Why Asking for Help Isn’t Enough to Stop the Overwhelm as an HSP and What to Do Instead

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover why saying you need help is not enough to stop your overwhelm and what to do instead.

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 why so often nothing changes, even when you ask for help. How this leads to self-judgment and further overwhelm and how to address the way you’re holding delegation. You can finally have time to relax Again, 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.

Maybe this is you. You have that conversation again, and you say it kindly and you say, clearly I need to delegate. And you say, I can’t keep doing this alone, and it’s a good conversation. Maybe it’s with your partner and your partner nods and says, here’s a few ideas. There’s a little discussion about it.

But a week later, it’s like the conversation never happened. You’re still ju juggling everything, still keeping the master list in your head, and you’re still the only one who knows what needs to happen next. And when you look at your overflowing to-do list, you whisper to yourself, I just have too many balls in the air.

So this is what happens when you try to delegate and somehow it ends up circling back onto you. It’s like asking for help doesn’t actually change anything. You may tell yourself, I’ll just get through this week. And that’s how it goes. One week stacks up onto another week and so does the tension in your shoulders.

And all of this doesn’t solve the problem. You want to be a good partner, you want to be a good parent, you wanna be a good human. And somehow that’s all just gets tangled with doing everything. And trying to do everything alone. The problem is when this continues this way, you don’t feel just tired. You feel alone, like you’re the only one who notices all the different things that you have to do and tries to keep track of them and tries to do them all well, and those tasks seem to be endless because when one is finished, then another starts.

And it’s this impossible situation and you’re an HSP, you need rest, you need downtime. But that’s so far down on the to-do list that you may never get to it, or at least that’s the way it feels. And if you drop a ball, then shame can come in. I’m not doing a good job. And even if other people don’t notice this can keep you pushing and unable to.

Relax, delegate, and do live in a more balanced way. And so this can also lead to comparison where you start thinking, why can’t I just be okay with chaos? Like other people maybe your partner is completely unbothered by piles of stuff or noise or unfinished tasks, and you start to feel like you are annoying or that you are high maintenance or you are too particular.

Maybe your partner doesn’t care that you do a really good job with all the tasks on your to-do list, but you do and you start judging yourself like there’s something wrong with you for caring that much. You may not want to be that person. You may start judging yourself and you can end up getting hyper aware of how you work and how it’s different from other people.

And start thinking that there’s something wrong. On top of that, it drains your energy and you end up spiraling even more. And then finally, when you do say that you need help, but then still end up doing it yourself, that feeling of hope that maybe someday this would be more balanced, starts to fade away.

So this recurring overwhelm, it’s not a minor thing. It can come up on a regular basis, maybe come up every month, maybe it comes up every week, maybe it comes up every day. But this constant overwhelm or recurring overwhelm leaves you feeling not safe, and it leaves your nervous system feeling unsettled.

And the that the delegation never land lands. It’s the cost of that is that you are unable to be as present as you’d like to be, unable to be as creative as you’d like to be, and you’re less peaceful than you’re like to be. You may be thinking that it takes you maybe 10 times longer to do things than say your husband does.

Because you are going to look at all the details. You’re gonna do a job super well so that it never has to be redone, and you’re going to finish it in a way that is satisfying to you. You care, and that’s not a problem. We as HSPs care about things. That’s our nature, and it’s a really good thing. But when caring turns into control by necessity, then it leads to burnout.

And that’s not okay. Now the one who’s caring is getting burned out and who’s gonna care for the things that we care about, it’s a losing proposition. So every time you say, I’ve got it, when really you’re just barely juggling everything, you, you reinforce this pattern. And what happens is that people start thinking, oh help isn’t needed.

She’s got it all taken care of. And so you end up carrying it all again and people stop seeing you as someone who needs support. So let’s talk about the beliefs that keep this all going. And these are beliefs that are common to all of us, and I think you’ll find that these may resonate and be familiar in your mind as well, especially as highly sensitive people.

The first one is, if I don’t do it, it won’t get done right. This was my mom’s approach. She’s used to say, it’s easier to do it myself than to train someone else to do it, and there’s some truth to that, but it’s a short term thinking. If you can build a system that will, that also depends on other people, then you may not get everything done perfectly.

But over time it will improve and will become better and better. And the best part is you’re not doing all of the grunt work. Another belief is that delegating is a luxury that I haven’t earned. This could be like financially think that I need to be earning more money or have more money to be able to delegate.

Maybe we don’t have enough money. And so you overlook places where you could delegate. That doesn’t cost any money. Or you may think that you don’t deserve to be delegating, that you need to be doing it yourself because for some reason you put yourself in last place, and so there’s no one below you to delegate.

This is a belief. It’s something that can be questioned. Another belief is, oh, it’s not that bad. I just need to get through this week. If that’s where you’re thinking, then you’re just pushing the problem down the road. You’re not actually addressing it. What’s important is to get honest about what is your experience, and if it really is that bad, pay attention to that and see what can actually be done to change that situation.

And then finally, a thought that is easy to believe is that I should be able to handle this alone. Being self-sufficient is wonderful. Being independent is something I value, but. We don’t have to do everything alone, and there are ways to be independent. There are ways to be like an adult and still have relationships that support us that are not completely us doing it alone.

Delegating isn’t a weakness. It is more like sustainability. And so we can’t keep doing everything ourselves. And sustain that over a long time. Getting overwhelmed by it is not a bad thing. It’s just a signal that you’re trying to do the job of three people, and your nervous system is screaming for relief.

It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means you’re functioning so well that no one realizes that you’re drowning. So you have to be the one to realize that and start making some changes. So what if the real problem isn’t that you haven’t delegated? What if it’s that you’ve been trying to delegate from a place of guilt or exhaustion or desperation instead of from clarity, groundedness, and boundaries?

In fact, I don’t believe that you need a better to-do list. I believe that you need a new role in your life because being a good partner. Doesn’t mean disappearing if you’re tired of living in 30 day breakdown cycles or 15 day breakdown cycles. And if you’re tired of whispering or even speaking more clearly about needing help, but still finding that you’re holding it all.

And if you’re ready to build a life where delegation isn’t just a dream, it’s more of your default. That’s exactly why I created the HSP Inner Freedom Program. Inside, I’ll help you step out of silent suffering and into supported leadership where guilt, shame, and burnout are not something that you’re faced with on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re ready to make a change, go to the show notes and click on the first link you find, or visit my website, true inner freedom.com/solutions. You don’t have to break down to be taken seriously. Let me help you build a life that finally supports you.