How to Manage Overwhelm: Strategies for Highly Sensitive People
Overwhelmed by Everyone’s Needs? How to Manage Relationship Stress as a Highly Sensitive Woman
As a highly sensitive person, because you are so in tune with the feelings of others and you care so much about what happens to people around you, you might find yourself constantly tending to their emotional needs. And when people feel the level of warmth and empathy that you bring to the table, they keep coming to you to continue to fill their emotional needs. And although this is a great way to connect with others, and you do enjoy helping people (because the skill comes so easily to you), the problem is you run the risk of pouring continuously into other people without getting your own emotional needs met.
And what happens overtime is that your emotional well dries out. The good thing is that there are many strategies that you can utilize to ensure that you continue to be a caring person, while getting your needs met.
Ask for what you need: Feel free to ask the people around you for your needs. If you need help, ask for it. Because if you keep pouring into others without receiving, you will be burned out.
Take a break: Even though you enjoy spending time helping others, note when you bandwidth is depleted and take a step back. You can’t serve people all the time.
Know your limit: You can’t be all things to all people all the time. Play to your strengths and let others do the rest, You can’t stretch yourself too thin.
Balance your hobbies with your responsibilities: Each week, spend some time looking at your calendar to ensure that you include some hobbies or at least some downtime. Actually put it in, or else it won’t happen.
If the above feels like too much, brainspotting therapy can help you get unstuck. It’s an effective way of helping you break away from difficult habits that have been stubborn to break.
How to Say ‘No’ Without Feeling Guilty: Boundaries for Highly Sensitive Overachievers
Because you are so in tune with the feelings of others, you might feel like a bad person when it is time to turn somebody away. After all, you might think “What is the harm in helping them? If I know I can help them, why can't I just do that every time they call me?” The problem with this is that if every time somebody called you for help, you actually run to them, you would be helping people all day, therefore leaving yourself drained.
It is even more difficult to set boundaries when you are a high-performing woman. Because a part of you is excited and feels fulfilled when you check those tasks off your to do list. Work is actually quite enjoyable to you. And because you're quite capable of helping other people emotionally, coupled with being so great at your job, you feel extremely guilty when you have to say no or turn somebody down.
But when you constantly say “Yes,” you gain the reputation of the super responsible woman. People automatically run to you when there is a problem – even at work. And over time, you begin to resent those around you, because you wonder why all the competent people around you seem to outsource their problems and their work to you. It is because you have created a monster.
Before you say “Yes” to someone, give yourself a 24-hour window to think it through. Ask yourself if you have the bandwidth to be able to help them in this season. Think about all the other responsibilities you have. Will you be able to help them and carry out your responsibilities without burnout? Will helping them bring long-standing joy and peace for you? Just because you can help someone does not mean you should always jump in to help them.
Think about it this way: If you do not allow people to learn how to work through things, you rob them of the process of actually learning how to work through things. If you are involved in healthy work and personal relationships, then it is possible to say “No” sometimes without negative repercussions. You can prioritize your self-care without damaging your relationship.
This is where Brainspotting therapy comes in with my clients. Brainspotting therapy helps change long-standing habits that have held you back and made you feel stuck. Brainspotting targets the deeper layers of the brain so that these unhelpful habits can finally be broken. When we have broken the emotional hold, then saying “no” to prioritize your self-care becomes so much easier. And guess what? The guilt starts to go away.
Balance is Possible: How Highly Sensitive Women Can Juggle Career, Relationships, and Self-Care
As a high performing woman, it is important to accept that you will never be able to accomplish every single task that you have laid out for yourself. It’s not because you are lazy or incompetent, it is simply because your expectations for yourself are sometimes too high.
It is also important to remember that you cannot throw yourself so deep into work that you forget all your personal relationships. You can do both quite well- if you are able to put up good boundaries and prioritize your mental health. With Brainspotting therapy, you experience a world of emotional clarity so that it becomes so much easier to manage the dynamics of personal relationship versus your high-powered career.
To keep it simple, when you're looking at your weekly schedule, make sure there is actually time for you to rest, recharge and maybe connect with somebody outside of your work. If you are intentional about this on a weekly basis, it becomes a lot more difficult to be constantly drowning in work. Maybe you have some busy seasons at work where it’s all hands on deck, but when you're outside of busy season, be sure to calendar in time to actually spend with loved ones.
When you think about your work dynamics, are you carrying too heavy a load? Is there any wiggle room where you can either drop some responsibilities, outsource them or complete them at a later date? Remember that there are areas within your workspace that you have control over. Those are the areas in which you have to assert your influence and voice. Life does not just happen to you- you have a say in certain areas of your life. It’s the idea of accepting what you cannot change, but changing what you can,
When You Feel Everything: How to Keep Emotional Overload from Ruining Your Relationships
As a highly sensitive woman, you can feel like you absorb the emotions of others. But it’s not like you are actually absorbing their emotions. It’s that you notice tiny details that act like an alarm and alert you to how others are feeling. And this feels like you have actually absorbed their emotions. This can lead you to either run away from others- because you do not enjoy the feeling of constantly being tossed around by the emotions of others.
Or sometimes, you get overly involved in the emotional business of others because you want to fix and soothe them. Remember that is not necessarily your job to fix everyone. Sometimes others do not actually want your help. Sometimes they're fine with the way things are going. Sometimes they're coming to you simply to vent- not to fix. And if you do not have enough bandwidth to actually help somebody who is asking for your help, then what you will get is complete burn out, resentment and frustration. Know when you have the bandwidth to have deep conversations versus when you just want to keep things light. This will prevent you from emotional overload.
Also have at least one safe person in your life with whom you can share your emotional burdens. You are allowed to laugh wit them, cry with them, vent, and just be human. You can talk about the difficult things in your life, as well as the wins you are experiencing.
The Art of Unplugging: How to Step Away Without Feeling Disconnected from Loved Ones
One of the most important parts of being highly sensitive is having alone time and times when you minimize distractions. Even though you might live a very busy lifestyle and lots of people come to you for help, it is important that you have some non-negotiables around always being busy. As a high-performing woman, spending time by yourself gives you the opportunity to reflect on the work that you are doing and also recharge your energy so that you can continue to perform at a high level.
Unplugging does not mean that you completely ghost everyone. Unplugging simply means that you have specific times in your schedule when you can be by yourself. You can take yourself to lunch, you can sit at home and watch TV, or you can simply silence your phone so that you can do other things around the house. You can go on a relaxing vacation or you can decide that you will no longer be helping people during this season because your life is already feeling too full. It really is that simple. Some people like to set boundaries every single day by putting their phones on do not disturb from a certain hour in the evening until morning.
Are you constantly overwhelmed by the emotional demands of your relationships? As a trauma therapist in Houston specializing in brainspotting therapy, I help high-performing, highly sensitive women—including Black women—manage overwhelm and build healthier, more balanced relationships. Schedule a brainspotting therapy consult call in Houston today to start your journey toward emotional peace and deeper connections!
About Me
My name is Ibinye Osibodu-Onyali. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in California and Texas. I help women who are struggling with trauma, anxiety and insomnia.
I also help couples learn how to speak each other’s language, date each other again and manage conflict in a non-painful way.
Many of my clients are:
Couples who want to regain their friendship and trust
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