Lauren Sapala, Author at Sensitive Refuge

Highly Sensitive People, You’re Not Responsible For Other People’s Feelings

Lauren Sapala — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 08:00:06 +0000

“You are responsible for your stuff and everyone else is responsible for theirs. You’re not helping anyone by trying to manage the emotions of other people.”

Years ago, I worked for a startup on a tight budget, with ten of us working out of an extremely cramped office. The woman who sat next to me wore a strong perfume that reminded me of the candle store in the mall. Usually by mid-morning I had the beginnings of a throbbing headache, and by the end of the afternoon, I was downright nauseous.

At that point in my life, I hadn’t yet discovered that I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP) as well as an introvert. I just knew that I did not mix well with strong smells, loud noises, or crowded places. I was prone to headaches and anxiety and something as simple as a strobe light could set me off.

So, even though this woman’s perfume seemed like such a small thing, it was actually wreaking havoc on my daily life.

Thankfully another one of my coworkers had become a close friend. She was very similar to me — intuitive, people-oriented, and sensitive. When I told her about the perfume lady, she said simply, “Why don’t you ask her not to wear that perfume to work anymore? Tell her it bothers you.”

I was stunned and speechless. That was allowed? I could ask other people to modify something because it was causing me a problem?

Rationally, I understood this concept. But emotionally, it felt like my entire world had shifted.

“This is a fight we’ll never win. We simply cannot be in charge of everyone else’s emotions. Nor should we be.”

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Why It’s Hard for Highly Sensitive People to Speak Up

I’m sure I’m not the first sensitive person to struggle with this issue, and I definitely won’t be the last. Speaking up for ourselves is not only hard to do, but it tends to bring up a ton of emotional baggage from our past.

Most of us have felt for our entire lives that our personal needs as HSPs are weird and inconvenient to others. We need more space than other people. We need more time. We need more complexity and more depth. Because other people are often confused by these needs, or can even feel rejected in some way, we learn as children to compromise on them constantly.

As a result, instead of figuring out how to negotiate with others for what we need, we withdraw further into our own world. We attempt to meet all of our needs there, totally on our own.

That works about half the time. The other half, we end up feeling resentful, unheard, isolated, and powerless.

So, as highly sensitive people, we have two choices. We can step into our power and be uncomfortable now, in the present moment, by speaking up for what we need. Or we can choose powerlessness and guarantee that we’ll still feel uncomfortable — and probably angry, bitter, and emotional exhausted — in the future, by suppressing our needs and keeping our mouths shut.

Many highly sensitive people struggle with people-pleasing tendencies and a penchant for codependency. We really, really want to make sure that everyone in our environment is happy — especially with us. But this is a fight we’ll never win. We simply cannot be in charge of everyone else’s emotions. Nor should we be. That’s what this whole “free will” deal is about: everyone gets to choose their own adventure here. In order to truly honor someone else, it’s essential to step back and let them have their own choices and even their own reactions.

“I hereby give you permission, from this day forward, to communicate your needs through the written word, whenever and to whomever you want, without feeling guilty about it.”

How to Stop Feeling Responsible for Others’ Emotions

Not every HSP struggles with this. But if people-pleasing and feeling personally responsible for others’ emotions has always been an issue for you, this four-step process will help:

Step 1: Evaluate Your Needs

Does the thing you need encroach on the rights of anyone else? Is it harmful to other people? If you’re not invading anyone else’s space or being disrespectful of someone else’s boundaries, it’s safe to say that you’re justified in asking that your needs be respected. Use common sense here as well. Sure, your coworker might argue that listening to dance music at top volume is his inalienable right, but most sensible people would agree that his argument doesn’t hold water.

The Takeaway:

If you’re able to speak up for what you need and still be respectful of others, then do it. It’s not your responsibility to set boundaries for other people — only for yourself.

Step 2: Use Your Preferred Mode of Communication

Many HSPs have the misguided idea that we should push ourselves to have face-to-face confrontations with people, when there is nothing that makes us feel more like we want to crawl under a rock. But there is a solution. I hereby give you permission, from this day forward, to communicate your needs through the written word, whenever and to whomever you want, without feeling guilty about it. So send that email. Write that letter. Leave that note in your neighbor’s mailbox.

The Takeaway:

If you feel comfortable speaking to someone in person, go for it. But, as long as you state your needs as honestly and respectfully as possible, writing is perfectly acceptable — and might even get better results.

Need to Calm Your Sensitive Nervous System?

HSPs often live with high levels of anxiety, sensory overload and stress — and negative emotions can overwhelm us. But what if you could finally feel calm instead?

That’s what you’ll find in this powerful online course by Julie Bjelland, one of the top HSP therapists in the world. You’ll learn to turn off the racing thoughts, end emotional flooding, eliminate sensory overload, and finally make space for your sensitive gifts to shine.

Stop feeling held back and start to feel confident you can handle anything. Check out this “HSP Toolbox” and start making a change today. Click here to learn more.

Step 3: Maintain Your Boundaries Over Time

Even after you’ve identified what you need and found the courage to ask for it, sometimes the other party will still try to push your buttons (by being consciously manipulative) or forget your previous requests (by being unconsciously oblivious). So, sometimes, you have to go through the whole process again. The upside is that every time you go through it, you get more practice on how to take back your power.

The Takeaway:

Asking once might not be enough. If you have to repeat yourself, that’s okay. Think of it as a practice.

Step 4: Hold Responsibility Only for Yourself

There will be many times when it feels “easier” to put someone else’s comfort before your own. When you’re evaluating your needs, you might be tempted to push them aside so that your coworker can go on enjoying his crazy loud dance music every morning. Or when you’re speaking up, you might try to soothe someone else’s defensive reactions. And maintaining a boundary can be trickiest of all — you might give in when someone tries to tear down your fence because they’ve always been allowed into your garden before, and now they don’t like feeling left out. Sound familiar?

But guess what:

The reactions of other people are not your responsibility. They never have been and they never will be.

The Takeaway:

You are responsible for your stuff and everyone else is responsible for theirs. You’re not helping anyone by trying to manage the emotions of other people.

Speaking up for your needs isn’t easy. But if you’re truly committed to living your best life, then it must be done. And the more you do it, the more you’ll be able to readily identify what’s yours, what belongs to other people, and how to draw the line between the two. You’ll come to a place where you step into your own power consistently, with passion and purpose.

And when you look into the mirror, you’ll respect the person looking back at you, because you’ll know that person speaks up for their needs.

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A version of this article has also appeared at Introvert, Dear.

The post Highly Sensitive People, You’re Not Responsible For Other People’s Feelings appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

You’re Not ‘Too Sensitive’ for Leaving a Toxic Situation

Lauren Sapala — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Sensitive people need to do what’s right to protect their energy — and sometimes that means taking a step back from those we consider “friends.”

Recently, I was having dinner with three friends at one of my favorite restaurants when the conversation turned to a topic I always dread: politics.

The friend sitting next to me raised her voice and began angrily detailing why people who disagreed with a certain issue were insane or stupid, or both. I immediately froze in place. My chest and throat constricted and heat rushed to my face. I felt like I was in the beginning stages of an anxiety attack.

A couple of seconds later, my other two friends joined in with their opinions, which were only a variation on all the things the friend sitting next to me had just stated. I was starting to calm down from the shot of adrenaline to my system and could move again, but now I felt shaky and a bit dizzy. I desperately tried to gather my thoughts as I also endeavored to calm my body.

As I settled myself, my intuition came back and began scanning the dialogue of my friends. I could hear the coldness in their voices. I could feel the dismissiveness, the judgment, the separation they felt from the people they were discussing.

The political issue that had come up was one that was complex and multifaceted. It could be viewed in dozens of different lights, depending on the situation and the person involved. In a flash, my mind grasped the depth of the gray area in between the two poles of black and white that my friends were determined to uphold.

And in that same flash, I saw that my friends weren’t really interested in exploring the topic anyway. They didn’t honestly want to find out if there was a solution. They were just angry, and they wanted to judge and blame someone.

A second after this realization, I plunged into sorrow. I was sorry about the attitudes of my friends at the table, but I also felt a bit hopeless about humanity overall. Will we ever get anywhere if we all keep judging and blaming each other? Just as I prepared to dive back into my inner world to try to work this question out, my thoughts were interrupted.

“Well, what about you? What’s your opinion?”

My three friends were looking at me, waiting for an answer. I could see in their eyes that the only way I could avoid an argument was to agree with what they had just said.

But I couldn’t do that. I had just gone through two minutes jam-packed with soul-searching existential questions and had come to the only conclusion I could possibly accept: My truth was radically different from theirs.

And they weren’t really interested in what I thought anyway.

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What It Means to Be Highly Sensitive Around Toxic Energy

It was at this point that I wished for the thing I have wished for probably about a million times in my life: that I was “fierce.” That I had the type of personality that was effortlessly assertive, knew how to prove a point through cutting logical argument, and thrived on competition and debate. I wished I was the kind of person who only cared about if I was right. It just seemed like life would be so much easier.

But I’m not any of those things.

I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP). I need to feel emotionally safe and supported before I can express my true thoughts to anyone, and I also need more time than most to process my ideas and speak in front of a group (even if it’s only three people). I also absorb the moods and feelings of those around me — especially strong ones.

So, when people around me go from zero to 10 on the anger scale, I pretty much get gut-punched by all the negative energy. And because I’m intuitive, I see almost every different side of any issue. Black and white doesn’t exist for me. I live in the gray area.

The situation with my friends in the restaurant is something that has happened to me throughout my entire life.. Whenever I’m in a group of people and they start arguing with each other (whether about politics or something else), my body goes into fight-or-flight mode. It’s not something I can control; it just happens.

My highly sensitive nervous system absorbs every ounce of toxic energy like a sponge — and sometimes I feel physically sick.

It’s kind of like I’m drunk or high (but not in a good way). I become flooded with thoughts and feelings, and sometimes I can hardly think or speak. In my most challenging moments, there’s no way to explain what I’m going through or why I need the people who are arguing, judging, and blaming to just stop it.

Sadly, I have a feeling that even if I could explain it, the people in argue-blame-judgment mode at that moment wouldn’t stop anyway.

You Have the Right to Leave Toxic Situations

So, what does an empathic, intuitive, highly sensitive person do in situations like these?

There is only one answer: Leave.

That night, I excused myself and said I needed to visit the restroom. I locked myself in and breathed deeply for a few moments until I calmed down. I texted my husband and briefly told him what was going on, and he sent me a few much-needed words of reassurance. Then I walked back out to the table and got through the rest of the meal.

But after that dinner, I left the situation in a more drastic way. I had already been feeling a rift growing between me and those friends, so I stepped back even more. I did not cut any of them out of my life completely — I still value them as people — but I shifted our phone calls to text-only exchanges. I unfollowed a couple of them on Facebook and took more frequent social media breaks.

Basically, I put some healthy boundaries in place.

Some might say I was being “too sensitive” for reacting to my friends’ argument the way I did. In this era of social media outrage, those same people might say I should have gotten just as loud and angry as my friends, vigorously defending my views. But as a soft-spoken HSP, that’s just not my style. Besides, what I believe our world needs right now is less arguing, not more.

As sensitive people, we need to do what’s right to protect our energy — and sometimes that means taking a step back even from those we consider “friends.”

The Only Way to Bloom

I also put more energy into nurturing some connections I had made recently with a new group of friends, people who were more mature, grounded, and interested in what good they could do with their lives — instead of judging others for the way they lived.

It’s vital for highly sensitive people to feel understood. There is nothing that can replace a good friend who recognizes your sensitive nature and honors it.

However, the other essential piece of the puzzle is to choose friends who are positive, compassionate, and nonjudgmental. HSPs must keep company with those who have curious minds and open hearts.

It’s the only way we will ever feel safe enough to bloom.

A version of this article was originally published on Introvert, Dear.

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The post You’re Not ‘Too Sensitive’ for Leaving a Toxic Situation appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.