← 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
#339 | 3 Powerful Ways to Remove Decision Overwhelm & Stress for Highly Sensitive People
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover three powerful ways to move through decision Overwhelm with more clarity, calm, and confidence 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 why trying to plan everything perfectly is secretly making decisions harder. The one simple shift that makes overwhelm dissolve when you have too many choices and what your nervous system needs in order to access real clarity without forcing it. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person. I'm continually refining my HSP Inner Freedom program, and sometimes I get overwhelmed with so many different ways that it can develop. If I do this, and then I'll do this, you know, if that happens, then maybe I should do this. Maybe I should include this. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should arrange things in a different way. Maybe I should. You know, it just goes on and on and on. So if you're trying to plan things ahead of time, especially trying to get it right, trying to do it perfectly in a way, then this can actually make decisions harder. When you're trying to get every detail right from the start, it's really a recipe for overwhelm. And this is especially true for highly sensitive people because we get overwhelmed more easily than other people. So for us, as for anyone, clarity comes from alignment. It comes from connecting with something inside that is inspired to do something. That's what we say. I'm interested in that. I'm curious about that. I want to do that. I'm excited about exploring this possibility. But the opposite of that, or what gets in the way of that is the idea of having to get it all planned out perfectly before I take the first action step. And of course, as highly sensitive people, we are extremely good planners. We're able to think ahead. We're able to see the implications of every step that we make. And. And that's a good thing. But that same quality in us can also stop us or make us get frozen because we're unable to take the first step. So it has to be a balance between some planning and then just some action. If I don't take the action, then I'm going to be stuck in the planning phase. Forever. And my decision making is going to become a nightmare. I like to think of it as I plan it out as best I can in broad strokes. Then I take a step and then I let life show me some feedback, and then I adjust, and then I take the next step and then I adjust and so I can continue planning as I'm moving forward. And this turns decision making from being some kind of a perfect performance that I have to come out of the box perfectly with into a kind of collaboration between myself and my intuition and the world that I'm interacting with. Imagine you were designing your living room and you wanted the perfect couch, the perfect layout, the perfect lighting before you bought anything. And of course it sounds reasonable. I want to have it all planned out, then I'll go do the buying. And in the end you end up opening 47 tabs on your browser and you end up scrolling endlessly and second guessing every choice. And you still don't decide why, because you're trying to get it all right before taking the first step. But imagine if you chose just one piece. Maybe it's a couch that you love right now and you bring it home and suddenly the room starts to speak to you and you feel what would go well with that couch? Maybe the rug that you choose becomes clearer. Oh, I want that kind of rug. The lighting choice starts to make sense and so you're no longer designing in your head, you're co creating with the space. That's what aligned decision making looks like for highly sensitive people. One intuitive step, then listening, then the next. And so with my HSP Inner Freedom program, my path forward is to work with the next client and learn what their needs are and then adjust my program as I go. And this is a living process, something that continues as long as I'm continuing the program. And so in that way it goes from kind of a sketched out version to a more detailed version to a more detailed version. But it's all in a balanced way and it's all in interaction with real people. So there's no need to do it all in the planning phase perfectly. This can actually be feeding into a fear of failure or a fear of criticism, which is common for us as HSPs. So just notice that and use that planning to get a good start. But then don't forget to get into the action phase so that you can get real feedback and then continue to adjust as you move into the project. So one other issue with decision making for highly sensitive people and for everyone, but it affects us more is when you're trying to do. You're trying to manage too many questions at once. Decision making happens when it happens easily, when you're focusing on one thing at a time. If you're focusing on many things at a time, your mind will go into overwhelm. And as a highly sensitive person, you'll see all the implications in that one direction and you'll see all the implications in the other direction and the other direction. In the other direction. All the different questions that you're trying to answer, they're all on your plate at once. You're going to see an infinite number of detail in each of those, and it's going to be a formula for overwhelm. Luckily, most decisions don't need to be made simultaneously. They may feel urgent, but actually they can handle waiting and just dealing with one at a time. So give yourself permission to focus on just one decision at a time. The others can wait. When you narrow your attention, your inner guidance starts to get louder and you start to get clearer. Imagine you're planning a weekend trip and suddenly your mind spirals into where should we go and should we fly or drive and where should we stay and what will we eat and what will the weather be like and should we invite anyone and will be worth the money? And all at once you feel like you have to figure everything out right now. And it's stressful, but the truth is, you don't. You could start with just one do I want this weekend to be restful or adventurous? Once you answer that, the other decisions start to line up and your nervous system calms down and your intuition has room to speak. And so what felt like overwhelm starts to feel doable again. What feels like it was too much starts to be something that you can control. I can control one thing, I can work with one thing, I can explore one thing, but I can't explore many things at once. And then one other area that really makes a huge difference with decision making is that as HSPs, we need to feel safe, we need to feel calm, we need to feel settled in order to make decisions. And I think that's true of everyone. If we're already overwhelmed trying to make a decision, it's probably not the best time to make that decision. We may need rest, we may need some inner work, we may need some time away from the pressure. And so if you can give that to yourself, ideally on an ongoing basis, then your decisions are going to be much easier to make. So this means take care of your routine, make sure you're getting enough rest, make sure that it's balanced in a way so that you have more access to your inner world and keep doing inner work. For example, there may be beliefs inside of you that keep you stirred up, along the lines of like, I'm not allowed to have an opinion, or other people won't like this, or other kinds of things that get in the way of being able to make a nice, clean, simple decision. So when you do inner work and question some of these thoughts, you can open up some space and start to feel like decisions are doable again. And then finally, meditation is a powerful tool for just loosening your grip on the world and giving you a little more ease on the inside. And it puts you more in touch with that inner part of yourself, which is where decision making actually takes place. When you get cut off from that inner place, then decision making is difficult indeed. So the feeling I'm left with today is that decision making at first seems like something to do in the outward direction, but in reality, it has to do with connecting in the inner direction. Anything that simplifies the situation on the external level or brings you back in touch with your inner experience will aid you in decision making. In this episode, we looked at why trying to plan everything perfectly is secretly making decisions harder. And you can't expect your vision to get expressed perfectly in the world. It's a collaboration between your vision and the reality of the world. And both sides have to make compromises. That's how the inner gets expressed in the outer. That's how decisions get made in a way that they integrate with the real world. We also looked at one simple shift that makes overwhelm dissolve when you have too many choices. And that simple thing is to focus on one thing at a time. It can't be overemphasized enough. This is the difference between overwhelm and depth and focus. And then finally, we looked at what your nervous system needs in order to access real clarity without forcing it. And this is to build a strong basis through meditation, inner work, good routines. That basis is a settledness on the inside, a restfulness, a clarity. That's something that has to be cultivated through these different practices outside of the actual decision making itself. 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 Breakthrough Mondays where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom. 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.