← 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
#277 | Why Work-Life Balance Is Essential for HSPs, and How to Find Your Unique Sweet Spot to Reduce Overwhelm
00:16:37
Are You Chasing Balance or Just Burning Out Trying? If you're a highly sensitive person constantly striving for the perfect work-life balance, you might be chasing a mirage—and adding to your stress without realizing it. This episode unpacks why the...
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover the missing element that no one talks about when it comes to work life balance as a highly sensitive person 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 how to find your unique work life balance sweet spot As a highly sensitive person, why chasing an ideal version of balance may be what's keeping you stuck, and how to loosen rigid ideas of balance so you can find what truly works for you. 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. If you know me, you know that one of my favorite words or concepts is the idea of balance. Balance is something that I love, I strive towards. It's something that supports me in everything that I do. And I think it's probably a common thing for highly sensitive people to like this particular idea because we love harmony, we love for things to work together. And I kind of think on the deepest level, the biggest truths in life are a balance of opposites. And so it's easy to kind of get stuck on one side or the other. But when you look at how those two opposites interact and how they can actually come together, I find that's where the true wisdom can be found and the true depth of life can be found and the truest truths can be found. So when we look at the idea of balance in life in terms of work life balance, or trying to integrate these opposites of doing for others and doing for ourselves, it can be interesting to think about and it can be challenging. Definitely. The trick to understanding balance for highly sensitive people is that we have a different sweet spot than other people. We, because of our depth of processing, we get overwhelmed more quickly. And because of that we need more recovery time and we need to have things done in smaller batches or have a little more rest time built into our routine. This is just our natural way. We can get overwhelmed quickly, whereas other people can build up quite a lot of imbalance before it becomes an experience of overwhelm. I like to say that we don't have much of a buffer as HSPs, and that's a good thing because we are sensitive to things that others can't sense. But where's the balance. So the first thing in understanding how to navigate work life balance is understanding that if you're an hsp, if you're a highly sensitive person, then your balance level is probably going to be very different from other people's. And so if you're comparing yourself and we all do this naturally, then you're going to be misled a little bit. You have to look to yourself as to where is the balance point for you. And this comes down to very practical things. You know, am I getting enough sleep for me? And so who cares that the national average is a certain amount of hours of sleep? Are you getting enough sleep for you? This is an important question. And you can tell if you're getting enough sleep if you wake up in the morning and you feel refreshed. And so of course, there are many factors that go into this, but at least are you getting enough time on the bed and are you getting enough nutrition in your meals? Are you having hot meals regularly? Are you getting all the things you need, protein and all the different elements of a balanced meal? This is an important factor in terms of balance. Are you getting enough exercise? Are you getting enough quiet time? Are you having time for meditation, alone time, time in nature, time for creativity or hobbies? And do you have enough boundaries around your job, around your work? This can be especially hard if you're, you know, for example, a mother at home with a newborn or something like, where is the boundary of your work? It could be 24, 7, or if you're working for a company that just likes to work people to the max, and there just doesn't seem to be a boundary. So most of us, as highly sensitive people, don't gravitate to situations where we are pushed to the limit because we break down. You know, it's a kind of a perfect setup in a way. We just can't tolerate certain kinds of situations. But there are always ways of tweaking any situation. And it's really important to pay attention to both the quantity of work that you're doing and the quality that you're doing, because hours is one thing, but if your job is super intense, that's also going to drain you and it's going to make it harder to keep a work life balanced. If you're multitasking consistently at work, it's going to be draining you more as well. So these are things to look at on a practical level of how, how is the balance in your particular life and choosing jobs and relationships that support your special needs as an, as a highly Sensitive person is an important part of the strategy. You know, like some people like to stay up late, some people like to go to bed early. I like to go to bed early. Luckily my partner does too. So it works. Some jobs like to work you 247 and have you on call. Other jobs, you leave the job when you leave work, and that's it. So there are different kinds of jobs, there are different kinds of relationships, and finding one that matches with your nature can be super helpful as a strategy for balance. It also can mean that if you have an existing job or have an existing relationship, you may be able to adjust things within that relationship or within that job that will give you more time. Sometimes a small tweak can make a huge difference. Just, you know, quitting a half hour earlier or just not working in the evening, or just going to bed at this time, or just some small things like this can make a huge difference. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. So the problem is that if you work on all this balance, there are a lot of factors you can look at and they're all really helpful to play with. They're all strategic and they're things that can actually make a real difference. However, when you're just focused on balance, you can sometimes get caught in, in trying to optimize balance so much that it becomes stressful in itself. It becomes a project of its own. And when you're not reaching this balance, which is often a high ideal, you can end up feeling a little bit like a failure, and then that can go into a negative loop as well. So this is a really important point, and I think it's something that is not talked about enough, which is that balance, while wonderful, is not the whole story. If you only work on balance all the time, you may end up feeling like you're imbalanced all the time because you're trying to get to an ideal that is not really achievable. Balance is a dynamic thing. Think about a whitewater kayaker going down a whitewater river. Balance is not a one time thing. Oh, I'm balanced, right? No, it's constantly adjusting. First you turn to the left, then you turn to the right, then back to the left, and then to the right. It's this constant adjusting. Same with a tightrope walker. They're just constantly making little tweaks, adjusting. And so if you are focused too much on balance, you can end up going a little bit crazy because there's no rest. No rest meaning there's no no place of arrival where you can say, you know what? I'm really in a balanced place now. It may happen like once in a blue moon, and then it goes away. And then you start yearning for that time when it was balanced. And then you think, you know, the mind can just go downhill real quick. So if you start trying to get a perfect routine, you can end up stressing yourself and you may miss out on the more spontaneous side of your life. You may lose touch with where your actual energy level is, because that's always changing. You know, I heard something recently, someone said that burnout is not caused so much by overworking, but, but by working outside of your alignment with what you're interested in. I think there's some wisdom in that. So energy level is constantly changing and it's constantly dependent on other factors besides the physical balancing that we often look at. And so if you're too much attached to doing it right, trying to get it right, trying to do all the routines right, trying to manage all these different things, you can end up getting more stressed as a result. Routine alone will not make you stress free. Routine is great, but we're here on earth to learn and to grow and to get out of our comfort zones too. And so if I'm able to feel comfortable getting out of balance, then I'm starting to get a little bit of more freedom coming in. If I'm requiring balance, then there's a certain rigidity there that makes it harder to actually experience that sweet feeling of balance itself. So what I'm talking about is that balance is an internal thing as well as an external thing. And it requires, once again, no surprise, the balance of opposites, the balance of routine, and the balance of freedom to break routines and freedom to adjust those routines. So when you're looking at how to find this sweet spot for yourself, it's very personal, it's very individual, and you have to find it yourself. I like to look at two different areas where you can kind of question your thoughts, stretch yourself a little bit. And here are the two areas. One is anything where you're resisting creating more balance in your life. And the other is any attachment to balance itself that you're having. Now, these are completely opposite, but they can both be looked at. And there may be attachment on both sides. Resistance to creating more balance means that, yeah, I'd like to go to bed earlier, but I don't want to ask my partner if that will work or not. You know, I don't want to have that discussion. So I don't want to have that discussion. Is it true? Ask the questions to go through the inquiry and challenge yourself, like, who would you be without the thought that you don't want to ask your partner about this? And play with turnarounds, see if there could be another way of experiencing this situation. And so if you can question your resistance thoughts, you may be able to employ more of the strategies that would support you. On the other hand, if you're too, too attached to being balanced, you may want to question those thoughts as well. And I suggest that you do both. So you, you need to go to bed at this time. Is it true? Right, like that's also worth questioning. This gets, this starts to break the, the rigidity that, that has to be only done one way. And so when we're first starting to find balance or look for balance, it's often in a black and white way, like, okay, I'm going to stop doing this and start doing this and then everything will be fine. And that's great. But what if there's some room for just variation, some room for different solutions you may not have thought of? And this kind of open mind can super. Can serve you in super ways as you're exploring the world of balance. So remember you're on a river whitewater rafting and there is a, like, it's never going to be this perfect state of balance. Just what is the next piece of balance? What is the place where I'm getting too far in one direction and see if you can find that. So the feeling I'm left with today is that even balance needs to be balanced. Yeah. In this episode we looked at how to find your unique work life balance sweet spot. As a highly sensitive person, and it is unique to you and it's unique to highly sensitive people, we have a need for recouping more than other people. We also looked at why chasing an ideal version of balance may be what's keeping you stuck. Because that in itself can be an imbalance. And that's what I mean by even balance needs to be balanced. We then looked at how to choose or how to. Sorry, loosen rigid ideals of balance so that you can find what truly works for you. And the way I like to do that is through questioning my thoughts. I believe things and I think they're true. And so I act as if they're true. And my whole life revolves around these, these thoughts. But they're just thoughts and they can be questioned. And when you do question your thoughts, you may see that there's more than one way to do things and you may be able to loosen that rigid idea of balance and expand to an even broader balance that is very dynamic, very resilient. It changes moment to moment and you're adjusting moment to moment instead of just following rules. So thanks for listening. It's fun to explore 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 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.