Rest as the Ultimate Stress Management for HSPs: Overcoming Barriers to True Rest

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to prioritize rest as a highly sensitive person, even when it doesn’t seem to be supported.

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 why rest is the perfect antidote to overwhelm as an HSP, how to find and challenge the thoughts that prevent you from taking good rest, and some practical tips for deeper rest. 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.

Getting overwhelmed is one of the most common issues that highly sensitive people face. This is because we are sensitive to stimuli. And when lots of things are going on in our environment, when we have lots of projects going on, when we have too many things on our plate, then it becomes too much and it becomes too much for us quicker than it does for other people because we’re so sensitive to all of the data points that are being presented to us.

That’s the definition of sensitivity is you, instead of seeing, instead of just seeing 1, you’re seeing 4, all the small points between the bigger points, and that leads to overwhelm very easily. So, this is caused by basically too much activity, too much mental activity, too much physical activity, too much emotional activity, too much activity creates extra stimulation, which causes this experience of overwhelm, which can cause us to shut down.

And this can happen in a minute situation, just, in a one off kind of situation. And it can also be a cumulative thing, which causes a kind of overwhelm that happens over time, that grows with time. When I look at my situation right now, I’m experiencing a little bit of that. I’m kind of getting to the point of, there’s an overwhelmed building inside of me that’s been going on for several weeks now.

And it’s due to me having too many projects on my plate. Thank you. And. It’s a typical highly sensitive person problem, but it’s real nonetheless, and it doesn’t matter how much you understand it or know about it, it’s so easy to get caught up in the allure of activity and the, even the need of activity.

That the balancing factor is missing. And so my experience is, you know, just a little more tired, not sleeping as well, a little more backache, headache, just not as comfortable, not as fully on my game as usual, and this craving for rest. This is a good thing. Craving for rest means that the body and the whole nervous system is saying, wait a minute, we need to go in the opposite direction.

And what is the opposite direction of activity? It is the direction of rest. Rest is the perfect antidote for overwhelm because it balances it. When you give rest to your body, give rest to your mind, give rest to your emotions, then, the natural balancing ability of the nervous system begins to recoup and, rebuild and get you back in shape again so that you can take the next steps of activity.

For listening. All of us, whether you’re highly sensitive or not, need this balance between rest and activity, and it’s an alternating thing. You know, you go out, you’re active, then you need to stop and rest. That’s how our daily routines go. That’s how we work with times of action and times of vacation.

This cycle of rest and activity is super important for all of us. But we, as highly sensitive people, have to pay special attention to it. And I’m getting the call right now, so I’m sharing this with you. And, we’ll get into a little bit of what that can look like, and what we can actually do to get some more rest.

It seems like an oversimplification that getting more rest is the solution, but it really is. I remember one time, I was on a meditation retreat, long meditation retreat, I was getting a lot of deep rest. I was really in my zone. I was feeling so good. And, one of the people that was helping with the food service was kind of complaining about how tired he was and how stressed he was.

And I said something kind of sincerely, innocently, that, you know, he should get some rest. And I really meant it. Because I knew this would really be the solution for him. But needless to say, he was not very happy with it. I can remember it. And everybody afterwards was like, Oh, why’d you tell him that?

It is the solution, it’s just not what we usually like to hear. And that goes for me too, you know, I want to keep doing the things that I like to do, and sometimes rest is the last thing that I want to focus on. It is the solution. There’s no substitute for good rest.

So, let’s look at the things that get in the way of us resting. First of all, rest is not valued that much in our extroverted world. It is one of those things that you’re supposed to do around the edges of life. It’s almost like you’re selfish if you rest too much or if you take care of yourself, there’s that little sense of, oh, you’re taking care of yourself.

So that’s kind of selfish. Instead of seeing that when you take care of yourself, you have way more to give to other people. But the world doesn’t see it that way too often. And it’s easy to just start feeling kind of self conscious if you need more rest than other people. So that’s one thing that can get in the way of rest, and it’s something that can be questioned, for example.

You can just bring yourself through the process of the work of Byron Katie, which I always promote, which is questioning the idea that it’s selfish to take care of yourself in a particular situation. When you question a thought like that, you may start to see it more on an experiential level that it’s actually the most intelligent way to, go about taking care of yourself, but more importantly, that it’s actually the best way that you can serve others.

The other thing that gets in the way of resting is this idea that I can’t afford to rest. You know, I’ll rest later. I can’t do that now because, and that’s a big because, there may be a million things after the because, and if you really want to do your work, write out what those are. Like, what do you need?

What are you wanting that is getting in the way of your rest? Maybe it’s approval. Like, if you do this one thing, then you’re going to get the approval of somebody, or you’re going to avoid their disapproval. And so you’d rather not get your rest. Even just the simple idea of asking or discussing with family members that you’d like to go to bed earlier or that you’d like to have more time available for resting.

That requires some, you know, courage in a way. And so thoughts like, I need their approval or they’re not gonna like it, that kind of thing. Things like that can be questioned and can begin to open you to the possibility of actually taking care of yourself. Another thing that can get in the way is attachment to success.

You know, that’s something that I can get caught in, where I want this project to succeed, and so I will end up going all out and forgetting that I need to pace myself and take it more at a slow pace. You can even get attached to having fun, you know, like, Oh yeah, I want to stay out late. I want to hang out with friends.

I want to do this and fun is great, but it always still has to be balanced with rest. And so if there’s an attachment to fun, if there’s an attachment to success, you can question those attachments by literally questioning the thought. I Want to stay out to end. I want to have more fun. I want to be successful.

I need this to happen. Those are attachments or they can be. And when you question them, you can end up feeling a lot freer to see the more balanced picture. You may also, find yourself, getting attached to finishing a job. You may even get attached to The idea of escaping rather than actually dealing with the fatigue, like, Oh, I’d rather just go again, do something fun, instead of actually taking care of the physical need to slow down.

And then finally you can question the thought like something like there’s something wrong with me if I need more rest. Just a part of being a highly sensitive person that we do need more rest and, it’s easy to have a lot of self judgment about that. So the more you do that kind of work, the more you question these kinds of things, the more you’re going to be able to look at your situation objectively.

And take care of yourself. So finally, I wanted to go over some practical tips for getting deeper rest. The first one, is what we just did is go through and question the thoughts that stop you from resting. These are big blocks that can get in the way of something that is very simple to do, but we have all kinds of reasons not to do it.

The next thing is build a routine around rest. It’s something that grows with time. It’s not just a one off, like, Oh yeah, I’m tired now, I’m gonna get rest now. That’s helpful, but what’s more helpful in my experience is to build a routine around some kind of rest cycle. So going to bed at the same time, getting up at the same time, and making sure that the time In bed is long enough for you and realistically, so it may mean compromising on some other activities so that rest is a priority and then doing it day in and day out. I find even if I don’t sleep, I just lie in bed quietly and my body is getting so much