How Highly Sensitive People Can Handle Conflict Without Overwhelm

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to be with conflict in a way that is less stressful for you.

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 conflict is especially challenging for highly sensitive people. How to experience conflict so that it is less stressful for you. And how to build up tolerance while respecting your limits as an HSP. 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.

I speak for myself when I say that conflict is something that I tend to not want in my life. I tend to Avoid it. I tend to run away from it, and it’s not my favorite thing by any means when I think about it. But conflict is a part of life, and it’s something that we as HSPs have to face, have to deal with in some form or another throughout life.

So let’s look at why conflict is important. so challenging for highly sensitive people. It’s really pretty simple. We are empathetic by nature, so we feel the stress when other people are stressed. We get engaged with what they’re engaged with. We we, we follow along with them. We also can get overwhelmed if it’s in, if the conflict is involving us because We tend to put so much awareness on the other person that we sometimes lose our own stance, our own like where we stand in the situation.

And so this can make it even more frustrating as a highly sensitive person. On top of that, like all people, but maybe more important, more especially as highly sensitive people, we like peace. We, we like. Things to be peaceful, and so conflict is in direct contrast to that, and that can make it challenging because of this kind of almost attachment that we have to peace.

Another thing as HSPs, we like to get to the bottom of things. We like to really understand what’s going on. And so if there’s a conflict, we may be wanting to really get to the bottom of it. And it’s not always easy, and especially if the other person is not willing, and it can be a point of frustration.

And another thing that makes conflict challenging for highly sensitive people is that we tend to keep thinking about how to resolve the conflict long after the conflict has happened. And some people may just move on to other things, but we’re still thinking about it, and we’re still trying to work out what happened and how to do that differently, and on and on.

And so that. exaggerates the experience and makes it more stressful for us. So, how can we experience conflict so that it’s less stressful for us? I think the most important thing or the first thing to think about is that conflict itself is not a failure. I tend to think of conflict as like, oh, failure.

I failed, or these two people failed, or something is not right, there’s something wrong. But what if conflict was not something wrong, but something that is natural, something that is also okay even though it’s not my first choice, but it still has its value? The way I like to think of it is, conflict is kind of exposing the next layer to be explored.

It’s bringing up something where two different viewpoints are clashing and there’s probably something being missed on both sides. There’s something being covered up, something, there’s some attachment there. There’s some interesting things sitting in the murkiness underneath the conflict. And so the conflict is It’s bringing it out.

It’s saying, okay, this is an issue. Let’s deal with it. And, and as I often like to think like it’s the alarm clock saying, okay, let’s look what’s going on here. So this could lead to growth, and this could be a really good thing. And when I look back on some of the conflicts I’ve had in my life, a lot of growth has often come out of it on the other side.

So, conflict is not a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a failure. It could be the beginning of something that’s just starting to emerge. Another piece that can help with dealing with conflict as a highly sensitive person is to Just see how other people’s conflict, if it’s not between me and another person.

How their conflict is not mine, it doesn’t have to be mine. I don’t have to resolve something that is happening between two other people. If I’m clear, my business is taking care of myself, staying where I am in my peace and their business is working out what they need to work out between the two of them.

So, this gives me a Or can give me a bit of space between two people when they are going through some kind of conflict. And I’ve experienced this many times. One of the instances that comes to mind is with my partner and his mom. We live together and they get into it sometimes. And I used to get really frustrated and want to, I’d get mad at them for being mad at each other.

And at some point, I kind of relaxed and started seeing that they just need to work something out. This is old stuff, and this is things that just need to get worked through, and this is a good thing. It’s just none of my business. And so I can just Either witness it peacefully, or just move on about doing something else while they continue doing what they’re doing.

It’s like, it’s none of my business. That can be really freeing, can really help when dealing with conflict. Another way, of course, is to write out your stressful thoughts and question them about any conflict that you’re experiencing. What I’m talking about is doing the work of Byron Katie. It means, okay, you’re in a conflict situation.

Then Allow yourself to to be upset and and then see that it’s your own stuff coming up. So I like to actually leave the situation and go and write my thoughts verbatim onto paper. Maybe it’s a judge your neighbor worksheet. Maybe it’s just me. Writing freeform, but I want to see what’s inside of me that’s getting me all fired up and, and, and scared and angry and frustrated.

And so when I get those thoughts out, then there’s a little more distance on them and I’m a little less caught up in them. On top of that, of course, I can actually question those thoughts, which allows me to even see bigger perspectives and open up and sometimes dissolve the stress completely.

Another thing that helps for me to experience conflict in a less stressful way is to ask for time. You know, I’m in a conflict, maybe it’s me and another person. And I, I can’t think very clearly when there’s a lot of conflict. This is a typical HSP experience that we get overwhelmed when there’s a negativity going on.

And so, literally, my brain shuts down. I can’t think in a clear, coherent way. I can’t make arguments that are actually fair and true. I just shut off. And so What I, when that happens, I need to get out of the situation, just ask and say, you know what, I think this is really important, I’d really like to, to explore this further, but right now, my, my brain is, is shutting down because of the actual experience of conflict, and I need to take some space.

And so when I do that, I can go into another room, or I can go into another place, and then get clearer. Maybe I’ll write down the logic of what my thoughts are. And what, what it is that I stand for. And then I can come back and present, and we can resume the conflict. It’s maybe not a conflict even then, it becomes more of a discussion.

Because the energy is less, the clarity is more on my side, and maybe it’s clearer on both sides, and you can begin to have a kind of a fruitful discussion. And then finally, if there are other people that are in conflict, and it’s just drawing all your attention, then A simple way to deal with that is to move to another location just be away from that conflict so that you’re not so caught up in it.

Okay, so let’s also look at how to build up tolerance when you’re dealing with conflict and how to do that while respecting your limits as an HSP. Conflict, as we see, saw, is we, in fact, internally were conflicted as well, and there’s always, you know, there’s just too many parts of life and they have to work together and they don’t always mesh.

And that’s just the way things are. So, so how do I build up tolerance for conflict, which is, is going to show up anyway? I think the biggest piece for me is allowing it to exist. You know, like conflict has a right to exist. It’s a part of this complex universe that we live in. And if I’m holding some ideal that conflict just shouldn’t be there, then I’m going to be constantly stressed whenever any kind of conflict comes up.

In fact, you could say from that point of view that I’m having a conflict with conflict. So, somebody’s having a conflict, or they’re having a conflict with me, and then I’m having a conflict. With the whole idea that they’re that, you know, that they’re having a conflict. In other words, I think there shouldn’t be a conflict.

And so what am I doing? I am at war with War as if war wasn’t bad enough. Now I’m at war with war. I’ve got like an extra layer of war there. So just allowing conflict to exist and seeing as we saw earlier, maybe even the good in it. That gives me a lot of greater tolerance for conflict when it shows up.

It doesn’t mean I’m pro conflict. No, it just means that I’m I’m accepting of it when it happens. I understand when it happens. And it’s not as terrible as my mind would like to tell me that it is. Another thing that happens or kind of helps for building up tolerance in my experience with conflict is to not just run away right away.

My first tendency is, of course, I shut down, I have no brain power left, and I want to get out of there. But, and it can be wise to do that, as we’ve already seen. But it can also be interesting to stay for a little bit longer and see how bad is it? How shut down is my brain? And I’ve often found that I actually still can think clearly, even in a conflicted situation, even when emotions are running.

And that’s a very interesting thing, because it means that I may be more resilient than I even think I am. And so just staying a little bit longer to see, to test that can be an interesting approach. And then, of course, there may be a limit to that. Then I’m going to want to leave and get clear and, and then maybe resume the discussion at a later point.

So Let’s think if there are any other ways to build up tolerance while respecting your limits as an HSP, whenever you’re dealing with conflict. I guess those are the main things. When you reach your limit, then leave. There’s nothing more you can do. It may be nice to stay for a little while longer.

It may be possible to find some peace even in the midst of conflict. That can be amazing. But there may be a point where you’ve reached your limit, and so honor that limit and say, okay, I need some more time, I need some space, I’d be happy to come back and look at this when I’m feeling more rational. In this episode, we looked at why conflict is especially challenging for highly sensitive people.

And we saw it’s because of our sensitivity. We’re empathetic. We like peace. We like to, to resolve things, get to the bottom of things. We think deeply about things. And so conflict tends to affect us deeply as a result. We also looked at how to experience conflict so that it is less stressful. And one of the things that I mentioned is that conflict is not a failure, but it’s actually, it leads to growth.

And if I hold that in my mind, I don’t see it as necessarily a bad thing, but maybe as something that is helping me, helping other people work through things. And it’s just the kind of expression that something is not quite right. And from there, the growth begins to happen. We also looked at how to build up tolerance when dealing with conflict as a highly sensitive person.

And one of the ways to do that is to allow it to exist to, because fighting the conflict itself just adds another layer of war to the already stressful and conflicted situation. And one thing that I didn’t mention, which I think is also super important, is can I stand in there and actually listen to the other person?

A lot of times what makes conflict between me and one other person stressful is that I’m so focused on my own experience and defending myself or that thinking that I’m wrong that I don’t actually hear what the other person is saying. Now this is ironic because as highly sensitive people we tend to be super tuned in to other people but sometimes we’re tuned in with a certain bias to our tuning in.

And the question is, can you release that bias enough to hear what is really going on for that person? And what are they really communicating? And could it even be useful for myself? Could it even be truthful? And this kind of opening towards what that person is saying, even if their delivery method is is terrible it can be really enlightening to experience what’s the, where’s it really coming from on their side.

So this can also increase tolerance. I’ve experienced it many times now where I hear somebody like my partner will be arguing with me and I. Find myself actually hearing what he’s saying and that it’s, it’s like, Oh my gosh, this is actually right on. Find myself agreeing and not in a kind of Pollyanna way, but in a way that is like, wow, this is really helpful.

So this can make, make conflict less of a stressful thing. So there are many more things you can think about this. And of course, it’s something you have to explore yourself. This is why I always promote the work of Byron Katie as a way of looking in, looking at all the angles, and seeing how something, what you think is bad, could actually be good.

So thanks for listening, and I look forward to next time, and I hope you have a great day.