← 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
#343 | How to Deepen Your Relationship This Valentine's Day Through Inner Work as an HSP
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover how to create deeper connection in your relationship by doing your own inner work, even if your partner never changes. 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 fix the relationship often backfires and where true connection actually begins. The hidden belief that makes you feel dependent on your partner for emotional depth, and how your own healing can bring more closeness, even if your partner isn't on the same path. 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. Zoom forward A week or so from now. It's Valentine's Day, and you're hoping for a moment of real connection. Something sweet, something meaningful, something different from the usual routine. But your partner seems distracted, and maybe the dinner feels rushed and the words you wanted to hear don't come. And now that familiar ache starts rising. You're a little disappointed, but you don't want to seem needy. You're actually craving connection, but it feels like it's up to them to create it. So you try to subtly steer things. Maybe you ask more thoughtful questions, you drop hints, or you suggest another activity. But inside you're tightening, trying to fix the disconnect without saying the. The vulnerable thing. I feel far away from you right now. Why trying to fix the relationship often backfires and where true connection actually begins. Many highly sensitive people care so deeply about their relationships that they naturally want to improve them, especially when things feel disconnected or strained. But here's the trap. Trying to fix the relationship often puts the focus on the other person. If only they'd open up more. If only they'd listen better. If only they'd meet me halfway. This external focus creates pressure and often, resistance. Your partner may actually feel criticized or controlled or simply overwhelmed, even if your intention is love and connection. Meanwhile, you're left feeling powerless and waiting for them to do something different so that you can feel more connected. But real connection doesn't begin with your partner. It begins with you and your connection to yourself. When you stop trying to fix the dynamic and start tending to what's actually alive inside of you, your unmet needs, your tenderness, your longing, something profound can start to shift you. Stop outsourcing closeness and you start being who you are. You start radiating who you actually are. And ironically, this is often what invites your partner close, closer. True connection begins when you meet yourself first. So here's a hidden belief that can make you feel dependent on your partner for emotional depth. Many highly sensitive people long for emotional depth in their relationships. Not just companionship, but resonance. And we're built for depth, so it's natural for us to want depth. But here's where it gets painful. Somewhere along the way, we adopt a quiet belief that says, the only way I can feel depth is if my partner creates it with me. So we start scanning for signs that they are meeting us there. Are they reflecting enough? Are they opening up enough? Are they present or emotionally attuned or saying the right things? And when they don't, it can feel like we are starving. We're not getting that depth that we love. But the trap here is mistaking them as the source of depth instead of the mirror of that. Emotional depth isn't something your partner gives you. It's something that wakes up inside of you when you're connected to yourself. And then when you're with your partner, some of that may get reflected back to you. That's what makes it so enjoyable. But when you believe they have to go deep first for you to feel whole, you give away your access to what you're actually craving, which is something inside of yourself. Depth is something inside of you. And the truth is you can touch depth anytime, through inner work, through meditation, through self reflection, even five minutes of silence, just to drop back into your own experience. And from that place, connection starts to get easier because you're no longer trying to get connection to fill a void. You're bringing depth with you. You're connected to that depth inside of you instead of waiting to receive it from your partner. So how to do this? I mentioned inner work. And I find that to be such a powerful part of this equation, a way of connecting with myself. I'll give you an example from my experience, my life. My partner is very sensitive, but he doesn't like to talk in a kind of brainstorming kind of way the way I do. I like to just ramble and kind of, kind of stream of consciousness, think about things. And sometimes it doesn't make sense, and that doesn't work for him too well. He likes to talk about things once they're clear. And I like to talk about them while they're in a state of evolution. And that's how I get clear. And I would love to do that with him. I've tried it many times and I know, I imagine how intimate that could be because I've done that with other people who also like to talk that way. But it just doesn't work for him. And so it's not that he doesn't want connection, we both want connection, but our ways of connecting are slightly different. And as a result, I have many times, out of reaction, pulled away emotionally from my partner because of this. I'll start rambling about something and then you can tell it's just not comfortable. And he says something and I just kind of shut up and withdraw and close my heart. And so I start thinking that if you won't meet me there, then how can we possibly connect? Like this is the only way we can connect, and it's not going to happen. So I just withdraw and I start to feel unsafe to be vulnerable in that way. And I become dependent on him to somehow magically get it and change somehow so that I can get what I want, which is that particular way of connecting. But years ago, I started doing the work of Byron Katie. And this particular inner work practice starts with writing down your frustrations and judgments about the other person and then questioning those raw emotional thoughts. When I started doing that, I started finding that it's actually okay that my partner and I are different. It doesn't mean we can't have a deep connection. And I don't have to forego what works for me. Either I still can ramble with other people and. Or I can ramble with myself. And I also. I don't have to impose what works for me on him, which feels like it's respectful to. To him as well. I call this a kind of healthy separation in a relationship. It leaves me free to find other ways of talking things through with friends, with myself, with teachers, so that I get what I need. And I can then share insights and takeaways with my partner, which is exactly how he loves to think about these things. Just bring me the know, bring me the Cliff Notes. Give me the short version. What's the conclusion? He loves that, and so I can share in that way. And it keeps things neat and organized for him. And it works well for him. It's not like this ongoing quicksand, which I think he would describe it as of me just kind of rambling. So we both get a little bit of what we need. And it feels like respect both for him and for me. Ironically, as a result of my doing some inner work and finding that I just need to Take care of myself instead of being dependent on him. Our conversations have deepened tremendously. Now I'm more aware of what works and what doesn't work so that I can engage more intelligently with him. And I found different avenues and ways of connecting and ways of talking that work for both of us. The whole thing is just grown from there. And as a result, there's much less of the boundary violations that happen, the arguments that happen, because I'm not really respecting his way and he doesn't like my way. And then we get into a kind of power struggle and all that nonsense. So a little inner work, me getting a little clearer about myself, my. My needs and how to take care of them brought the relationship to a whole new level. And that's possible through inner work. And this is just a small example of the changes that can happen when you do your own inner work and free yourself from dependency on the other person giving you what you want. So the feeling I'm left with today is that ultimately relationships are actually an internal thing within myself. And when I learn to connect with myself, to hold myself, to hear what I need, to give myself that, to take care of myself, then I become less needy in the relationship and true connection becomes a possibility. Instead of trying to get them to go where I need, where I need to go, I just go there. And it opens up a possibility for a new kind of connection with a partner. In this episode, we looked at why trying to fix the relationship often backfires and where true connection actually begins. Again, it's through connecting with yourself instead of trying to change the partner or change the relationship in some way. We also looked at the hidden belief that makes you feel dependent on your partner for emotional depth. And that is that I need my partner to come with me, to meet me halfway, to be there as a. As a co explorer in this deepening. And while it sounds like a good belief in reality, it leaves me dependent. And when I can free myself of that and see that I can bring depth within my own self first, then I can also bring depth to the relationship. And then finally we looked at how your own healing can bring more closeness even if your partner isn't on the same path. And I love this, that it's not dependent on the other person. It really isn't. My relationship is. Is so different today than it was 20 years ago when I first started doing this work. It's like I don't even recognize it. So this is what can happen when you just keep going inward, keep working on the things that are bothering you and find your own solutions and then just keep coming back to the to the relationship with more and more and more to give. 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. 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. 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.