HSP Challenges

The Surprising Reasons Why Highly Sensitive People Are Exhausted

If there’s a gap between what you want to do and what you can do, that’s okay.

Everyone’s grappling with something extra right now:

  • Finding our way through the confusion of pandemic life
  • Navigating kids’ school situation
  • Experiencing trauma or PTSD due to racism and injustice
  • Being a working parent without any type of childcare
  • Being a stay-at-home parent without any respite
  • Feeling financial insecurity
  • Facing a personal struggle without an easy “fix”‘
  • Feeling distressed about any number of our societal/global crises 

​Each one of these takes up mental and emotional bandwidth, and bandwidth is finite; at some point, we reach our max. 

Additionally, Highly Sensitive People use more energyprocessing our complex feelings and thoughts.

It’s not because you “think too much” or are “too sensitive”; your brain and nervous system process more than non-HSPs do.

Despite all that, HSPs are resilient

Most of us are used to pushing through tough circumstances, used to “getting it done” despite stressors.

We’ve done it our whole lives. 

Yet right now, many of us don’t have the bandwidth to keep pushing through.

Personally, I see a huge discrepancy between the amount of learning, reading, working and engaging I want to do and the amount which I’m able to do.

Quite frequently I have intentions and desires that get pushed off to the next week, month, or indefinitely(!) because I just need to rest.

If you have ways you want to grow that feel stuck or SLOW moving, if you’re losing your cool or wish you could be a better partner, parent or friend than you feel able to be, know that you’re not alone.

Three keys helping me right now:

1. Surrender. The more I surrender to what IS, my angst falls away and I experience peace that strengthens my heart and rebuilds my energy.

This doesn’t mean accepting the unacceptable. It means owning my capacity; accepting the reality of “what is” vs. forcing “what isn’t”.

2. Baby steps count. Maybe you can’t spend an hour a day right now working on what’s important to you. Can you spend 5 minutes? Read 5 pages? Take 5 breaths? It all counts.

3. Prioritize rest and pleasure. Many of us have internalized the message that if it’s not “productive”, it’s a waste of time.

Taking the time to notice what makes you smile and your body relax is powerful. Creating space for those things is radical. Want to join me in this?

I hope this message resonates and you can give yourself permission to be exactly who you are, exactly where you are.

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Therapeutic Center for Highly Sensitive People
Brooke Nielsen Yang, LMFT, MFC #0001325
brooke@therapyforhsps.com I (720) 739-0206