Protect Your Time: Tip #2 in the How to Thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person Series
Tips on how to thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person have grown exponentially in recent years. Thanks to the research of Elaine Aron, PhD, so many people now understand the HSP trait. Her HSP books have made this research accessible to so many people around the world. This means that so many HSPs now understand themselves better and can make tangible changes to support themselves. (This means you!)
I’m a Highly Sensitive person myself, as well as an HSP therapist for women living in Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Washington, DC. I like to highlight these five things that HSPs can do to thrive:
Protect your time
Practice grounding
Continue to learn about the HSP trait
Today I’m talking about protecting your time as a Highly Sensitive Person. It’s the second of five in the How to Thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person series.
What do you mean by protecting your time?
An HSP brain takes in more information than non-HSP brains. As a result, Highly Sensitive People need more down time than non-HSPs. Part of taking care of your HSP brain involves giving yourself more breaks and more time for transitions. Doing this gives your brain little resets, and prevents overstimulation and overwhelm.
Giving yourself more down time includes blocking off time in your schedule for it.
Protecting your time means that you are taking your need for down time into account.
For example, when someone asks you if you can help them move on Saturday, your answer will require some thought. It won’t be as simple as saying, sure, I don’t have any plans at that time. You’ll need to look at your day - and maybe your week! - and assess what your capacity will be.
How many things do you have scheduled during the week, and on Saturday? Are they things that will require a lot of mental energy from you? How much down time will you have that week? What else is going on for you on Saturday? These are the kinds of questions you want to ask yourself.
Of course if something is a top priority for you, you can rearrange your schedule around that. But you want your first priority to be yourself.
Protecting your time protects your nervous system
I’m sure you’ve had one of those days where you didn’t have a minute to breathe. Meetings and errands and to-do lists back to back. How did you feel at the end of those days? Probably utterly spent and like you needed to crawl under the blankets to recover. Your nervous system hates not getting any breaks! Your brain doesn’t have enough time to catch up. Irritability and overwhelm come in with a vengeance.
I’m not saying you can avoid these all the time. But you can certainly minimize the number of times they happen. Protecting your time is a way to plan for breaks and down time so that your brain can refresh and be ready to support you. Even mini-breaks throughout the day can make a difference.
Protecting your time means saying no
When you say yes to more than you have capacity for, you short yourself on attention and enjoyment of the things you agreed to do. Saying no is not a natural response for HSPs. You want to make everyone around you as comfortable as possible! HSPs are often afraid that saying no might cause hurt feelings, irritation, or even threaten a relationship entirely.
It’s true - these are all actual risks. The question you want to ask yourself is whether it’s worth it to you to avoid those things and stay in overwhelm, or risk those things and give yourself the opportunity to do the things you love. There’s no right answer here, and you are always in charge of what you decide. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can be creative about how much risk and when you want to take.
Protecting your time allows you to fully engage
If you said yes to every opportunity and request, well, that would be impossible. (Even non-HSPs can’t do that!) And for Highly Sensitive people, saying yes to most things can spell disaster. Not only does this set you up for overwhelm, it also prevents you from enjoyment. As an HSP, you love the deep engagement, not surface level. If you’re saying yes to too many things, you get into surface level territory.
By protecting your time, you allow yourself to engage deeply and fully in the activities you love the most.
About the Author
Owner of Bronwyn Shiffer Psychotherapy, I love supporting HSPs to strengthen their capacity to protect their time.
I offer online therapy in Boston and throughout Massachusetts, virtual therapy in Wisconsin, and telehealth therapy in Washington, DC.
In addition to therapy for Highly Sensitive people, I also provide anxiety counseling and depression therapy. Looking for support in fully engaging in things you love?