← 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
#384 | Why You Get Stuck Trying to Make the Right Decision as a Highly Sensitive Person and How to Move Forward
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By the end of this episode, you'll see why trying to feel completely sure before making a decision can keep you stuck. And what begins to change when you allow clarity to develop as you go. In this episode, you'll discover what's really driving the need to feel fully aligned before you act. Why that sense of alignment can be hard to reach through thinking alone. And how alignment often becomes clearer after you begin, not before. 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, have you ever gotten stuck trying to make a decision? You're looking at two different things, and first, you look at the first one and you can picture it. You can see how you could go in that direction. You can see the steps, and then your attention shifts to the other one, and you can picture that one, too. And you can see how it would work, and you can see where it would go. And what happens is you don't move. You stay there for a moment trying to feel into it which one is right. And you're waiting for something inside to settle, but it doesn't always happen. And so you may find yourself checking again. First one, then the second. And then you can end up sitting there for a long time, not starting, not choosing, because you're waiting for one of them to feel like the right move. What's happening in a moment like this is very subtle. It looks like you're deciding, but underneath that, what you're actually doing is you're searching for a feeling. You're searching for a sense of alignment, like an internal yes that you can say, yeah, that's it. Something that tells you that this is the right choice, and if that feeling were there, then you would just move right into it and there wouldn't be any hesitation. So the mind starts trying to get there, and so it checks each option and it compares, and it runs through how each one might go. And it looks for pros and cons, and it looks for anything that might feel off. And the more it does that, the more it finds more variables, more angles, more possibilities, and suddenly you're not choosing between two things, but between two very complex things that have lots of different variables involved. And instead of getting closer to a decision, it keeps the process actually going. This process can go on infinitely because that's what the mind does. The mind compares. It's what the intellect does. It compares and it finds differences between the different options, and it finds more and more distinguishing points. And then. And this just can go on and on. And on just dividing and dividing and dividing and getting more and more into the weeds as we go. So instead of getting closer to a decision, it can feel like the decision is getting pushed further and further away. And it's like you're trying to arrive at a feeling that thinking alone can't quite produce. That's the problem using the mind to make a decision when it can't always produce the feeling that you're looking for. So why does this affect highly sensitive people more than others? I think this is hard for everyone. Making decisions is never. Well, not never, but it's often not an easy thing. But as a highly sensitive person, we take in and analyze and look at more variables than other people. That is our nature. And we're built that way for a reason. We notice detail, we process things deeply and we, we're good analysts actually. So when we make a decision, we have as much information about that as possible and we are weighing pros and cons and we're trying to find the way forward as a result. So we look for what might, what something might actually feel like before it even happens. And this is our strength. We're good at projecting and imagining and predicting and avoiding possible problems. This is really a superpower of being an hsp, but it can make decisions just a little bit slower. And so that's also natural. You have to build in more time when you're an HSP for making decisions because there is this natural comparing process that takes place. But that doesn't mean that it has to be infinite. It doesn't mean that we have to get stuck just because we see more nuance. Just because we're comparing more variables doesn't mean we have to get completely stuck in the decision making process, which is something that can happen to us. We can get overwhelmed and just bogged down in the decision making process. And doesn't have to be that way. What we're looking for when we're trying to make that decision decision is a clear sense of alignment. And we're looking for a way that is like, absolutely. We're like, yeah, that's it. And it's an ease feeling and it's like a clarity feeling. But the problem is not all decisions, even when you research them thoroughly, provide that kind of feeling, provide that kind of clarity. You may not have enough information or you may still be unsure. And that makes it sometimes hard when you can't reach that feeling. And so what can happen is you start looping and you start checking one option, then check the other and Then you look, waiting for something to settle, and you think a bit more about it, and then you notice something new and then you feel less certain and then you go back again. And this can go on and on for quite a time because each pass through that loop feels like, okay, I'm working my way towards the solution, I'm getting closer. But the clarity you're looking for doesn't always arrive. So how do we do this differently? How can we approach a decision so that we can honor the HSP trait of taking our time and being thorough and looking at all the variables, but we can also not get caught in the loop where it doesn't go anywhere? One place to begin is with feeling what it's like when you're in this decision making process. Often if you notice there's a kind of frustration there, a kind of feeling of being stuck, like you should be able to decide, but something isn't landing. And it's sometimes easy to move straight past that and try to solve it, to just be like, come on. The problem is, with my lack of clarity, we need to research some more. And you can end up ignoring that frustrated feeling that is internal while you're making that decision. But this is actually a great place to slow it down and to do a little bit of inner work and to look at what's going on on the inside, because that may be as important as all the analysis you're doing on the outside. And so the idea is to meet this feeling, this frustration feeling more directly. Because underneath the frustration, there's usually something you're believing in that moment, something that the mind is just assuming is true, that can be causing the feeling of frustration to be there in the first place. Things like, there is a right choice here. I mean, that can get me stuck forever. If I think there's a right choice, then I certainly don't want to make the wrong choice. So I'm going to be really, really looking to see if I can find that right choice. But that's an assumption that there is a right choice and many decisions don't have a right choice. So this is something that it's interesting to become aware of. What am I actually believing when I'm in this process of making the decision? So other thoughts are like, I should be able to feel it, I should be able to find the right decision. And so instead of trying to push through that, you can just start noticing it, start hearing it, start being aware of the kinds of thoughts that are causing you to get stuck. Like, I have to do I have to choose the right one. I have to. This has to be. It's going to affect so many things. Like this is life or death, right? We may not say that, but there's a certain part of us that can be believing that. And that is what can make it very difficult to make a decision. We put pressure on ourselves with these kinds of thoughts. And so if you begin to first of all be aware of the thoughts that you're believing underneath the feelings, and then even start to question those thoughts, then that can start to loosen the emotion and what you find is clarity can start coming in. So that means you can ask yourself, is it really true that there's just one right choice here, or is it true that you need to feel completely sure before you begin? Or is it true that this is a life or death decision? Is it true that if I choose one and if I choose the wrong one, I'm going to suffer forever? Is it true that it's irreversible? Like these are the kinds of things you can begin to question and loosen up the emotion that is blocking the decision making process. Just sitting with these kinds of questions without trying to force an answer can already start to open things up. Because what often begins to shift is not the decision itself, but your relationship to it. One thought I've questioned myself is I need to make a decision and to find that that is not absolutely true takes so much pressure off of that deciding the decision making and allows me to explore in a much more carefree way. And then the pressure softens and the sense that you have to get it exactly right begins to loosen. And from there something else becomes possible. You can begin to move, even sometimes without that perfect sense of alignment. Alignment is an ideal and it's something that I really try to find. I look for alignment, I try to find where my feelings are matching my actions. And I think all HSPs do. This is something that's important to us. But keep in mind that this is an ideal and that you may not always be able to live up to that ideal. And if you're trying to, when you're unable to, you can end up being frustrated. So who would you be without the idea that you have to find the perfect alignment in making a particular decision, what happens is you can take a step, you can see how it actually feels, you can notice what you learn from just that one step and you can adjust from there. So instead of waiting for a clear yes before you begin, the question becomes, is this close enough to move forward with not perfect, not fully certain, but workable. Something you can step into. And as you do that, alignment doesn't disappear, it just shifts. It becomes something that develops as you go, instead of something that you have perfectly lined up before you start, something that you refine through experience rather than something you have to fully arrive at before you start. So the feeling I'm left with today is even good things like alignment and integrity can be a source of stress if you're too attached to them. By loosening your grip on the idea of perfect alignment, you can find a lot of freedom to explore and discover deeper and deeper levels of alignment over time through action and reflection. In this episode, we looked at what's really driving the need to feel fully aligned before you act. And it's a natural desire for integrity. And as HSPs, we value integrity above almost everything. But it also can lean into a little bit of perfectionism where we're looking for that perfect integrity before we can take action. We also looked at why that sense of alignment can be hard to reach through thinking alone. And that is that because analysis doesn't necessarily yield that feeling of alignment. And so it can get confusing when more and more and more and more analysis is happening, because that's not actually where decisions end up being made from. And finally, we looked at how alignment often becomes clearer after you begin, not before. And that is through taking action based on good enough alignment that gets the ball rolling. So thank you 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.