HSPs and anxiety - Part Two

Know your triggers; feel your feelings; remember to breathe, and learn to slow down.

Welcome to my weekly newsletter building a supportive community for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs).

Apologies for the delay in sending this week’s newsletter: I’ve been down with Covid for the past few days but I’m on the mend. Thank you for reading!

After writing about my experience of anxiety last week, I wanted to share a few thoughts for HSPs who may be facing similar challenges. This is by no means an exhaustive guide — rather the distillation of some of the key lessons I’ve learned through my own personal process. I hope some of these points will be useful — and I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Know your triggers

One of the most important keys to managing anxiety is to begin to notice your triggers — what kinds of situations, people or events are most likely to make you feel anxious? Are there parts of your life that you prefer to avoid, or cause you to withdraw? As HSPs, we like to understand everything deeply — including our anxiety — and it can really help to look for patterns by talking your experiences over with somebody you trust. If you can identify your triggers, your anxiety will immediately start to seem more manageable, and you can take steps to structure in extra downtime and support on days you may need it.

Recognise the underlying intelligence

Anxiety can feel very unpleasant — and we might have a strong temptation to want it to “go away” or to “get rid” of it. That’s an understandable reaction — but it overlooks the fact that our anxiety once served a very protective, intelligent purpose. Anxiety is the body’s way of keeping us safe by warning us of some perceived danger. It can help to remember that a lot of the time the anxiety that we’re experiencing in the present isn’t because of any actual threat — but a rerun of a reaction to something that happened in the past that’s stayed stuck in our nervous system. If we can begin to acknowledge that our anxiety once served an important function, then we can start to think about it in a new way. Rather than seeing anxiety as something to be ashamed of, we can recognise that it’s a valuable part of ourselves.

Face your feelings

Our anxiety may be a sign that we’re carrying a load of unacknowledged emotions that we’ve tried to stuff down — but which are now calling for our attention. Modern life doesn’t tend to provide much space for us to undertake the slow and sometimes painful work of becoming reaquainted with our deepest feelings. But at some point we can all gain a great deal from finding ways to go within and make contact with whatever has been waiting for us. A lot of people understandably hesitate to begin this work — they fear that the feelings will be so overwhelming that they won’t be able to function day-to-day. But when we do start to make more space for our feelings, our life can begin to change in unexpected ways. There’s many potential avenues for doing this work — which is often best undertaken in community — and I aim to return to this in a future edition of The HSP Revolution.

Breathe

As sleep coach Charlie Morley pointed out in a previous edition of The HSP Revolution, the quickest way to change your neurological state is through the breath. When you start to feel anxious, the most effective thing you can do is to notice how you’re breathing. Then start to take deeper breaths: Place a hand on your belly, and breathe right down into your belly and back. Breathe longer on the exhale. Keep doing this for as long as you reasonably can — and notice how your whole system begins to relax.

As Charlie pointed out, during the course of everyday life we’re often breathing at about 15-20 breaths a minute — which is incredibly fast. Our nervous systems are in a chronic state of what’s called “sympathetic dominance” — which is a bit like pressing the accelerator pedal while the hand-brake is on. As Charlie put it:

“Think what that would do to a car: It would wear out the battery, wear down the brake pads. It would be really bad for the body — and it turns out, it is. Simply because of the way we breathe, many of us are in a chronic state of low-level anxiety or fight-or-flight. That can get worse when you bring high sensitivity, or high levels of stress and trauma, into the mix.”

So the next time you catch yourself starting to feel anxious, remember to take slow, deep, conscious breaths — and feel yourself gradually come back into balance.

Slow down

So many of us struggle to give ourselves time and space just to be — but so much of our anxiety arises precisely because we’re running away from the difficult feelings we’re carrying inside us. After years of working with hundreds of clients from many walks of life, I’m convinced that our culture of constant busyness is really a symptom that we’re avoiding deeper layers of unprocessed emotion. Many of us are carrying so much stress and unacknowledged trauma that we’re afraid of what might happen if we ever stopped. But being constantly on the go wears out our nervous system. If we’re going to move beyond anxiety, then we need to let go of guilt and give ourselves permission to structure in more of the downtime that all HSPs need to thrive.

There’s a lot more to be said on this topic — and I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Until next week!