Overcoming Financial Overwhelm: Stress Management Strategies for the Highly Sensitive Person

 I’m excited to announce a new course called the Work 1 0 2, for those of you who have taken the work 1 0 1, which is my introduction course to the work of Byron Katie, and a basic course in beginning to use this as a form of stress management. Then the Work 1 0 2 is available to you as the next step, going a little deeper into the work.

And in this case, we’re gonna be focusing on the practice of spoken work. Spoken work is a way of doing this practice, asking yourself these questions with another person. Basically, the other person asks you the questions. You ask them the questions, and you support each other as you dive inwardly to do this kind of inquiry.

There’s a lot to this, there’s a lot of subtleties and for some people working with another person can be even stressful. So we’re gonna get into all of the nuances of this way of doing the work of Byron Katie in the course called the Work 1 0 2. And if you go to the work as meditation.com, you can read more about this as it is now one of the courses that I’ll be offering.

Somewhat regularly

because I noticed for me, like a recent experience, some something happened and I was feeling like, oh, I got this. And everything that was coming at me, I was like almost not even paying too much attention and being like closed, not open to see other things or hear other things because I didn’t want to.

Lose my peas in a way. Welcome to Wiggle Room, a podcast where we start with stress and then look for ways to turn it around. And we use something called the work of Byron Katie, if you’re not familiar with it. This is a way of questioning the thoughts that you’re thinking. Most of the time. We don’t question our thoughts, we just believe them.

We just act on them, and that’s normal. What happens is when you get stressed, you naturally will begin to question your thinking. And the work of Byron Katie is a way to do this in a very systematic way that often reveals a lot of unexpected and very insightful realizations.

I’m Todd Smith and on the program today. We have a little bit of a discussion to begin things in the inquiry circle, or sorry, in the open session recording. And the first probably 20 minutes of that is a discussion I. Prompted by a question, how do you keep yourself grounded when doing the work?

And the problem that came up is you start doing the work, you find some peace, and then you wanna hold onto that piece. And so you start finding yourself actually limited as a result of that. So we get into an interesting discussion. I share my thoughts as well as some of the other participants share their thoughts on this topic.

And then in the remaining 10 minutes or so, one participant does the work on the thought. I hate to feel powerless, and her situation is a financial one, so you may be able to relate. Let’s dive into the work of Byron Katie together. As always, it’s a simple, powerful way to question what you think. And here’s our latest weekly open session.

I record these as is. In this particular case, there was a, my microphone stopped working right towards the end and I do cut out the sort of delay waiting time for that. But nothing of any actual importance was cut from the session.

Todd, I have a question. Sure. How do you keep yourself grounded? Like when doing the work? I noticed for me, like a recent experience, some something happened and I was feeling like, oh, I got this, and like everything that was coming at me, I was like almost not even paying too much attention and being like closed, not open to see other things or hear other things because I didn’t want to lose my PS in a way.

So how do you stay grounded? Be aware of everything that’s going on, but also not in a way like self-sufficient that you think that you don’t need anything else? I guess that would be, that’s a great question. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t have a immediate answer. But let’s think about it together a little bit.

And the first thing that comes to mind is this idea that. That openness is really valuable. In fact, that’s where the work tends to point us okay, if you’re stressed, usually there’s something closed. There, there’s something like I’m attached to something or I’m just closed and I only see one way and it’s blocked and I’m having a problem there.

So the work says, okay, question that question. Your thinking there, and you start to see another way. Oh, great. There’s another way. There’s a back door as well as a front door. So if the front door is blocked, I can go out of the back door, no problem. So that’s the beginning of some openness. And that feels great.

Like you said, it feels it feels there’s more peace now because I can move. I have the freedom, I can see it in a different way, and that’s really great. But you’re bringing up a really interesting point. What happens if you start to get too attached to, the back door is the only way, this is the best way, and I don’t want to.

I ever used the front door again and so I get turned around, but then I’m stuck on the turnaround and I’m, I can get yeah, I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re seeing here, but you can get caught in seeing something in a new way, and that’s the only way. And you see this.

Pop up in so many different ways in life. So

it was so peaceful to find that new way that I don’t wanna let go of that peace. It was so like, ah, finally I found there was another way to look at it. I don’t want to. Get rid of that piece. So that is attachment, that is a form of being closed in a way, even though it’s more open than it was when I was really closed.

I’m, I went from really closed to more open. But if I’m attached to that more openness, I’m actually closed in a weird way. So anytime I notice attachment to something. Then there’s a thought there that I’m believing, and I think the thought you said so perfectly is, I don’t want to lose my peace. So then I would just take that to the next.

I would question that thought, I don’t want to lose my peace and then see what you find on the other side of that one. So it’s like, how open can you be? Are you open just to. Getting out of stress. Are you open to even experiencing some more stress in the process of opening even further? So you never know what it looks like to be open and so the work will just lead you the, you can trust it when there’s a stress.

There’s like even though you were feeling peace. You were noticing there was something a little bit closed, right? Something felt off about that. So that’s the clue if anytime something feels off. Then you can apply the work again, and you just can keep reapplying and reapplying it. It reminds me I’ve used this analogy recently and it’s something I’ve always enjoyed is the idea of that white rotter rafting.

Like you do the balance and you’re like, oh, great, I was tipping to this side, so I pushed on this side and it brought me to balance. But if I think that’s the only. Just push to the left and then everything will be great. Then I’m gonna be in trouble ’cause I’m going the other side and I’m gonna fall in on that side.

So I have to change and now push to the right and then again change. So it’s constantly balancing from one side to the other side because life is dynamic. It’s not just one, you do one piece of work and it’s done. You do one piece of work to balance that, and then you find where the imbalance is coming again, and you do it again.

And my experience is the more you do this work, the more you start to feel it. You start to feel when you’re getting imbalanced and you start to naturally come back to balance. Even without formally going through the four questions and the turnarounds. Sometimes I need to, but sometimes it’s just like finding, like walking a tightrope.

You can just. Okay. Yep. Yep. In the beginning you’re falling off and you’re falling off, but in the end you’re able to just do a little bit of small changes and then it’s not as yeah, it’s not as dramatic the shift, but you have to always keep doing it. If you just become rigid, that’s when the whole thing is just going to fall over.

You have to be, yeah. Feeling. If it’s getting, if it’s getting closed again in some way. So those are my thoughts. I don’t know if anyone else has any thoughts. I’m open to hear.

And Edwin, what’s your experience? Just listening as I was playing around there what’s your experience in terms of your situation? Does that resonate in any way? It does, yeah. It’s like going from one corner to the other, but not realizing that you’re doing it. Like for me, it felt like I’m having a peace that I want to keep.

I don’t wanna lose that piece. So my attempt of not losing that piece is oh, there’s an altercation going on over here, so I wanna run away because I don’t want to get in the middle of that. I don’t wanna lose my piece. So instead of jumping in and like using a new way of looking at things, I’m just like avoiding it completely and just running away in a way.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So a truly open mind is. As peaceful with altercations as it is with nice quiet surroundings. If you really want to push it to the limits and and challenge yourself to the ultimate level, then can you be peaceful even when somebody is arguing with you or with, or if there’s something like there’s always something and the more.

Integrated. This becomes the more easy you do become with everything, and it doesn’t, there’s a lot of nuance to this, but that is the idea. It’s like not enough just to say, okay, I found my turnaround. Now that’s my new religion, and I just closed down to everything else. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I see your hands there.

Go ahead, Wendy.

Okay, thanks. Yesterday or day before I, time disappears. I’m always not wanting any kind of confrontation and we’ll try to be the peacekeeper, but we had a very aggressive solar salesperson at our door and he just simply would not leave. And I don’t know what it was, but for that moment I got so angry.

The, and I got my husband involved in it as well, and I’m typically the peacekeeper because I will avoid any kind of conflict. We literally almost lifted him up and dropped him off of our property. We just we just ganged up on him, get out of here, we’ll, have you arrested? And he resisted it and it was thrilling.

Yeah. I was exhausted afterwards, but I, all I could think of was how, unlike me, but apparently that’s not unlike me. Exactly. Like with an open mind. Everything’s on the table. Everything’s on the table, and it’s like almost scary. How much is possible there? Yeah. I’m the same way.

I do not, I avoid conflict, like all my whole life. I’ve always avoided conflict, but. Over time doing this work, I’ve actually found myself putting my foot down or saying, really, no, that is not gonna work. I’ve found myself using this kind of anger voice sometimes when it just like that has to.

Stop or something like that. And that’s so unusual for me, but in a weird way, it feels like balance for me because I tend to be more on the let’s keep everything peaceful side. So yeah, this is what we mean by open mind. How open can your mind be is even negativity. Okay. It’s even, yeah. Anger.

Yeah. Okay. Wow. And right after that I had, I was gonna say, I’ve got, I had the balls to do this. Yeah. I had the balls to do this. I don’t like a medication my doctor gave me. And Right. I called and left a message and said, I’m not taking this anymore. Find me another one. It was almost like, oh, I’m gonna use this.

And then I just got off the phone with the pharmacist. They. Found me a new medication that will not have the side effects. Yeah. Yeah, I hope I don’t go too far in that direction in so you’ll notice this is exactly what we’re talking about. So now that starts to feel good okay, great. I’m finally standing up for myself.

I’m actually not afraid to be even very in your face if necessary, but then you’ll feel like, okay. If it starts going too far, you’ll notice the imbalance, and that’s what you can trust. That’s what I mean. It’s like you’ll notice the imbalance, like Edwin was saying, there’s something off. I’m not quite open, I’m still, I’m almost a little too attached to my piece or something like, so if you notice I’m getting just a little, maybe it’s a little too aggressive here.

This doesn’t feel right. Then you’ll notice you can question your thinking. Which is whatever the thought is that’s making you be aggressive. I have a right to do this, or I, they should, whatever. And you can find your way back to balance, and then it’s just a conversation instead of a confrontation.

Yeah. So with practice, we just, it just gets finer and finer. And I think what I’ve noticed is that my ability to stand up for myself. In the beginning is very crude. And then over time it becomes finer and I’m able to stand up for myself in a way that’s also not harsh.

But I’m not afraid to be harsh if it needs to happen. Yeah. And so it’s appropriate. When Edwin was saying he, being attached to the piece, but. My not responding wasn’t peaceful for me. I may have appeared peaceful ’cause I wasn’t attacking, but it was not peaceful in my mind.

Yeah. Until I said something. So we’re starting to pay attention to peace on the inside. What’s my peace actually feel like? Not what does it look like? You can be saying. Crazy things sometimes and feeling really peaceful about it. And that’s right for me. And no one else can judge it. ’cause for them it looks crazy.

But for me I’m like, this feels right. But I can also be I. Really peaceful on the outside looking, but feeling not right on the inside. So what we’re shifting is the attention from outside to inside and the more I pay attention to what’s going on inside, the more I don’t worry about whether what it looks like I just know I’m listening to myself and acting in a way that feels true and right for me in that moment.

And yeah. Yeah, that’s all I can do. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So Monica, I know you had your hand up a while ago. I don’t know if you still have the thought, but if you want to I’m happy to hear. No, it was just an association do you say it that way? I I made an association with what Edwin said.

Because it made me think about what in, in Buddhism, they’re they’re also very much into observing. Observing, like Katie says. Noticing. So whatever it is, it’s just about noticing. If it’s just noticing, you cannot be attached. It’s that’s a bit what I, that’s what it made me think of.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s awareness. It’s, there’s nothing off about awareness. There’s nothing off about noticing there is something off about being attached to it or that it should be different or I don’t want to lose my piece or any of those things. There’s a stickiness there and that feels feels off.

It feels a little bit stressful and if it go gets pushed far enough, it can become very stressful. But just awareness itself or just noticing as you say, is is a very free place to be. And yeah. Okay. That’s it. And I also liked what Wendy said about going to the opposite and that aggression actually in that moment, the way you said it, Wendy, was.

Really peaceful. You were in peace then, a certain idea or a definition about what peace is, but it, it doesn’t have to be that way. Yeah. My turnarounds have consistently pointed me towards standing up for myself, saying no, being direct, being raising my voice. Like that’s where my turnarounds point me.

It’s funny, someone else, they might point them to tone it down and to be. Softer, but I’ve already, I already have that. It’s like I needed the other skill. So whatever you need to balance yourself. Your stress will show you and the work will point you right where you need to go. That’s why it’s so specific for each person.

That’s why I like to say you can’t take another person’s medicine. You can’t take someone else’s turnaround and just borrow it and use it for yourself. No, if you have a heart condition, you take the heart medicine. If you have a, some other condition, you take that medicine and you don’t take the wrong one because it doesn’t work so well.

So the diagnosis in this work is the feeling of stress. Oh, there’s a symptom showing up, stress that tells me something isn’t right for me, specifically. When I find out what that thought is specifically and then question it and turn it around, it brings me back to balance for me. That no one else can follow that path because it’s specific to me.

When I do that, I do find the balance, but then if I keep going as Edwin started this whole conversation, I may start to notice there’s something not feeling right afterwards, and that tells me I’ve now, I’ve gotten too attach to even my own. Experience of peace, and then I followed this, that symptom of stress again, find this the thought and then question it and find an even bigger piece.

So peace just gets, keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Cool. That was fun. Thank you. Thank you, Edwin. Good topic. So anything else, anyone else want to bring up or anything? We have about eight minutes. You could do a very short, I could still question a thought. Maybe I don’t know if it’s too late for that. Why not? We have eight minutes.

Let’s do the fast version of the work of Byron Katie and see what can happen. Okay. So what’s your thought? So my thought is. I hate to feel powerless when they tell me to pay this huge amount. So the situation was, I was

I was seeing a precalculating for the taxes and I was really. Like it blew my head off, like it was a huge amount I had to pay and I didn’t even expect that I had to pay anything. And I did the work on it today and because it was this morning. Okay and so then this thought come up, came up I hate to feel powerless.

Ah, great. All right, let’s do it. So you hate to feel powerless. Is it true

in that situation? Yes. And can you absolutely know it’s true. You hate to feel powerless, and I tell you to pay this huge amount.

No, this, can you hear me better? Okay. Sorry about that. Yep. Okay, so if you guys have a few more minutes, we can go over time if you want to just continue with this. Yeah. Okay. So I can now relate to your statement. I hate to feel powerless.

Yeah. Great. So how do you react? What happens when you think you hate to feel powerless and they’re asking for this huge amount of tax money?

Like it, it’s like I want to block everything from happening. Like this can’t be happening. This is not allowed. So I’m very much in resistance I cannot even take it in. It’s like it’s really not supposed to be a block. I get really tight in my chest

There’s this sense of unfairness. I see,

yeah, I see images of unfairness, like things happening that are not fair. And I cannot do anything about it. And how do you, go ahead. Yeah, I’m trying to figure out a way to get out of it somehow. Like it’s like I’m friend looking for ways to. Yeah. To get control again, basically it seems. Exactly. So how do you treat this, the actual feeling of powerlessness when you think that you hate to feel powerless?

Yeah, it’s not really an option, it’s

it shouldn’t be there. I see it as an enemy. I treat it as an enemy. I,

I am angry at it. I’m so disconnected for myself. It’s really, I think I could use some help. Okay. I think you’re, yeah, you’re saying it very clearly, right? It’s like there’s the feeling of powerlessness coming up and then the thought, I hate to feel powerless, and then just naturally feeling disconnected. I’m not even, I’m not even allowed to. Feel that way? No.

It’s it’s this thing that it’s taking the whole space and it’s not allowed to be there. So it’s really, yeah. It’s again, powerlessness right power. There’s powerless from the tax people and now there’s powerless because of the powerlessness. It’s it just Yeah. Becomes really, yeah, a lot.

So who would you be without the thought? I hate to feel powerless.

There’s more lightness that I immediately sense. It seems like things start flowing again. Like before it was more cramps and now there’s more of a, like a feeling inside of me, like more kind of relaxing, more flow flowing.

Yeah, the thought comes up. There’s only one option like this. Yeah. So that’s, it’s just this one, one reality, like I have to pay. It has nothing to do with power, physically powerlessness. It’s just what it’s. Wow. Yeah. So all we’ve done here is look at the difference between with the thought and without the thought.

I hate to feel powerless, and with the thought it’s even more powerless. Without the thought, it’s a little more easy. So that’s the effect. So how do you turn it around? I hate to feel powerless.

I hate to feel powerful. Okay. Interesting. Yes. I can blame others, right? Exactly. So I don’t have to take responsibility. Yeah. Isn’t that what’s partly going on in this situation? Oh, they’re making me pay this huge amount, and so the focus is on them. I feel powerless, but at least I don’t have to feel powerful and take any responsibility or take action.

Yeah. Actually in this situation, I don’t. I don’t really know how to, but yeah, it is something about I can totally wipe it away and blame it on them and just it’s not gonna change anything. So it’s pretty yeah it’s not really helpful, but yeah. So yeah, I can really see that in how I hate to be powerful and.

Yeah, I’m wondering if I should look for more here or that I think it should go to, I love sometimes one, one turnaround just becomes, you make sense of it. It doesn’t have to be three examples. So what’s another turnaround? I hate to feel powerless.

I love to feel powerless. Okay. How could that be in this situation? How could that be?

At least it’s a big alarm bell too. To check my attachments. Yeah. Powerlessness. Yeah. Something is going on. I’ve had, like in the last few years, I’ve so many, I’ve had so many huge financial like setbacks that it’s I can see the game of it like getting less and less attached to money, like yeah. Seeing the practice going on there. And it’s really interesting in a way and. Like I said before, at some point, like I would never invest in a course like that, pay so much money for a course like that I lose like a huge amount of money.

But. It is a course in a way, and it’s a very valuable course to get detached from. So yeah, in this situation I. Love it as well. You’re getting like an advanced course, an attachment to money. It just keeps getting too I’m starting to get good at it

Euro, no problem. Oh yeah.

Wow.

I can start laughing about it almost. Yeah it’s realizing also I have no control exactly over, over my money. So I love to realize that, that I don’t have the control over it.

I don’t even have to feel powerless. Because, yeah, in a way, like it’s not my responsibility and I have no control. Yeah. So there is something, there. Something big happening there. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, so I love to feel powerless. I, is there any other turnarounds? I hate to feel powerless.

Powerless. Hates to be me.

I dunno. We’ve turned it inside out and outside. In and all out. Yeah. Just checking. I’m not seeing obvious one, but. Yeah, I either.

Okay, so it’s a we said we’d do a quick one, so it’s a quick one and it’s yes. Cool though, like unexpected insights coming out of this little thought. I hate to feel powerless. And that’s just what we were talking about, just trusting. That this feels stressful. There’s the alarm and just seeing where it goes, and that’s all exploring, exploring.

So thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Now we have to find out where we can sign up for this course to get find non-attachment to money. It’s a very expensive course. Governments are involved. You can take it with me. I’ll give it to you.

Yeah. I love it. Cool.

If you would like to participate in open sessions like the one you heard just now, then go to the work as meditation.com and then go to the open sessions page, and there you can find the schedule of the upcoming open sessions you can. Sign up to join us. Bring your questions, bring your stressful thoughts to work, and just bring yourself, many times, you can just sit and listen live with us when we’re recording.

I. While you’re at the work as meditation.com, I also encourage you to check out our virtual retreats Every three months or so, four times a year, we do a virtual retreat over a weekend, and it’s a way to spend the weekend doing the work. I. There’ll be people from all over the world joining in. We meet on Zoom and we do some group work as well as partnering up with each other so that you can have them facilitate you and you can facilitate them as you start to question some of the stressful thoughts on your mind.

I find that these virtual retreats are excellent way of getting an intense blast of inquiry, and sometimes I blow through some pretty amazing things. When I am doing these weekends. Next I’m going to read one of my newsletter articles called The Work is Preventive Medicine.

The onset of Darkness doesn’t bring sadness or fear when I shift to indoor lighting. In 2017, I attended a funeral. The funeral of my dear friend teacher and Ayurvedic Doctor Vajra. I miss him and I love him, but I don’t feel grief losing a friend cannot be compared to losing a parent, a spouse, or a child.

It took me a couple of months of work to go through the grief after my mom died. But there’s another reason why I don’t feel sad when faced with this great loss. The reason is that I’ve been doing the work of Byron Katie for a long time, and it’s becoming instinctual not to go down that road of creating pain for myself.

This is especially true because after my mom died suddenly in an accident, I did a lot of the work every day for a couple of months, and I. Started to see my way through that very challenging situation. So when faced with a similar situation with a friend, I’m noticing that a lot of that stuff was worked before, worked with my mom, and it’s carried forward into new situations.

The work shows me again and again, how much it hurts when I want things to be different than they are. Noticing this again and again Through my work, I’m not so tempted to dive into the pain. I’m more and more aware that it’s a choice. Pain looks like this. He shouldn’t have died. He died too soon. I need him to be my doctor.

I didn’t learn everything from him. I want to spend time with him again. I’ve never formally questioned these thoughts, but I don’t need to. By doing the work over the years, my mind has come to recognize that these kinds of thoughts bring me pain every time they remind me of so many other thoughts like them that I have questioned, and so my mind is not interested in holding onto them.

This is what I mean by the work being preventive medicine. Every time I do the work, I see more clearly that I always have options. I see that no matter how bad anything is, I’m the only one who can make me suffer. This is not a general theory. This is a practical experience that I get when dealing with the particulars of any situation that I bring to the work.

The more work I do, the more clearly I see it. It’s cumulative. The cumulative experience is what held me when my friend and teacher died, and that’s why I didn’t go into grief. I simply saw other options besides pain. Even guilt couldn’t make me suffer because I’ve worked those guilt thoughts before as well.

Thoughts like if I don’t hurt, it means I don’t love him, and I know it’s not true. I can feel the love in my heart. I can feel the love for from him. Same as always. I feel as connected to him now without a body as I did when he had a body. There’s just no reason to close my heart. What is left inside of me is an openness, and that openness is what I brought to the funeral.

A heart full of gratitude and a clear mind that I have everything I need. Then I could say goodbye with love and I could share my love with everyone else who was there. And of course, there are no absolutes. I have no grief. Is it true on coming back home? I caught a cold and spent the last few days sleeping on the sofa.

Who knows? Maybe that was grief coming out. We all grieve in different ways. If so, I look forward to working through any grief that shows up. And I wrote this several years ago. I’ve noticed looking back that no further grief did come up for me. Or at least not in an obvious way. I. And so I pass it on.

I share the legacy of an amazing healer, and by this I mean my friend, if you haven’t already, I invite you to subscribe to the newsletter that Ra Mishra’s team still sends out@chanika.com. They have so much knowledge about health there and. I call this knowledge, which is Ayurveda, the ancient healing wisdom of India.

I call this knowledge turnarounds for the body. ’cause it’s also just like we do here with the work. It’s a way of creating balance in the body as well as the mind. And it’s just another way to do this. So I hope you enjoy learning from Vajra as much as I did. And I end with a quote from Byron Katie from her book, question Your Thinking, change the World.

I have a friend who, after doing inquiry sincerely for a number of years, came to understand that the world is a reflection of mind. She was married to a man who was the love of her life, and one day while they were sitting on their couch, he had a heart attack and died in her arms. After the first shock and the tears, she began looking for grief and there was none for weeks.

She kept looking for grief because her friends told her that grief was a necessary part of the healing process, and all she felt was a completeness, that there was nothing of him that she’d had while he was physically with her that she didn’t have Now.