← 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
#354 | How Perfectionism Hides in Your Good Intentions as a Highly Sensitive Person & What to Do When It Starts to Overwhelm You
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover how perfectionism can quietly hijack your best intentions as a highly sensitive person and how to shift out of overwhelm before it turns into burnout. In this episode, you'll discover how perfectionism hides inside your most caring and conscientious efforts, why overwhelm often builds quietly for HSPs, even when you're not doing that much, and a simple way to spot when caring has tipped into pressure and what to do next. 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. You sit down to send a simple email, and two hours later you've rewritten it seven times, changed a dozen word choices, and still haven't hit set. Not because you're trying to be impressive, it's just that you want to do it right. That same pressure can show up everywhere. In how you write, in how you speak, in how you parent, or how you help others, or how you host, or how you respond, or how you deliver. It's not about being flashy or perfect. It's about being responsible. But the weight of being responsible for everything can quietly burn you out. What starts as care becomes pressure. What starts as intention can turn into an obsession. And suddenly you're exhausted. Not from what you're doing, but from how heavily you're holding it. Most highly sensitive people don't identify as perfectionists. They identify as thoughtful, as conscientious, or as caring. But underneath this thought that I just want to do it right, there is often a quieter voice whispering something like this. If I mess this up, something bad will happen. If I disappoint them, that means I've failed, or if I don't try hard enough, I'll regret it. That internal pressure builds up invisibly. You're not overwhelmed by what you're doing, you're overwhelmed by what you're carrying. And because for many HSPs, doing it right doesn't just mean doing a good job. It means proving that you're responsible. And this is the most ironic thing in the world, because as highly sensitive people, we are probably the most responsible people on the planet. But if we have these fears of that, I have to get it right. If I don't, then I'm a failure, or I have to prove that I'm responsible. This is what takes sensitivity and turns it into perfectionism. It's one thing to be careful. It's another thing to be worried and stressed about making mistakes or about Protecting someone else's feelings. So, for example, let's say your friend shows you a project they've been working on. Maybe it's a piece of writing, a room they just redecorated, or a new outfit. And you notice something you would normally mention. Maybe it's a typo or a clashing color, something that seems off. But instead you pause and you soften your tone and you downplay your feedback. Or you may not say it at all, not because you're trying to be dishonest, but because your nervous system registers the potential impact of your words before you even speak them. That is an HSP thing. We can imagine. We can see clearly what could happen if we say something. You imagine their facial expression changing, or you feel their possible disappointment. And so instead of sharing your honest reaction, you adjust yourself to preserve their emotional comfort. It's not just kindness. It's a kind of preemptive emotional labor. And if you do this dozens of times a day, it's no wonder your body feels tired even after quote, unquote, light conversations. So what can happen is instead of just trying to do a good job, doing the best I can, being conscientious, caring, which are all natural HSP traits and don't have to be stressful at all, what happens is you start trying hard to prevent things from going wrong, and you start being hard on yourself if things do go wrong. And this is where perfectionism creeps in. It's like. It becomes like an emotional tangle, not just a task list. You're. You're managing so many unseens in that particular list, and that's exhausting. For example, a friend asks you for a small favor, and you say, yes, of course, and it's easy, and you'd be happy to do it, but then you maybe start worrying. Will this actually help them? Did I sound annoyed? Should I have phrased it differently? What if I messed this up? And suddenly that same favor, which at first sounded like, fine, great to take on, it can take over your mind, it can take over your calendar, and it can take over your emotional bandwidth. Because saying yes wasn't just a task. It was a kind of unspoken commitment to get it perfectly right and to not let anyone down. And that kind of pressure builds up really quickly. In fact, that's why I created the perfectionism self check to help you spot where your care has turned into pressure and how to return to peace before burnout sets in. Perfectionism is like holding your breath while you work. You get tense, you get hyper focused. Every detail matters but the longer you hold your breath the less clearly you think and eventually you'll either snap or collapse. What you need is to exhale and come back to balance if you notice that you're tired a lot even though you're not doing that much and part of you wonders if something is wrong or maybe you're not trying hard enough but what you really want is to stop driving yourself so hard. That's exactly why I created the Perfectionism Self Check. It's a printable guide that helps you recognize when natural care has tipped into pressure and it can be used as a quick body based reflection to restore clarity so that you can then imagine the same task without stress and let that version guide you. This is a short but powerful way to interrupt burnout before it builds. Go to the Show Notes and click the first link that you see or visit trueinnerfreedom.com Perfectionism Self Check Enter your details and I'll send it right to your inbox.