← 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
#387 | Why It's Easy to Judge Yourself as Too Complicated as an HSP and What's Really Going On Underneath
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By the end of this episode, you'll see why it's so easy to judge yourself as too complicated as an hsp. And what begins to change when you understand what's actually happening underneath. In this episode, you'll see why it's so easy to turn sensitivity into a character judgment. You'll understand what's often happening underneath the thought I'm too complicated. And you'll start to see why so much of the pain is not just your sensitivity, but the way you've learned to relate to 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. Sometimes being a highly sensitive person can make you feel like you're just harder to be than other people. Like there are too many conditions, too many things that affect you, too many things you need in order to feel okay. And after a while, it can start to feel embarrassing. You might notice that you need more quiet than other people, more recovery time, more space, more care around what you take in. Maybe loud places wear you out fast. Maybe certain fabrics bother you. Maybe a restaurant that seems normal to someone else feels exhausting to you before the food even comes. Maybe a tense conversation stays in your body for hours. Maybe you need more time to process something before you can respond clearly. And when that starts adding up, it can create a very specific kind of self judgment. You don't just think, oh, this is hard for me. You start thinking, why am I like this? Why does everything affect me so much? Why can't I just be simpler? Why does it seem so easy for other people just to live? And then underneath all that, a deeper conclusion starts to form. Maybe I'm too complicated. Maybe I'm too much. Maybe I'm difficult. Maybe I'm high maintenance. Maybe people have to work too hard to be with me. That's the pain I want to talk about today. Because for a lot of highly sensitive people, the hardest part is not just having a sensitive nervous system. It's the meaning you end up attaching to it. It's the identity that starts to form around it. It's the way sensitivity slowly turns into self distrust. You start having a real experience of overwhelm or discomfort or depletion. And then almost immediately, the mind comes in and adds a judgment. This shouldn't be so hard. Other people can handle this. I'm making this difficult, or I'm too particular. And now you're carrying two things. You're carrying the actual experience and you're carrying the shame of having the experience. That second part is often where so much of the suffering comes from, because the original experience might simply be that your nervous system is overstimulated. But now, on top of that, you're also questioning yourself, defending yourself internally, comparing yourself to other people, trying to decide whether your needs are even valid, trying to figure out whether you're honoring yourself or just becoming more and more limited, trying to tell whether this is wisdom or weakness. And that internal questioning gets exhausting. A lot of HSPs live in that space, not just feeling what they feel, but constantly evaluating whether they should be feeling it or not. You might accommodate yourself, but then feel guilty afterwards. You might speak up about something and then wonder if you're being too difficult. You might avoid an environment that drains you, and then question whether you're narrowing your life too much. You might need recovery time, and then immediately judge yourself for needing it. So the whole experience becomes heavy. Because you never just get to have your own reality. You have to argue with yourself about it too. And when that happens long enough, it starts to shape the way you see yourself. You stop seeing sensitivity as something you have, and you start seeing too muchness as what you are. That's where this gets painful. Because now it's not just crowded places are a lot for me now. It's I'm the kind of person who can't handle normal life. It's not just, I need more time to settle after something intense now, it's I'm weak. It's not just this environment doesn't work well for my system, it's now I'm impossible. And once it becomes an identity, it starts affecting everything. How you speak to yourself, what you ask for, what you think you're allowed to need, how much you explain yourself, how quickly you override your own experience, how much shame you feel in relationships, how much pressure you put on yourself to be easier and lighter and lower maintenance and less affected. A lot of highly sensitive people have spent years trying to become more manageable, more manageable for other people, more manageable for the pace of the world, more manageable for the expectations around them. And it makes a certain kind of sense. Because if you grew up being told you were too sensitive or too emotional or too. Or too affected or too intense or too particular. It is very easy to internalize the idea that your natural way of being is a problem to solve. So now, even when your sensitivity is showing you something real, you may still treat it like bad news about your character. And that's a painful way to live. Because Your system is trying to communicate with you. Instead of being met with understanding, it gets met with criticism. You feel overstimulated and the response is, come on, you should be able to handle this. You feel impacted by something and the response is, ah, you're being dramatic, or you need space. And your internal response is, you're making this too complicated. No Wonder so many HSPs feel tired. It's not only because they feel so much. It's because so much of what they feel gets followed by self rejection. And this can create a really lonely inner experience. Because even if other people are kind, you may still be the one turning against yourself on the inside. You may still be the one minimizing what you know is actually true for you. You may still be the one trying to force yourself to function like someone with a different nervous system. And when that doesn't work, you take it personally. This is where I think something important can begin to shift. The thought I'm too complicated often sounds like self awareness. It sounds even mature or maybe even humble in a way. But a lot of the time it's actually pain. It's pain that has to be organized into and has been organized into a kind of identity. It's the accumulated effect of not feeling understood or feeling different, or comparing yourself to people who are less affected or living in environments that are too much, or trying to keep up with standards that don't fit your wiring. Or repeatedly having experiences that genuinely affect you and then making those experiences mean something diminishing about who you are. So underneath the thought I'm too complicated, there is often something much more tender. There may be grief. Grief that life feels harder than you wish it did. There may be shame. Shame that your needs seem more visible than other people's. There may be fear. Fear that your sensitivity will cost you closeness or ease or opportunity or belonging. There may be loneliness. Loneliness from feeling like other people don't fully get what it's like to be in your system. And there may also be exhaustion. Exhaustion from trying to negotiate with your own nature all the time. That's why this thought can carry so much weight. Because it usually isn't just a passing judgment. It's sitting on top of years of experience. Years of adapting, years of second guessing, years of trying to figure out where honoring yourself ends and limiting yourself begins. Years of wondering whether your needs are real or whether you're just becoming difficult. So when you catch yourself thinking I'm too complicated, it may help to slow that moment down, because that sentence can make it sound like the problem is you. But often what's really happening is that your system is having a real experience and then an old layer of shame lands on top of it. That's a very different thing. Because if the problem is that you're fundamentally too complicated, then the answer becomes self rejection. The answer becomes trying to be less you, trying to toughen up, trying to override, trying to shrink your truth until it looks more convenient. But if what's actually happening is that your sensitivity is real and the shame around it is old, then something else becomes possible. Then the work is no longer to make yourself simpler somehow. It becomes learning how to stop turning your sensitivity into evidence against yourself. And that's a very different path. And for a lot of HSPs, that shift can be huge. Because the moment you stop making your sensitivity mean that something is wrong with you, there can be a little more space, a little more honesty, a little less inner violence. You may still need what you need. You may still have preferences, limits, recovery time, sensitivities, and moments where the world feels like a lot. But now those things don't automatically have to collapse into a painful conclusion about who you are. And that matters, because when the shame softens, you can start relating to yourself more clearly. You can start noticing what actually supports you, and you can start seeing where you've been pushing against yourself. You can start telling the difference between your nervous system and the story you've built around it. And that begins to change the whole experience. If this lands for you, if you can feel how much pain can gather around that thought, I'm too complicated, then you're not alone. This is one of those places where highly sensitive people can look functional on the outside, but inside there's a lot of pressure, a lot of self monitoring, and a lot of quiet shame. And that shame can shape your whole life if it isn't seen. It can shape your relationships, your work, your choices, your confidence, your willingness to honor what's true for you, your ability to rest, your ability to trust yourself. So if this is something you're living with, if you're tired of judging yourself for having the kind of system that you have, and you want to help, get some help untangling the shame that's gotten wrapped around your sensitivity. I'd be happy to support you in this. You can learn more about working with me one on one at the Working Together page on my website. The link is in the show notes.