← 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
#286 | How to Enjoy Deep Connections as an HSP Without Getting Lost or Stressed in the Process
00:14:19
Highly sensitive people crave meaningful, soul-nourishing relationships—but what happens when that connection starts costing your peace? In this episode of Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, Todd Smith explores the powerful draw HSPs...
Loading summary
Transcript7 lines
- [00:01]
Sam
By the end of this episode, you'll discover how to engage in deep connection with others without losing yourself in the process.
- [00:12]
Todd Smith
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.
- [00:41]
Sam
In this episode, you'll discover why HSPs are uniquely suited for deep connections with others, what can happen if we go too far down the rabbit hole, and how to balance the desire for deep connection with the need for moderation. 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. Have you ever had a really deep connection with someone that ended up not working out? I've certainly had this, and it's more common than you think. Let's look at why highly sensitive people, first of all, are uniquely suited for deep connections with others. We value depth. We value depth in our work, we value depth in our relationships. And it's natural for us as highly sensitive people to gravitate towards deeper relationships. We actually tend to have a little bit of impatience sometimes with superficiality, and so the interest seems to go towards depth. We also value meaning, and there is a lot of meaning in deep connections with other people. We value connection in and of itself and we are very empathetic. So therefore we're actually super capable of connecting with people in a very genuine way. We get people, we understand where they are. We see a lot behind the. The superficial aspects of a person, and that makes us very uniquely capable of having deep relationships with others. On top of that, we're very emotional and emotions thrive in connection. Emotion is a huge part of connection, and I think that's part of the draw for us towards deep connection with others. And finally, we, as highly sensitive people have a lot to offer. We have a lot of insight, we have a lot of intuition, we have a lot of love. And it's natural for us to want to have a way of sharing that, of putting that to use. And deep relationships are a place where that can happen. But what happens if we go too far down the rabbit hole? There are, it seems to be, as far as I can see, two conflicting parts of us as highly sensitive people. One is the desire to connect deeply with others, and the other is a need or desire for a balanced life. And so these two things, being contradictory, make it hard to find how to navigate this, you know, I want to just go all out. I want to go all in. I want to be really super connected with someone. I want to share deeply. But I also need a balanced life and I can get overwhelmed easily. And so how do you manage doing both in a way that is balanced? What can happen is that we can end up losing ourselves, which is probably a good thing from time to time. It's not bad for a while, but it's not great over time. If you lose yourself too much in connecting with others, then it can start feeling like it's not balanced, something isn't right. And you may start even resenting the connection or trying, you know, trying harder. But then like, still it's not right, it gets confusing. So losing ourselves, while on the one hand is not a bad thing and brings a refreshment and change. If I'm constantly lost to myself, it can feel like stress and doesn't feel like something that I want to maintain over time. The other thing is we can end up starting to follow the other person's lead so much that again we lose ourselves. And this is fine from time to time. It's great to follow someone's lead. It's great to be just led and go in a place that is unexpected and new and not hold all the responsibility in control. But we do still have real needs. We still do need things to stay balanced in our life. We need our alone time, for example, as HSPs. And sometimes if we go too deep in a relationship, we can lose perspective and lose almost the ability to come back and take care of ourselves. We, as highly sensitive people, need to process our experiences. We need to reconnect to ourselves and our own inner experience and the energy that's there inside of us in order to stay balanced. And so if we're constantly going outward, even if that outward is in the deep area, so it seems like we're going into a really beautiful deep place with another person. But it's still outward unless there's a clear connection inside of you to yourself. And that is also possible. So checking in and making adjustments, coming back to yourself, finding time for yourself is as important as going outward. And so how do you manage these two opposites? Wanting to go out, even needing to go out, wanting to go deeply with others versus taking care of yourself, staying connected to yourself. So always in any relationship, as far as I can see, there are always two relationships going on. The relationship to the other person and the relationship to myself. And relationships, both of these relationships have to be working for it to be sustainable. If it's only a relationship to the other person, I may end up enjoying that to whatever degree it lasts. But the foundation for that relationship is kind of weak because I'm not fully connected to myself. On the other hand, if I'm only connected to myself and only value that, and that's all I focus on, I may not have a relationship with anyone else because I'm focused there. So these two things interact and both need attention and both are valuable. But for a relationship to work, it has to work on both sides. And it's easy as a highly sensitive person, as an empathetic person, to give more emphasis to the relationship, the person, the connection, the experiences with another person, and less experience or less emphasis on the relationship with myself. We can easily almost erase ourselves. And maybe sometimes that's a motive in getting into relationships. But regardless, even if that's not the case, it's easy to override and forget ourselves and lose touch with what also brings us balance. So in a way, relationships are one of the hardest things in the world. Whether they're friendships or whether they're romantic relationships, they are asking us to do something big. They're asking us to balance two completely opposite parts of ourselves. The part of us that points outward and can go deeply that way, and the point of us, the part of us that points inward and needs to stay connected on that level. So how do you know when something isn't working? Stress. Stress will let you know. Stress is your friend. Stress is the feedback mechanism built into your system saying, hey, there's something going on here. Something's out of balance. Check it out. It's like the little light that comes on in your car and you know that something is off. You better go check it out and bring it in for a tune up, because otherwise, if you keep driving, you could run into danger. So what works for me in balancing these two opposites is to, on one side, limit the time for deep connection. Having time for connection and then having time for myself. Both of these, I almost have to budget those because they're. It's easy to just get carried away with one and the other. So I like to look from a more broad perspective. How do I want to balance this? And of course this can be adjusted as you go along, but I love to have a time for connection and then kind of a finite time and then, okay, that was great and we'll do it again. And coming back to the other parts of my life, this feels like balance to me. Now I will add, there's another way that this can start to happen over time. And this is really more development on the like a spiritual development that can happen is the more you get in touch with yourself, the more connected you are are with yourself, the more that self stays with you. Even when you are involved with something very outward or very, you know, like you're focused on another person, you're deeply connected with another person. And you may remain deeply connected with yourself as well, but that's not always the case. And so great if that's the case, wonderful. You may have even more resilience than most of us. But if that isn't the case, then taking time and managing time so that it's not all one or not all the other can make all the difference in the world. You know, there's a time in the day for activity, there's a time at night for rest. And when we honor these boundaries, we tend to stay healthy. So there's a time in our days and our weeks for connecting with others. And there's a time in our days and our weeks for connecting with ourselves, for doing other things, for not being in the deep area of connection. So the feeling I'm left with today is that depth is not everything. It's wonderful, but it's not everything. Balance actually is something more important than depth. In this episode, we looked at why HSPs are uniquely suited for deep connections with others. First of all, we are empathetic. We are capable and interested in depth. And it's something that we are naturally drawn to. We also looked at what can happen if we go too far down the rabbit hole. And it can lead to stress, it can lead to losing ourselves, it can lead to a resentment, and it can even cause relationships that mean something to us to blow up. And finally, we looked at how to balance the desire for deep connection with the need for moderation. And I think moderation is just another word for balance. It's not that depth is everything and it's not that depth is nothing. There's time for depth and there's time for taking time away from depth. And if I can manage that in a way that feels right to me, then I can maintain long term relationships that are meaningful and deepen and deepen and deepen over time. So thanks for listening. It's always great to explore these topics with you. This program 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.
- [13:30]
Todd Smith
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.
- [13:41]
Sam
The test will reveal your unique sensitivity.
- [13:44]
Todd Smith
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.
- [14:07]
Sam
Sam.