How to Prioritize Your Needs Without Anxiety or Guilt to Avoid HSP Overwhelm

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover the truth about self care, why it’s not selfish to take care of yourself.

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 how to reframe prioritizing yourself as essential, not selfish, how to set gentle boundaries and communicate them clearly, and how to start small and build self priority into your routine. 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.

Back in the day when I was meditating a lot, I was living in an ashram, used to come home and visit my mom. I remember her once saying I was being selfish for meditating so much. And I can understand her point of view, but let’s look at that a little more closely. This is something that can seep into our lives, comes in little comments like this, or just seeing what other people are doing and noticing that they’re giving a lot.

And what about me? I actually am capable of giving, but when I do, it ends up overwhelming me. And this is the nature of being a highly sensitive person. We need more downtime than others. So let’s look at the idea of prioritizing ourselves. We tend to think of it as selfish. We tend to think that this is something we should take care of after we’ve done other things and made sure that everyone else was doing okay.

But this just leads to a kind of guilty feeling where we’re worrying about putting others first instead of taking care of ourselves. And it can end up backfiring. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of being like putting everyone first, really doing a good job with everyone else, and then there’s just no time for you.

And then you feel either exhausted, or worse yet, you may explode with regards to other people. For example, maybe your partner wants to stay up later than you do, and you want to sleep. This can be a place where you might start feeling guilty. about putting yourself first. Oh, my sleep, we should put us above me.

And that’s a common thing. And in some degree, it is true, but it can go to an extreme, and it can end up blocking us out of taking care of ourselves. Similarly, say your boss wants you to work longer hours and it’s just too much for you. Oh my gosh, what should I do? I need to be paid.

I need a job. And so my boss and kind of in a way has this, over my head and I feel guilty. Okay, maybe I should just do it. Or your friends want you to spend more time with them and you have a lot of other priorities that you’re balancing and it’s just not fun when you’re trying to keep everything going and you now have no time for yourself.

So the thing I want to point our attention to is the idea that prioritizing your needs isn’t taking away from others, it’s helping you to show up as your best self. If you prioritize yourself, then it means that you’re going to show up in your best form, you’re going to be full of energy, you’re going to be creative.

Able to give, and that’s what people love about you. That’s what people love about highly sensitive people. We have a lot to give. We’re creative, we’re we connect with people, we we just have a lot going for us. But, if we go to the point of overwhelm, overbook ourselves, and don’t take care of ourselves, then we can come into the same situations that we normally might do well in, and we can end up being just not fun.

Like we’re tired. We’re grouchy. We have short fuse We may even try to cover that up to some degree, but it’s not really being there anyone that is around us So it’s strange. It sounds like taking care of ourselves is a very selfish thing. Oh, I’m gonna go to bed now. Oh my gosh, how selfish. Can’t you tell?

There’s other things that, are going on and then you’re wanted and needed and all of that. But taking care of ourselves is the basis for everything else that we have to give. If we don’t take care of that basis, it’s like building a building without a foundation. Before saying yes to somebody, ask yourself this.

If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to for myself? And this can be something just to keep in mind. There has to be a balance between myself and my needs, and other people and their desires or their needs. The next thing I want to look at is setting some gentle boundaries and communicating those boundaries clearly.

We may feel as HSPs a certain pressure to meet other people’s expectations we are sensitive to other people’s expectations, and this can lead to overwhelm and even resentment, and we may find ourselves caving in and just giving in to that pressure to make no waves, if possible. But the way I like to think of boundaries is not as walls, but as guidelines that are there to protect my energy and help me maintain balanced relationships.

They’re not set in stone, they’re not immovable, but they are there as a general channel for my energy to flow, for my time to be structured in, so that I can stay as balanced as possible going through lots of different situations. Once you find what your boundaries are, then communicating them has to be clear, but also gentle.

And it can include things like, I’d love to help, but I need some downtime first. And it’s honest, people understand it, and the more you communicate it, the more they start to see who you really are, and how much you can give, and people adjust. It can be quite amazing to see. Or you can say, I can’t commit to that right now, but I’d love to connect at another time if that’s true for you.

And so it gives you options besides just the yes or no right now or Oh my gosh, I should just give in and take care of it. There are other times when I could connect and it doesn’t jeopardize my desire to be with someone or just something like, you guys have fun. I’ve got a lot, I’ve got to go take care of myself now.

And it’s honest again and clear. Like to your boss, I love that you value my help, but I can only go so far. There’s only so much I can do. I have physical limitations and I don’t want to burn out. And so even reframing it in terms of the boss’s understanding that they want the best work out of you.

And if you’re getting burnt out, it’s going to be less than ideal. This gives them something that is also a value from their point of view. Or sometimes, I love this one, just to sit down, say, Hey, let’s sit down and figure out a way for us to spend more time together. And this is like going to the drawing board and just saying, Hey, okay, I’d like to do this, but you know what?

I’m balancing this and figuring out. with all your cards on the table, if there’s a way to do it. Or maybe you’re sitting with, two calendars and thinking it through that way. And maybe you have to do some of that before you’re meeting with somebody. Maybe just on your own, sit down and think, okay, is this something that I really want to make a priority?

Or am I just feeling pressure from, say, a friend that is pushing me in that direction and it may not be something that I’m even wanting to spend that much time? Maybe I have to just be more realistic. And I may need to do that kind of research on my own at first. And then, sometimes it’s just a no.

And you may say, as much as I’d enjoy it, it’s just not my priority right now. And that’s fine. Or you can say something like you know me, that’s just not my thing. And, I love you, but it’s not, it’s just not where I want to go. And so there can be many ways of practicing this and experimenting with communicating that is both, in a way that is both gentle and loving, but also firm and holding a boundary of self care.

And then I want to end with another idea of starting small and starting to build up self priority into your routine, like just doing small little steps. It doesn’t have to be something that is like earth shattering change, because often times that is not very sustainable. But rather, start thinking about what small consistent changes can I create in my self care habits.

that will support me and make me feeling, feel like I have more time for myself, more regeneration time if I need it, or just time to pursue my own interests as well. That’s really important. It’s not just sleep. Okay, I can give myself sleep and I don’t feel guilty about that. Do you have time for exploring some of the things that you want to do, not just what everyone else would like you to do for them?

Here are a few ideas. Five minutes of quiet time, and maybe it’s just before you check your messages, or maybe it’s just before you step into doing your job. Or maybe it’s a break at some point in the day, just taking five minutes of quiet time just to relax, close your eyes, sit on your sofa do nothing, is a, is an amazing thing.

Or maybe there’s something that you just are drawn to, that you want to pursue because it’s interesting to you, and it’s just your time. Those five minutes can be transformative. and your experience of your day. Another one is to say no to one non essential task this week. Is there one thing that I don’t really need to do?

Can I just take it off the to do list? Can I be okay with not doing that? Saying no to myself is probably the hardest part of saying no. Saying no to others is hard enough, but saying no to myself? Because I really want to do certain things. So that can be something to practice and can be helpful for building self priority into your routine.

Scheduling guilt free alone time and treating it as non negotiable. I love that idea of scheduling. Booking in a time. This is my time for doing this. Maybe it’s My time for exercising, or maybe it’s my time for reading, or maybe it’s my time for studying something, or maybe it’s my time for just listening to some music, or my time for some hobby, or just my time to relax or take a nap.

Having scheduled free time, alone time, is something that can really support highly sensitive people. And if you make it As important as a appointment with somebody else, it can support you all the more. Another thing I like to think of is to ask myself, what do I really want to do with my downtime? I’m so busy with so many things and I tend to take longer to do things.

That’s a common HSP trait. So asking myself, what do I really want to do if I have downtime can start bringing that into my awareness and start drawing me. And I start wanting to create downtime. Like right now I’m taking a, an online music theory class. And I always wanted to do that since I was in college, never took the time to do it.

And it’s fun. So It draws me. It gives me impetus to take some time for myself so that I can pursue that little mini hobby that I just found. And another thing is, consider the difference between us time and my time. And both are important, especially in family, especially in relationships. But there’s a difference between the two, and I like to budget for both.

I like to have some my time in my day, and I like to have some us time in my day. And I like to think, is there a good balance between those two? And finally, just know that no one will keep the balance if you don’t. Only you can know where your limits are, and only you can communicate those. The more aware you become of them, and the more you do communicate them, The more you will be able to be your best self, basically, at all times, and even if there are fluctuations in that, there’s a general sense of, I’m taking care of myself.

In this episode, we looked at how reframing prioritizing yourself is essential, not selfish. Because when you take care of yourself, That’s when you are your best self, and when you are your best self, not only do you feel good, not only do you have more fun, but you’re also more effective at work, you’re more fun with friends, and you’re more of a joy to have around.

We also looked at how to set gentle boundaries and communicate them clearly. And we saw that being gentle is important. It’s important to us as HSPs. It’s how we like to communicate. Once we have the idea that taking care of ourself is a good thing for everybody, then finding creative ways to do that is really important.

Otherwise, people are left guessing or we’re missing the communication part. Which can lead to misunderstanding. And finally, we looked at how to start small and build self priority into our routines. And starting small is essential. It’s like building a habit. Building some small piece, some small window, some small little areas that are protected in our days or in our weeks.

Where we start taking care of ourselves, start pursuing our own interests and use that to balance all the ways that we take care of others and are there for others. So thanks for listening, and I look forward to connecting with you in another episode. We will continue exploring different strategies for stress management for highly sensitive people.

Hope you have a great day.