How Long Should You Stay in a Challenging, Stressful, or Overwhelming Situation as an HSP?

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to navigate the confusing gray area between deciding to stay or go.

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 the key questions to ask when you’re torn between staying, leaving in a hard situation, why highly sensitive people often default to self-sacrificing patterns. And how to make a choice that feels true to your nervous system and your heart. This is an addition of strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress.

As a highly sensitive person. A very common question that comes up for myself and for the clients that I serve who are highly sensitive people, is this idea of should I stay or should I go? There have been songs this is an issue that we face as human beings, and I think it’s especially poignant for highly sensitive people.

So the question is, how do you navigate this? It’s a tough one because it’s black and white. Do I stay, do I go and it can show up in situations like in a relationship kind of situation. Should I continue in this relationship? It can be in situations like where you’re. In a work situation, and you’re not sure if you should stay or go, maybe it’s a difficult relationship with your boss or with a coworker or something like that.

So the question is how do you approach this kind of a problem? It’s a challenge for sure, and what I find helpful is to ask a few questions. What would help me get clearer on this decision? First of all, decision making for me is always a personal choice. If there’s no right way to make a decision, there’s no right or wrong, and it’s on that basis that I’d like to explore.

If I think I have to make the right decision and that there is a right decision, then I’m gonna put a lot of pressure on myself, and it’s going to be stressful to even try to think about making some kind of decision. But on that basis, if you’re open to exploring, then questions that can be helpful are things like this, how much is this affecting me?

Is this something that my mind is exaggerating and it’s really not that big of a deal? Or is it something that’s really strongly keeping me down? Like it’s really actually, hurting me and thwarting me and keeping my emotions tied up all the time. Sometimes even just doing a percentage and saying like, how much percentage wise is this affecting me in my life?

And maybe it’s just 5%, maybe it’s 90%, and being aware of this can be helpful. Even looking more closely at what specifically does it look like? How much time do I spend thinking about this, how much. How does this affect my my work or my home time, or my friendships or my hobbies or the things that I’m interested in?

How much is this affecting me? It can be a great way to just have a closer look at the actual situation, and if possible, if you can do this objectively, then that’s ideal. We always are subjective beings and some somehow being objective is not always possible. But just even making an effort of okay, objectively, what does this actually look like?

And that can be very interesting. Another question is, how much inner work have I done on this? And a lot of times something that is really stressful when you do some inner work on it, it can shift quite dramatically. And the same stressor is no longer causing the same challenge or no longer causing the same issue.

I find this to be a variable that sometimes is overlooked. I think a lot of people aren’t even aware that there is inner work that you can do, that there are ways of seeing any situation, no matter how dire from a lighter perspective, because ultimately, even though situations are bad sometimes and are worthy of getting out of, and all of that.

There is also always this little bit of wiggle room inside where I can make it really bad or I can make it bearable or even okay. You can think of Viktor Franco in the concentration camps how you see a situation makes all the difference in the world. So this is a really valid question, like, how much inner work have I done at it?

And the work I love to do is the work of Byron Katie. Just find the stressful thought, question it and see if there’s a way of experiencing the same situation differently. So if that, if you haven’t done inner work, then that’s a great place to start and just experiment with then if you. Are doing inner work or not?

Are you noticing any changes? Like maybe you’ve been doing some inner work on this for a while and it’s still not changing, still just as frustrating, still just as maddening or hurtful or all of that. So inner work doesn’t solve everything. Sometimes actually taking action in the outer world and saying no to something that isn’t working for you is.

More powerful than all the inner work that you do on it. Now, these are two ways of approaching stress. One is on the outer level and one is on the inner level, and both are valuable. I love inner work, but I also love taking action to change situations if I can do that. So if you’re not noticing any changes, then that can be something that factors into your decision making.

If you are noticing changes, then what does that look like? What’s the progression looking like? Are you satisfied with that? Is there something that feels like progress or growth happening here? This is a major consideration because just because something is hard or situation is difficult, if there’s some real serious growth coming out of it, then.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. So these are things to keep in your awareness as you’re considering whether to stay or whether to go. Another question is, what is your preference? This is a great one. It’s one that we often forget to ask ourselves, especially as highly sensitive people. What do I like?

What do I want? Where do I like to work? Who do I like to live with? What are my preferences? Because ultimately, these kinds of life decisions are based on our inner preference. And if we’re not paying attention to that, we may be going along and doing what we think we should do or what others want.

And if we ask ourselves. A lot of clarity can come out of that. And even if you can’t act on it, just being aware of one’s preference can be can change things quite a lot. But oftentimes that’s where courage actually comes from. So another question you can ask yourself is, how much charge do I have around this?

And this is an important one for me because I know when I’m. Really charged about something that my mind is in a reaction state and I’m trying to get away. That’s my reaction is to leave, get out, try to get away. And so if there’s a lot of charge, then that might be something to look at. Again, pointing back towards inner work, if I can.

Work through a little bit of that charge and find ways of reducing that either by finding ways to balance myself or questioning the thoughts that are revving me up, then I may be in a more rational mind. And from there, it’s much easier to make a decision. Ironically, it’s actually easier and more effective to say no or to leave a situation when you have less charge about it.

The more charge you have about it, the more reactive it is, the more of a scene it becomes and the more difficult it is actually to extricate yourself from a situation. So I think this is a really powerful gift, again, of inner work, is to look at your situation, question your thoughts about it, reduce some of the anger or the feeling of that you’re a victim, any of that kind of.

Stress and then see where you are rationally. And then you can come back and check, okay, what is my preference? Now I’m in a more free state to follow my preference instead of in a reactive state where it’s may not be it just may not be as balanced when I’m trying to make a decision. Another question you can ask yourself is, do I have support?

And support is helpful in some situations. For on both sides, whether you’re staying or whether you’re going. So you may need support and if you have support, it can be super helpful if you are staying, but you may need support for leaving as well, because it may be challenging for you to leave. You may have trouble finding the courage to leave, and so finding support.

Whether you’re staying or going can be really helpful. This can be a friend, this can be a family member. This can be someone who is a therapist or someone who supports you in some way like that. But support is very helpful. And then finally, a question you can ask yourself is what feels right to me?

Not necessarily what is easy, not even necessarily what is my preference. But what feels right to me, what feels like the right thing to do? And without moralizing too much, just it’s a feeling. This is, I’m asking myself for a feeling like what feels right, not like what I should do, which can end up being manipulative, but it’s more like what feels right to me.

We make decisions on feelings and my experience, and so checking in what are my preferences, what feels right to me? Gets me more in touch with that part in me that is true for me. And when I make decisions based on those feelings, they tend to have naturally more courage and they tend to be easier to follow through on.

So these are a few questions you can play with when you’re thinking about it. This is something that. Is easy to wrestle about and it’s easy to get. You can go around in circles and the same way, it may naturally take time. This is not something that is always an instant. Solution.

There’s not always an instant, oh, yes, I’m gonna make a decision, and yes, it’s a yes or no. It’s a no maybe, but maybe it’s a sit and wait also. And that’s also okay. So that’s why I said from the beginning, there’s no right way to do this. Now, I wanna mention, as highly sensitive people, we may tend to default to self-sacrificing patterns.

Because we have deep empathy, because we sometimes fear being too much and we may end up trying to downplay our needs in order to avoid being judged. We tend to have avoid, try to avoid conflict and so it’s natural for us to just go along. We’re also highly conscientious. So if you’re doing, if you wanna do a really good job at work, then leaving might be in contrast to that natural tendency.

We also have, tend a tendency to have strong conditioning around caretaking. We also have sometimes internalized shame just for being different. And so we may compensate for that. And in order to feel accepted. And we also can get caught in overthinking an analysis paralysis. So these things can get in the way or can make it challenging for us to listen to ourselves to make a decision based on our own feeling, our own experience.

And this is something just to notice and be aware of as an HSP. So how do you actually make that choice that feels true? Both to your nervous system, like how to take care of yourself and to your heart? For me, I don’t make decisions too much. I tend to ask myself and then wait to see what comes up from inside.

I do a lot of asking and I ask and I wait, and I ask and I wait. And sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes years. And this is how I like to do it. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s bad, and just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s good either. So don’t use hardness as a reason to either stay in the relationship or get out of the relationship.

Use your own experience by checking in with yourself and see what feels right for you instead. Finally, you can’t do it wrong and. You may not be able to do it. You may not be able to stay, you may not be able to go, and that’s okay too. So my direction, my way of working with these kinds of decisions is to do a lot of listening to a lot of asking of myself and trusting of myself, and letting that be what I listen to and follow as much as I can.

The feeling I’m left with here today is that decisions are about listening to yourself, and this takes stillness. There’s a lot of chaos. There’s a lot of thinking, there’s a lot of pressures from outside. Situations are complex and there’s a lot going on, but decisions come from sitting with yourself, being with yourself, sorting through the chaos, moving beyond the chaos to a place of quietness if you can find it.

That’s where I get in touch with direction. In this episode, we looked at some key questions to ask yourself when you’re torn between staying or leaving in a hard situation. We looked at why highly sensitive people often default to self-sacrificing patterns, and we looked at how to make a choice that feels true to your nervous system and to your heart.

And remember that HSPs have a limit or have a limitation that brings us to overwhelm quicker than other people. And so being aware of that can be a factor in making a decision as well. It may be that an environment that’s suited for other people is not perfect for us. So thanks for listening and it’s great to explore with you.

This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom.