Tackling Social Stress: A Guided Meditation for Highly Sensitive People

  By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to reframe the stressful social situation of superficial conversation to something more satisfying.

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 to notice when superficial conversation is causing you stress. How to look for the underlying need or want to question and how to see superficial conversation from a different perspective through self inquiry. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

One of the things that can make social situations stressful is superficial conversations. If you’re a highly sensitive person and you like depth, then the antithesis of that could be standing around in a situation where you’re talking with people about super superficial things, and it can start to be stressful.

You can actually start wanting to get out of there. You may feel some kind of just impatience with the situation. And so we’re going to look at that today as an example. entry point for doing a little bit of the work. So the first thing to do is to think of a situation where you were engaged in a superficial conversation, maybe against your will, maybe it’s someplace you had to be.

And what was that situation? So look for a specific time and a place.

Could be a work thing, could be a Some kind of a party

I can remember this is still stands out in my mind because I did it every year for a number of years my mother’s Christmas party my mom and my stepdad had a place in New York and Brownstone there and they Invited like a hundred people over every Christmas and it was like a black tie thing and people are standing around talking and eating and drinking and I can remember that being stressful.

So find a situation like that where you’re feeling stressed by some kind of superficial engagement with someone.

And it’s important to get really specific too, like I remember standing and talking to a particular person who is just asking, so what do you do? And I was at the time living in an ashram and I didn’t really have good words for what I do. I sit and meditate. And it didn’t quite fit into. The New York vocabulary at least from my point of view at that time, find the moment where you’re talking to someone in particular, you’re feeling uncomfortable, that’s what we’re looking for as a starting place.

So once you’ve found a specific time and a place, and you can pause the recording if you need more time to do that, then we’re going to look for what’s bothering me in that situation. I don’t like superficial conversations. Or I need more depth in the conversation, or, what is it that’s, what are the thoughts that I’m having there?

This is a waste of time. This is going nowhere. These are all thoughts that could be questioned.

Let’s question the thought, I need depth in conversation. This is one that I resonate with, and if you do too, then see if you can find it in your situation. I need depth, and it’s not here. Okay, so let’s question this thought using depth. The four questions and turnarounds of the work of Byron Katie. So in your situation, be there, be talking to that person.

You need depth in conversation with this person right now. Is it true?

And this is just a yes or a no, so take your time.

This yes or no forces you to look and try to feel out one or the other. You have to land on one or the other, and it forces the issue. You have to think deeply about it. Is it true you need depth in conversation?

And I’m going to go with a yes. Just feels honest to me.

So regardless of your answer, yes or no, we’ll go to question two. If you answered yes, then this question is for you. If not, you can just listen. Can you absolutely know it’s true that you need depth in conversation? Are you sure?

Again, yes or no?

This question makes you pause and think a little deeper about it. Can you absolutely know it’s true you need depth in conversation

in this situation?

And I see it’s a no for me.

Question three, how do you react? What happens when you believe on some level, even if it’s not even conscious, that you need depth in conversation, and you’re in this particular situation talking to this particular person? What happens to you?

I immediately feel uncomfortable,

and my thoughts are, how do I get out of this?

I start looking around to see if there’s something that needs to be done. Maybe I can help my mom with something, or is there something I can tidy up in the kitchen? Anything to avoid this shallow conversation.

How do you react when you think you need depth in conversation?

I disregard questions like, what do you do? And I dismiss them as superficial. Interesting. It may not be a superficial question, but that’s the way I see it.

My ego does a funny dance of feeling at the same time superior to these people who seem to be so superficial. and inferior to them because I don’t really know how to play that game.

What happens to you when you think you need depth? in conversation and you’re not experiencing depth.

I notice an agitation in my body, like a nervous energy. I want to move, I want to tap my foot or something, move my hands.

It’s an impatience.

I want to get back to my world.

I want to go deep into things.

So this feels like a waste of time. How do

you treat the other person when you’re believing that you need depth in conversation in that situation?

It’s funny, I treat them almost like they don’t exist.

My eye scans over them and moves on like they barely exist.

Quite harsh when I see it now.

I need depth in conversation. I see images. Do you see any images from the past of needing depth in conversation? I see images of amazing conversations I’ve had with people where the depth dropped out, where the bottom dropped out, and it was just like like connecting and insightful and amazing and enlivening.

And then I compare it to this and it’s I have no use for it.

I’m so judgmental with this thought. Some things are great and some things are terrible. Some things are amazing, some things are useless.

Imagine now, you’re standing with the same person or sitting with them, and the conversation’s going exactly the same, in my case, what do you do? What do you do? And imagine now that you didn’t have this thought, or even this feeling, that you need depth in conversation. What would it be like to s to be there with that person, having that conversation.

Without the thought, I need depth in conversation. I’m just more present. I’m more relaxed. There isn’t this energy to get out of there. There isn’t this judgment.

I notice a curiosity about the other person.

Who are they?

I’m also noticing, going back to question three for a second, with the thought, I need depth in conversation. I notice how defensive I am, like, I don’t really want you to ask me what I do because you won’t understand. It’s too deep for you. It’s not on your wavelength. You won’t like it. I’m defensive. It’s like me trying to protect myself.

And without the thought that I need depth in conversation. It’s less about me and more about the other person. There’s a curiosity of, huh, who is this person on the other side of the conversation? And I actually like learning about people. I like connecting. There’s something interesting there. So without the thought, I need depth.

I’m patient with the conversation, and who knows where it’ll go, but I haven’t given up before it even started.

So who are you without the thought, you need depth in conversation.

It feels more connecting to me with that other person. I’m more likely to turn it around to, what do you do? In not just a superficial way. I see the possibility for depth. Right here. Interesting.

Seeing the effect of this thought, I need depth, versus if you don’t have the thought that you need depth in conversation,

It’s clear that thought influences how I interact, how I see the conversation, how I see the other person, how I see myself. And it’s adding stress in my experience. So if this is the case, let’s look at an opposite and see if one of the turnarounds, the opposites, could be as true or truer than the other.

Then the original statement, I need depth and conversation. It sounds like a good thing, right? I need depth. Depth is good, but could the opposite be true? That’s what we’re looking for now. So let’s go there. Instead of I need depth and conversation, the turnaround would be I don’t need depth and conversation.

So let’s stretch our minds a little bit and see if we can find any truth in that. And look specifically in your situation if you can. How is it that you don’t need depth in that conversation to be okay, to be comfortable,

even to enjoy yourself.

What I’m noticing is I don’t need depth in the conversation if I’m not trying to get somewhere, if I’m not trying to get, in fact, if I’m trying to get in depth, it’s like I’m trying to get somewhere where I may not be able to go. And I don’t need the depth because I can just relax and just be. That’s actually deeper than trying to change things or get out of there.

I don’t need depth in conversation, that’s what we’re looking for, I’m just having to explore this. How could it be true?

Maybe it’s, maybe I’m looking for depth in the wrong place. If there’s depth in me, just standing within myself, then I don’t need the depth in the conversation. In fact, I can bring depth to the conversation. If I have it within myself.

So this changes the source of depth for me. Instead of the depth coming from the conversation, or from the other person, or being limited by the other person, now the depth is dependent only on me. And to whatever degree I have depth, I can bring it out, like water from a well, and share it.

So I don’t need depth in conversation. I can bring it. I like that. How else could this be true? You don’t need depth in conversation.

For me, it doesn’t have to be right away. Maybe there’s a wisdom to beginning with superficial conversation and then moving towards deeper conversation. And part of that is just finding out where the other person is, gaining trust. Depth happens within the container of trust. And with someone I don’t know, I need to build that trust.

So I’m rushing it here. If I say I need depth in conversation, it’s getting ahead of process of building a situation where that could actually happen, or uncovering a situation where that could happen.

So I don’t need depth in conversation.

I need superficiality in conversation. That’s another way of putting it. I need superficiality in conversation in order to get to depth in conversation. I think that’s true.

Yeah. Depth is the holy grail. But I have to go through my quest, if you will, before I get there.

Even depth will have less meaning if there isn’t superficiality. And in fact, depth loses its meaning if I remove superficiality. It’s if you dig a well, it’s 300 feet deep, and then you decide to get some mining equipment and you mine the whole area down to 300 feet for a mile in every direction, where’s the depth?

It’s gone. Now the, now it’s just, everything’s the same level. So superficiality, is what contrasts with depth to give it its meaning, to give it its beauty, its experience. So I need superficiality in conversation. It’s cool how this is turning around. I need superficiality in conversation to experience depth.

Another possible turnaround is I have depth in conversation. So in this situation with whoever you were talking with, where do you have depth possibly there?

Or the potential for depth?

I’m thinking with this person who’s asking me, what do you do? I have the potential there to really say what I do. Oh my gosh, yeah, I meditate about eight hours a day. It’s really amazing. It’s yeah, I could share my real vulnerable self instead of Oh, yeah, I do I I don’t even remember what I said,

I might even have lied and said, Oh, I teach meditation, which wasn’t what I was doing at the time, trying to, I was trying to phrase it in some way that they would understand what if I just gave them the real me, so I have depth in conversation. Someone’s asking me a question. I could go as deep with that as I wanted.

Now let’s say they’re really just chatting away, and about gossip, and who did this to that person, and all this. Can you find depth even there? Is there depth even there?

Look at the person.

Can you see more deeply into that person?

One of the things I enjoy studying sometimes is the Enneagram, which It’s all about, personalities and you can look at superficial, somebody being superficial and it can be amazingly deep to seem be thinking about, Oh, where, what’s going on there? What are they thinking? What are they, where’s that coming from?

So there could be many ways that depth may be right there in front of you. But if you’re thinking, Oh, this is superficial, you miss it. Another place where depth lies for me is. Something to do with the heart. Conversation may be superficial, but there’s something beautiful, there’s something open, something connecting about the way that person is holding their heart.

And that is not superficial. You don’t have to be brilliant, you don’t have to be deep to be radiant with love. So maybe I’m looking at people’s hearts more than looking at the content of their conversation. And if I’m allowing my heart to be exposed as well, then The chance of two hearts meeting is very high, even in a crowded room full of cocktails.

In this episode, we looked at how to notice when superficial conversation is causing you stress. And you’ll notice it by the stress that you’re feeling, the anxiety, the need to get out of there, the judgments that you’re having against the other person. And even the egos. A little dance of being greater than and less than at the same time, better than you and not as good at the same time.

So these are signs that like the superficial conversation is getting to you and it’s a sign to check it out. So the next thing is how to look for the underlying need or want to question. And this is a great way in any stressful situation to identify a stressful thought to question. Look for what are you wanting?

What are you needing? In this case, we found the idea, I need depth in conversation, and there may have been other needs or wants, you can brainstorm them first, but find one that seems to resonate and seems to be close. And then finally, we looked at how to see superficial conversations from a different perspective through self inquiry.

And this is the beauty of doing the work of Byron Katie, where you take it gradually starting with a specific situation and then go through these questions, the four questions, to start to loosen your hold on the stressful thought. And then when you’re, you’ve done that, begin turning the thought around gently and exploring the different possibilities.

And what we found here is that. Wow, there are a lot of possibilities. Like I have depth here. I can bring depth. There’s depth in the connection of the heart. There’s there was a lot more ready for me to take and enjoy in that situation. Then I was able to do because my mind was blocked with this idea that I need depth and this is not it.

And so I turned my back on it. So thank you for doing the work here with me and for listening. And I look forward to next time. In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.