Handling Raised Voices: A Stress Relief Meditation for Highly Sensitive People

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to find some inner space for yourself when others are raising their voices in conflict.

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 to find peace within yourself even when there’s no peace outside, how your thinking about the situation can make it worse or better, and why loud voices are not as scary as you think. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Conflict and raised voices are something that gets to all of us HSPs more than other people. It gets to almost everyone, but it can be especially stressful for highly sensitive people because we take that in and really feel it a lot of the time. Let’s do a little meditation in the work of Byron Katie to see if we can find a little more space for ourselves, a little more of an easier way of experiencing that.

The first step is to look for a specific situation when someone—in this case, let’s think of someone other than you—is arguing. Think of two people arguing in your environment. You can hear their voices; they’re shouting at each other or using that kind of stressed tone of voice. Find a specific moment—look for the last time or a moment that stands out, two people arguing.

For example, I’m thinking about my mother-in-law. She’s 91. She has a little bit of dementia and doesn’t like showering. Her daughters come once a week and help her shower. I’m thinking of a time a couple of weeks ago where she was just really resistant and really angry at them, fighting. There were loud, loud complaining voices. It’s the kind of thing that makes me very uncomfortable. So, find a situation like that for yourself and let’s do the work.

Once you find the situation, let’s look for the thought that is going on in your mind. For example, it might be something like, “I want everyone to get along.” That’s certainly a common one for me in a situation like that. But let’s go even deeper. Why do I want everyone to get along? For me, it can be something like, “I can’t rest until everything is peaceful.”

Let’s look at that thought and question it together. When you look at this situation that you’re faced with, these raised voices, arguments, and conflict, “I can’t rest until everything is peaceful.” Is that true?

I’m going to say yes for me. Can you absolutely know it’s true? You can’t rest until everything is peaceful in this situation. For me, the answer is no.

So how do you react? What happens when you think that you can’t rest until everything is peaceful and you’re watching this argument unfold in front of you? Where do you feel it in your body?

I notice it in my solar plexus. There’s a kind of tension. My whole body starts to tense. How do you treat the situation? What do you do? How do you react to the situation?

I find myself pulling back. I find myself wishing it would just go away. I find myself looking back into past situations where this kind of thing happened again, and I know it’s going to happen again, so I feel really powerless. I focus on the energy in the voices. There’s this raised voice and this tone of conflict, complaining. That gets to me. It gets inside of me.

How else do you react when you think that you can’t rest until everything is peaceful? I can’t rest. I won’t rest. There’s something going on here, so I’m at the mercy of this to subside before I can move on with anything else. I notice my thinking—my brain just kind of shuts down. There’s not much else I can think of or focus on. So, this is reaction.

How do you treat the other people? For me, I look down on them. Even though my mother-in-law has dementia, I’m not—I’m looking down on her. There’s contempt there. I’m treating her like she should be a normal person. She shouldn’t have these issues. It’s really like a mental problem. Her brain is not working, and I don’t have any compassion. I’m just like, “Oh, if you’re going to be mean, then I don’t want anything to do with you.” I reject her.

Then I keep this emotional distance even after the argument. There’s this emotional distance. I’m not going to get too close, not going to give her too much. In a way, it’s passive-aggressive.

So who would you be without the thought that you can’t rest until everything is peaceful, and you’re watching this argument unfold around you? Without that thought, I would not be as much resisting the argument. It’s still loud, still kind of annoying, but it’s less grating somehow. That’s important somehow, to get to this resolution.

I kind of think, “Okay, well, that’s understandable.” They say that people with dementia don’t like water on their body. I’m like, “Okay, yeah, she’s being—from her point of view, she probably thinks she’s being tortured.” According to her memory, she showers every day, even though she doesn’t. Without the thought, “I can’t rest until everything’s peaceful,”

It’s a feeling of allowing that argument to happen. It’s almost like something has to come out. There’s something stressful for her, stressful going on inside, and I’m almost respectful of that process. Just like, “Urgh, it has to come out.” Better out than in.

Without that thought, I also start seeing more of my environment. With the thought, I’m focused on her. Without the thought, I’m aware of the fact that there’s other things I’m doing. I’m getting ready to go out the door. I need to get the grocery bags. I’m not going to be around for the whole thing.

I even feel a little bit of gratitude to her daughters for coming and taking care of her this way. I see the goodness of it. She’s allowed to stay in her own home. Without the thought, my mind is broadening. My mind is opening.

I see options, like I can still leave if it’s too much for me. I’m not a victim.

Let’s turn the thought around. The statement is, “I can’t rest until everything is peaceful.” The turnaround could be, “I can rest even when nothing is peaceful.”

So how is it possible to be able to rest even when nothing or not everything is peaceful? That’s the question. In your situation, how is it possible to rest when you hear those loud voices?

I’m thinking resting means sitting in the situation in a more accepting way. When I’m watching the argument and watching it more neutrally, without this desire to shut it down, there’s no fight inside of me. It’s just a witnessing. So I can rest on a certain level. It still may have its effects. The anger is still there, and the other person I hear—the loudness affects me still, but it’s less grating when I’m not trying to change it.

So I can rest even when everything is not peaceful. It depends on how I see it. When I see it as just natural, understandable—a normal issue for someone with dementia—in fact, that is a normal issue. Just anger. It’s common with dementia. I’m seeing it objectively. Almost the way a doctor would see it. I can put up with it that way. It’s not as grating because she could get really loud.

So I can rest even if everything’s not peaceful if I’m not engaging in trying to change it. Because that draws me into it and makes it worse. I can rest also because I can leave. I can put more distance between me and that situation. I can go on about my business. I’m still aware of it, not like I’m unaware, but I’m not resisting.

Let’s try another turnaround. Instead of, “I can’t rest until everything is peaceful,” turn it around to, “Nothing can be peaceful until I can rest.” So everything is dependent on me to rest in order to be peaceful. How’s that even possible? How’s it possible that my peace is as important for the external peace as what they’re doing?

Well, for one, I don’t fuel it. If I’m peaceful, if I’m okay, if I’m resting, then I’m not going to be aggravating the situation in any way. So the turnaround is a funny one. “Everything can’t be peaceful, or nothing can rest until I’m peaceful.”

Maybe rest in the sense of rest the way it is. Argument is an argument, and it is part of life, and it can just rest in itself and be an argument. If I just allow it to be an argument, so it can’t rest until I see it that way. It can’t just be easygoing until I see it that way.

Also, when I’m peaceful, I often see ways of interacting that also generate peace. I might just find a word. I might just have a smile, or I might just have a glance that brings peace in that situation. Just a look of understanding, even though I’m not involved, can completely calm the situation.

In this episode, we looked at how to find peace within yourself, even when there’s no peace outside. And when we think that we are at the mercy of our environment, then we really think we have to control the environment to be peaceful.

But what we found here is by questioning just this thought that “I can’t rest until everything’s peaceful,” we started to see some space there that is possible to be in even when the environment is something we can’t control. We also looked at how your thinking about the situation can make it worse or better.

If we’re trying to change it, or we’re resisting it, trying to change it, then that’s going to bring us into the conflict, and that’s going to make it way more stressful. If we let go of that to some degree, it’s going to give us a lot more options. We can start seeing, like I was saying, going about my business instead of being locked in on the conflict.

Finally, we looked at why loud voices are not as scary as you’d think. Because the voices themselves, while they have a certain effect physically and do touch us, it’s how we view them. If I’m looking at them from the point of view of an observer or a more objective person, like a doctor, it’s amazing what you can put up with.

But when I’m thinking, “This shouldn’t be this way, this is affecting me,” it takes the natural effect of the sound and amplifies it because of the thinking.

Thank you for listening and doing this work along with me. I look forward to our next time together, and in the meantime, have a great rest of your day.