← 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
#265 | Why HSPs Get So Stressed In Emotionally Demanding Situations & How To Get The Space You Need
00:15:01
Is your peace being quietly hijacked by subtle stress triggers? Highly sensitive people often find themselves overwhelmed by seemingly small moments—like a simple question asked at the wrong time. In this heartfelt episode, Todd shares a personal...
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Todd Smith
By the end of this episode, you'll discover how to recognize when your personal space has been crowded and find your way back to peace. 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 a personal story of overwhelm after my father's death and why it stayed with me, why HSPs feel especially stressed when their space is invaded, even in subtle ways, and how inner work helped me find peace from within and meet future moments with more clarity and strength. 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 like to pay attention to stress when it shows up for me because I know from experience that I always learn something. And I also like to pay attention to it because it's calling out to me. Something needs attention, and a part of me can't let go of something. There's somewhere I'm stuck, and the stress is letting me know that. So when I look at the recent passing of my father and I look at the different areas that showed up for me, sometimes it's a small thing, seems like a very small thing that was getting me looping, making me stressed. And so even though I had a good experience with my father, I think the whole thing was accepted. I feel. I feel a lot of love. It's not acute grief, but yet there was a moment after he died and the undertakers came to take his body where there was just a little moment in that exchange that I. I kept flashing back on, kept going to it. My mind wouldn't let go of it. And so this became a doorway for me to go in and do some inner work. And that's what I want to share with you today. So when my dad died, he died at home. It was peaceful. He had a peaceful expression on his face. It was really almost magical. We had like kind of a half smile on his face, and we were all really enjoying that. And when the undertaker came and they put him on the stretcher to take him away, one of the undertakers asked me if they should take the pillow along with it. And of course, I'm not used to taking dead bodies away, so I was like, well, why would you want to take the pillow? Of course not. Well, we'll keep the pillow. But I said no very quickly. Basically I just acted and seemed like it made sense to me, but I realized quickly that there was something more that the undertaker was thinking about and that I wasn't fully, you know, aware of myself. And so then I started feeling this little trap where I'd already committed and I'd said no pretty emphatically, like, oh no. I was just very clear about it and I may be trying to be decisive, I don't know. And, and then I couldn't really backtrack. I got to stuck in this place where I wasn't really able to say, well, what did you mean? And, and, or I changed my mind. Like those were not options on the table. And so I just watched as what seemed to be kind of what she was pointing at started to happen. And that is his head wasn't supported on the stretcher. And I knew that probably it's, it's probably going to change the expression on his face and it's probably going to just, you know, not look as good later. And so this, but this caught me, right? It just caught me and I was stuck in that. And what I noticed is that my mind kept going back to it as I mentioned. And then later when I went to, to the crematorium to have his body cremated, I could see that his, his head, his face had expression has changed and it was just not as peaceful looking. And that mem memory is like the last memory I have of my dad's face. And so it started really sticking and started. I started really getting caught on that. And so this is an example of how a moment which seems very small can, can attach, like, can get the mind caught for a long time and needs processing. So I want to mention why this kind of thing happens with HSPs. In this particular case, the thing I'd like to focus on is the, the feeling that I had, which was, I don't think in reality what was happening, but the feeling that I had was that I was under pressure, that this undertaker was asking me a question and I should have a quick answer, I should know exactly how to answer. Like, I've done this a hundred times before. And so this kind of situation where it almost feels like your space is being invaded even by a question, sounds strange probably to most people. But as HSPs, this can be a very real thing where just a simple direct question can make you freeze because. Well, let's look at why. Because HSPs process things deeply and we need time to do It. And so what happens is we often don't ask for the time to do it. And we feel like we've been pushed a little bit and we feel like, caught, like there's nothing we can do. And then we go into that, that response of just trying to manage perception or trying to look good or trying to be nice or just somehow fading off into the distance. And so. But this is something that happens to hsps in general. In this case it was the undertaker asking me a question. In your case, it might be somebody just maybe asking you a question or doing something that just gets a little bit into your space and maybe puts a little bit of pressure, time pressure on you. When you're a slow processor, then you need time for that. And for me it's important to ask for that time and it's not always easy to do. Also, fast decisions can feel unsafe to HSPs because we feel like we have to come up with the right answer right away. And there are many factors involved in any decision. And so being aware of that can also help in wanting to ask for more time. Another thing that was a major factor in this situation was that my nervous system was already dealing with the loss of my father just happened that day. There was already some fatigue there from caring from him, some grief there. And the combination of that with the small demand that I was experiencing, just this, this question with the need to say something quickly was enough to overwhelm me. It didn't take as much to overwhelm me. So as HSPs we can get stressed by space demands being like our space being impinged on when we're tired or overwhelmed already or already dealing with a lot. The other thing that can happen, and I think this happened to me, was getting into the other person's business a little bit, feeling like I needed to, in this case, look good to the other person. I wanted them to think well of me. And that is something that we HSPs can fall into. It's not something that we have to fall into, but it can happen and it can make it even more complicated. We tend to think about everyone in the room and how what we do affects them. And then finally, another HSP trait that lined up here and made the perfect storm for me is that trait of reflecting and processing over time. And so I can continued, continued to reflect deeply on this moment. And it just became bigger and bigger in my mind until I did some work. So the key here is to learn how to recognize this and then to step in and break this vicious cycle of seeing something, dwelling on it, and then it becoming more and then more and then going around in a circle. And the way I did that was to, first of all look at what started the feeling of stress for me. What was it about that situation that that got to me? And I often find we look at ourselves first. We look at our, you know, we tend to blame ourselves or judge ourselves, but often what's really starting things is what something someone else is doing, what I think someone else is doing. And if you can get honest enough to find that, it can really get to the core of what was causing the stress. So in this case, I looked at what this undertaker had done to me, quote unquote. And my feeling was that she didn't give me time to think things through. And that was the offense. That was what locked me into having to come up with this quick decision and having to, you know, and then not being able to back out of it. So if you can identify that, that's already 50% of it right there. If you can identify what it is you think started this for you, who did something to you, what did something to you, what is causing you to feel this, this tension, then that's a great start. And then the next part of it is to actually question the thought itself. You know, she didn't give me time to think things. True. Is that really true? And I use the work of Byron, Katie, which is four questions and turnarounds. It's a great way to question a stressful thought and find a different way of looking at it. And so I saw that when I believed that thought, it made me act as if I had to be really decisive and really quick. And it made me defensive and it made me dependent on her to have done things differently. Problem is, she already did it. It's done, it's in the past. But when you get stuck on that, you're thinking that they should change in the past in order to. For me to be okay. And so that's an impossible. Where it turned around to is I don't need her to give me time to think things through. I need to give myself time to think things through. And it's obvious from a intellectual point of view, but from an emotional point of view, which is where I'm doing this inner work, I started to discover that I did have a choice. I could ask for time and say, hey, what do you mean by that? Or why do you ask? Or is this important? Or is there anything I should consider, like asking the expert instead of trying to be the expert myself. And so when I saw that I didn't give myself time to think things through, it brought me out of the victim mode and feeling like I was a victim of her not giving me space and put me back into my own power and realizing that there were a lot of options. Now, of course, that situation is passed. It's done. There's nothing I can do about it. But just seeing it that way, seeing that I did have options and seeing that those possibilities were there and that they could be used in the future, gives me a lot of feeling of empowerment. And that breaks the cycle of me being a victim and wishing that they had done it differently so that I didn't have to go through this and wishing I had done things differently. Like, this whole goes into a big circle. If you find that you actually had power and that next time you could use that. And now you've learned from this experience, it suddenly is like, wow, thank you. This is a really cool experience for me to have and it gives me options in the future. So the feeling I'm left with today is that it's never too late to find options, and that finding the options, even after the fact, is actually empowering. In this episode, we looked at a personal story of overwhelm after my father's death and why it stayed with me. We looked at why HSPs feel especially stressed when their space is invaded, even in subtle ways, even just by a question. And that is because we process things differently or deeply, and we need more time to do that, and so we need to ask for that time. And finally, we looked at how inner work helped me find peace from within and to meet future moments with more clarity and strength by seeing that I was more in the driver's seat than I thought. So thanks for listening. It's fun to share with you and 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@TrueInnerfreedom.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, Sam.