Unpacking a Moment of HSP Overwhelm and Finding Perfectionism at Its Root

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how a client literally got sucked into the storm and how inner work brought her back.

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 the mind gets trapped into thinking. I can’t rest yet how a client broke through this trap through inner work and found ease again, and how perfectionism often lies at the root of all this stress. This is an addition of Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom.

A client recently did a really insightful piece of work, and with her permission, I share. The idea of what we discovered here with you, the situation was her boat dock got flooded. She lives on a lake and it, there was a big storm and the water rose very high and it damaged the boat. All the furniture from the in the boat dock was floated away.

And it was a big mess. And. This happened right after she had hosted a party for all her family coming from out of town. That was went on for several days. And in fact, some people stayed even longer because they just, it was easier for their travel arrangements. So normally that party is something she enjoys doing from time to time, but she plans to have rest afterwards and to decompress.

And she’s an HSP. And she knows how to balance herself. But in this case, the storm happened right after that, and so there was no chance to rest. And she just got literally pulled into that storm of trying to capture everything, clean the mud, and, recover items and all of that. And so that was the basic situation that she brought to the session.

And we used it as an opportunity for doing some inner work. And I used the work of Byron Katie as the process that I used to explore the stressful thoughts that are running in a situation that make it stressful for us. So we looked for a second and tried to figure out what was the thought that was bothering her.

And it was an interesting one. It’s not your standard thought that you might think to question. But it was what was really coming up strongly for her, which was, nobody was hurt in this storm, so I shouldn’t complain. Sound familiar? It sounds like such a good thought. Oh, I’m being, actually being positive.

No one’s hurt. And I was really lucky, like I’m almost trying to put a positive spin on it. But what was actually happening was that she was using this thought, or her mind was using this thought to trivialize her own needs for rest. And so as she was going forward in this cleaning process, after this whole party issue, she was just getting more and more exhausted.

She was feeling more and more overwhelmed. She was craving time alone. And she was cleaning things, but really not wanting to clean them. She was resenting it as she was cleaning and feeling frustrated by it. So we questioned the thought that, since nobody was hurt I shouldn’t complain. And it was so interesting to see how this thought played a role in her experience because she was thinking she shouldn’t complain.

After all, she wasn’t hurt, nobody was hurt. It. Gave her no recourse for just asking for time out, for pacing herself, and she reacted by just going all out and doing everything against her own will and pushing herself further and further into overwhelm. Interestingly, without the thought, if we imagine this is question four of the work of Byron Katie, who would you be without the thought?

She was seeing that. If she wasn’t thinking that she shouldn’t complain just because nobody was hurt, she would be paying more attention to the feelings that she was having, the fatigue that she was feeling. She would be making more, paying more attention to balance in her life. Getting good exercise, eating and better meals like balanced, getting enough protein and then taking rest and having downtime.

And so it was the idea that she shouldn’t complain, that her mind was using to stop her from actually taking care of herself. And and we turned it around as she should complain. And now, of course, for people who really complain a lot, this would not be a turnaround. But in her particular situation, it was actually the direction for balance.

Instead of trying to hold in her complaints and trying to. Be be good in a way. She’s allowed to complain and allowed to hear what her, the feedback that her system was actually sending her. And those are, yeah, we can say they’re complaints, but they’re more like little alarm bells saying hey, I need some help.

I need some rest. I need some balance. And so she should complain. Her body should complain, and it’s natural too. So what really was needed was for her to listen to that and then incorporate that into the way that she approached the situation. What was interesting is when she looked at it, she realized she actually was really good at pacing herself normally.

Often after a party like this, she would take. A week or two to get things back to normal. She wouldn’t try to do it all in one day. She’s actually good at it. And that’s what’s amazing often for us as HSPs, is that we do know how to do things intelligently, but we get grabbed by these thoughts that will keep us from paying attention to what we actually know.

And so in reality she should be paying attention. To this little complaining voice saying this is enough. And and so just seeing this was really cool to see. Now we looked further and this is where it gets interesting. Underneath all of this was something more, and that was, she had all the furniture and cushions and things out in the yard trying to dry in the sun, and it’s a big mess outside.

And there was a part of her that was feeling like, I have to get this all fixed before I can rest. In other words, everything should be taken care of and then I can take care of myself. And this is easy to believe and it’s something that we easily can get pulled into as highly sensitive people because we like to do things well.

We like to have things in order. And it’s sometimes hard to let it go when things are in process. So we did a little more work on the thought everything should be taken care of. We questioned that thought and we saw that with the thought. It’s this stress tense, unable to rest kind of feeling, and without the thought.

It’s like it all zooms out into perspective. Oh, yeah. We will take care of this, but it doesn’t have to be done today. And so when we turned it around, it was like so cool. The way the turnaround showed up is that I should be taken care of. Not just everything, but I should also be taken care of.

And this showed immediately where this was needed. And so just taking time off saying, okay, let’s find some blocks of time. And do the work during those times, scrub down everything, do what we need to do, and then let’s have some blocks of time where we’re off duty and we have time to rest, have time to have good meals, have time to sleep, have time to exercise, and so I should be taken care of.

Was the missing piece in the equation when the mind is focused on everything else should be taken care of. The fact is everything will get taken care of. We as highly sensitive people are conscientious by nature. We will take care of things. That’s what we do. But we can pace ourselves and do this in a way that we can also take care of ourselves at the same time.

So the takeaway today is that putting everything in order on the outside should not come at the expense of putting everything in order on the inside. Outside is important. Inside is important, and balance is important. In this episode, we looked at how the mind gets trapped into thinking, I can’t rest yet, and it’s usually because there’s something important that we think we have to do.

Maybe it’s because we need to put everything in order as we saw here, or maybe it’s because. There’s a belief that I shouldn’t complain. Like nobody was hurt, so I shouldn’t complain, and so we can end up trivializing our need for rest. Whatever thoughts we used to avoid taking care of ourselves, these are the thoughts that I like to question.

We also looked at how a client broke through this trap through inner work and found ease again. And I love inner work. I love the work of Byron Katie because it’s a way to actually pause and look again at what we’re believing to question to gently challenge ourselves and consider if the opposite might be actually truer.

And in this case, it was much true. We also saw how perfectionism often lies at the root of this kind of stress, and that’s something that is easy to fall into because as highly sensitive people, we like to do things well and and there’s nothing wrong with doing things well, it’s just that it has to come in a balanced way.

So thanks for listening. It’s great to explore with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.