the lighter stresses that come up during the day, as well as the deeper stresses that may be in there from a long, long time. And inner work or self inquiry is a way to train your system to, to process negative emotions completely. If processing is something that we do, why not do it completely? Why not completely process a negative emotion so that it's no longer a negative thing? That's powerful. And when highly sensitive people learn how to do that, then they become way more resilient. There's actually the capacity in highly sensitive people to be even more resilient than people who don't have this trait. And that's because of our ability to go deeply. If you really can get to the root of it, if you can pull the weed out by the root, it doesn't come back. And that's an amazing thing. And even in this area of spiritual development, the idea of finding a higher purpose and devoting yourself to something selfless, service to something bigger than yourself, a cause or something that you believe in, or something that brings you and others joy, all these things can help to reduce stress for highly sensitive people. The cool thing about spiritual development and inner work is that it goes beyond just lifestyle change. It's not dependent on you having a good balance, everything. You can't always stay balanced. You can't always be in the place where you'd love to be, ideally with your routine or with your. The way you're taking care of yourself. But with spiritual development, you can still stay free on the inside. No matter what's going on, even if you're on your deathbed, if you are really awake and clear and detached in a way, life can be falling apart around you and you're still okay. So the feeling I'm left with in discussing all this with you today is there's kind of an owner's manual for being a highly sensitive person. There are ways to care for ourselves as highly sensitive people, and it's just a matter of learning what those are, learning how specifically to balance our systems and so we can function optimally. In this episode we looked at the hidden reason HSPs experience stress more intensely than others and why it's not a weakness. And we saw that it was depth of processing. We take in a lot of things and we process them very deeply. And that means that there's more of a workload for us in the world than others. And as a result, we have to stay balanced by stepping out of the world from time to time to keep the balance of ourselves. We also looked at how to finally understand your sensitivity as a strength instead of a liability. And it comes with all kinds of values and it is something that we bring a gift to the world. We offer something that others miss. We're able to see depth and offer caring in ways that is unique to us. And finally, we looked at the three pillars for stress management for highly sensitive people to help prevent burnout and to help us to thrive. And those are first of all, understanding the trait, understanding ourselves so that we can find self compassion, and secondly, by making lifestyle changes to create balance for ourselves and then finally, spiritual development and inner work to find true inner freedom. Thanks for listening. It's fun to explore being a highly sensitive person with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Join me next time for Self Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. 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.