← 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
#262 | How I Finally Fit Exercise Into My Life as an HSP Without Triggering Overwhelm & How You Can Too
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Are you too tired or overwhelmed to exercise—but secretly wish you could move more? For highly sensitive people, even the idea of adding exercise to an already overstimulated day can feel impossible. But what if movement could feel nourishing...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll discover how one small shift helped me bring movement back into my life as a highly sensitive person without tipping into overwhelm or exhaustion. 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 feeling too tired or busy to exercise is common for HSPs, and what to do about it, the shift that helped me fit movement into my full schedule and a low pressure way to return to exercise without burning out. 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. I love exercise. I love feeling good. I love feeling in shape, I love feeling strong. When I was younger, I was a swimmer and I used to love the exercise of it, the quiet of it, the kind of almost meditative quality of that particular exercise. And I just loved feeling good in my body. I've had a lot of ups and downs with exercise over the years. When I lived in the ashram, I didn't do hardly any exercise. I walked a little, but that was about it. And I lost a lot of weight. And though I didn't really become weak, I didn't feel quite as strong as I had in the past. And then since then, I remember going back and forth about starting exercise, stopping it, trying to get it in there, and then it's not the highest priority and all these things that make it challenging. When I learned about being a highly sensitive person, I started to understand some of the other issues that were stopping me from exercise, which is one of them is just tiredness, like overwhelm. When you use your mind a lot, when you're tired, when you're processing things deeply, and when you're using your emotions, all the things that HSPs naturally do, then you may just feel like, ugh, I don't want to exercise. Like one more thing to do, one more stimulation to add to my already overstimulated day. So this is how I came into thinking that, okay, I don't know if I'm ever going to get really on the bandwagon with, with exercise. What kind of pushed me over the edge before COVID actually was I just kept looking at my weight. It was like so little. I tend to lose weight instead of gain weight, which for anyone who has that issue, it can be as full of shame as, as gaining weight for other people. And so I was just noticing my weight was getting super low and the only way that I can gain weight is by actually exercising, like building muscle. And so for a while I was doing exercises pretty regularly in the morning and that was great. And I actually gained a lot of weight. I gained about 15 pounds over about two or three years. And that was really cool, except I just started feeling like this time in the morning is not the greatest time for me. So I like to meditate in the morning. We also got a dog, which means that I'm going walking, which is a form of exercise. But it wasn't like the more bodybuilding kind of exercise that I wanted to do. So it's like there was just too many things going on. And I also don't find evenings as a great time for me because that's family time and it's just not as easily available. So this is how I started moving towards exercise again. And now I've actually come to a place where it's a part of my routine that's really working for me. First of all, I started thinking of exercise as a part of my job instead of a part of my recreation time. It's like part of my day, part of my work day. And so I started associating it now with my actual work. And I tried to fit it in there. And there were challenges there too, because the beginning of the day is a great time for doing things, middle of the day interrupts things, and I wasn't sure where I was going to fit it in. I also had some really good inspiration. And if you want to get the same inspiration, you can go to episode 192 where I interviewed Dr. Alan Rosansky. And he talked about the value of exercise in a way that I hadn't heard before, in a way that just somehow resonated and it got me inspired. Along with that, a friend's mother I Learned who's like 95, credits her exercise working with a trainer regularly as the reason why she can still drive a car at age 95 and just is super fit and also not showing any signs of dementia. So these things inspired me. But how do I fit it into my actual routine? One of the ideas I got from Dr. Rosansky was the idea of an exercise snack. And so I tried that and I started doing like five minutes, two minutes, one minute of just a little bit of exercise, a few push ups or a few body weight Exercises. And that was, that got the ball rolling a little bit. But what I really wanted was an ongoing routine because as HSPs, every time we have to make another decision, that's another time where we can add to our plate and we can lead to overwhelm, like trying to optimize the best way to do it. And so I wanted something that I didn't have to think about. So what I ended up landing on was making it the last thing I do at work. It's like the last thing I work at home. So it's kind of a non issue. But so last thing in my day, at the end of my work day and I started seeing it as actually a time for me to regenerate. It's actually, I started seeing it as, strangely enough, almost relaxation. And what I mean by that is all day I'm using my mind, I'm using my emotions, and I'm processing on that level. But now I'm thinking of exercise not so much as a, like a hard thing to do or something that I'm gonna, it's gonna use a lot of energy to do, but rather something that's gonna give me energy back. And it's something that is like a way of getting back in my body when I've been in my mind too much. And so now I see it as a balancing thing, like the end point of the day. And I also see it now as kind of a transition into meditation, because that's the next thing I do after work, is meditate. So this is like going from intellect, busyness, tasks to body, like actually working out and then meditation. And I'm just really enjoying this flow. There's time there. I actually cut my workday a little bit to fit it in. And I do it about three or four times a week. And it is really working for me. The feeling I have is that it's enlivening. I'm getting energy from the exercise rather than feeling tired by it. So let's look at why HSPs sometimes feel too tired or maybe too busy to exercise. And this is such a common thing for us, and what can we do about it? So the real reason you may feel tired is that we, as HSPs take in more from our environment, more from the sounds, the lights, the emotional cues, the subtle dynamics. We process it all. We take it in, we're aware of it and we process it. So this constant intake and reflection can drain the nervous system and can leave you feeling fatigued and kind of full. So if you Add in their social interactions. It can. It can actually really become a lot in a short amount of time. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you may think the last thing you want to do is move your body. But in my experience, moving my body is what can sometimes move you out of overwhelm. Now you can overdo it, and that's another thing. But there is a balance of some exercise to the inner processing that we're doing. And I find it to be extremely balancing. Also, busyness for an HSP is not just about the tasks that you're doing, but about the emotional things that are happening there, like anticipating other people's needs, replaying conversations, connecting on an emotional level. Those things also can create a load inside of us that has to be processed. So these are the kind of things that can make you feel tired and make you want to not exercise. But if you can reframe movement as replenishment instead of output, instead of using more energy, it's more like, how can I move in a way that gives me something back? And you may find that it doesn't have to be hard exercise. It can be something that works for you. Maybe it's just walking, getting out in nature is so balancing for highly sensitive people. Stretching, dancing, yoga, or some kind of strength exercise. So I find that it's not always the same. I like to have different kinds of exercise. Some are more restorative, some are more energizing, some are moderate. And I can pick at the end of the day, what do I feel like right now? Do I like to do something a more gentle exercise, or do I want to do something a little stronger? And for me, it's just a half hour. I'm not going for like a hour workout half hour. Sometimes it gets cut to 15 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes. I can go back to that exercise snack thing. If really worse comes to worse, I can always take one or two minutes and do a little bit of exercise. So it's matching your movement to your current capacity and also just listening to yourself and adjusting. Another thing that can help is associating your exercise with something that you find calming. Some people like to have calming music or some quieter lighting or some kind of scent or something like that that will begin to associate this as this is a replenishment time, not like something that's going to burn you out. Okay, so any. Some final thoughts to leave you with are the idea that you can start by asking yourself instead of pressuring yourself, like, would you like to. Would you like to get into an exercise routine. What would you like to do? Like have a conversation with yourself. This kind of permission based conversation can make a huge difference in the making something that will last over time. Because I know myself, if I push myself, then that part of me that got pushed is going to start rebelling at some point. And yeah, it all goes out the window. The other thing is bare minimum. Start with a bare minimum, like five minute. Add five minutes to the end of your day or something. Instead of adding 30 minutes, build up, do it gradually and get more in the habit of it than worrying about the particular gains of one particular day. And then finally, let joy lead you. Pay attention to the exercise. Notice how you feel while you're doing it, how you feel afterwards. When I've done that, I've been amazed to feel this energy coming in. They talk about endorphins. It's really true. There's a feeling of like aliveness that starts to come into my body and for me that's extremely grounding and extremely valuable as a highly sensitive person. So the feeling I'm left with today is that exercise is doable and it's replenishing. It's not something huge, it's not something that I have to make a big deal about, and it's not something that takes my energy. If I do it in the right way, it can actually give me energy. In this episode we looked at why feeling too tired or busy to exercise is common for HSPs and what to do about it. And we saw that it's because we process so much and what we can do about it is begin to use exercise as a way of balancing that. We also looked at the shift that helped me fit movement into my full schedule, and there were actually a number of little shifts that all contributed. But the overall feeling that changed it for me was the idea that doing exercise was the way to end my day, the way to bring me back into my body rather than just move straight from my busy day into my meditation time. And finally, we looked at a low pressure way to return to exercise without burning out. And there are several pieces to this. But mainly the idea is to take it slow, do what is doable, listen to yourself and have different options available within the time. That works for you. So thanks for listening. It's great to talk about exercise with you. I think it's something because we focus on mind and emotions so much, it's sometimes easy to forget that body is such a great way to bring balance to ourselves. 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 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.