The One Change That Will Reduce Your Stress Level the Most as a Highly Sensitive Person

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover the one missing ingredient in your life that can nourish you and bring you back to balance.

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 one vital component of a balanced life that is often most neglected by highly sensitive people. Why HSPs respond so well when this issue is addressed. And how to practically start improving your quality of life today by taking this approach. Welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.

There is one common issue that inflames all stress types, and that is a lack of rest. If you have relationship stress, for example, lack of rest will make the relationship issues worse. They will make your emotions more challenging. Everything gets amped up when there is a lack of rest. If you have work stress, then burnout thrives on lack of rest.

That’s what just, again, inflames that and makes it more intolerable. Rest. A lack of rest can exasperate a situation at work very easily. If you have trauma related stress, then it always feels worse when you’re tired and it’s harder to do the inner work needed to release it. When you’re tired, the insights don’t come.

You may not feel motivated and you can become more pessimistic. So lack of rest is a. A missing ingredient, like when we say rest itself is a missing ingredient in, I would say all of our lives to a large degree, but it shows up in especially for highly sensitive people. And the nice thing is if you start addressing this, it can start changing your life in a very easy way.

This doesn’t mean that rest is this panacea. One solution fits all that works for everything. No, it’s a starting point. It’s a place where you can begin and get some easy wins in terms of stress management in your life as a highly sensitive person. What you’ll find is as you rest more, as you get more rested, as you start catching up on rest and start making it more of a routine of your life.

Then it will take away some of the overlay of daily fatigue and overwhelm and all of this that accumulates over time and it will start working on the backlog of that, and you’ll start finding that it’s easier and easier to see what’s going on inside of you. And you’ll see the bigger pieces of stress that you know, also need dressing with other means, but will take a lot of the weight off your shoulder.

Just this one thing. So why do HSPs have trouble getting the rest they need? I would say, as I mentioned, everyone has trouble with this. Our world is set up in a very outward direction. We’re motivated to go outward and we’re pushed outward. We’re drawn outward. And taking rest feels you’re slipping or not addressing, or not focusing on the things that are important all around us.

Which interestingly enough, a lot of times they’re just putting out fires. So why do HSPs have more trouble than others? First of all, we need more rest than others. We need eight to 10 hours of sleep. This is not me saying this is Elaine Aaron in terms of the, she was the pioneering researcher on HSP and she has come up with a figure somewhere in the eight to 10 hour range.

Based on research of what is needed for a highly sensitive person per night. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to be asleep, but it means like resting with your eyes closed on the bed during the night and getting the rest that you need. She also recommends a couple hours of downtime in the day, like just daydreaming, just relaxing, doing nothing.

And building this into one’s day is hard compared to other people who maybe need less sleep. And you may start to feel social pressure. You may feel like you’re, again, the odd man out or the odd woman out, and you may feel like you, okay, I’ll take care of myself last ’cause I’m taking care of others.

And the result is that it becomes challenging to get the rest that you need. The problem is if you don’t get the rest that you need, rest that you need, then all the other parts of your life start start having problems. Another area or reason why highly sensitive people have trouble getting the rest they need is that we like to go deep into every area of our life, and so we like to do things well.

And in that way it can be hard to pull ourselves away from our own interests. If you really doing something or if you really wanna finish something, or if you really wanna do a good job with something, then the heart’s engaged. You want to do it, it feels good, it feels right, but it can become blind to the physical needs of the body to rest.

And so part of the discipline of finding balance. Is learning how to pace yourself and take breaks and have, do only so much in a day and know that will we’ll have tomorrow to continue on that journey. But the world tries to push us and it tries to say now or never. And if you believe that kind of thought that kind of idea, then you will keep pushing and you’ll forget to take care of yourself.

I like to say that a balanced, highly sensitive person is one of the nicest kind of people in the world. Just so thoughtful and just good people. Deep, interesting, thoughtful, but an imbalanced HSP can be one of the most toxic kind of people in the world, like where we’re just emoting. So you know, just full of stress and it’s just coming out and there’s no buffer.

And that’s not fun for us. When we’re like that. It’s not fun for those around us. And the things that we care about tend to suffer when we don’t have balance inside. So one of the easiest ways to start balancing yourself is to take more rest. Another interesting thing about being an HSP is that we respond really well to good environments.

There’s this. A characteristic called differential susceptibility. And they’ve studied this in the research where if you put an HSP in a difficult non-supportive environment, they will do worse than others. But if you put an HSP in a good supportive environment, they will do well better than others. So this is a differential susceptibility.

We are more susceptible to. Bad environments and we are more susceptible in a good way to good environments. And that means that if you start getting more rest in your life, you will respond very quickly to that. As an HSP, you are built that way. So if you can build that into your life, you’re going to experience more balance coming in more quickly than others would if they started bringing that into their life.

The other thing that is so important for us as HSPs is this whole area of overwhelm we’re we have a tendency to get overwhelmed easily because we process things so deeply, and the antidote to overwhelm is rest, overwhelm is healed through rest. You need to give yourself time. You need to take a break when it’s too much.

Then pull away, take a break, go inward. Rest is not just a nice kind of thing. Like that would be helpful and good. It’s no, this is the exact perfect medicine for us as highly sensitive people because we are faced with that kind of overwhelm. On a daily basis. It comes up in different ways and some ways we’ve already learned to pace ourselves, but there may be ways in your life where you haven’t learned how to pace yourself.

So that you are not accumulating stress over time. That’s what we don’t wanna do. We don’t want to keep accumulating and make more and more stress, so like our fuse just gets shorter and shorter. There should be enough rest built into our life that we can actually start feeling like we’re on an even level or even getting more and more rested over time.

So how do we practically. Do this. It’s not an easy thing. We wouldn’t be talking about this if it was an easy thing. And so one of the things that I find to be super helpful is to make a plan. Actually sit down, talk with your partner, figure out when is an ideal bedtime for you. Think about it carefully.

What? What are the responsibilities you have? What are the compromises you may have to make? What’s a good time for you to wake up? What would be. Doable with your schedule and see if you can find eight to 10 hours. That would be something you can stick with, something that you can make a part of your routine and build in as a part of your family life.

And another thing besides just having the time set aside is planning some wind down time. This sounds luxurious, sounds like Oh no. That’s too much, right? I would say if I had to compromise, I would make sure I had wind down time, at least a half hour be before my bedtime, and I would, if I can’t get my eight to 10 hours, I’m gonna at least plan some wind down time so that I can not just crash and go into bed.

If I go straight from say, the computer to bed, then my mind’s gonna be just wound up. Or if I go from any kind of active mode into sleep mode, I’m gonna need time to transition. And this is true, especially for highly sensitive people. So take a bath, put your, soak your feet in warm water. Listen to audio books or music.

Rest your eyes. You don’t have to sleep. I love doing a little massage, like I love this little. Traditional Chinese medicine approach of gua sha if you’ve ever done that, where you take a little like a smooth stone or you just use your hands and you massage different parts of your body.

I massage my face, my shoulders, my arms, my hands, my legs, my feet. And just for five minutes before bed, it releases a lot of stress and tension. And so I fall asleep more easily. You can also get support from Ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine or other kinds of holistic practitioners who can guide you and give you extra support in slowing down and how to slow down, but it’s an important part of life.

Another thing that you can do is shut down your computer before dinner so that you don’t. Just keep working on things. I used to do this where come it’s about time for bed. I’m like, I’ll just check my email. 30 minutes later, I’ve just engaged in all kinds of things in this email and or emails, and my mind’s all wound up again.

I’m tight again, and it’s harder to fall asleep. So you have to draw a line somewhere my day ends somewhere. Why not make it earlier? Why not make evenings be for you or for your family, or for both. And then another important thing is be patient with the stresses that start to come out. When you do get rest, you may feel uncomfortable.

You may start tossing and turning a little bit. You may feel like, oh my gosh, I just want to go do something. This takes discipline and it takes patience. But if you can give yourself time to just rest and that’s just all I’m doing. Even if your mind goes around and does all this, that’s fine. I can’t stop my mind anyway, but I’m gonna at least rest my body.

And that’s why I love that direction of just being on the bed for eight to 10 hours. Don’t have to fall asleep. Don’t have to be asleep, just resting. And then. I think probably as important as all of these is start celebrating the feeling of rest that develops over time. Over the weeks, over the months, you’re gonna start feeling more rested.

You’re gonna start feeling more yourself. You’re gonna start having more energy. You’re start, you’re gonna start having more insight. Things are gonna start going better. And this can be something, it is something to celebrate. It’s as important as any of your outward accomplishments because this is the basis for all of the things that you do.

And if you can structure a life that is built around rest, then you’re gonna have a very happy life. You’re gonna have a very peaceful life, and you’re going to enjoy the things that you do. If you wanna take rest to the next level, then include meditation in your life, in your day. Twice a day.

Make that a part of your life. I do transcendental meditation. It works really well. I’ve been doing it for almost 50 years. It’s amazing. There’s so many amazing meditations that are available to you. Find one. Choose one that works for you, and use that as your quiet time. And that will deep give even deeper rest than the rest of sleep.

When you compliant combine meditation and sleep, you suddenly have a life that is going to feel really good on the inside. And yes, you may have to compromise a few of the things that you do on the outside because there’s less time, but everything you do is gonna be that much more enjoyable. So the feeling I’m left with today is that everything depends on having enough rest.

Health depends on it. Happiness depends on it. Spiritual development happens on it. If I’m just all tired and exhausted, there’s no I can’t do much. I can’t even meditate. Or it’s much less fulfilling. Inner work depends on it, you name it. So in this episode, we looked at how this one vital component of a balanced life is actually the most neglected by HSPs and by the world over.

And why HSPs respond so well when this issue is addressed because of that differential susceptibility. So give yourself the rest and you will start to bloom much quicker. And we also looked at how to practically start improving your quality of life today. By taking this approach. It requires a little bit of discipline.

It requires a little bit of planning, but if you can take that effort. And begin nourishing yourself. You will find that it becomes fulfilling in and of itself. I look forward to my wind down in the evening. I look forward to massaging my feet a little bit. I look forward to having just good eight solid hours on the bed.

I look forward to that, and it is as much a part of my life as anything accomplished in the outside world. So thanks for listening. It’s always great to explore with you. This program comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Strategy Fridays where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.