HSP Anxiety About Falling Behind: Letting Go of “I Need to Catch Up”

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to loosen the trap of comparison.

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 HSPs often find themselves falling short when comparing themselves to others, why believing the thought, I need to catch up, can be so debilitating, and how to move back into your own lane and stop comparing. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays. where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

As highly sensitive people, we tend to do things more slowly than others. We tend to do things somewhat thoroughly, but slowly. And it can lead to a feeling like you’re behind sometimes, a stressful feeling, like compared to other people, your own age You may feel like you’re falling behind, they’ve raced ahead, and you’re still deciding what to do, or you’re still trying to figure out how to do it well and that can be stressful.

So we’re going to look at a situation like that, and we’ll do a little bit of the work on it. So the first step is to see if you can find a particular situation where you were comparing like this. Maybe it was with people from your university or your school, maybe it’s with a partner, maybe it’s with brothers and sisters.

or with friends. It could be social, it could be professional, or it could be any kind of situation where you’re thinking you want to be ahead and you want to be, or at least up to, where others are, and you’re seeing yourself as lagging behind. So take a minute, see if you can find a moment where you had that feeling of comparison and and you were the loser.

I’m thinking of a situation where I ran into a classmate from college and found out that she’s been writing some books and getting them published and doing very well with them. And I, by comparison, I feel like, oh, I’d like to do, I’d like to write a book, but. Eh, it’s not happening. Certainly not anytime soon.

How is it for you? Are you feeling this comparison with other people?

It helps to be really specific. If you can, find a moment and land there. And if you need more time, just pause the recording and you can take as much time as you need.

So we’re going to question the thought, I need to catch up, and you’ll use your situation where you’re feeling like you are behind compared to others, especially others your own age if possible. And let’s question this thought. So you need to catch up. Is it true?

And this is a yes or a no, so take your time to see where it lands and wait for something deeper inside to answer this. It can be emotional, it can be stressful even, it can be wise, but It shouldn’t be just intellectual. You need to catch up. Is it true?

I’m going with a visceral feeling that is a yes. I do need to catch up.

So if your answer is yes, then go with me to question two, which is, can you absolutely know it’s true that you need to catch up? And ask that part inside that is feeling bad when comparing you to other people. Can you absolutely know it’s true? You need to catch up.

I can hear my ego getting a head of steam going, Yes! I can absolutely know it’s true. And I’m just going to give it another minute just to see if that settles and anything else comes up, or whether I just go with that answer. Can you absolutely know it’s true? You need to catch up.

For me, the visceral thing is still there, so I’m going to, I’m going to go with that. So yes, it’s true. So how do you react? What happens when you believe that you need to catch up? This is the third question of the work. What happens to you? What are the reactions that happen

in your situation?

So I’m seeing my classmate and I’m happy for her, but I’m also a little jealous,

Judging myself like, oh, You’ve wasted a lot of time, it’s too late, there’s a little feeling of shame there. How about you? What happens to you when you think that you need to catch up.

I get a little panicky. Okay, I got to go faster now, churn the water like a drowning swimmer.

There’s an urgency,

pressurize myself, and ironically my creativity goes down, my energy goes down, and it’s a downward spiral there.

So what happens to you when you think you need to catch up?

I’m unable to be myself and walk my own path. I’m on the outside, she’s on the inside, she’s got the real path, and I’m just, yeah, pseudo. I’m just, I’m not really where I’m supposed to be.

She’s the center of the universe instead of me. That leaves me out in the cold.

How does it affect how you communicate with whoever it is you’re comparing with? that you think you’ve fallen behind with.

I keep a distance, like an emotional distance. I remember the warmth of our friendship and there’s some kind of pull there, but there’s also a kind of push too oh, I don’t want to feel bad, so I don’t want to get too close.

I better just dig in and start doing my own work.

And I become reckless, at least in my thinking. Okay, drop everything. All the other priorities start writing a book, like it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit into my life at this moment, but I become desperate and I become reckless.

So let’s go to question four. In your situation, be there in the same comparison that you were started with, but imagine for a moment that you didn’t believe that you needed to catch up. Who would you be with that thought not there? There’s just no trace of that thought by some miracle

that you need to catch up. If it wasn’t there, who would you be? When you see you’re the person you’re comparing yourself to.

Now I feel the connection. Now I remember why I like this classmate.

It feels easier to talk. I can even ask for advice or I can ask for her experience. There’s no sense of I’m lesser than or I’m desperate.

Who are you without the thought you need to catch up?

And what do you see when you look at your life, your own life, without the thought You need to catch up.

I see so much richness in my life. Even as I look in my past, I’ve done so many things that were meaningful to me, and it wasn’t a straight path, but it’s been also a good path.

I spend my attention more on inner work than on outer accomplishments.

So without the thought I need to catch up, that starts to have an equal weight, starts to balance it out for me.

Yeah, like we all only have so much time and you have to focus on something. You can’t do it all, and I chose my priorities, and I’m actually glad of that.

So who would you be looking at your own path now and moving forward? If you didn’t have the thought, you need to catch up and be like these others that you’re comparing to.

The word that comes to mind for me is like a natural unfolding. I’m curious to see how this will naturally unfold. I have no idea if I’ll write a book or not. I’d like to, but there’s certainly a lot of other things that are much higher on the priority list for me at this point. So there’s a relaxing that happens.

And a wait and see kind of attitude. Feels easy going.

I feel like I’m navigating my own way. And then when I see my classmate, I see she’s doing the same thing. It’s cool. It’s like a, it’s like a kind of wave.

That’s who I am without the thought, I need to catch up.

So seeing this shows how a simple, innocent sounding thought I need to catch up, can cause a lot of stress. It can make me more desperate, more stressed, more, more grasping, and self judging. And so without that thought, by comparison, it’s a much easier, more easygoing feeling. And all we looked at in this little thought experiment is comparing with the thought and without the thought.

Same situation, nothing’s changed, but that thought makes a big difference. Thoughts are powerful, and this one we’ve seen. It really is. So if that’s the effect of the thought, let’s try turning it around and seeing if the opposite might hold some truth, or might be, might sit better, because we’re looking for inner balance here.

So a turnaround would be, instead of I need to catch up, I don’t need to catch up. So let’s hold that and play with it and see if it could make some sense. See if there’s any truth to it for you.

So take a moment. Where do you see in your situation the possibility that maybe you don’t need to catch up?

I’m just seeing in my situation how different each of our paths are and how my friend’s path is perfect for her and came at the right time for her and mine is perfect for me and who knows how it goes. So I don’t need to catch up because it’s like comparing apples and oranges, just doesn’t make sense.

I don’t need to catch up. How about you? What’s an example that makes some kind of sense for you of why you may not really need to catch up at all? Maybe.

What are you trying to prove? I’m thinking about myself here. I’m trying to prove that I’m as good as My classmates. Trying to be, keep up with the Joneses here.

When I see it that way, it just seems silly. Like what do I get if I write a book? Oh, now I’m great or something? How many other things have I thought I’d be great at? I’d be amazing if I just only did that. This is just one more of those. It’s a little mind trap. Oh yeah, if I do that, then if I write a book, oh yeah, then I’ll be great.

Just what the ego loves.

So I don’t need to catch up because I don’t need to fulfill every desire that the ego has. That’s just like nice to have stuff, like little cherries on top here and there, but not really the substance of life. So I don’t need to catch up.

Maybe the turnaround is I need to slow down.

I need to catch up with me. Yeah,

could that apply for you? That catching up with you might be more important than catching up with the person you’re comparing yourself with.

What I love about me, when I’m really in touch with where I actually am, is that I’m just, it’s always really clear what the next step is for me. It’s always really clear oh, I’m really working on Other things, and those other things lead to other things, and then those lead to other things. And when I catch up with me, I’m just right in the right place every time.

It’s only when I try to jump ship and try to be someone else that I think I have to catch up with some ideal.

It takes a certain amount of humility to catch up with me. It means not pretending that I’m ahead of where I am, but it brings a whole lot of peace.

I’m doing just right. Just the way I am, just where I am,

and we’ll worry about writing books or whatever it is if that time ever comes. It’s like a load off of my shoulders. In this episode, we looked at why HSPs often find themselves falling short when comparing themselves to others. And that’s because we’re looking at the outward accomplishments and we sometimes don’t notice what we pay attention to as HSPs, which is the inner side as well.

And it also doesn’t take into account the planning and the intelligence that we put into making decisions, which can slow us down. We also looked at why believing the thought, I need to catch up, can be so debilitating. Just this thought, which brings us into comparison, makes us get graded on this outward experience.

And suddenly there’s a winner and a loser, and if we’re slow in accomplishing things, or slow in processing, or just have different values, then we don’t measure up and then we can be end up being hard on ourselves. We also noticed that without the thought, it’s a way easier kind of experience, way more comfortable.

And this is Bringing us to the last point that we looked at is how to move back into your own lane and stop comparing. And what we saw is it’s just a matter of where you look. If you’re looking at them, then they become the center of your universe. If you’re looking at you, then you become the center of your universe.

And from That point of view, there’s nothing off. Everything was done appropriately, one step at a time, and all those things that quote unquote don’t measure up just don’t make sense because you were following your own path. So thanks for listening. It’s great to be here with you, great to do this work with you, and I look forward to our next session.

In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.