Overcoming Overwhelm in Crowded Spaces

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to reduce the stress of a busy environment without actually changing the environment.

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 another factor besides the environment that may be causing the problem, why it’s possible to be less stressed by a challenging environment, and how to come back to creative problem solving instead of feeling like a victim. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do The Work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Let’s start by thinking of a situation where you were overwhelmed by a busy environment. Maybe you were on a train commuting. Maybe you were in a crowd somewhere. Maybe you were trying to study somewhere, and there were too many distractions going on. Find a situation where the environment was too much for you and was starting to stress you out.

And it doesn’t have to be a huge overwhelm. It could be just a minor overwhelm. This also will work for this meditation.

So, for example, I’m looking at a situation where I was trying to write my newsletter, and I could hear my partner talking on the phone in a loud voice. Even though the doors were closed, I could just barely make out the words, and it was stressing me out because I was wanting to write the newsletter.

So, find a situation like that, something that was just too much input. Something was pulling you out of yourself.

And if you need more time, just pause the recording and take as much time to find a specific situation as you can. The specifics will help make this work.

So let’s begin by questioning the stressful thought. The one I’m finding here is “This busy environment is stressing me out.” So let’s go through the questions of The Work of Byron Katie. First question, is it true? This busy environment is stressing you out. Is that true? Be there. Feel it from there. Is it true?

And just be honest. So for me, I’m saying yes. This environment is stressing me out. And we’re looking for a yes or a no.

If you answered yes to the first question, then let’s go to the second question. If you already answered no, then you can skip this question. The second question is, can you absolutely know it’s true? This busy environment is stressing you out. Are you sure? So look again.

And again, it’s a yes or no. And be honest.

What do you find? Can you absolutely know it’s true that this busy environment is stressing you out?

I’m going to go with a no on this one for myself. And no matter what you answer, let’s move to question three, which is how do you react? What happens when you think that this busy environment is stressing you out? What are the reactions that happen?

I start to feel frustrated.

It starts to be almost an angry kind of feeling. I think of all the times I’ve tried to prevent this from happening, and I still can’t control it. Yeah, it’s exasperating.

How about you? What happens when you think this busy environment is stressing you out? What emotions do you feel?

And then what are you unable to do when you’re believing this thought, that the busy environment is stressing you out?

I’m completely unable to focus. There’s no possibility.

And that makes me even more frustrated.

And I see past images. How about you? Do you see any past images that corroborate this experience of frustration or stress for you?

Like I see so many times when this has happened before.

And then I start feeling like not respected somehow.

So these are reactions. When I think “This busy environment is stressing me out,” my mind starts seeing past images, it starts reacting out of emotion, and it starts to shut down. Then I want to avoid, like I want to just go work in a completely different place, which maybe is not a bad idea, but I’m trying to get out of here.

That also is a reaction. How about you? What other reactions happen to you when you think, “Ugh, this busy environment is stressing me out?”

I feel almost justified to make a scene, even though I don’t. There’s a certain feeling of, like, ugh, contempt, I guess is the right word.

This busy environment is stressing me out. And then I start attacking myself. Oh, I should be stronger. I shouldn’t let it get to me. I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.

How about you? Does it turn on you in any way?

So these are reactions. This is what happens automatically when you start thinking this thought in this situation.

So let’s go to question four of The Work, which is: Who would you be without the thought? In the same situation. So the situation is whatever situation you chose. For me, it’s sitting, writing my newsletter, and hearing that voice through closed doors. So in the same situation, who would you be without the thought, “This busy environment is stressing me out?”

It’s interesting for me; I feel immediately like I want to take a breath. I feel like there’s something, I’m not so much of a victim without this thought. I still see the same issue. There is something going on in my environment, and it is distracting, but I start thinking about how I can solve it, so it feels more empowering.

When I’m thinking “This busy environment is stressing me out,” I’m just a victim here. I’m just frustrated. Why can’t it be different? Without the thought? I’m just thinking, okay, what could be a solution? Maybe I move to a different room. Maybe I take my computer outside. Maybe I go down to the library.

Suddenly options start popping in. My creativity starts coming back.

And I see how much my partner has adjusted for me. There’s almost a feeling of gratitude there, and it’s not perfect, but it’s okay. It’s more than I was noticing before. So how about you? Who are you in the same situation, whether you’re in a crowd, or whether you’re on a train, or whether you’re hearing some distracting noise?

Who would you be without the thought that this busy environment is stressing you out?

Look around. What do you see?

What options start to come up?

This thought almost causes a kind of hypnosis where you just become entranced by this idea of, “Ah, this environment, the environment, the environment,” and you just get locked into that. But without that thought?

What shows up? What’s it like?

So these questions—question three, how do you react; question four, who would you be without the thought—they show how much that thought influences our experience. Sure, the environment influences us, no doubt, but our thought, this thought, influences our experience as much or even more, maybe.

So let’s turn the thought around. Instead of “This busy environment is stressing me out,” we could say “My thinking about this busy environment is stressing me out.” So how could that be as much of a factor for you as the actual environment?

You know, for me, there’s a little bit of noise, and it catches my attention, but then there’s me feeling frustrated about the noise, which is even louder in my mind than the noise. So I have two noises now. The original noise and the noise of my thinking, which is charged with emotion on top of it that is now fully distracting me.

It went from a small distraction outside to a large distraction inside. And that may be more of the problem for me in my situation than the actual noise. So “My thinking about this busy environment is stressing me out” could be just as true.

You know, it can also be that something else is stressing me out. I’m noticing that in this situation for me, and I’ve noticed it in other situations as well. What else is going on for me? Is it just this noise? Or is this the straw that broke the camel’s back?

For me, I was trying to write a newsletter, and the reality of the situation is that I didn’t have a clear thesis. It wasn’t really clear what I was trying to say. And so the words weren’t coming out, and it just wasn’t flowing. And so then my mind goes and latches on to this noise and distraction in the environment.

So it could be the same. Like, for you, look at your situation. Is there something else going on that already put you almost over the edge, and then the environment took you the rest of the way over?

Maybe something completely out of that environment. Maybe something at home or something at work was stressing you out, and then the environment after that became too much.

Or maybe you’re trying to do something, like I’m imagining myself trying to read on a busy train where somebody’s talking near me, and it’s like impossible for me. So something is stressing me out. I’m trying to do something, and I’m not able to do it. So, we’re just looking at how the turnarounds could be as true.

Instead of “The busy environment is stressing me out,” my thinking about the busy environment is also what’s stressing me out.

And then just for balance, another turnaround would be, “This busy environment is not stressing me out.” That’s fairly similar, but let’s look at it. Could it be that the environment is not stressing you out as much as you may be thinking?

Again, it points for me back to my thinking. Once I latch onto it, then I start building it up into something bigger. And in reality, it’s not stressing me out that much. It’s like, oh yeah, a little noise. There’s some noise there. It’s a little distracting. You know, for example, maybe that’s the time I pull out some earplugs.

So there’s, that’s the end of that busy environment stressing me out. Is the stress coming from the environment, or is it just some distraction in the environment? And then how I’m handling that distraction is making me stressed. So what we’re introducing here is the possibility that I have more control over my experience than I think.

Environment has a factor, it is a factor, but there’s still a lot of options of what I do with that environment. I’ve also had the experience of, again, writing my newsletter, being so into it and so in the flow of it, that probably the same kind of sounds are going on outside, and they weren’t getting me at all.

In fact, it’s really almost hard for me to pull away from that interesting, enjoyable experience of writing and turn towards some outside noise. So that’s also within the realm of my experience, even as an HSP. So, this is interesting. The environment plays a role. But so does what I do with it, how I see it, and what I’m focused on.

And of course, I will choose every time, if you give me the chance, for a quiet environment, for a peaceful environment—that is optimal for me. But life doesn’t always give it, and it’s nice to see that I can still experience some degree of peace, depending on how I hold that environment.

In this episode, we looked at another factor besides the environment that may be causing the problem of stress, and that factor is my thinking. The environment brings in a certain amount of distraction or disruption. But my thinking can bring in as much or even more disruption and distraction and the emotion that comes with it. So this is a major factor. And the good thing about it is that it’s something more under our control. It’s not 100%.

We can’t completely control our emotions or our thinking. But we can question our thinking. We can look at the issues that are causing us to be kind of on the edge. And that’s great news. The other thing we looked at is why it’s possible to be less stressed in a challenging environment. And again, it pointed to the same thing of, if I see that I control some of the factors that cause my experience of stress, then it can be easier to actually be in that situation.

And sometimes it’s just a matter of knowing that I’m not going to be able to change the environment, and there’s a kind of letting go of that. And finally, we looked at how to come back to creative problem solving instead of feeling like a victim. And this happens naturally when I stop seeing the environment as the principal cause of my stress, and I see all the things that I can control, such as putting earplugs in, dealing with issues at work or home, or other issues that are on my mind.

Getting clear on what my thesis is for writing a newsletter, for example. This creative process can happen when I step back from feeling like a victim, that the environment is doing this to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. So thanks for listening. It’s always great to sit and do The Work with you, and I look forward to our next session.

And in the meantime, I hope you have a great rest of your day.

If you haven’t already, go to trueinnerfreedom.com and take the HSP Stress Survey. Understanding the stresses you face will help me cover the topics you’re most interested in for this podcast. As a thank you for helping me, you’ll get free access to my January 3-day stress management training, designed especially for highly sensitive people.

You’ll also get free access to the True Inner Freedom community, where you will enjoy connecting with kind, understanding, and compassionate HSP members to support you on your journey. And finally, you’ll get an individual 15-minute inner freedom call with me to help you find clarity around your experience as an HSP and begin finding true inner freedom in your life.