How to Avoid Overwhelm When Caring For Stressed People as a Highly Sensitive Person

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to stay balanced when caring for others who are stressed.

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 it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by stressed people in your life as an HSP, why highly sensitive people are especially capable of handling stressed people. How to stay centered even when those around you are not. 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.

If you’re like me, you may have noticed a kind of unusual thing going on. You probably. When you notice stressful people, you may secretly want to avoid them, or you may actively wanna avoid them. I know I do. And at the same time, you may find that when you’re either forced or decide to be around stressful people or to work with stressful people or to care for them in any way that you’re actually really good at it.

So it’s a funny dichotomy where part of me is wanting to run away and part of me is actually quite good and capable of handling stressful people. This, when we look at the brain research for highly sensitive people, you can see that there’s a greater activation in empathy related areas of the brain when you are around others.

And so when you see someone who’s stressed. You will naturally be empathetic as an HSP. We notice stress in other people. We pick up on it and we tend to care about it. So the problem comes when we get overwhelmed by their stress. This means that when someone else is stuck, we can end up getting stuck too.

We can become dependent on them or us to fix them. In order for us to feel better, and this is where imbalance starts to come in. It’s one thing to be aware of someone’s stress and to be able to support them to become more balanced. But it’s another thing if our emotional state is dependent too much on their emotional state, that’s like a dependence.

The analogy I like to think of is as highly sensitive people, we are like a seismograph meter, one of those little things that just gives the reading of whether there’s an earthquake and it can feel like very sensitive, just the tiniest little movement in the earth and it’s gonna start making those marks on the paper.

So we are like that. We pick up on the sensitive information around us. Including the different kind of stressful situations that people face around us. But the interesting thing is that the trait of being sensitive is actually a neutral thing. It’s like a seismograph, it’s neutral. It just picks up on things, it records it, it notices it and that’s it.

It’s just awareness. The problem comes is if we start attaching to one side like that. That we need to get them balanced and we get caught in that we can end up not just being an observer or someone noticing someone else’s stress. We can get caught up in their stress. It’s like a lifeguard if you go out and try to save someone.

And if you end up getting caught in the. The situation, you can end up drowning along with the person you’re trying to save. So why are highly sensitive people, so especially capable of handling stressed people? First of all, as I mentioned, we’re tuned in so we are aware and we can not only see their symptoms, but we can often detect the causes of their stress.

Seeing the cause is a very, is it’s a long, goes a long way to beginning to see how that could be remedied. Secondly, we care and caring is a natural part of being sensitive and we’re just naturally empathetic. So that goes a long way as well. And then we’re also capable. We are very conscientious. We study things, we think deeply about things.

And we over time build an arsenal of abilities that can be super helpful for people around us that are going through things. And then finally, I think maybe most importantly, we are respectful. We don’t tend to chart to, to barge in and take over. But we tend to be respectful of the people who were supporting around us.

And that goes a long way to creating a safe space for people where actual transformation can happen. I know for me, if I am stressed, I want an HSP around me to support me. That’s who I would choose out of everyone because of these capabilities. So the. The thing that I wanna focus on here is how to stay centered even when those around you are not.

And the key to this for me is a healthy separation between what is theirs and what is mine, or another way of saying that, what’s my business and what’s their business? I find just asking myself that when I’m around someone who’s stressed or I’m caring for someone who’s stressed is super helpful. What is my business?

What is my job here? And what is their business? What is their job? Or what is God’s business and what is God’s job, not just mine? So my business is anything that I can control. And there are a lot of things I can control, but there are a lot of things that I can’t control. And if I’m clear on this difference, it can make all the difference in the world on my stress level.

So what can I control if I am with someone, like for example, my mother-in-law has dementia and I can’t control that she doesn’t remember things. So if I’m trying to. Control that, which I can’t control. I’m gonna be frustrated. I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be stressed. If I’m thinking she should be able to remember that and she can’t, then I’m gonna be frustrated.

I’m gonna be arguing with her and with the reality of the situation. But it can go further than that. Maybe she’s angry, maybe she’s frustrated. For example, she doesn’t like to take a bath and she doesn’t like to take her medicine and. And she doesn’t like to be told what to do. And so there’s this fine line where sometimes I do have to tell her what to do.

Sometimes we do have to give her a bath and we do have to have her take her medicine. And so my business here is to make sure she takes her medicine or make sure she takes her bath, make sure that she is that I’m giving her the care that she deserves on that physical level. Her business is whether she gets angry with that.

And so if I’m trying to make her not be angry, I’m so in her business and I’m gonna be so frustrated and it’s gonna be very difficult. People sometimes ask me ’cause I deal with stressful people in my job. I facilitate people in stressful situations. And they ask me, do you get stressed by that?

Now I’m a highly sensitive person. You would think that I would get stressed by being around stressed people, but my experience is not that at all because in my job I’ve done a lot of work and I’m very clear where is my business and where is the other person’s business. My business is to support them, create a safe space, ask them challenging questions, and be gentle with them.

And then their business is what they get from it. Whether they have a breakthrough, whether they just keep on being stressed, whether they like me or don’t like me, whether they had a good experience or bad experience, that’s not my business. And so when I really see that I can stand on my side of the street and I can be there, I can hold a beautiful space for someone and let them do what they do.

And. It feels respectful and it feels clear and it doesn’t get to me. So the same thing if you’re with others in your life, whether you’re in a position of caregiving, whether you’re professionally taking care of someone, or whether it’s just someone stressed showing up in your life. If you can keep this in mind, what is my business?

What is their business? It can save you a lot of grief. Another area where. You can do some work, and this is where I love doing the work of Byron Katie, is to question your wants and your needs around somebody. Maybe you’re working with a client, maybe you have someone that you’re taking care of in the home, like a dementia patient, like my mother-in-law.

Or maybe you’re just dealing with a friend and they’re they’re venting and they’re getting frustrated and they’re stuck and all of that. What are my wants and what are my needs here? Am I wanting them to think, oh, you really helped me? If I’m attached to that kind of idea, I’m gonna be putting a lot of pressure on myself to come up with something to really help them.

Or what am I needing? I am needing them to be grateful to me. So if I’m attached to that, I’m gonna be, again, putting pressure on myself. I’m going to be trying to rack my brains and try to help. And where am I? I’m in their business. So these wants and needs are like an impetus. They’re motives that push me out of my business into the other person’s business.

And so if you begin to question those wants and see, do you really want that? Is that really true? And how, what does your life look like when you’re wanting that? And who would you be without that? And try turning it around. If you play with this and start questioning your wants and needs, you will have less of this push that draws you over into the other person’s business where obviously you can’t control things and your stress is going to mount.

So this is a super key, when I’m looking at. The work that I do, I’ve questioned thoughts like I need her to see what I’m seeing or I need her to think I’m doing a good job. These kind of wants or needs are very distracting and very like they pull me into the other person’s world, the other person’s business, and it’s not what I can control.

So questioning these can give a lot of freedom. Because then I, again, find that natural separation between me and my clients, or between me and the other person. The person can actually go on and start ranting, go crazy, be non-compliant, anything, and I’m just there doing my job. I’m free, and I’m just stepping in for a moment to see how I can help, but respectfully leaving control of their life to them and to life, to God.

So one question that comes up is there are blurry lines. This happens with kids, for example, if you’re a parent. It happens with older people if you’re a caregiver. And it happens when you’re working with people where you’re in an advice giving kind of capacity. So where is the line? Sometimes you may actually be having to intervene or maybe you’re actually having to, take control for a little while with a kid. They don’t have a fully developed brain, and so you have to actually be that brain for them in some regards. But if you’re clear, if you’re aware, you’ll notice there’s still always a line between their business and your business. You just have to get clear on where that line is, and it may be different in different situations.

So the key is. To notice when you start feeling stressed, when you start having that reaction, then there’s a good chance that you’re getting into an area where maybe you’re actually out of control. Maybe you don’t have control, and you’re trying to be in control where you can’t be in control. And you have to back up a little bit.

So stress will be your wake up call and if you’ve listened to it, and then notice what you’re thinking and believing and question it, you will find that you can. Distinguish even in blurry situations where your job is and where the other person’s job begins.

So healthy separation. I think that’s really the key here to staying calm, staying peaceful when other people are stressed. If it’s personal, if you’re having personal investment in it, if you think it’s your job to fix them. Then every time they scream, you are going to be you’re gonna be vibrating with stress because you think that you’re failing at your job.

But if you’re clear about what their job is, which is their business, their world, their emotions, not something you control, then you can give all the care in the world and you can give it freely, and it can actually be very effective. But if they don’t manage to do it well then it’s okay. It’s not on you.

And that is super helpful. And then one final word, when you’re dealing with stressful people in any regard, naturally, as HSPs, we have a limit and we reach our limit earlier than other people. And so we have to pace ourselves and we have to allow for recovery time for ourselves so that we can reduce the overwhelm and come back to.

Balance in ourselves, and that will help us again, get clearer on this distinction between what is theirs and what is ours. So both things are important. Doing your inner work and also taking care of yourself so that you have the rest and balance needed to actually be a caregiver instead of just being an exhausted, say lifeguard, running out to save someone in the surf.

And because you’re so exhausted, you go down with the other person. So the feeling I’m left with today is that healthy separation is not something you can just do intellectually. You have to work with the emotional part of you and find it on a felt level inside questioning the wants and needs that keep you push, keep pushing you into their business where you don’t have control.

In this episode, we looked at why it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by stressed people in your life as an HSP, and it’s simply because we are so sensitive we’re that seismograph that records every little blip on the coming in from the environment. We also looked at. Why HSPs are so capable of handling stress people, and it’s because of our empathy.

It’s because of our caring, it’s because of our conscientiousness and capability of doing things well, and it’s also because we are able to perceive the actual situation and see what’s actually causing the issue in many cases. And then finally we looked at how to stay centered even when those around you are not.

And this is where I keep mentioning this healthy separation. There is always a way to find it. It may be blurry, but if you ask yourself, whose business are you in and what is your business? What is your actual job? You will start to see where your job ends and theirs begins. And if you respect that line, then you will find that.

You can experience a lot of stress around you without getting stressed yourself. So thanks for listening. It’s always fun to explore with you. This program 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.