← 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
#366 | Why Feeling Behind Creates Instant Overwhelm for Highly Sensitive People and How to Release the Pressure
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By the end of this episode, you'll discover why the simple thought I'm behind can instantly overwhelm highly sensitive people and how questioning that thought can release the pressure and restore your clarity. In this episode, you'll discover why the thought I'm behind can instantly overwhelm the brain of a highly sensitive person. Why? The real problem in these moments is usually not the workload or. Or the clock. And a simple question that can release the pressure and help your mind start working again. 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. Imagine a morning like this. You wake up a little later than you planned. Not dramatically late, just enough that the day already feels slightly compressed. And you had a very intentional morning planned. You wanted to meditate, do a little movement, cook something healthy instead of rushing. Maybe a few quiet moments to settle your mind before the day begins. And today was supposed to be different. You had finally blocked out time for some deep work on an important project. Something meaningful, something important to you, and something important for your work. Something you could not get done yesterday. So it rolled over to today, and you were looking forward to that space. But now the morning is already tighter than you expected, and you move a little faster through your routine. And you check your email and a message appears. And an administrative task that was not on your radar pops up. It might take an hour or even more. Now your attention starts jumping. You open one thing, then another. You try to decide where to start, but nothing quite settles. Your breathing gets a little shallow. Your mind starts scanning the entire day. The deep work, the unexpected task, the things that still need to happen, the things you want to do to take care of yourself. Oh, my goodness. Highly sensitive nervous systems are very good at processing information deeply, but they do not function well when internal pressure suddenly appears. Pressure compresses the system. Instead of calmly doing the next thing, the brain begins trying to solve everything at once. And in my experience, it feels often like your brain just freezes. I just can't think. It's like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. And that's when the overwhelm starts to appear. It's not that the tasks are impossible, but the nervous system has shifted from clarity into pressure. Now, here's the surprising part. When we look closely at moments like this, the overwhelm is usually not caused by the workload, and it's usually not caused by the clock. Even though it seems like it, it's caused by the meaning that the Mind attaches to the moment. I explored this recently with a client in a one on one session. And she described almost exactly the same kind of morning. You know, the scattered attention, the inability to focus, the sense that everything suddenly felt urgent. And when we slowed down and looked at what was happening internally, one thought stood out. And that thought was, I'm behind. Such a simple little thought. Then I asked her to imagine the exact same situation again. The same morning, the same tasks, the same amount of time available, but this time without the thought I'm behind. So no story that something has gone wrong, no idea that she's already late or falling behind. Just the simple reality as it was. And I asked her to notice who she would be in that moment. Without that thought. Almost immediately, something changed. Without the thought I'm behind. The nervous system did not go into pressure mode. The brain no longer tried to solve the entire day all at once. And she said the situation no longer felt overwhelming. This is amazing. One thought can make such a huge difference. As she imagined it, she felt the situation had simply become a kind of puzzle. Instead of panic, her mind started organizing the pieces. And she remembered even strategies she already knew about how to do that. Which tasks were urgent but not important. Which ones were important but not urgent. Which things could wait. Nothing about the situation had changed. The same tasks were there the same amount of time. But once the pressure dropped, her mind began functioning again. And that's the key point for highly sensitive people. Overwhelm often is not caused by the number of things to do. It is caused by the internal pressure that shuts down our clarity. If you remove the pressure, then the brain can work again. It's that simple. So what can we do when that pressure starts building? One helpful step is to pause and question the thought that created the pressure in the first place. There's almost always a thought. If you look for it, you'll find it. In this case, the mind says, I'm behind. So instead of automatically believing it, try asking a simple question. Is it true? Is it really true that I'm behind? Or is that simply a stressful interpretation of the moment? Behind according to what timeline? Behind according to what expectation? Behind according to what definition of how this morning was supposed to unfold. When my client explored this belief more carefully, something interesting happened. She realized that in some ways, she was actually ahead. When she looked at her to do list, she started looking at all the things she had accomplished yesterday, the day before, for the last three months. It was like, oh my gosh. And even that day, she was ahead in many very concrete ways for her. So this is a change of perspective, and this is what happens when you question a belief that you were just assuming was true, and especially if that belief was causing the kind of pressure that I'm behind causes. So when she looked, she found that things were already done, that some tasks were already easier than expected, and that the situation was far more balanced than the mind had suggested. And the moment that belief loosened, her nervous system relaxed and her mind began working again. She could focus, she could prioritize, she could move forward calmly. The tasks hadn't changed, the time hadn't changed, but the pressure had disappeared. This is something I see often when working with highly sensitive people. Our nervous systems respond strongly to the thoughts we believe when a thought creates pressure, questioning it can release that pressure very quickly. And when the pressure drops, something very natural returns. Clarity. You stop trying to catch up on an imagined timeline and you simply begin doing the next thing in front of you, one step at a time. So the feeling I'm left with today is that HSPs don't do well under time pressure. But a big percentage of time pressure comes from the thoughts we're believing, not just the situation itself. When you question a pressurizing thought, the situation becomes much easier to deal with. In this episode, we looked at why the thought I'm behind can instantly overwhelm the brain of a highly sensitive person. And it's because we're not wired to do a lot of things at once and I'm behind puts pressure on us to start moving in a thousand different directions at once, and it just makes us freeze. We also looked at why the real problem in these moments is usually not the workload or the clock. And as we saw, it is the thought that we're believing that is causing this pressure. In this case it was I'm behind. In other cases it might be I need to finish by this time. You know, this is an absolute deadline. There could be many kinds of thoughts that pressurize a situation. If you find out what it is and question it, then you can start to release that pressure. And finally, we looked at a simple question that can release the pressure and help your mind start working again. And this comes from the work of Byron Katie. It's simply, is it true? You know, it's the first thing, is it true? And there are more questions to the work of Byron Katie. And it's an amazing little set of questions, but that one alone can loosen things. 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.