← 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
#348 | The Hidden Stress of Love for HSPs & How to Ease It So You Can Relax Into Real Connection
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover why love can feel overwhelming for highly sensitive people and how to ease the hidden stress so you can finally relax into real connection. 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 even a healthy relationship can feel overstimulating for highly sensitive people. The invisible emotional load you carry and how it keeps you stuck in survival mode, and how to shift from managing love to actually experiencing 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 used to feel like my partner took up all the room in the relationship. It was like I was on duty somehow, and I had to be there, ready to do what he wanted and ready to soothe over any emotional issues that came up. I put myself in a servant role rather than in a partnership role, and this felt like I didn't have a life. It felt like I was just there to be of service rather than there to be a participant. But over time, I've learned to take up space for myself and the relationship and to stop carrying what was never actually mine to carry. I've learned to allow my partner to wobble a bit, to have issues, to not have everything smooth and easy all the time, and it's not my job to carry it. So have you ever felt like you were always managing the relationship instead of being in the relationship? Have you ever felt like you were walking on eggshells or trying to prevent conflict? Or have you ever gotten overwhelmed by your partner's tone or their. Their energy or their intensity, but then feel maybe guilty for reacting to it? This is what I mean by not actually allowing yourself to have space in the relationship. And it's very common for highly sensitive people. You may actually start to wonder, is this really love, or am I just exhausted by trying to make it work? And so you end up hiding your needs to avoid feeling like you're too much, but you end up feeling emotionally neglected as a result. When you don't actually show up in terms of what your actual needs are, then there is no one there to take care of them. And that is a feeling of not getting what you need. So what can happen is you can end up not just feeling your own feelings, but absorbing their feelings. And this happens naturally as a highly sensitive person, but becomes exaggerated when the focus is too much on them and it feels like you're, you're just all about them and their emotions become the predominant thing. You may start to see, as we all often do, that something is off before they speak, and you may carry the weight of fixing that when it wasn't actually asked or wasn't actually needed. This is an understandable kind of reaction because we, we like things to be peaceful, we like things to be calm and settled. And so when we see a storm brewing or we see some problem emerging or an emotion coming up in our partners, we can easily think, okay, let's just head this off at the pass and nip it in the bud, if you will. And so we end up stepping in in ways that may not actually be appropriate or may not actually be needed and sometimes can even cause greater eruption if we get into the other person's business. But even if we do it well, it's carrying, we're carrying a weight in the relationship, we're carrying extra responsibility in the relationship, and that is a burden and it's tiresome. And it also prevents us from taking care of and getting our own needs met and understood. So you may know what your partner needs, but you may have no idea of how to express what you need without feeling selfish or without feeling dramatic. That's the thing. When we disappear, when we go into the ether and are no longer showing up so that anyone can see what we actually need or want or feel, it seems like it feels like we're being selfish if we start to come out of that and actually express something. And this can keep us locked into that place of being invisible in a relationship. So what happens is you end up trying to keep the peace externally, but you may be starting to fall apart internally. And this can be a real problem for us as HSPs. It happens to others as well. But I think it strikes us more often when we go out of balance. We tend to go out of balance in this direction. Everything's looking good, we're taking care of things, we're managing everything. But our needs are invisible and there's no time or energy or even permission for us to take care of ourselves. So the cost of this is that you may end up feeling drained after time with your partner, even when there's nothing wrong, because you're taking on subtly these little jobs, these little responsibilities, this need to steer the relationship or steer the experience so that it avoids the pitfalls of emotional outbreak or disappointment or problems. So when you're constantly at the helm, then it can be draining even when there's, like I said, nothing wrong. And then what can happen is you may start to begin to resent your partner. And, and it can be very subtle, but it's just a feeling of like, oh gosh, I just need a break or this is too much. Or you may start getting a little bit angry at them, even though you may not express it. And you may start to turn it on yourself where you start to resent yourself for taking care of the relationship too much and not taking care of yourself, but you don't know what to do about it. And you may stop sharing your feelings as well with your partner. Not because you don't want to, but because you don't trust that they'll land well. And so there becomes this. The relationship becomes almost one sided, where they think everything's going fine because everything is just about them instead of what a real relationship is, is I have needs too. I can bring those in and together we can work on my needs some of the time and work on their needs some of the time. And there's a balance in that. And so also you can also start to fear that love requires abandoning yourself. And you may just think that's the way it is. Either I'm alone or I'm in a relationship and I'm abandoning myself. So it's like not very nice choices like, okay, I'm either. If you want to be in a relationship, then you really, it can leave you feeling like, well, how the heck can I do that? Because if I'm in it, I'm going to have to abandon myself. And you may start to think that if you were stronger then maybe this wouldn't bother you. Um, this is a very common kind of thought. Maybe I'm just not built for romantic love. Which of course is not true. HSPs are like the people built for romantic love. We just have to work through a little bit of stressful conditioning and reactivity that prevents us from being real partners. If we can overcome that potential is very powerful for us to be amazing, have amazing relationships. The truth is, your sensitivity isn't the problem. It's the emotional residue that builds up when you don't know how to process it, when you continually go across into your partner's lane and start taking on their responsibilities and, and you don't know how to find that healthy separation, that balance point between what's theirs and what's yours. And when You. You experience things through a sensitive nervous system, but you are don't have the tools to process them so that you can be free of that experience again. When an experience isn't processed completely, then the mind just keeps looping on it and the frustration can build. The thing is, you're not too sensitive for love. You've just been trying to love without tools to match your nervous system. As a highly sensitive person. When you're sensitive, love feels like it's more. There's more. The experience is more intense, there's more of it. There's more to give. Which means that the beauty is greater. But it can also mean that the overwhelm can be greater as well, unless you know how to avoid it. So loving as an HSP without the right tools is like trying to listen to a beautiful symphony with the volume turned all the way up. The music is rich, it is beautiful. But it quickly becomes overwhelming without a way to adjust the sound. You don't have to stop listening. You just need a volume dial. What if love didn't mean abandoning yourself to stay connected? What if you could stay open without taking on your partner's mood? What if being in a relationship could become less stimulating instead of more stimulating because you've created emotional space between their feelings and yours? So if being in love leaves you feeling overstimulated or overlooked or emotionally wiped out. And if you're tired of playing the role of peacekeeper in your relationship while no one else is keeping peace inside of you. And if you're exhausted from constantly carrying the weight of two emotional lives. That is exactly why I created the HSP Inner Freedom Program. Inside, you'll learn how to stop absorbing your partner's stress and moods. You'll learn how to express your needs without guilt. And you'll learn how to recover quickly when you feel emotionally stung or shut down or overwhelmed by anything that happens. And you'll learn how to stay connected to yourself and your partner at the same time. This isn't about fixing your partner. It's about finally tending to you. Go to trueinnerfreedom.com program or go to the Show Notes and click on the first link that you see there. And this program is designed to get you in touch with the deeper aspects of your own experience so that you can trust yourself. So that you can bring yourself out into relationship. Because love shouldn't feel like a minefield. Especially not for someone who feels everything so deeply. 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. 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. Sam.