Tone of Voice Sensitivity: Stress Management and Inner Peace for HSPs

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover why tone of voice is so important, and how to maintain balance in the face of it.

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 what HSPs can learn about another person from their tone of voice, why we’re so easily affected by a dismissive tone of voice, and how to remain peaceful even when someone uses a harsh tone of voice. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Tone of voice carries a lot of information about the other person when you’re talking to them. And we as HSPs are aware of that, we’re interested in that, and we pick up on the subtleties and not so subtle aspects of tone of voice. Moreover, we’re affected by it very easily because of our nature to, to look deeply at things to ruminate and to be worried about rejection and wanting connection.

So tonal voice is a huge area. It’s huge for everyone but for HSPs, it’s that much bigger. And so what I’d like to do now is to play with. a little bit of inquiry, self inquiry, where we begin to look at how to experience tone of voice, which you can’t control, so that other people will use all kinds of tones of voice.

Is there any way to experience tone of voice or see it or view it in a way that is less stressful? So let’s do this work together. The first thing to do is to look for a situation where someone’s tone of voice. got to you, or something triggered you, or you felt stressed by the tone of voice that they were using.

So take a minute and see if you can find something. Maybe it’s something recent. It can be very subtle. It can be something your boss said, your partner said, your child said. Your mother or father, something where their tone of voice conveyed something that they that kind of grated against you or made you feel hurt or in some way stressed.

In fact, let’s go a little more focused on this. Let’s look for a situation where someone was, your, the tone of voice was conveying that they were being dismissive. You can find that. Somebody’s tone was making you feel like they were dismissing you.

I can think of a situation not too long ago where I was sharing with my partner about a potential idea for our pickleball club and we were both in agreement and conversation was going along fine. And then I added an extra point. that I don’t think he was aware of. It was a subtle point and I don’t think he was aware of it.

But his tone of voice came back to me. What I heard was he didn’t want to hear my point. He didn’t really want to listen. It’s though, he already knew that already. And so I felt dismissed. So can you find a place where somebody’s tone gave away this idea that they’re dismissing you in some way?

way or another.

And if you need more time, just pause the recording and you can look for a time, take as much time as you like, to find a time where you actually had this experience. This will make this that much more powerful when you go through the process that we’re about to go through.

So the thought we’ll question is their tone is dismissive. And we’ll start with question number one. Is it true? In that situation, you heard their tone. It’s dismissive. Is that true?

And the important thing here is to be honest to your own experience. At no point during this process of doing the work of Byron Katie do I want to leave my experience. My experience is the ground on which I stand. So no matter what these questions are, no matter how challenging they are, no matter how much they stretch me, I want to keep my feet on the ground of my own experience.

Be there in your situation, you hear that tone of voice, their tone is dismissive. Is it true?

In my situation, I’m going with a yes. And this question is just a yes or a no, so it may take a minute to find that.

If your question is a yes, then there’s another follow up question, which is, can you absolutely know it’s true that their tone is dismissive in this situation?

Again, just be honest.

I’m sticking with a yes. I really think it was dismissive.

Question three of the work is, how do you react? What happens when you believe that their tone is dismissive in your situation? What happens to you? Regardless of whether it’s true or not, how do you react?

I feel defensive, I feel shut down, I feel hurt. I was actually trying to add something, and I was expecting a Yeah, great idea. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. I was expecting some kind of agreement and I Got dismissive so I feel disappointed Sad,

I feel the disconnection between my partner and me. In fact, my reaction is I pull away.

I also continue to bring it up and try to make my point and try to talk about it, even the tone of voice. But there’s an edge to everything.

So how do you react? What happens when you think you’re, their tone is dismissive,

even though I’m trying to talk, trying to engage, trying to bridge the gap, it’s like I’m building a bridge on quicksand. It just falls immediately.

I don’t have any confidence in that moment.

I also feel victimized quite strongly and that makes me angry. Don’t use a dismissive tone with me.

I start to feel justified and I start to look down on my partner.

All this from the tone of voice. Now, tone of voice is important, but look what happens to me when I focus on that, when I think that, when I believe that. Their tone was dismissive.

I feel a heaviness in my heart.

I see past images. Do you see any past images where this has happened before with this person or another? Their tone is dismissive. Yeah, it’s like a groove. I’ve already been down this road before with my partner and with other people. and my tolerance is very thin.

I also feel like I’m right, and that gives me even more fuel to fight.

Who would you be in the same situation? And, Exactly the same thing happens, and your partner even uses, or whoever it is, uses the same tone of voice, exactly the same tone of voice, you can hear the sound is exactly the same, but imagine for a second, and you’ll have to use some real imagination here.

But imagine for a second that you didn’t fully believe that their tone was dismissive. Who would you be hearing that tone? I

feel a little more space. I’m not quite sure what’s going on. Maybe my partner’s just irritated about something else. Maybe there’s something else going on.

I would also be open to, okay, what is it that I’m missing? Because my partner may have a point here too. Maybe I’m bringing up something that he really is aware of and just doesn’t need to hear. I’d be asking about his experience. It feels connected.

It doesn’t feel so stressful. So same tone. This is what’s interesting. Same tone. Without the thought he’s being dismissive. I don’t know what it is, and I’m connecting with him to find out what it is. I’m open to hearing his experience with the thought his tone isn’t dismissive. I am not open to hearing his experience at all.

It’s I know you were being dismissive and I have no tolerance for that and end of story. So without that thought, without that interpretation that his tone is dismissive, even though it may have been right, we don’t know exactly, but if I’m not thinking that thought, it opens up possibilities and I’m more curious to find out.

what really was his experience. The chances of our connecting or resolving this misunderstanding are much higher.

So this is the power of a thought. As soon as I believe the thought, their tone is dismissive. I’m, I’ve separated and I’m ready to defend and I know I’m right and there’s a war going on. If I don’t have the thought, I feel connected, I’m interested, I’m curious. Very different energy. One idea, one thought, the tone is dismissive, changes my whole experience of that situation, at least hypothetically.

If that’s the case, then it might be worth exploring an opposite of this thought. Their tone is dismissive, what would be an opposite?

Let’s go with their tone is not dismissive. Is it possible? Is it possible?

What do you find? Is there any other interpretation besides dismissive here?

So like in my situation, maybe he was irritated about something else and it’s just coming out here. So the dismissive is just one way of looking at that tone of voice. But it might be an unrelated thing. And we can’t rule out there may have been some dismissiveness in there, but it may not have been the real reason for it.

So that helps as well.

I know when I’m crabby I just don’t, I can be dismissive of everything, but it’s not as personal as it sounds. So their tone is not dismissive. What other things could be going on? Maybe it’s integrity. Maybe this, I’m thinking of my partner, just saying, why are you saying this, which I already understand.

Like he’s just doesn’t want to be wants me to know that he doesn’t need that.

And according to him, and I think that’s probably true, I tend to like to explain things and look at things and hash things over and look at all the aspects of it. And he’s let’s just cut to the chase. So he’s being in his integrity of you know what, I don’t want to go into a longer.

more complex discussion about this, I think we’re already in agreement. So that little bit of tone may have been just communicating to me I don’t want to go there. So yeah, maybe that is what dismissive is to a certain degree, but one way of looking at it is that maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Like it’s a communication and there may be other ways of communicating that might be even better, but it’s still a communication. And that’s important for me because I tend to not communicate what’s really important to not to, I tend to hide my feelings. to try to keep the peace and that kind of thing.

And so in this way, my partner is a teacher to me, showing me you can say if you don’t want something. And in this case, he used tone of voice. So you can look at it as, yeah, he was being dismissive, but you could also look at it as he was being communicative. Possibly. Or as we already saw, just irritated about something else.

Just having a bad day. Such a possibility.

So how about you? Any other ways that it’s possible that the person’s tone, even though it’s pretty darn clear, was not necessarily dismissive?

Could be insecurity, too. Comes across as dismissive, but the real root of it could be insecurity and not wanting to not be knowing everything.

So there may be many other possible explanations, but just the possibility that there are explanations besides the one I already had softens it.

So now let’s look for another turnaround. The original statement is their tone is dismissive. Another turnaround would be my tone towards myself is dismissive. Now this is a really valuable turnaround as far as I can tell. My tone towards myself is dismissive in the moment when I heard my partner’s tone being dismissive.

So we have to look at two things here. What was going on outside, that tone of voice that my partner used, and what was going on inside you don’t count. That’s what I’m telling myself your voice doesn’t count. You should concede there’s something going on. about you, that’s dismissive.

And on a very subtle level, that’s what I was doing to myself. Otherwise it would not have hurt. If somebody comes up and yells at me, you’re stupid or something. If I’m not believing it at all, like zero, it’s, it can’t hurt me. Just Oh, what’s wrong with you? What’s going on? Or is there something I’m missing about myself?

There’d be a curiosity, or there’d be like a kind of this doesn’t make sense. But, if I believe it about myself, game over. Now I’m hurting, now I’m really in a bad way. That must be going on here for me. My tone towards myself is dismissive. Long term habit. Okay, if there’s any conflict, you just step out of the game, that’s what I tend to do.

Just remove yourself. Oh, you don’t count. Your opinion doesn’t count. If you have to stand up and fight about it, then that’s not you, so I’d rather accept loss. So it’s I treat myself like I’m a loser in situations like that.

So how about you? How is it that your tone towards yourself is dismissive? When someone else is using a dismissive tone,

It’s like as if their dismissive tone wasn’t enough and I have to add my own dismissive tone on top of it. Now we’ve got a double whammy. That’s tough. And I would argue that the dismissing of myself. is far worse than the dismissing coming from outside.

So this is a huge area where I have control because I can’t control other people’s tones of voices, but how I treat myself when they use those tones of voices, I have more control over that. And that’s where my inner growth can bring resilience, even in the face of a dismissive tone of voice.

So another turnaround. Instead of, their tone is dismissive, you could turn it around to, my tone towards them is dismissive. So let’s look at that, just for balance. How could it be that your tone towards them is as dismissive, or even more dismissive, possibly, than their tone towards you?

And keep in mind, it doesn’t matter who started it, they may have started it, But did you join in the fray? That’s what this is asking. My tone towards them is dismissive.

I know for sure that I got into a dismissive tone of voice verbally. I actually was like impatient with him. There was that tone. A little bit of anger coming in my voice. That tone was coming in. I think there was a lot of dismissive tone I think you don’t get this. I didn’t want to hear that he didn’t want to hear.

So my tone was dismissive. I’m sure it was all over that conversation. If I had recorded it, I would have heard tone of voice. After tone of voice coming from me as I continue to talk about it.

How about you? Where does tone of voice come up in this situation?

And keep in mind, your tone of voice may be on the inside, even if you’re not saying anything on the outside. That still counts. Like rolling my eyes, that’s dismissive! Totally dismissive. So if I do even a little bit of that, it’s not to make me wrong, it’s just to see that we both are doing it.

And if we’re both doing it, okay. It’s not as bad. When I only focus on the other person and what they’re doing, and I’m the innocent victim, then it’s actually extremely powerless and extremely frustrating and not a great place to be. We tend to gravitate towards this victim role because we don’t have to take any responsibility.

But the reality is the victim place is not a nice place to be. So this turnaround balances that a lot. When I see that my tone was also dismissive, then I see two equals being dismissive to each other, and okay, so we could have done better, but that’s the way it went. It’s not as terrible as it seems.

I don’t have this, I don’t have this victim mentality of being abused. Because no, I’m abusing right back. Yeah, it’s more like a fair fight. In this episode, we looked at what HSPs can learn about another person from their tone of voice. And there’s a lot to be learned. Being sensitive is not a bad thing.

We can learn the emotion of the other person. We can learn their attitudes, of what they mean when they say something. We can learn the intention behind what they’re saying. All of these are contained and in the tone of voice, and it’s something that is worth paying attention to and noticing and working with.

However, there is still some kind of room inside of tone of voice for interpretation, and so sometimes the first interpretation may not be the total story, and it’s worth looking to see if there’s something more there. But paying attention to tone of voice is excellent, it’s just, does it get you? If you start getting stressed by it, then we have to look a little deeper.

So we also looked at why we’re, as HSPs, so easily affected by something like a dismissive tone of voice. And this is just comes from the fact that we pay attention to the subtle aspects of speech. We’re interested in emotion, we’re interested in connection, we’re often afraid of rejection, and we’re empathetic.

So we, we are tuned in to these subtle aspects of tone of voice. And that’s totally fine. It’s just that we have to have extremely powerful ability to process what we see in order to remain balanced. If we just have raw data coming in, it’s going to overwhelm us. But if we have the raw data coming in, and an ability to process it, as we just did here in doing the work of Byron Katie, then that raw data doesn’t necessarily have to overwhelm.

So that was the last thing we looked at, is how to remain peaceful, even when someone uses a harsh tone of voice. And one of the most powerful ways to do that, is by coming back to what is us and what is them and just seeing that what they’re doing is their business and what we do is our business. If we start taking on a tone of voice towards ourself, then we enter in and it becomes way worse than just whatever the person was saying from their side.

And then if we enter into being dismissive towards the other person, then now we’ve really jumped into the fight, and it can become even worse for us. So staying back in our own business, that’s what the work always points us back to. It’s coming home to ourself, to our own inner experience, and not doing the same thing to ourselves that the other person is doing.

That is huge. And then finally, we can look for alternative explanations of what the other person is, what their tone of voice actually means. Yes, it may mean they’re being dismissive. It may also mean they’re just having a bad day. Or it may also mean that they are saying something exhibiting integrity to express something honestly, even though it’s not pretty.

So it depends on what you look at. If you can look at something that is not so terrible in a way that doesn’t make me turn me into a victim, then that situation can be experienced in a much more in a much lighter kind of way. So that’s the power of inquiry, that’s the power of looking at the same situation from different points of view and seeing that I have a lot of control in how I view it, even though the tone itself may have been harsh.

So thanks for listening, thanks for participating and doing your work here with me. It’s always a pleasure to go deeply into this and to see what we can discover when we question our thoughts. Thanks again, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.