HSP Overwhelm: Letting Go of the “Something’s Wrong with Me” Belief

  By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to reframe your experience of overwhelm as an HSP.

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 the mind attacks itself when you experience overwhelm, the power of thought to cause stress or to allow peace, and how to stop the vicious cycle of self attack. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Experiencing overwhelm is not fun. It’s overwhelming. It causes a feeling of of stress and a feeling of discomfort. You can feel scattered. You can feel like you just want to go and hide. And and so it happens. It happens to everyone, whether you’re a highly sensitive person or not, but it tends to happen more with highly sensitive people because of our nature.

Where we go from there is often interesting. Because sometimes the mind starts to think That there’s really something wrong with me for that experience. And that’s what I want to look at today in this meditation. So let’s start with finding a situation where you experienced overwhelm, or you looked at your past experience or experiences of overwhelm, and you started noticing a kind of judgment in yourself.

That like there’s something wrong with me. I shouldn’t be getting overwhelmed so much. There’s something wrong with me So look for a specific time if you can you can also do this work more generally because this may be a common experience

So let’s question the thought there’s something wrong with you. Is it true something wrong with you because you’re getting overwhelmed? Easily, is it true?

And we’re looking just for a yes or a no, and I want you to be honest, as honest as you can be.

Something wrong with me. Is that true?

My gut is saying yes, there’s something wrong with me. So I’m just going to go with that honest emotional response as I see it. If something comes to the contrary, I’ll change my mind, but so far nothing is coming. So yeah, it’s true. Something wrong with me.

So if your answer was yes, then there’s another question. If your answer was no, you can skip this question. Can you absolutely know it’s true that there’s something wrong with you because you experienced overwhelm or you experience overwhelm a lot? Are you sure there’s something wrong with you?

Again, a yes or a no, trying to look at it as objectively as possible, staying honest to your experience.

Are you sure something wrong with you?

I’m not 100 percent sure, so I’m going to say no, but you follow your answer where you, where it leads you.

So the next question is, can you is how do you react? What happens when you start to think there’s something wrong with you? Notice what your mind does. Where does it go? What are the thoughts? What happens?

I notice a little bit of fear. I notice a little bit of frustration.

It’s a feeling like I don’t know what to do,

and there’s a lot of self judgment.

How does it show up for you when you think there’s something wrong with you because you get overwhelmed easily?

I feel almost a kind of shame. I want to not expose myself, not want to be seen,

and I also notice an impulse to try to do something about it.

And this is also stressful because I don’t know what to do. Where do you

feel it in your body when you think there’s something wrong with you because you get overwhelmed easily?

I notice it in my solar plexus.

And how do you treat yourself when you think there’s something wrong with you for getting overwhelmed easily?

I almost treat myself like a second class citizen, in a way. Like an outsider. Like there really is something wrong with me. An invalid, you might say.

So these are a few of the reactions that happen that just come up spontaneously when you think this thought. Yours may be different than mine, but I’m doing this work along with you here. So, the next question is, who would you be without the thought that there’s something wrong with you when you get overwhelmed easily?

Who would you be if you didn’t have this thought that there’s something wrong with you?

I notice the energy comes into my heart. Like, it opens into my heart. It’s a pleasant feeling. Like breath or energy is flowing there.

I see my tendency to overwhelm more objectively somehow. It’s like, okay, it’s not that, without the thought there’s something wrong with me, I’m just aware of a kind of limitation. Okay, yeah, I can only go so far before the overwhelm happens. And that’s what I mean, it feels objective. How about you? What do you see when you look at yourself without this story?

That there’s something wrong with you because you get overwhelmed easily. I

feel a kind of compassion, almost like a kind of self love growing inside of me as I sit in this. Almost like I’m this, I’m some kind of a creature that I’m Holding, and this is how it is, like it’s, it’s almost endearing.

So without the thought, there’s something wrong with me. My mind is more of an observer, more objective. My heart is more open. There’s more energy in me.

In fact, going back to question three, how do you react? When I’m believing that there’s something wrong with me for being overwhelmed easily, I’m, like I said, I’m trying to fix it. I’m kind of like. Trying to change myself, push that away, I’m, I’m really not at ease with it. But if I don’t have this concept that there’s something wrong with me, for getting overwhelmed easily, I’m just aware of it, I’m working with it, I’m kind of seeing, okay, how do I dance with this?

It’s a, it’s, it’s part of reality. And now what? It’s a very different feeling. There’s a kind of flow possible.

So this contrast between with the thought and without the thought shows how this thought affects us. When I believe there’s something wrong with me, it’s much more stressful. If I don’t have that thought, it’s much easier. So could it be that the thought itself is adding an extra layer of stress? Maybe the thought itself Is more the issue, so let’s consider could the opposite of that thought be, could it be that there’s nothing wrong with me?

This would be a turnaround. So let’s explore this turnaround and consider, are there any examples in your situation, in your life, when you look at yourself, that even though you get overwhelmed easily, that there’s nothing wrong with you? Let’s think about it. What do you find?

I don’t know. The image of a, of the sensitive plant, you know, comes to mind. If you touch the leaves of that plant, it closes up. There’s nothing wrong with a sensitive plant for doing that. But if I judge it with a critical judgment, I might say it’s overwhelmed or something wrong with it. But that sounds silly to me, because I know that’s just its nature.

It does that because it does that, and that’s not a problem. So, that analogy just kind of gives me some ideas here. Let’s keep going. How could it be that there’s nothing wrong with you even though you get overwhelmed easily?

Another thing’s coming up for me, like,

like, some fine electronics, like maybe in the inside of your computer or something, they, they can do amazing things. But if I fry it with like 220 volts of electricity, I’m going that computer will be useless. So there’s nothing wrong with a computer that gets fried with 220 volts. It’s, it’s, it’s nature.

It needs a fine trickle of electricity to be able to do the magic that it does. So there’s nothing wrong with me for being highly sensitive and requiring a lower voltage. And there’s nothing wrong with me if I get overwhelmed when that voltage is exceeded.

It’s like I wasn’t built for that. I wasn’t built for that.

Why would I use a tool that wasn’t built for a particular job and then expect it to perform the way a different tool would perform? It’s not a fair comparison.

So there’s nothing wrong with me for getting overwhelmed easily. It’s more like there’s something wrong With the environment I’m putting myself in, like it’s not a match for me, but it doesn’t say anything about me, doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me, it’s just that I may not be in an ideal environment for me to thrive.

There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m loving this. I’m loving playing with this because it just opens up a different way of feeling this experience, feeling through this experience. Even though I get overwhelmed, there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s like the overwhelm is telling me there’s the limit. There it is again, and there it is again.

But that’s not something wrong. It’s like my limit meter is working.

Something right with me, we could even say. that I’m, I’m awake enough and my little override meter is working enough that I shut down when I get out of where I, my normal range is. And let’s go further with that. Something right with me, like what are the advantages of being that sensitive where Certain things will certainly overwhelm, but what are the advantages of having the normal range be at a very fine level?

I can do very fine,

like a jeweler just brings out those fine little tools,

different than a blacksmith using heavier tools. So the advantage is that I can sit with subtle thought, I can sit with subtle emotion. I can connect in a subtle way with others,

I get to experience the subtle.

And if it means that the gross is not a perfect match for me, so be it. My preference anyway is for the subtle.

So there’s nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing, nothing wrong with getting overwhelmed. It just shows me, here’s my limit, don’t go beyond there. Stay within the area where I am. optimally set up for doing amazing things, for experiencing subtle things, and contributing on that level. In this episode, we looked at how the mind attacks itself when you experience overwhelm.

It starts judging itself, and it’s just like that sensitive plant. If I’m judging it, then I’m bringing in something extra. And it’s not a part of the actual system. There’s nothing wrong with the system, but the mind attacks itself for what it thinks it should be. We also looked at the power of thought to cause stress or to allow peace.

And we saw so clearly when I’m thinking that there’s something wrong with me, then it causes stress. And if I don’t think in that direction, the more peaceful experience starts to come up. This is not an intellectual thing, it’s an experiential thing. And then we looked at how to stop the vicious cycle of self attack, and it’s by looking at the balance, and looking at the opposite of what we were thinking is true.

Instead of, there’s something wrong with me, there’s something right with me. And yes, there’s some limitations, But that’s also right. And I even love my preference for being subtle. And I’m willing to forego some exposure to things that overwhelm me. And ever, and even if I forget to, it’s okay because it’s just a reminder.

Oh yeah, if I go there, I get overwhelmed. So this is how the vicious cycle can be slowed down and how the mind can come back to its more balanced position. So thanks for being here with me. Thanks for joining me in this meditation. And I look forward to more with you. In the meantime, I hope you have a great day, and I will see you in the next episode,