← 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
#332 | Am I Just Being Dramatic? The Question That's Quietly Killing Your Confidence as a Highly Sensitive Person
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover why questioning your own needs is quietly eroding your confidence and how to stop feeling dramatic for simply being 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 the subtle ways HSPs suppress their needs and the hidden emotional toll it takes how self doubt around your sensitivity quietly chips away at your confidence and a mindset shift that helps you stop apologizing and start trusting your needs again. Welcome to this edition of Self Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience. Have you ever been invited to someone's home and they've kindly set the mood with a heavily scented candle? As soon as you walk in, your senses go on alert. The smell is intense, maybe cloying, maybe chemical, and within minutes you feel a headache coming on. Would you consider saying something like, would it be okay if we blew out the candle? But then your inner dialogue starts to say, well, they're just trying to be nice. They're trying to make it cozy. Don't be difficult, they're going to think you're ungrateful. So instead you say nothing and you sit through dinner distracted and slightly nauseated, wishing you had spoken up, but also shaming yourself for being so particular. I like to close my eyes and be grateful before I eat. I also like to eat slowly and savor every bite. My partner, on the other hand, prefers to get out the door quickly, and I notice that I often avoid closing my eyes if he can see it, and I eat faster to keep him happy. Do you notice that you pause before speaking up about your needs and then maybe often don't speak up at all? Do you internally rehearse how to say, can we turn down the music? But in the end you stay silent? Or do you actually adjust everything to take care of your nervous system? You get the right lights, the right activities, the right pace, but then criticize yourself for it. You know, my partner and I stopped playing pickleball last summer and I've really enjoyed the break. I'm not even sure I'm going to go back. And now he started playing again and I start to think, oh, should I do it for him? You know, maybe I'm being selfish. Or do you bring your own pillow, your own food, your own detergent or earplugs, and then feel embarrassed for being that person? It's easy to judge yourself as high maintenance or particular. So particular, like annoyingly particular, and feel like that's not a good type of person to be. You may be managing your environment like a pro, but inside you can end up feeling like a problem. And you may ask yourself, am I just being difficult? Am I being exhausting to be around? What are people thinking? Or you may constantly toggle between honoring your needs and then judging your needs. Very common thing to do and something that I can relate to. This is what happens when you feel ashamed of the very traits that are trying to protect you, the very traits that make you who you are. As a sensitive person, you can end up judging yourself like you're some kind of annoying person. And you may focus more or too much on the other person. Like, I want to be sure I'm a good partner. And of course compromise is great. I do want to be a good partner, but I can go too far with that. And we, as highly sensitive people, often do go too far with that. So we're looking for the balance. So let's look at what's going on underneath. When you suppress your needs to seem easy, you can end up imploding eventually from the buildup or maybe exploding. You can end up smiling and saying it's fine while your system is screaming on the inside or feeling sad on the inside. It's kind of like if you shake a soda can, eventually it's going to blow. And if you keep holding it in, eventually it will blow with you as well. And it's just the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish anyway. You can also end up spending more energy managing the guilt of having needs than meeting the actual needs. And you can end up building a Persona that is agreeable while your real self can start to disappear. So the underlying belief that I see here is that if I need more than others, then that means that I'm too much. We need to reframe that. We need to think through that and see if that's really the case. Needing more isn't being dramatic, it's being attuned. For example, some people can eat peanuts or gluten without any issue, and other people get sick without a trace. They can die from peanuts, for example, if you're allergic. But we don't say that they're being dramatic. We just say they're Being smart for avoiding what harms them. Some people, for example, tan in the sun, and other people burn in 10 minutes like I do. But the person who wears sunscreen and a hat isn't too sensitive. They're just protecting their body. So why is it that we can be so forgiving of allergies and people's sensitivity to the sun, but we're not so forgiving of ourselves when we have needs that are equally legitimate? So, as an hsp, your nervous system processes more more deeply, more thoroughly, more emotionally, and so needing more rest, more time for recovery, more quiet, more space, and being quote, unquote, particular about what you put in your body, on your body, what your environment is like. This is not weakness. This is awareness. There's nothing extra or off or too much about a nervous system that notices things early. When you deeply understand cause and effect, why would you ignore that kind of information? For example, I know for myself if I eat too much, then I'm not going to sleep well or I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night, so why would I eat as much as everyone else? It just doesn't make sense. What is dramatic is ignoring your needs until you explode. That is going to be dramatic. So preventing that, why would we label that dramatic? Why would we label that as too much? That's just intelligent. Your needs are not excessive. Your sensitivity simply speaks sooner and louder than others. Hence you're able to avoid problems earlier than others. It's like, why would you live in a sloppy house just because others don't value order? Why sink to the lowest common denominator just to be cool? It doesn't make sense. What if you stopped trying to prove you're not high maintenance and started designing a life that supports you as you are instead? Can you imagine the energy and the clarity and the feeling of connection you would have if you allowed yourself to take care of yourself? If you allowed others to truly meet and see you, the real you? That is what makes deep connection possible. What if being misunderstood was a price you were willing to pay in order to be your best self? What kind of life would you have if you allowed others to have their reactions and didn't take responsibility for them? What if you became unapologetic about what makes you feel safe or what makes you feel steady or inspired or free? I'm inviting you to the party. We'd love to meet the real you. So look, if you're tired of silencing your needs just to seem cool or chill, if you've lost yourself trying to be easy to be around. And if you're ready to stop apologizing for what you actually need but don't know how to begin. That's exactly why I created the HSP Inner Freedom Program. It's for highly sensitive people who are done questioning their needs and are ready to build a life around their needs instead of around other people's comfort zones. Go to the Show Notes and click the first link or visit trueinnerfreedom.com program to discover a path designed just for highly sensitive people who are ready to stop questioning their needs and start living in deep alignment with with who they really are.