Why You Need More Time to Process Things as a Highly Sensitive Person & Why It's Your Biggest Strength

 By the end of this episode, you’ll see why your slow, thoughtful way of processing might be one of your greatest strengths.

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 slow, methodical thinking is a hallmark of high sensitivity, not a shortcoming. What my HSP dad taught me about honoring your natural pace, even in a fast moving world. Why embracing your natural timing can help you stop comparing yourself. Welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.

Have you ever thought that it takes you 10 times longer to do something than other people? Maybe this is an exaggeration, but have you noticed that. It seems to take you a while to process things. As highly sensitive people, we tend to be slower at this. This is our nature and the reason is we like to do things well.

When you do things well, as it takes longer to do that. What happens with highly sensitive people is that we’re not just doing the immediate task at hand. We’re also trying to see how this, what we’re doing. It’s balancing other areas, how the other person is, how it affects the other person involved or other people involved.

How it impacts the future where it leaves things moving forward. It’s like playing a game of pool. If you hit the ball and just try to get the ball into the pocket, then great. You’ve accomplished the object of the game, which is to get the ball in the pocket. But a subtle player of pool will hit the ball in such a way that it leaves the Q ball ready to hit the next ball, and then they do that again and again.

So this is thinking ahead, this is thinking about the implications of what you’re doing. Same thing in chess, like you can think about just taking one making one move on the chess board. The advanced players look at many moves ahead. They’re actually thinking about the implications of so many factors, not just this one particular move.

So the advantage of this is that as highly sensitive people, because we are a little slower in our processing and a little more thorough in our processing, we actually have a lot of good advantages. We tend to be good at. Creative problem solving. Instead of jumping to the first available solution, we often sit with a problem longer, and this extra processing time lets us uncover creative or elegant solutions that others might miss by just rushing and getting the job done.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with rushing in, getting the job done, moving on, and supports having a balanced life. In fact, we as HSPs can learn from. Those who do that, and there are times when not doing a great job or not doing a perfect job is actually a good idea, but when needed, when appropriate, our ability to problem solve is second to not.

We have an ability to go deep and look thoroughly and to process in a way that really yields the best results. It also is something that helps us with. Any role of service or leadership where we’re, we have more empathy, we’re reflecting more deeply on other people’s experiences. And so if you’re a caregiver or if you’re a coach, or if you’re in a leadership role of some kind, this allows you to make wise and attuned decisions that support the other person instead of just checking the box.

So this takes longer, it takes more thought. We have to think more deeply about it, but this is a major strength of being a highly sensitive person. Another place where slowness actually is good for us is that when you pay attention to detail, then you catch small inconsistencies that others miss. You may notice the typo in the proposal, or you may.

Notice the shift in someone’s tone, or you may see an overlooked step in a process. And this attention to detail is very powerful for problem solving, for effectiveness in action. And when used appropriately, it can be a major boon for us and for others as well. It also affects our communication. We tend to think carefully before we speak and before we write.

And so our communication, our emails our conversations, our presentations, they’re often clear. They’re often considerate, they’re often tuned into nuance, and they’re less likely to just be an impulsive thing that may or may not land. So attention to detail, taking time, doing what we do best, processing things as highly sensitive people.

This is something that we can feel good about. It’s not something wrong with us. Just because it’s slow doesn’t mean it’s worse. It’s actually different. We also have high standards, and when you have high standards, then doing, taking your time can make a huge difference in doing a job really well. Not doing a job that you have to redo again, you can do it well and it may stand the test of time.

So we often anticipate future issues as we’re working through a particular problem, and as I mentioned with those analogies of chess or playing billiards or pool, we are making the setup for the next move, and we’re taking into consider consideration all of these other factors that really in the end, can make our job easier and the lives of other people easier.

When we’ve thought about these things in advance. I think about my dad in a way. He was a highly sensitive person and he he showed me through example, the value of that way of processing that it was okay. Dad always said, I’m a slow processor. We didn’t know what that meant until later.

I realized just before he died that he was a highly sensitive person, but. Just because he was slow, did not mean he was dull. He was a super intelligent man, but he liked to chew on a problem for a while. He liked to think about it. He liked to look at it on from different angles or talk about it, and I learned from him that’s okay.

And I noticed the same thing in myself when, for example, I’m studying foreign language, I will learn a new vocabulary word. Slowly. I don’t just see it once and remember it. I don’t just, I can’t always just have a quick recall. But if I use it in many different contexts and learn the nuance of it and how it’s different from another word that’s similar and all of that, once I do that, it’s in there forever.

I don’t have to refresh my memory. I don’t have to, do more flashcards later. It’s in there and so it may have taken a while to get in there, but once it’s in. It’s there because look at what’s happening in the brain. I don’t just have one data point in my brain. I have a data point connected to many other data points, and that’s a structure that’s like a web of information that is much stronger and stays much longer in my brain.

So what I like to think about is that. Our natural timing, our natural pacing is right for us as highly sensitive people. We’re a little slower on the processing, but that’s perfect for us. It’s perfect for other people to be faster, and so we can give them that, but we can allow ourselves to be who we are and see the strengths of that.

I like to look at the strengths of both the quick thinkers for fast processors and the strengths of being a slow processor. So for fast processors, the advantages, there’s a super fast at making decisions. They can evaluate the situation, move into action, and it’s great for fast-paced environments, emergencies, anything where that kind of quick timing matters.

Fast processors are also highly adaptable, and so they can pivot easily. They can handle unexpected challenges. They’re just really good at this quick movement and back and forth that can happen in life. They have confidence under pressure. They tend not to second guess themselves because they’re just taking the first thing that comes up running with it and off they go.

And they can be very efficient in their execution. They just jump into the task, see the job, do the job, stay out of the misery, and it’s great. This is, these are all advantages of being a fast processor, but let’s look at the advantages of being a slow processor, which we as just HSPs naturally are. We have the ability to find depth and to find nuance in anything.

We see the layers in a situation, whether they’re emotional, ethical relational, and we ask better questions and we make more thoughtful decisions. So as a result, we tend to make fewer mistakes over time because we take time to reflect and we try take time to understand the consequences. And so we are not as impulsive.

But we don’t have as many errors. We don’t have to keep correcting, and these are just two different modes. There’s nothing wrong with just jumping in and then correcting and jumping in and correcting. That’s what fast processors are good at. We as slow processors tend to look at all the options, consider them well, and then choose the one that seems to be the best.

But we can also learn from past processors that sometimes it’s okay to just jump in. We don’t have all the answers and learn as we go. Also when it comes to emotional intelligence and empathy, we slow thinkers tend to be more attuned to the subtle dynamics of how others might feel. And so this makes, it makes us very attuned to others and it helps us to navigate complex relationship situations or if we’re in some kind of leadership role, noticing how we can move things, how we can present things in a way.

That will be optimized for everyone. We also have strong follow through because we have thought things through and we’re now dedicated to getting a long-term result. And so being a slow processor is not a bad thing. Being a fast processor is also a good thing. But each one has a different role to play.

And so if we know who we are and we can play to our strength, we can play our role to the best of our ability and then enjoy other people playing the other role of being quick and moving quickly into action. So the feeling I’m left with today is that slow is good. The world praises speed, but thoughtful consideration is an equally valuable trade.

In this episode, we looked at why slow, methodical thinking is a hallmark of high sensitivity, not a shortcoming. It’s what allows us to do things well. And we looked at why my HSP dad honored his natural slowness, and what that taught me was, which is it’s okay even in a fast moving world to go a little slower and do things your own way.

And finally we looked at why embracing your natural timing can help you stop comparing yourself. If you’re comparing yourself to others who process quickly, you may start judging yourself and seeing yourself as the loser when in reality you have a different role to play. So thanks for listening. It’s great to explore this idea with you.

This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.