Three Types of Stress Affecting Highly Sensitive People and How to Manage Them

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover why HSPs have a major advantage over others when managing stress. 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—a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

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. When I think about stress in general, whether you’re a highly sensitive person or not, I see three main areas where stress seems to show up.

The first is mental stress. Mental stress means that you’re focused on something and you’re getting challenged by the overwhelming experience of it. Maybe there’s too much activity. The mind is active trying to solve something or it’s staying engaged with something that is taking a lot of its attention. Mental stress is something that we all face at work. If you’re working for seven, eight hours a day, by the end of the day, there’s stress there. In addition, if there are deadlines, there’s a kind of stress. If you’re trying to solve something that is difficult to solve, then this is the kind of mental stress that can be a challenge and needs to be dealt with.

In dealing with mental stress, the best antidote is rest. Meditation is a great form of rest. Sleep is a good form of rest. Basically, taking a break from that project, from that situation that is demanding so much mental energy, is what’s going to balance it. Sometimes this means saying no to something, or prioritizing and saying, “Okay, we’ll get to that later.” Doing one thing at a time can be very helpful when dealing with mental stress, because that feeling of overwhelm often comes from trying to balance too many different things.

Changing your focus to something else for a while, exercising for a while, or loosening your attachment to the outcome of what it is that you’re trying to do can also help. Let’s say you’re trying to create something and it’s challenging, and you’re running into problems. You’re getting frustrated and you don’t feel like you’re making progress to that goal. Stepping back a little bit and asking, “How is it okay that I don’t reach that goal? Or how is it okay that I don’t reach that goal today?” can reduce mental stress. Even though you’re still moving towards something, if you’re not holding it so tightly, that can definitely help.

Also, redefining perfection can ease stress. Perfectionism is something that highly sensitive people, myself included, tend to get caught in. We can see how perfectly things can be. We can see the subtlety of how nicely a job we can do. But redefining it to match what is actually possible will reduce mental stress quite a lot. Finally, working on any need for approval is key. If you’re doing something with the hopes of getting approval, of proving yourself, or being successful in a particular way, this adds a lot more stress and may make you push more than necessary.

These are all options you can play with. Some are very simple, like taking the time to rest, meditate, or say no. Changing to something else can be quick fixes. Others, like using The Work of Byron Katie to question your attachment to a particular outcome or your need for approval, go deeper. These approaches offer ways to reduce mental stress.

Now I said there are three main types of stress. The second one is emotional stress. Emotional stress happens when you think something is worse than it is. The outcome feels very stressful on an emotional level. While mental stress can have an emotional component, emotional stress especially comes up in relationships. It’s tied to feelings of not being good enough, the desire for acceptance, and the belief that what is happening is a terrible, exaggerated thing.

Emotional stress can make us feel powerless and stressed. The feeling can show up as anger, sadness, or fear, among other emotions. But emotions are not bad—they’re an alarm clock. They get our attention and tell us there’s something we need to look at to come back to balance. For highly sensitive people, emotions surface sooner, so we’re living with the awareness of stress earlier than others.

As a facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie, I’ve seen how this process gets you to pay attention to emotions and connect them to the thoughts behind them. Emotions and thoughts go together—there’s an emotional component of an experience and the thought component of the same experience. The emotion gets our attention, while the thought can be questioned. Doing this shifts the emotion and often settles it down. Listening to emotions, giving them respect, and questioning the beliefs tied to them allows stress to dissolve.

Finally, the last type of stress is physical stress. This is critical for everyone, but especially for highly sensitive people. We’re sensitive not just mentally or emotionally, but physically as well. HSPs may need less medication for the same effect, or they may become grumpy if they haven’t eaten or are overtired. Managing physical stress means finding balance in routines, eating well, getting enough sleep, and exercising regularly. Routines are vital—they provide stability and help highly sensitive people thrive.

Highly sensitive people also need stress management more than others. Because we don’t have the same “buffer” that others do, stress impacts us more quickly and intensely. I remember early in my practice with The Work of Byron Katie that something as simple as a raised voice could throw me into a funk for days. But with time and this process, I’ve developed a kind of “buffer” or inner space that allows me to recover much more quickly.

The good news is that HSPs have a major advantage: we notice stress earlier than most people. This allows us to take preventive action. For example, working on minor daily stresses—even if they only impact your mood slightly—can help prevent bigger issues from developing. This is like a tightrope walker making tiny adjustments to stay balanced. HSPs have the unique ability to catch stress early and adjust in real time, which is a significant advantage.

To recap, we covered the three main types of stress: mental, emotional, and physical. Each requires its own approach to manage effectively. We also looked at why HSPs need stress management more than others due to our lack of a natural buffer. Finally, we explored why HSPs have a major advantage in managing stress: we notice it sooner and can take action earlier.

Thanks for being here with me today. It’s always exciting to share these insights and tools for stress management as an HSP. Have a wonderful rest of your day. If you haven’t already, head to TrueInnerFreedom.com and take the HSP Stress Survey. Your input helps shape future podcast topics and provides you access to my three-day stress management training for highly sensitive people. Stay balanced and take care!