The Bucket Holiday: Stress Management Strategy for Highly Sensitive People

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover what a bucket holiday is, and how it can turn your life around as an HSP.

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 how the bucket analogy explains why HSPs experience overwhelm more than non-HSPs, how to use this analogy to find some important places where you have control over your stress, and practical examples of bucket holidays you could take. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays.

On Fridays, we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person. I learned the term “bucket holiday” from our dog trainer just the other day. I’d never heard it before. She was talking about our dog, who is super reactive. He’s a standard-sized schnauzer, two and a half years old, and he can just, you know, get overwhelmed by just about anything.

I’m sure he’s a highly sensitive dog. She talked about the idea of a bucket holiday, where you give a break to the stimulation that the dog is experiencing. And it made me think about how we humans need bucket holidays too. Maybe this concept has been talked about with humans as well.

The basic idea is that we all have different sizes of buckets. Some are big, and some are small. Some can hold a lot of water, while others can hold just a little. That’s our nature—we can’t really change it too much; it’s who we are.

We have to work within the limits of our bucket size. If the bucket gets full, it overflows, and we feel overwhelmed, unable to be our best. There’s another element: each bucket has different drainage holes of varying sizes. Some buckets drain quickly, while others drain slowly. This too is just part of who we are, and it affects how fast we can get over overwhelm when it happens.

The other factor is that life provides us with different amounts of “water” in different situations. Sometimes water is pouring into our bucket, and other times it’s just a sprinkle. This also makes a big difference in whether or not we get overwhelmed. It’s really a balance between these factors that determines if we’ll feel overwhelmed or not.

Highly sensitive people have an additional factor to consider. If you think of water as incoming stimuli, HSPs tend to multiply that water. We’re aware of more details in everything, so one drop of water is almost like ten drops for an HSP because there’s so much information in each drop. So, if water is pouring in, imagine that multiplied by ten.

I love this analogy because it explains why HSPs experience overwhelm more than non-HSPs. Everyone has a bucket size limit, and if you add enough water, it will overflow. For those with a smaller bucket or smaller drainage holes—or for those who experience each drop as more intense—the chance of overwhelm increases faster than for someone with a large bucket, big drainage holes, and no multiplying effect.

For me, as a highly sensitive person, I think of it as not having a buffer. This means I have to pay close attention to what’s coming in and how much I can process. I have to pace myself due to the system’s physical limitations.

So, let’s look at how to use this analogy to find places where you have some control over your stress experience. First of all, we can’t control the size of our bucket. That seems to be something we’re born with. You may have a small one, and that’s just the way it is, like being a naturally skinny person. I’m a skinny person and don’t have the physical buffer some people have, so I have to be careful about what I eat to avoid overwhelming my system.

If your bucket size is small, the question becomes: how do you live within that constraint? The next area to look at is the size of the drainage holes. I’m not sure how much control we have over that either, but we probably have some.

When I say drainage holes, I’m referring to our ability to process things. When water comes in, how quickly can we process it before it drains out? If you’re an HSP, you probably process things thoroughly and slowly, and it may take a while. But there are factors you can control here, such as whether these holes in the bucket are blocked by stress.

If the holes are clogged, it doesn’t matter how big they are—water will overflow. By reducing stress or processing it, you can keep those holes clear, which will allow you to process experiences more effectively.

There’s our natural processing ability and then our stressed processing ability, which is often reduced from its unstressed version. Another thing to keep in mind is that gaining more skills can open up new holes in the bucket, so what was once overwhelming becomes manageable.

And of course, you can ask for help. If you need assistance, someone else can share the load, like putting some water into their bucket. There are ways of working within the limitations of your drainage holes and processing ability.

Finally, you can control where you put your bucket and how long you keep it there. If you’re under a waterfall, you’ll be overwhelmed instantly, but you could move it to the side and get just a bit of water, making it much less overwhelming. Or you can find other places with a gentler flow.

Personally, I know there are areas where I don’t thrive because I can get overwhelmed quickly. I’ve learned that these are not my strong environments, and I avoid them unless necessary. It’s just intelligence: why put your bucket in a place where it’ll get flooded quickly?

So, while we have a certain nature—bucket size, drainage hole size—that may be fixed to a degree, there are things we can control. We can keep the holes open, maybe add new ones, and control where we put our bucket to avoid overwhelming it.

Now, going back to the idea of a bucket holiday, I actually took one last week. My number one bucket holiday is a staycation. If you’ve never tried it, a staycation means staying home and taking a week off without going anywhere, just relaxing.

I love this. I try to do it a few times a year. It doesn’t cost anything; it’s easy. I just relax, read, listen to music, and play with the dog. I sleep more, meditate longer in the mornings, and feel my energy returning. It’s like the bucket is draining, and the feeling of overwhelm goes down and down.

When we think of overwhelm, we tend to think of it as a short-term issue. We get overwhelmed and need to rest immediately. But there’s also long-term overwhelm, where our bucket is nearly full, so it doesn’t take much to overflow again. Taking a bucket holiday gives us time to let the water level drop gradually over several days, creating a buffer when we return to regular activity.

Other bucket holiday ideas include a meditation retreat—great for rest and often away from daily life—or a yoga retreat, which can be similarly restful. Nature excursions, like camping, can work if you manage them well. A little cabin rental where you can just relax might be a great option, as could a beach or lake holiday.

I know my great-grandfather was once prescribed by his doctor to take a summer beach holiday to fully relax. He took the whole family, fished every day, and it became a family tradition. My cousins still do this every year: take a week to sit on the beach, swim, talk, and play games together. That’s a bucket holiday.

If you can, unplug during these breaks. Avoid Wi-Fi, cell service, and even TV. It reduces stimuli and gives your brain a chance to lower the water level in your bucket.

Another cool idea I heard from a friend is to rent a room in a nearby town for the weekend and explore it like you’re on vacation. It’s not expensive and doesn’t involve air travel, yet it’s still relaxing and rejuvenating.

These are just a few ideas. I’m sure you can come up with more, but the idea of a bucket holiday is about giving yourself time to decrease the water in your bucket and regain that buffer for life’s ups and downs.

In this episode, we looked at how the bucket analogy explains why HSPs experience overwhelm more than non-HSPs, which could be due to any factor: smaller bucket size, smaller drainage capacity, or multiplying the stimuli due to high sensitivity.

We then explored ways to control your stress, even if you can’t change your bucket size or processing speed. Keeping your system as stress-free as possible can keep the drainage holes open. Gaining skills may open new holes, and getting help is another way to manage limitations.

Finally, we looked at bucket holiday ideas: a staycation, meditation or yoga retreats, camping, a beach or lake holiday without digital distractions, and even exploring a nearby town. All of these can help drain your bucket, creating space again for life’s challenges.

Thanks for listening. I love sharing these ideas and thinking them through with you. I look forward to our next session. In the meantime, have a wonderful rest of your day.