Taking Responsibility with Compassion: Inner Work Tips for HSPs

By the end of this episode, you’ll experience a more peaceful way of seeing yourself, after saying something you wish you hadn’t said. 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 certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie.

In this episode, you’ll discover how to do inner work on self-criticism, a powerful stress management strategy for working with your inner critic, and how to find the balance between taking responsibility and shame. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Self-criticism is something that can easily trip us up as highly sensitive people. It’s something that we are perceptive about. We’re perceptive of many things. And sometimes we see things that are present and it becomes a bigger and bigger deal for us and can actually draw us into a stressful kind of reaction.

So let’s work on a kind of situation where you had some kind of thought that you might have hurt somebody. It may have been very minor, but let’s play with this a little bit by doing the work of Byron Katie. Think for a second, before we begin, of a specific time when you felt like you hurt somebody. Maybe it wasn’t major—just a time when you felt like you said something you shouldn’t have said.

For example, I recently had an email exchange with my dad and my sisters. My dad was talking a little bit about his end of his life, and he was kind of almost looking for support and love, and talking in kind of grand terms, as that often happens at that age. We were all sharing a lot of love, and I did too, but we were also being honest as well. I thought I was a little too honest, because we were talking about one of his faults. I said he was a little bit gruff and impatient, and later I started to regret it. I started thinking, “Wow, I shouldn’t have said that. He’s just going to focus on that. He’s going to feel terrible.”

So look for a situation where you felt like you did something, said something, or wrote something, and later you started feeling guilty about it or started feeling critical about how you said it. Take a second, see if you can find a specific time and place. Finding a specific time is so helpful when doing this work. When you’re dealing with specifics, then it becomes much more experiential. When you’re dealing with generalities, it becomes much more abstract. Specifics will hold you in this process. If you need more time to find a specific situation, just hit the pause button and take as much time as you need.

Once you have your situation, the question is: What is the thought that I’m thinking? You may need to brainstorm a little bit. What were you thinking in this situation? What’s causing you stress in this situation? For this exercise, I’m going to choose one for all of us, which is: “I hurt them.” See if you can find in your situation where you’re believing this thought that you hurt them.

Now that we have a thought and a situation, let’s begin the process of questioning that thought using the four questions and turnarounds of the work of Byron Katie. The first question is: Is it true? Is it true that you hurt them in that situation? Let that emotional part of you answer that question. Let that part that was feeling self-critical answer the question. See what you find. Is it true that you hurt them? This is just a yes or no.

If your answer is no, then you can skip the next question. But if your answer was yes, then let’s go to it. The second question is: Can you absolutely know it’s true? Just look at that particular situation. You may see a lot of things. Just notice them. You’re looking for a yes or no, the closest you can get. It may not be the perfect answer. Can you absolutely know it’s true?

In my case, it’s a no. I can’t absolutely know. I really don’t know. I haven’t talked to my dad. I’m not sure. And I can feel that. That’s honest for me. We’re looking for honest answers when we do this work. It doesn’t matter if it’s a yes or no, just that it’s honest.

Then we’ll move on to the third question of the work, which is: How do you react? What happens when you believe this thought that you hurt them in that situation and afterwards? What are your reactions? In my case, I felt like my energy went down quite a bit afterwards. I was folding clothes after that email and I just felt this heaviness in my body. I blushed a little bit to myself. Felt some shame.

What happens to you? How do you react when you think you hurt them? I want to take it back. I want to undo that email. Start scrambling, looking for maybe how I could apologize. Then that feels weird because I’m not sure he really was hurt. Not sure how. Yeah, so it’s confusing. How do you treat yourself when you think you hurt them? This is also a reaction. I treat myself like I’m a terrible person, like I should have known better. I’m impatient with myself.

You may find other reactions as well, and feel free to pause, feel free to write down your answers if you want to. Just pause the recording and write as much as you need. We’re noticing how you react when you’re believing the thought that you hurt them.

When you’re ready, let’s go on to question four, which is: Who would you be without that thought? It’s a very interesting question. Who would you be without the thought that you hurt them? Regardless of whether you did or not, who would you be without the thought that you hurt them?

I notice for myself that I’m just folding clothes. The email’s sent. I’m enjoying the sharing that I did and my sisters did with my dad. It feels light. I feel connected. How would you be in your situation without the thought that you hurt them, regardless of what you did?

Notice how the thought changes everything. When I believe I hurt him, I feel stressed. I feel ashamed. If I’m not dwelling on that, if it’s not coming up for me, there’s a lighter feeling. This is not to say that I didn’t hurt him or them, it’s just: Who would you be without that thought? If you’re not holding on to that thought, you start to see how you feel without that burden.