Preventing Overwhelm: How Highly Sensitive People Can Use The Work of Byron Katie for Daily Stress Management

Client: So, sort didn’t come with anything, so I’m just checking in. With what came, uh, with what’s here now, you know,[00:04:00]

sort of used to doing the work on, uh, feeling, feeling or, you know, beliefs or thoughts, whatever, when, when there’s stress and so not feeling it right now, there’s a good place to start. Let’s say,

Todd: hey.

Client: I’m sitting down to do my daily work like I am now. I’m not feeling very stressed at all. I guess one, I would go back to a worksheet or something, or it probably isn’t too hard to find something if I look.

What do you do, Todd? I know you, you, you do this daily and, and, uh, you know, makes me think of like the rhythm that a writer has when they sit down and sometimes, you know, there’s, there’s nothing coming out. So, um, how, how does that, how does that look?

Todd: Question. That’s a great question. Yeah. It is kind of like similar to the rhythm of a writer.[00:05:00]

Um, because on the one hand we like to, we like to write when we have inspiration, right? Or we like to, an artist would wanna do art when they have inspiration. Um, but it’s not always inspiration. So how do you do that? And I can remember as a photographer. I used to go out. I used to have a newsletter every week, which I created new photos for, and I would just.

I sort of have to go out and find something and it was like kind of bleak outside and not really, it was nature photography, not really much. I was inspired to see, but I just go out there and as I went, drove around and looked, suddenly something would catch my eye. Oh, that’s interesting. And then I’d have an idea and then I’d follow that.

And then I’d follow that. And pretty soon I came back with a number of cool new photos, um, that. Were something I liked and something that I could [00:06:00] share with, uh, my readers. Same thing with writing, you know, writing my newsletter today or writing my, um, like right now, I’ve been working for the last three months on the work 1 0 2 course.

Every, pretty much every day I am writing for at least an hour or sometimes more, and. Where’s the inspiration coming from? Right? So these are analogies I’m throwing out here, but it’s very similar to doing the work. Um, when you do the work every day, or even every week, some kind of regular schedule, some days you’re gonna have a lot of stress that you’re ready to do the work on.

And some days you’re not gonna have any stress, um, you’re not gonna feel like you need to do the work. Of course you don’t have to do the work, but there’s a value in just showing up like I did with the photography. Just go out and drive around on a gray day and see what kind of stuff I [00:07:00] might find. And so when I do that, uh, to sit down and do the work, uh.

On a daily basis, I will do one of two things and you actually mentioned already, uh, these one is I may have written a worksheet some days ago and I’m just slowly working my way through it so I don’t have to come up with a new stressful situation every time I sit down to do the work. The first day, yes, I had to find the situation, and then the next day or next several days, I am just taking another piece of that worksheet and working on another stressful thought from that.

Uh, worksheet. So that’s a very easy way to make it work. Just practically, I come up with a new situation every week or two, and then I work on a daily basis on the thoughts that I wrote down on the worksheet. Then the other method is the one liner method or just kind of spur the moment method, which is [00:08:00] okay.

What’s bothering me right now? Oh, nothing’s bothering me. Oh, okay. I don’t have to do the work or, um. Nothing’s bothering me, but is there anything I’d like to think about working, um, anything from my past or maybe something that, um, is maybe not in the forefront of my awareness right now, but it’s something that I would like to explore and now I have the time to explore.

So lemme try that. Or I look at right now today, and I think, uh, nothing’s bothering me, but if I drill down, increase the sensitivity maybe of my, of my meter, then I’ll start to see there are little blips and little highs and little lows even in today’s overall high uh, or good day. And so I might look at one of those tiny little spots and say, oh, that bothered me just a little bit.[00:09:00]

Um, and, and then. Go from there. So it doesn’t have to be earth shattering. Sometimes we do the work on traumas or on big things, and that’s a wonderful thing to do. But sometimes the little small things that come up can be incredible. You know, the, the shower isn’t working right, or the, you know, the drain isn’t working right.

Or some little thing on my computer, or it could be anything. I just recently did the work on. On, uh, vacation scheduling. ’cause I just noticed I wasn’t scheduling enough vacations and it was bugging me and I was like, my stressful thought was, um, I don’t know how to schedule vacations or something like that.

Right. And I worked through it and turned it around, and then from there started going into a little living turnaround of. Learning how I taught myself, how I’ve already got schedule lined up now for next year. So it’s kind of cool. So it doesn’t have to be, um, [00:10:00] huge. I guess that’s my, my main point. Um, so that’s how I approach it.

I, I just give myself the time. Uh, I schedule the time and I think that helps a lot. I, I know what time of day when I’m gonna be doing my work each day. It’s in my calendar and I. I respect my calendar, so I just go with the flow. And then during that time that I have, I’m gonna just work on whatever inspires me, or I’ll just keep working on work that I’ve already set up for myself.

But I’m there, I’m I, I don’t have to think much about what I’m gonna do. I just show up and then. And then just run with either something immediate or something that I’ve got ready to go. Yeah.

Client 2: Edwin. Yeah. With that same perspective, is there a way for that you used to like identify? I noticed, [00:11:00] like in my personal experience.

There’s some like very small things that you kinda like put under the rock. It’s like, oh, this is not a big thing. Or you just think like, oh, it’s okay, but then it starts like building up and when you notice it, it’s like huge. So how can you identify like those things of. When you are like more open to things happening and they’re actually not a big deal for you, then those ones, small ones that start like building up to, to create a big mess later on.

Todd: Yeah. And sometimes it’s hard to tell. I, I don’t know if I have a good answer for that ’cause they’re, when they start out, they’re all very small. It doesn’t seem like much and so you can just. Dismiss them in a way. Um, or if you have the time and you have the habit, you, you might start to work on them. So, um, I don’t think it matters too much.

I don’t think you have to know. I think just, um, I. Trust that if something’s coming up for you, then go for it. And if you [00:12:00] didn’t, if you think it’s too small and you miss it and it keeps building, then it will come louder and louder until you finally say, okay, I’m gonna answer this call. Um, so you can, that’s the beauty of the, of your stress, is that you can trust it.

It, it will. Keep bugging you until it gets dealt with and it starts as a whisper and ends out with a yelling, you know? Or it can just be like pounding on you to try to get your attention. And so I don’t worry too much like the more I do my work, and this is how I love doing it on a regular basis. I’m pretty much always taking care of the big ones.

They’re, they’re getting dealt with right away, and there’s no backlog or not too much backlog of old ones, and so as the loud, big, problematic stresses get dealt with, they’re cleared off and there’s room for looking for the smaller ones. As you keep doing it, [00:13:00] there’s room for smaller and smaller ones, and what you’re actually doing is you’re catching them earlier and earlier and earlier, um, as you continue doing your work.

So this is the beauty of a practice of the work actually doing it every day, is that you’re not just. Cleaning house once a month or something, you’re cleaning it every day. And so someone with the is doing that is gonna have less of a job every day, but they’re gonna start getting into the finer, uh, aspects of it.

And, and there’s, it’s, it can get very, very subtle. You can be dealing with just the whisper of a stress. And when you, when you’re questioning that, you’re turning it around now, you’ve prevented it from becoming a huge, big issue. Uh, in your life. So I love using the work for prevention. That’s, that’s how I like to see it.

Yeah.

Client: Wow. So, so many wonderful, uh, uh, points that we [00:14:00] touched on already. And, um, I love this phrase. I keep hearing you use Todd, trust your stress. Uh, the, I realized as I, as I think back, you know, when I was about to answer the question, I was, I was feeling that that slight bit of pressure of like, Hey, it’s quiet.

You know, we sometimes feel that pressure. It’s like, someone’s, we’re waiting and we’re on this call, so we’re on this video, so hey, better come up with something, you know, and there’s that, there’s that little bit of stress, but. Or there can be, there was for me and, and, and being, having like cultivating patience for me, cultivating the patience to sort of sit with that or sit through that.

Um, maybe, maybe that goes away and maybe I notice, hey, there’s, there’s not much here right now. You know? And, and I, and I’m just waiting for, you know, part of trusting your stress could be, Hey, something’s really loud and it’s coming at me and it’s time to deal with it, not avoid it. And another could be like.

Hey, I can’t find any stress around here. Let me just wait [00:15:00] on it and maybe it will come. And, and it, it, it reminds me of some, some, some things that I encountered early on when, uh, when I started the work 1 0 1, uh, which is this idea of, you know, kind of going with what’s really real for you in a sense where we’re real is like, what’s got the charge?

What’s, you know, and, and that’s where we start to get into me to like the work as a meditative practice. It’s like not jumping at the first thing that comes, that the mind wants to grab onto or making something up so I can, you know, do the work. It’s like there’s a, there’s an opportunity to wait and if nothing comes, then nothing comes.

But, but you’ll know it when it does.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. It’s a meditation, right? Meditation is, is like. Giving space for myself. In this case, we’re looking for stress. That’s a, it’s a funny kind of meditation we do here, but it’s a, it’s a way of. By looking, waiting to be shown what [00:16:00] is bothering me. Maybe nothing’s bothering me.

Great. Okay. But let me just be, be aware of what my internal experience is and, and then take it from there. And, and I always come back to I don’t have to do the work. That’s also true. So, right. It’s just, uh, however much or little as I want to do. But there’s something special about doing it every day.

Like I used to do it five days a week and I really liked that, but sometimes I’d get to four. And then about a year ago I decided I’m going to make it like really every day I’m just gonna, ’cause I, I realized it’s partly just psychological. I’m like, oh yeah, I don’t wanna do it every day. Not about, not weekends.

And, but I just decided I’m just gonna try it and. It took me a little while just to get that momentum going, but now I love it and I don’t have any resistance to it every day. And it’s a different thing. Like every day I’m touching in on that, touching in, touching in, touching in, and it’s a, it’s a cool experience.[00:17:00]

So, yeah.

Client: And, and, and when you, when you make that, when you get to that point where it’s a daily rhythm. I, I can imagine that, you know, what comes to mind is, is like this, you often hear the advice for, for folks that can’t sleep, to not do anything in their bed except sleep. Because there’s this conditioning that happens, this process of like learning your, not just your, your mind or your conscious thinking mind, but your whole, your whole organism like learns, hey, it’s, it’s bedtime and I’m gonna sleep.

And it’s just a natural process. And so, you know, if you’re showing up every day, I would think that there’s the possibility of some similar process where your whole being is like ready at that point. For the work and, and, uh, and, and how that could really be interesting. It is,

Todd: it becomes something that I look forward to, something I enjoy doing, um, is I, the analogy I sometimes use is like having a bath and I’m gonna, I’ve [00:18:00] got this built in time in my day to have my bath and, uh.

Uh, no matter what I discover, no matter how trivial the subject, no matter how important, whatever, it’s going to be a pleasant experience for me because I like doing the work. I like, um, exploring the opposite of what I think, just to see what’s there. And, um, so the experiences, it just sort of warms me a little bit.

It makes me feel a little more buoyant. And after a session, I’m just sitting a little taller. And that’s a great way to. Start the rest of my day.

Client: Anything we do, you know, every day, you know, every day is, is bound to become a, a part of who we are, you know, just, just like a part of us. Yeah. So yeah, the work as meditation practice

Todd: and it does, it kind of goes out after like.

Because you’re in such a habit of doing the [00:19:00] work, your mind starts to think that way. And so you’ll be out in the world running into some little stressful situation and you’re already finding turnarounds and you’re finding, you know, who would you be without the thought and you’re watching how you react.

And like the whole thing just starts to happen automatically without much thinking about it.

Client: Yeah, it’s amazing when it happens in real time that that has, it is just barely starting for me. But I think the first time or two, certainly the first time I became really fully conscious of that happening in real time, that I was like, you know, the first, like, is it true?

You know, I mean, in the way that I knew that it came from the work too. Like it came, it was, it was phrased just that way. It’s like, is it true? And I was like, oh, this is immediate, like wiggle room as to use your phrase. Situation and I’m like, oh, the fruits of practice. This is so, this is so great. It certainly doesn’t happen all the time.

Yeah. Or even that, that [00:20:00] frequently. But yeah. And, and it just, uh, I don’t know if one theme that’s emerging for me in this conversation is, is the work as a meditation. I’m just comparing it to what I understand about other meditative practices and my own experience with like sitting meditation. You know, like you said, it just becomes something that will happen.

Spontaneously on its own or may happen spontaneously on its own. And then it just becomes kind of like a natural, a natural process that sort of starts to take on its own evolution, its own development.

Todd: Exactly. I mean, the, the, the work is a natural process and it just reminds us to do what we naturally do.

Like we naturally, when we get stressed, start to question everything. That’s what we all do, uh, regardless of knowing anything about the work, but the work just formalizes and makes it so streamlined and, and effective at getting to the heart of it [00:21:00] quickly. Um, that. The mind recognizes that after a few times, it’s like, wow, okay, I want more of that.

I wanna, I wanna keep going with this. And that allows, um, yeah. So that’s, it is like, we’re not introducing even anything unnatural. We’re just building on what we already naturally do.

Client: Yeah. Even the turnarounds are, I mean, we, we probably do some form of that or another, but we, we may not be so structured or aware of it.

The, the turn turnarounds always feel, to me a little bit more like the stretching point. Uh, maybe, maybe stretching’s not the right word, but, um, yeah, I’m just, I’m just remembering on a, on a, a drop in session the other day I was, I was working on one. And I think normally I pride myself on kind of, you know, solving problems.

So I was kind of [00:22:00] approaching it like a mental problem solving exercise and like, okay, let’s like to, to what I said earlier, let’s, let’s just kind of wait and for it to be real, like, can, can we kind of feel a way that this could be real? It just wasn’t coming, you know, just wasn’t coming for a while. I’m like, wow, this is really, really hard.

And just kind of like something. Something, um, wasn’t, I, I, I took that to mean like, Hey, I, I really can’t turn this around. Or, or not, not, can’t. Um, that, that, that’s not available at this moment. Right? Emotionally, like some part of me is just going like, Hey, I don’t, I don’t see it. Uh,

Todd: and that’s listening to yourself as well, right?

Otherwise, you would just power through it. You could just say, let me just turn on my intellect and pump out a turnaround example and make, and it’ll make sense and it’ll sound good. And, but that’s not the exercise. The exercise is. Look, check in with yourself and find something real as you were [00:23:00] saying, and, um, something that’s connected to you that makes sense to you.

And, and so I may give myself, I may have to give myself space. To do that, and I may not find anything. And that’s the risk that you take for doing it in this meditative way. But if you don’t, it’s just gonna be an intellectual exercise. You might as well play Sudoku or something. It doesn’t really, it’s not gonna change your life.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, so that’s the, that’s why I would rather. Give myself the space to look for a turnaround, like turnaround example, and then find that I didn’t find anything, but I gave myself time and gave myself some space. And then just say, okay, well I’m not finding anything then, uh, I’ll just move to the next turnaround and we’ll see where it goes from there.

So you don’t have to find something for every turnaround. Um, you just do what you [00:24:00] can. Like I say, knock on doors, some doors open, some don’t. Um, but. Keeping it real, I think is the highest priority. Otherwise, if it’s not connected to something inside, what’s the point?

Client: Hmm. It seems like that’s a, a real, potentially, I don’t know.

Fruitful starting point too is if one’s having starting to have some form of stress, of stress, however we call it some inner. Discomfort around not having anything. There’s, there’s probably something there, you know, there, there may be an ability to, to sit with that and say, Hey, why do I think I need, you know, what, what do I need?

And, and wait on that, you know, uh, if one’s bringing to, I, I’m thinking again, of sitting meditation practice, if one’s bringing to sitting meditation practice, like, uh, this idea that they’re in need of help or that it’s gonna fix things. You’ve heard some teachers say, you know, if, if, [00:25:00] if that’s what you’re doing, well you’re not here, you’re, you’re not really, you’re not really connected to, to the present moment.

So yeah. Same kind of thing.

Todd: Yep.

Cool. Well, any other thoughts or anything else, um, wanna bring up from, related to this topic or anything else?

Okay. Well I think we’ll, uh, we’ll just stop there and thank you for the discussion. Thank you for the cool ideas. Fun to kind of talk about the work sometimes and just, uh, think about it this way. And I love this theme of, you know, the work as a meditation. That’s kind of what we were floating around here.

And, um, meditation. It can start from any point, from point of a lot of stress, from the point of a little bit of stress [00:26:00] or a point of no stress, and all kinds of options are there as long as you’re not have a precon, as long as you don’t have a preconceived idea of where, what it should look like or where it should go, or how you should do it.

It’s just an open story. Okay. And I think that’s what makes it interesting. Every time you sit to do the work, it’s a different experience. Um, and you never know what you’re gonna find. There’s so many surprises. That’s what I love about this process. What I discovered today might be similar to what I discovered in the past, but chances are there’s gonna be a new take on it, or it might be completely new or something completely unexpected.

And. Yeah, that’s well worth the time in my experience.

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 [00:27:00] then go to the open sessions page. And there you can see the schedule. You can learn how to sign up, uh, and you can participate in discussions and you can do your work there. You can bring up questions about the work.

It’s basically an open forum for anything related to the work of Byron Katie. And while you’re there, you can also find at the work as meditation.com, uh, my courses. And today I like to focus on the Work 1 0 2 course, which is an advanced course. You have to take the work 1 0 1 first, but the Work 1 0 2 is a course that’s focused on.

Everything related to doing the work in spoken form with another person. The Work 1 0 1 is mainly focused on doing the work in written form, uh, so that you get the feeling of how to do the work and you understand the principles and how to actually, uh, get, uh, work through your stresses, uh, even on your own in written form.

But then there’s [00:28:00] a whole nother level of doing the work, which is in spoken form, where you’re working with another person can be very, uh. Enjoyable. Um, but it can also be stressful. And so we get into all the details of how to, um. Maximize your experience doing the work, uh, in spoken form and minimize the stress that you experience so that you can dive deeply while working with another person.

So you can find both of these courses at the work as meditation.com, the Work 1 0 1, and the Work 1 0 2. Next I’m gonna read one of my newsletter articles called Wanting Without Wanting.

Wanting what is in front of me is wonderful, but wanting when I don’t have it can be painful. Wants are tricky. Wanting something is neither good nor bad. It all depends on the situation. [00:29:00] If I want to be married and I’m married, this is a great combination. In this situation, wanting to be married is peaceful, but if I want to be married and I’m not married.

Then that want could be actually painful. So it all depends on whether the thing you’re wanting is actually possible or is actually available in that moment. What the work of Byron Katie does is it helps me to adjust to changing situations, and it does so by first noticing any pain inside of me, any emotional pain that shows up.

It tells me that I’m resisting change or I’m wanting something that I don’t have. I’m arguing with reality. The pain comes from being attached to what I want when I can’t get it. That’s the key. It’s one thing to want thing, want something, but to want something. When I can’t get it, [00:30:00] that’s when the stress really begins.

So stress is the clue that I’m starting to do this. I’m attaching to something I that I want when I’m not able to get it, and my happiness as a result becomes conditional on getting what I want. When I notice a painful want like that, I do the work. I write down the want that is running inside of me, and I question it.

Not as a means of going into denial, but rather as a means of really noticing how that want is working for me. Is it bringing me peace or is it bringing me stress? Is it bringing me happiness or is it bringing me pain? Basically, the purpose of a want is to make me happier. I want, you know, a new car. I want to be successful.

I want to become. Proficient at something. These wants are not bad things. They’re something that’s trying to get us to be even happier [00:31:00] than we are. But the problem is when we’re not able to get those wants fulfilled, then it brings actually more stress than peace brings, more hap uh, more pain than happiness.

And so the work is a way of noticing that. Okay. Was wanting something and I thought it was gonna be really great, but actually my stress level is higher than I was, uh, experiencing even before that want. So noticing the effect of the want, the work is nothing more than noticing. When I notice that holding onto my want is causing me stress and pain, I’m much more willing to hold it loosely or even to let it go completely.

Which brings up an interesting con contradiction. When I question what I want, the intensity and desperation often goes away. ’cause what am I doing? I’m saying I want that. Is it true? And I’m really thinking about it [00:32:00] and notice how stressful it is to believe that I want it, and much easier I would feel if I wasn’t thinking that I want it.

So as I question what I want, the intensity, the desperation, it starts to diminish. But that doesn’t always mean that my want completely goes away. I’ve watched it happen many times after doing the work on a particular want. The craving goes away, the desperation goes away. I don’t care so much if I get what I want or not, but yet I still find myself moving towards some desired goal.

It’s almost just natural. So what I’m doing here is I’m desiring. Almost without desiring. It’s totally contradictory. I call it wanting, without wanting, and it’s a feeling of peace. There’s a feeling of empowerment there. There’s an easiness. It’s as if the want is no longer my want, [00:33:00] but it has a life of its own.

And so this non-attachment, if you can say, is where I can be peaceful, even when I’m still pursuing some kind of goal. This balance of opposites is my favorite place to be. It allows me to act and pursue practical goals in the world without feeling desperate about achieving them. I’m acting even wanting without attachment.

In fact, my action tends to be more effective in this space of not caring. The less I want, the more present I become. I notice that my wants bring me into the future or into the past when I question my wants. I often find that where I am right now is what I want. I may still be pursuing some goal, but I’m pursuing that goal in the present one step at a time, and that makes all the difference in the world.

And [00:34:00] so if I don’t reach that goal. No problem. I’m having a great time pursuing it. And if I do reach the goal, great, that’s an extra bonus. But it’s not the end of the world if I don’t. So when I’m in that space, it feels like freedom. So what are your painful wants? And I put the word painful in there to emphasize looking for the stress.

There’s something stressful I want, but I’m not getting, um, or I’m not. Comfortable with it taking a long time. So I encourage you to write down your stressful or painful wants and question them using the work of Byron Katie in the four questions and turnarounds. And I’ll end with a quote from Byron Katie in her book, question Your Thinking, change the World.

I am a lover of what is, and I don’t want anything else. [00:35:00] I only know I want to be here with you. Now I’m here with you. That’s how I know, uh, that’s how I know that I want to be. It wasn’t planned. It’s simply unfolding. I.

So thanks for listening, and be sure to subscribe to this podcast. Share it with a friend, or post something on social media. Leave a review for the podcast if you haven’t done that, and stop by the work as meditation.com to get my newsletter. Or to participate in open sessions like the one you heard here today.

Um, you’ll also find hundreds of articles on the work of Byron Katie, as well as information about the work 1 0 2, the, uh, work 1 0 1 and the Work 1 0 2 and virtual retreats, which are a great way to spend a weekend doing the work And Inquiry Circle. My online community, the Breakfast Club, which is a part of that, and private sessions, which is a way to work [00:36:00] one-on-one with me.

You’ll also find the Living With Money Course, the Finding the Door to Inquiry Book, and other programs that I continue to develop over time. So until next time, thanks for being here and I hope you have a wonderful

week.