← 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
#304 | The Secret to Getting the Connection You Crave With Others While Still Honoring Your Alone Time as Highly Sensitive People
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover the secret to connecting deeply with others, even when you need more alone time as an hsp.
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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.
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In this episode, you'll discover why it can feel like a challenge to maintain deep connections and take care of yourself as an hsp. The secret approach you may not have thought to try and how to bridge your inner and outer worlds. 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 felt pulled in two opposite directions at once? You feel like you're being pulled apart? As HSPs, we like to go deeply into one direction at a time. I sometimes use the analogy of 1 inch wide and 1 mile deep and I love to work that way. I love to go really into the depths and do one thing really well. The problem comes that we may need to do that in different areas. For example, taking care of ourselves can be a full time job, or being there for the ones we love can be a full time job. But doing both can feel overwhelming. As HSPs we like to do things well and when we can't, it can feel frustrating. Both things take time. On the one hand, as hsps, we need more time to decompress. We need more time to sleep than others. We need time to meditate and we need time to unwind before bed. We need time to for unrushed home cooked meals. If we need time for study and reading and learning, we need time for ourselves. And a lot of that needs to be alone time or time in our own house or in our own room even. And then on the other hand, we also really love friendships and depth of connections with partners and friends and family. And friendships require time. Friends are not predictable and they sometimes want to break into our time for ourselves. Same with family members, even partners. We may want to be there for them and what happens is we sometimes forget about ourselves in the process. So how do we manage these opposite pulls without getting overwhelmed as an HSP, HSPs in general get overwhelmed because we process everything deeply. And when we're even trying to process these, you know, we're trying to process these two opposites. It can be even, it just can lead to overwhelm so quickly. I think anyone can get overwhelmed to a certain degree with opposites, but it hits us harder and sooner. So what is this secret approach of somehow being able to do both of these things? First of all, let's think about what is a deep connection with another person. What is that? Actually, when you think about it, I think of a deep connection with another as a kind of a bridge. And it's a bridge between something deep inside of myself across over to something deep inside of the other person. When we meet on a deeper level, because I'm deeply present with myself and because the other person is also present with themselves, that's what I think of as a deep connection. There's something meaningful there. It's not just superficial, there's a connection. Depth is where actually where we do meet. I like to think of an analogy of a tree with all the different branches and the different flowers and fruits and leaves and bark and all the different, different things on the surface level of the tree. But all of those meet at the common root. There's one common trunk and then root that connects all of those different expressions of the tree. If you go to that common level, that is where you can meet both yourself and the ones you love. So what I mean by that is who we are. Like that too. We are, if you think of different people, we often tend to think them as completely separate. But I like to think of them as different parts of my world, different parts of the universe. And at our depth, we are more and more connected. That's why we love depth. That's where the connection can be made. And so if I can find the common place between the two of us, which usually lies on a deeper level, then that's where connection can be most meaningful. On the other hand, if you just look to the superficial connections, like say I'm one branch of the tree and my friend is another branch of the tree, and I just try to bring the two branches together. Like I'm going to try to bend my branch over and touch the other branch. And this is in the idea of trying to make it a fulfilling connection. But it feels superficial. It doesn't really feel like a connection. And first of all, it's very strained. I can crack the branch can crack as I'm trying to do that. And so it's not a very effective way of connecting. But if I follow the branch, my branch and my French branch down to the trunk or to the meeting point, then at that point it's very easy to connect because we actually already are connected. So it's a matter of putting your attention on that level. And if I can find that, that's when the connection is going to be most meaningful. But if I try to go outward to make that connection, like trying to make the branch reach over and touch the other branch, I can lose connection with myself. I can literally break off my branch. And then where's the connection? And even if you do connect, it's not as satisfying because you're not really in touch with a deeper place that gives connection meaning. So the solution is simple. Connect with yourself. First, be with you. That means connect with the deeper part of yourself. Not just the superficial parts of you, but the actual essence of your being, the ground on which you stand. Be there, connect with that. Then when you connect with others, you'll find the connection nourishing and fulfilling because it will naturally have depth and meaning. Why? Because you've already found depth and meaning within yourself. It also has this hidden benefit that if somebody doesn't connect with you, maybe they can't, or maybe they're not available or whatever. You just don't have someone. You're still connecting with yourself, which is already giving you depth and meaning, which is what we all look for in connection with others. Of course, it's wonderful to connect with another person and do that. But in case you can't, at least you have this. And when you have this, your potential for connecting with another person in a meaningful way has shot way up. Also, a side benefit of this is that it doesn't have to take a lot of time. A lot of time can be wasted trying to connect more deeply. But if you come to a meeting already deeply connected with yourself, it doesn't take time to connect. Part of the problem with frustrating relationships is that we're trying to connect, trying to connect, trying to connect, but we're not connected to ourselves. There's something a little bit desperate in us, or there's something that's just not settled. We're not deeply seated in ourselves. And so as a result, it's not very fulfilling. But if you come to a meeting already deeply connected yourself, sometimes just one look or one gesture, one smile, one little twinkle of the eye, all that, that's all that's needed to feel the nourishing value of connection. It's a knowing I know I'm connected, I know I have a friend, I know I'm loved, and I know I love. That's something that comes from connecting within yourself to a deeper place. Rather than trying to make sure that you have enough hours of connection or make sure that you're, you know, doing all the right things to have the right connection with the other person. That's on a superficial level, on the depth. All it takes is just a knowing and you've got a friend just like that. They may not even be around. You know, they may be dead, they may be in a far distant place, but it's this knowing of connection. You know, I can think of my grandmother who I love dearly, and she's been gone for, I don't know, 25 years or longer and, but I know there's this love, like there's the connection. Didn't take a second to think of that and boom, I have that full feeling right there. So how do you bridge your inner and outer worlds? How do you do this in a practical way? In other words, how do you connect to yourself? Seems like a tall order, right? We're always running around and it's hard to connect to ourselves, but it's actually not as hard as it seems as HSPs and really as human beings. It means taking care of myself, making sure that I have enough rest, have enough alone time to process my experiences, making sure that I'm in the habit of listening to myself well and that I have a way of connecting to the deeper silence within myself. Now taking care of oneself can be almost a full time job, but it is our primary job. No one else can do it for us. And all other relationships depend on us having a good relationship with ourselves, having taken care of what is inside of us. And so here are some of the tools that I use to stay connected with myself. The first thing is I build my day around regular sleep time, including time to wind down before bed. This is so important. And as hsps we need more sleep. So making that a cornerstone for everything is super important. And I make time for deep meditation twice a day. I make that a daily habit so that it's just built into my life and again, it's a cornerstone. Without that, where is the depth? I'm just bouncing around from one thing to another. I also use the work of Byron Katie to process stressful experiences. So that could mean old traumas, it could mean present day situations that I'm got stressed by. And I use this little method to unravel and decompress and find new ways of seeing stressful experiences so that they are not stressful. It's a way of digesting my experiences. And speaking of digesting, I cook nourishing healthy meals three Times a day. My partner and I, we both work from home, so it's a little bit easier. But to whatever degree you can, cooking your own food and having food that is nourishing and delicious and healthy can make a huge difference in how you feel. And then I allow fun time and relaxing time every day, which is as important as anything I accomplish at work. And that's been a hard one for me because I tend to be very accomplishment oriented. And I've. I was a kid who always did his homework. So part of my homework is relaxing, part of my homework is having some fun. And that is very balancing. So when you look at it, you would say from the outside anyway, this sounds like a very rigorous routine. And yes, you could say that. But what it is for me is it's a stable platform. It's a stable platform on which I stand or sit. And from there I reach out and explore the world of relationships around me. But I am grounded and I'm connected to something deeper inside of myself. So that when I do connect, it is meaningful. And as a result, I don't have a ton of friends. I have a few friends, but those are friends that understand me. And some of them I just meet for like maybe an hour once a month. It's not like I'm spending a ton of time, but when we meet, it's fulfilling because I'm coming to the meeting without a lot of neediness and with plenty of depth, ready for meaningful connection. So time is not as important when you're connected to yourself, when you've taken care of, of yourself. As HSPs, we tend to want to merge with another person. You know, it's just like we want to go all in, and we're capable of going all in, and it's appealing to us. But at the same time, it's also important for us to have a healthy separation between others. Otherwise we lose the depth and connection to ourselves and the balance in our lives. So the, the way that these two are reconciled in my mind, in my experience, is that merging happens at the depth of connection. We're already merged, we're already connected on a deep level. If you go to the deepest level, we are connected to everything and everyone around us. And so let the connection, the depth of connection beyond that level, Let that merging happen on that level, and then let the healthy separation happen on the surface level. I'm going to have my branch over here, you can have your branch over there. And I'm not trying to make my branch connect with your branch. Because I know we're connected at the root. When I see it this way, from surface to depth, I can actually have both at the same time. I can have deep connection and I can have healthy separation. So the feeling I'm left with today is that outer depends on inner. If you can stay connected with yourself, then you will naturally feel more connected to others. So if you have to choose, then make that your priority. In this episode we looked at why it can feel like a challenge to maintain deep connections with other people and take care of yourself as an hsp. It's because both things take a lot of time. And as HSPs, we're interested in both directions. And we looked at the secret approach you may not have thought to try in this regard, which is to focus on connecting with yourself first. Because if you don't connect with yourself and you try to connect with others, it will not be fulfilling. And if you do connect with yourself, even if you don't have as much connection with others, it will be fulfilling. So this is the shortcut to staying connected, first of all within your own heart, and then naturally, in whatever degree it feels right with those around you. And finally, we looked at how to practically bridge your inner and outer worlds. And it has a lot to do with self care. Has a lot to do with taking care of yourself, taking care of your body, as well as taking care of your mind and your spirit and giving them time, giving yourself time to just be. That's where connection happens. And then giving yourself time in a way that works for you to be with those that you care about. So thanks for listening. It's always great to explore with you. This program 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.
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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.
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The test will reveal your unique sensitivity.
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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.