10 Reasons Small Stressors Overwhelm Highly Sensitive People

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover 10 reasons why HSPs get stressed over small things and what to do about it.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover why it’s understandable that highly sensitive people get stressed about small things, how to gain compassion for yourself when this happens to you, and how to work within the limits of your HSP trait and increase your resilience. 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.

Do you ever judge yourself for being too sensitive? Do you start asking yourself, why do small things get me so much? Why is it a big deal? This is a common experience for highly sensitive people. And even if you know that you’re a highly sensitive person, you may still fall into the trap of judging yourself and being impatient with yourself when this happens to you.

It can happen in small ways, day in and day out. Somebody doesn’t return an email, how long does that take for them to return the email? You start wondering. And then the stress starts building, especially if it’s something that you think is important. Or a slight tone of impatience or judgment in somebody’s speech.

And it can affect you in a strong way. Or a frustration. I was just working with my dog today and it didn’t, he didn’t want to do what I wanted him to do. And it’s just this little. frustration. Why can’t you just do it the way you’re supposed to do? So these small things, they seem small, but they feel big when you’re a highly sensitive person.

And I’d like to look a little more closely at why that is. So highly sensitive people are have a unique kind of nervous system. And we tend to process sensory information in a heightened way. So that means that even small little stimuli like noises or lights or chaotic environments can feel overwhelming because this of this heightened sensory processing.

We also have deep emotional reactions. We have a stronger emotional response to situations that are maybe seem small. And so a little criticism can trigger deeper feelings of hurt or self pity. reflection. We also are very detail oriented and so we tune into all the tiny little things, the details that we missed, the things that other people are giving us that seem very minor, but we want a clean slate.

We want to, we want a clean desk. We want, we don’t want any unfinished things. And we are touched or hurt sometimes by offhand remarks that may feel more significant to us because we’re processing things in a detailed way. We also have high empathy levels, which means we pick up on subtle cues and the emotions and moods of others.

So that little frown or shift in tone will bother us more because we’re we’re noticing it, and if we’re in the other person’s business, which is where we can start to gain clarity here, if we’re in the other person’s business, we may start assuming responsibility for those emotions, and that’s where the stress begins.

Whether you’re a highly sensitive person, or a non highly sensitive person, whenever you get into the other person’s business, start assuming responsibility for something that’s not your responsibility, that’s when stress begins. And a big piece of coming back to peace is to, to uncouple that, to come back into your own business, and it can be a completely different experience.

But nonetheless, we’re more prone to this because we’re highly sensitive. We do have that high empathy level and it’s easy to get sucked in to other people’s emotions. Another thing that can cause this small things to make a big impact for us as highly sensitive people is that we reach overstimulation quicker than most people.

And that means that. Once we’ve reached our limit, then, of course, tolerance goes way down, and that’s when you can end up getting triggered by very small annoyances. Think of yourself at the end of the day, if you’re really tired, then it doesn’t take much to for anyone actually, but especially for highly sensitive people to get triggered.

Then you bring in perfectionistic tendencies, which are very common with highly sensitive people. We like to do things well. We see how well they can be done. And small imperfections in our work can become disproportionately stressful because we value this kind of precision and harmony and completeness that we idealize.

We also tend to ruminate a bit. We think deeply, and that’s a good thing but we tend to dwell on things. So that, that email that we’re waiting a reply for, we may keep dwelling on it and dwelling on it, and each time we do, it amplifies the emotional impact. We also, as highly sensitive people, tend to have a desire for harmony.

We, we thrive in environments that are calm and balanced. We look for ways to maintain harmony and we try to avoid things that disrupt harmony. A noisy neighbor, a minor conflict, an untidy workspace, those things can start to get us because of this attachment or desire for harmony.

We also have a higher sensitivity physically to stress. So highly sensitive people have been studied. They have higher reactivity or sensitivity to stress hormones like cortisol. So even a small bit of that hormone in the body can provoke a more intense physiological reaction. And then finally, we tend to think about outcomes, we tend to think about consequences, and so we can sometimes get caught in the fear of negative outcomes.

And this can also aggravate or accentuate the experience of stress. It’s not, it’s just one small thing here, but we’re imagining what that means into the future, and that can cause that extra experience of stress. So these are 10 ways that we naturally tend to amplify the experience of stress and can get caught in the stress loop.

So how can you gain compassion for yourself when this happens? The key is to understand your highly sensitive person trait. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s not, you’re not bad, you’re not different in a bad way. We are, we’re designed evolutionarily for a specialized role. And so let’s take a look at that role that highly sensitive people play.

It’s an important one. It’s something that is easy to focus on, but when you do, can give a lot of understanding. Basically, the HSP trait is an evolutionary advantage, at least that’s what the research is pointing towards, that it serves a specific role in society and in the natural world. And remember that animal species have parts of their species that are more highly sensitive.

than others. So this trait is thought to be a survival strategy for for any particular species. They call it differential susceptibility or biological sensitivity to context. And HSPs are often seen as the natural advisors, observers, or sentinels. So let’s look at some of the details. What are the evolutionary roles that the HSP trait is designed for?

First of all, it’s designed for keen observation and risk assessment. We’re attuned to our environment. This makes us ideal for spotting threats or opportunities. that others may overlook. And who knows, in old societies there may have been signs of danger or resource scarcity or shifts in the group dynamic that highly sensitive people would have tuned into, and it could have been invaluable for the survival of the community.

Also the HSP trait serves the role of processing like deeply processing things for problem solving. So this tendency to process information deeply, which can become stressful in certain situations, is actually a really important trait for any community. It allows us to solve problems, to analyze situations thoroughly, and to weigh risks and take actions.

Another area is empathy and social cohesion. HSPs have this heightened sense of empathy that allows us to detect undercurrents of emotion in certain situations, And helps us to foster harmony and cooperation in groups. And so we may act as mediators, as counselors within a group, or we may try to strengthen bonds and resolve conflicts.

That’s our natural tendency. And to do that, we have to have a lot of sensitivity, we have to have our kind of mind out there looking at these subtle cues. So it’s not a bad thing. We also think long term about where, what are the consequences of any particular situation. And so we think long and hard about things, we ruminate, we project, and this is not a bad thing.

It’s just that it can get out of balance in day to day life, and we may have to take extra precautions to rebalance ourselves. But this has served as a, an important role in society and in other species for, many years. We also like to support the health of a group. And so this trait because we’re naturally empathetic, we may tend to gravitate towards nurturing or caring for others supporting others emotionally, spiritually, or physically.

And this can enhance the overall well being of a group or community. The role in today’s modern society is probably in the area of counseling and therapy. Thank you. leadership advising, creative arts and innovation, research and analysis, and even environmental advocacy. So this is an important role that we play.

We have a unique specialized trait that has its limitations, but it also has its importance in helping our world, our society. be optimal in its ability to handle all kinds of different situations and to remain cohesive as well.

So the real question is how to work within the limits of your HSP trait and increase your resilience. What we need to look at here is how to balance stress because the trait is neutral. The trait is useful. The trait is part of who we are and it allows us to do many things that are very useful for ourselves and for our society.

But the stress can come in and this is where we need to think of like how to manage that. First of all, Managing overstimulation is a really key factor creating sensory friendly environments where there’s not too much distraction, not a lot of noise, not a lot of things that are pulling our attention in different directions.

Planning downtime is super important for maintaining balance. So yes, we can advise, we can see subtle things. We can do amazing things during. work time, but we need to have downtime so that we can reduce the stimulation and kind of reset and then come back again and do it again. It’s also important to limit exposure to stressful stimuli and there’s so many stimuli and some of us, some of them get us and we may be working on improving our resilience in that area, but at the same time we have to know our limits and there’s just only so much we can take.

And so just know what those are and plan around it. Another thing that can help is reframing stressors, just reminding yourself that this is small, right? It looks big, but will it matter in a week or a month or a year? Is it really that important? Is it really even true, going into the work of Byron Katie and also reminding yourself that even though you’re sensitive, that sensitivity is a strength.

That can sometimes just help to balance the perspective. Then, of course, building emotional resilience is key. This is where the heart of the work is. This is where I recommend doing the work of Byron Katie to question all of those stressful thoughts and to bring yourself back into your business instead of getting caught in the business of others, which can only aggravate any kind of stress.

Therapy is a valuable tool as well to work with someone who can can just help you digest and understand and find practical therapies for practical. means of balancing your life. Meditation, of course, is super essential. It builds resilience by increasing the conscious capacity of the mind so that it can hold more, so that it’s less overwhelmed.

It’s like expanding the bucket in a way so that it doesn’t overflow as easily. Journaling can also be helpful just to build resilience. It’s a way of processing, it’s a way of getting things out, and there have been tons of studies on the effectiveness of that. Then we have preventing overload. If you can set a few boundaries, maybe simplify your schedule, use some routines, this can help contain the overstimulation so that it doesn’t become too much.

Improving your ability to digest stress meditation again, the work of Byron Katie again, breathing, yoga, walking, gentle exercise, being in nature. All these things can help pull the stress out of you, relax the stress, and allow you to move into a more balanced state again. Perfectionism is always a factor with HSPs.

We tend to like to do things well, and so getting comfortable with good enough, getting comfortable with allowing yourself to make mistakes, redefining success, these can all be super important. And then Building supportive relationships, connecting with other HSPs, communicating your needs, and limiting any kind of toxic types of relationships, tox connections with toxic people can be super helpful as well.

And then taking care of your physical body, your diet, your sleep, your hydration, these things make a difference. And then cultivating inner strength, like spiritual practices Learning where your limits are, being more self aware and staying within them, and even gratitude for seeing things like what is good about a situation is a real turnaround and can open the heart and reduce the stress.

And then finally, allowing yourself to release emotions. Maybe crying, maybe expressing creatively in some way, maybe moving your body or moving the energy out. These are all ways that can be super helpful for dealing with stress and eliminating and keeping the balance within the, within the trait of being an HSP.

We’re never going to change the trait. The trait is not wrong. There’s nothing you have to correct about it. But we, as HSPs, have to manage our stress more than other non HSPs because we feel it quicker and it can take us out of balance further. In this episode, we looked at why it’s understandable that highly sensitive people get stressed about small things.

And we saw that this is due to many factors built into our nervous systems, our heightened sensory processing, our detail orientation, our high empathy levels, our tendency to get overstimulated, and then even small things will bother anyone, our desire for harmony, And and even our biological sensitivity to things like the stress hormones, cortisol, et cetera.

So this is just a natural part of being a highly sensitive person. We also understood how to gain compassion for ourselves when this kind of stress happens to us. And it’s about seeing why we are this way. You know it. If you see that. Our role is to be a sentinel, traditionally, to notice things and bring them to the attention of others.

Then this sensitivity is not a bad thing. It’s an essential thing. It’s just that we have to find ways to balance it. So finally, we looked at how to balance this tendency to get stressed, which we have as highly sensitive people. And of course, there are many ways, managing overstimulation, building emotional resilience, doing the work of Byron Katie, doing meditation.

Journaling there are many things improving, like having relationships with other HSPs protecting yourself, simplifying many options to help reduce stress. And all of these things will also help non HSP, non HSPs reduce stress as well. We all need stress reduction. But it’s just that for us as HSPs, we tend to get triggered quicker and we can go into further into overwhelm.

And so we need these tools and we need to use these tools more than other people. So thanks for listening and I look forward to our next time together. In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.