← 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
#355 | Why You Can't See What Others Love About You as a Highly Sensitive Person & How to Feel Loved Again
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover why it's so hard to see what others appreciate about you as a highly sensitive person and how to reconnect with your goodness in a way that actually feels true. In this episode, you will discover how not feeling loved even when you are creates a deep sense of emptiness. The hidden stories that quietly block you from feeling your own worth and why HSPs are especially vulnerable to them. And a gentle way to reconnect with the truth of who you are so you can finally feel the love that's been here all along. 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. It can be one of the most painful experiences for a sensitive person. You know that they care, they tell you, they show up and they even say the right things. But something inside still feels empty or unsure or unseen. And you keep wondering, if they really love me, why don't I feel it? And soon that turns into, maybe something is wrong with me. This isn't a lack of love. It's a nervous system that doesn't know how to receive it. We think about giving love and we often forget that receiving love is as important and is as much a gift to the person who is giving it. But we don't focus on that because when we're stressed, our nervous system gets into protection mode. This is why this happens, especially for HSPs. We as HSPs, we're wired to notice subtle cues. We notice tone, voice tone, body language, emotional nuances, and we are naturally, deeply attuned to what's going on with other people and impacted. When someone's love feels inconsistent or unclear, we're looking for inconsistency. We're looking for internal consistency, and we spot it when it isn't consistent. And that can make us doubt it. And a lot of times, people may love deeply, but don't always do it consistently for whatever number of reasons that may or may not have to do with you. So just the ability to notice these little subtle cues can put us a little bit on edge and be a little bit wary of love. And can it be trusted? On top of that, you may have grown up with love that was conditional or withdrawn or confusing. And that means that part of your system is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. And so again, you can't fully trust based on past experience. Now, that's not part of being, that's not part of the HSP trait, but it is a common experience. Of stress or trauma that can block the experience and put us on guard. And another way of thinking about this, these blocks, is there are stressful thoughts that run in your mind, and they filter your experiences before it reaches your heart. So you may hear I love you, but if the thought they're just saying that is running in the background, the love can't land. So there's a lot of ways to defuse love when it comes to us, to discredit it, because we have a story that we're not lovable. And this is purely stressful thinking. It is born out of stressful experiences in the past, but we carry them with us and they just run us unconsciously in everyday life. And so we don't know that we're doing this, but we literally are blocking any kind of affection or love, or maybe not everything, but from time to time, that can happen to us. And over time, this can create a painful loop where you doubt the love that's offered. You may even feel guilty for needing more than they can give. And then you may feel ashamed for not being able to receive what's already there. And so eventually, you can start to feel empty. And it's not because love is absent, but because your system has stopped letting it in. But that feeling of emptiness isn't actually a bad thing. It seems like a bad thing. It's painful, it's stressful, but it isn't actually a bad thing. And what it actually is, is a signal. All stress is a signal. It's like the little signal you get in your car. The light comes on and something needs to be serviced. It's a signal that it's time to, in this case, start looking for what are the thoughts, what are the past experiences that are blocking love now? And when you identify some of these thoughts and begin to question them, then you can actually reconnect with the deeper felt experience of who you are. And that's where healing actually begins. Highly sensitive people often hold themselves to a quiet but often punishing standard where you feel like you have to be doing something that is expected. You might recognize some of these inner narratives, Something like, if I don't get it right, I'll disappoint someone. There's an expectation there. If they really knew me, they wouldn't stay, or I have to be easy to love or I won't be loved at all. These aren't just passing thoughts. They're a kind of survival strategy. And these are forged early in life when your sensitivity picked up on every nuance in tone and glance and mood and assumed that you were the problem, so you adjusted yourself or believed these things about yourself. HSPs are especially vulnerable to these kinds of stories because we notice more, which means that we often internalize more. We replay and reflect deeply. That depth of processing is just a core aspect of being highly sensitive, which means that one moment of criticism or rejection can echo for days or even years. And as HSPs we love harmony. And so that can make us sometimes shapeshift or over function or self abandon just to avoid any kind of tension, because we're sensitive to tension and we can get overwhelmed by tension. And so we try to manipulate the situation to avoid that experience. It's a survival strategy. But over time, these stories become the lens through which you end up viewing yourself, even when the people around you are offering real love and acceptance. And you can be in a room full of people who admire you and still feel unworthy. And it's not because of what they see, but because of what you see. You believe instead. This is the key. What you believe determines your experience. And so what you believe, these are the stories that are running inside of you. The good news is that these beliefs and stories can be questioned. They can be questioned gently and lovingly and precisely until what's left is not so much a story, but the unveiled, truer version of yourself. The one that isn't at war with your own worth. The one that experiences things, that is present and is not filtering things through that story. So how do you reconnect with the truth of who you are when love can't get in? It's not because it isn't there. It's because something in your mind is standing in the way. And for highly sensitive people, that something is often a quiet, unquestioned story. Like, oh, they're just being polite, or they don't really mean it, or I'm only loved when I'm useful or I don't really fit in, or things like this? These thoughts don't shout. They're not loud thoughts. They're more like whispers. Yet these whispers can quietly block the very connection that your heart longs for. Just the tiniest whisper of a doubt is all it takes to keep the heart shut down and unable to receive. So how to begin releasing this? This kind of shift has to happen slowly, gently, respectfully, because these thoughts are here to protect you. They were put in place as survival mechanisms and you can't just rip them off without causing alarm inside. So you have to begin with curiosity. I like to just brainstorm and take out a pen and paper and actually write down, what am I actually thinking about this? What am I afraid of? What am I believing about myself? What am I believing about the other person? What do I want from that other person? All of that. So instead of just trying to feel loved, which is sort of like playing tug of war with yourself, it doesn't really work when you have a story going. Instead, find one of those thoughts that is alive in you when you're blocked from feeling love and question the belief itself. Go through and actually question what you're believing. My favorite way of doing this is called the work of Byron Katie, which is four questions and turnarounds and examples. It can be done so gently and it's a way of with full respect. Listening to that kind of hurt part of myself, that crying part, or that scared part of myself, or the part that feels that it's left out. And on the outside, listening to it, hearing what its belief is and then asking it if it really is true or not. Asking it what happens when it believes that and asking it who it would actually be if it wasn't believing that in the same situation. This is not positive thinking and it's not affirmations. It's a gentle, meditative inquiry that helps you meet those painful thoughts. It can help you meet any painful thought. And when you do, what's not true starts to fall away. Your grip on something that isn't true starts to loosen. And what is true, which is always deeper, starts to be revealed from underneath. So when you question a thought like I don't belong, you start to loosen that thought inside. It's a process might take you 15, 20, 30 minutes, an hour of really being in dialogue with yourself and, and questioning is it really true? How do I react? And who would I be without that thought? When this person is saying this, when you really do this, when you go through this process, you don't just think differently, you feel differently. You soften and you open. And the love that's been all around you all along finally has a way in. This isn't about needing more praise or more reassurance or more proof those things don't actually work. It's about removing the static that has been distorting the signal. The static is that noise inside, that thinking inside that is blocking and thinking. It's protecting the heart, but what it's actually doing is isolating the heart from contact with those who actually love you. Love is already here. You may have just forgotten how to feel it. So the feeling I'm left with today is that we are quite lovable as HSPs, but our stories that we don't belong block us from receiving it. When you question your stories, you start to see how safe it actually is to open your heart. In this episode, we looked at how not feeling loved even when you are creates a deep sense of emptiness. We looked at the hidden stories that quietly block you from feeling your own worth and why HSPs are especially vulnerable to them. And we looked at a gentle way to reconnect with the truth of who you are so you can finally feel the love that's been here all along. 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@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.