Episode #292: Equip Your Future Self — How to Maximize What You Learn from a Big Decision

Transcript — scroll to read here (or download above)

****

Grit ‘n’ Grace — The Podcast

Episode #292: Equip Your Future Self — How to Maximize What You Learn from a Big Decision

The decision is done. So, why does your body still feel like it’s bracing for impact? It’s like your brain was on board but your body missed the memo. If you know that feeling, you’re not alone.
For those of us with Sensory Processing Sensitivity, dealing with the aftermath of so much sensory strain can be intense: second-guessing, self-recrimination, shame spirals.
In this episode, we’ll explore the question, “How do you learn and grow from what just happened – especially when parts of the process were just plain hard?” I’ll share what I’ve been learning about post-decision recovery, reflection, and documentation of your hard-won wisdom.
So if you’re craving closure that’s kind rather than self-critical, you’ll gain the tools you need to find peace in the present and to Equip Your Future Self!
[Intro music]
Welcome to Grit ‘n’ Grace: The Podcast for Highly Sensitive Christian Women!
I’m your host, Cheri Gregory.
Are you tired of the overthinking, overwhelm, and exhaustion that come with being a Highly Sensitive Person?
Are you ready to stop worrying that something’s wrong with you and start understanding and nurturing yourself as an HSP?
Together, we’ll build resilience, practice self-compassion, set healthy boundaries, unlock your creativity, and learn to embrace – not fight – your God-given sensitivity.
Let’s dig in!
[Intro music fades]
Hey friend –

I’m so glad you’re here with me again today as we wrap up our series on HSPs and Decision-Making.
We’ve explored how to Take Your Tim – that was Episode 289 – Change Your Mind – Episode 290 – and Stand Your Ground – Episode 291.
Today, we’re talking about how to Equip Your Future Self.
Which, as it turns out, is the episode I needed the most… but almost did not record.

What kicked my rear into gear was actually a conversation in the Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe, in which one member was talking about how she was raised in a military family:

“There was just kind of this sense in our family, all through our growing up, that ‘It is what it is.’ This is the situation. This is what’s going on. It didn’t leave space to deal with the aftermath.”

And so lemme share with you a clip of my gut-honest verbal processing during that Zoom call:

“…this tendency to to not process. I’m actually today – yesterday, and today I’ve worked on this final episode of Grit ‘n’ Grace for this HSPs and decision making that’s supposed to be about learning from the decision. I have been avoiding this episode. I have been distracting myself from this episode. I’ve been like, ‘Maybe I just won’t do this episode,’ even though I said I was going to, and I finally realized I am running from this episode. I don’t want to sit down and do the very things that this episode is telling my listeners need to be done, partly because I don’t have the kind of glowing report I want to have from parts of my process, but more than anything, it is the ‘I don’t have time. I fell behind because of the decision making process. It was icky in the end, you know, when we actually went to the dealership, it was a nightmare. I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to sound like a whiner. Don’t want to sound like I’m wallowing in it. Don’t want to sound like a grown adult who can’t just move on from one bad night at a dealership.’”

Now before we go any further, this feels like a great time for me to once again invite you to consider joining the Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe. It’s the kind of space that makes all the difference after you’ve made a big decision. Inside the Cafe, we don’t just talk about clarity and self-compassion – we practice them. It’s where HSP Christian women gather to process the hard parts, celebrate the healing, and take gentle steps forward together.
So if you’ve ever wished for a supportive sisterhood where your thoughtful pace is honored – come join us. You can learn more at CheriGregory.com/cafe or just click the link in today’s show notes.

Ok. So like I said, this is the episode about HSPs and decision-making that I needed the most but almost didn’t record.
Because this episode is not about making decisions – it’s about recovering from the depletion of decision-making, and about moving on with the wisdom we’ve gleaned.

Which are two things it feels like all the other grown-ups do without thinking (or over-thinking as the case may be) but for me — like for many HSPs — recovering and moving on are skills I’m learning late in life.

And to be honest, I’m tired of feeling like I’m repeating the same remedial class for the ump-teenth time and wondering, “WILL I EVER LEARN?!”

And it’s at times like this — when my Inner Critic is taunting me for being SO STINKIN’ SLOW TO LEARN WHAT EVERYONE ELSE ON EARTH ALREADY KNOWS — it is so tempting to just assure myself, “Oh, I’m sure I learned my lesson!” and dive into something entirely new.

But even as I feel everything within me wanting to be JUST DONE WITH DECISION-MAKING ALREADY – it does occurs to me that we’ve actually come full-circle.

Now that my car-buying decision is behind me, I need to Take My Time. to discern the lessons I can learn from this whole decision-making process. And then I need to record them in such a way that my future self can return to them.

I need to discern what I can learn so I can return to those lessons.
So, in this episode, I’m gonna tell you a bit about the hardest part of our car-buying journey – the night that all my “best laid plans” fell completely apart – and I almost did, too.

I’ll also share what I would have put into a letter to the General Manager of Dealership B if he’d actually shown any interest at all in reading it.

Then I’ll walk you through my “Notes for Next Time” Google Doc. Which is my way of re-framing my question from “Will I EVER learn?” to “How can I increase my likelihood of long-term learning?” and then answering that question with, “Documentation, Documentation, Documentation.”

Because I don’t just want to “hope” that my Future Self doesn’t have to go through some of this ever again; I want to leave a clear PLAN to help Future Me do specific things very differently next time.
And it’s my goal to do all this out allowing my Inner Critic any air time, but instead practicing lots of Self-Compassion; which I define as intentionally and fully receiving God’s grace for my-self.
So you ready to roll?
Let’s talk about the actual experience of buying my new car. I had told our sales rep – who I’ve been calling Tom – I don’t want to sit in a dealership with music blaring for three hours, and he assured me there was no way that would happen. I figured that we’d eat at Panda Express on the way home because it was close to the dealership, so I didn’t eat any supper prior to going.

Now, remember those scriptures I talked about in Episode 289, how I was going to put these verses on a card and carry it in my purse and have it with me at the dealership – “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths. I will guide them. I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do.” Isaiah 42:16 – I had so wanted to have a glowing report about how well things went at the dealership this time, finally, for the first time in my life. But here’s the truth: I totally forgot all about those verses.

And Tom did end up being right. We did not sit in the dealership with music blaring for three hours. It was four hours of complete sensory overload.

We headed to the dealership, Dealership B at 4:00 pm, and we did not return home until 9:00 pm that evening – and it’s only 15 minutes away. Tom kept coming and going, he was juggling three or four other customers, and he said that they were short handed that evening. Between the constant music blaring, the sudden car honking and the strobe light flashing when someone finalized their deal and had their photo taken, and the math that Daniel kept doing in his head about how much grading he could get done once we got home – it went from “I’ll get six assignments done, I’ll get five, I’ll get four, I won’t get any grading done tonight.” The only thing I had to eat that evening was a bag of trail mix.

We kept being told “Soon.” and “In a few minutes.” which always turned out to be far, far longer; and at some point it felt like we were being lied to, but there was nothing we could do about it. We had already agreed via email on what I believed to be our out the door price, and I had told our sales representative what our down payment was going to be and how many months we wanted to finance the balance, but he kept bringing papers with options to choose from, and I thought I’d already made the choices, so I wasn’t prepared to look at new choices, so I just kept declining everything I possibly could.

But he insisted that $800 worth of pre-installed stuff was non negotiable, and by that point in the evening, I didn’t have the time or bandwidth to make a thoughtful decision about what to do about the $800. Should I fight it harder? Should I pay it upfront? Should I wrap it into the loan? We ended up paying it as part of the down payment, which means we paid $800 more out of pocket than we expected to, and that’s having implications for our budget for months to come.

But here’s the thing, they didn’t give us any documentation of what that $800 included. And at the moment, I didn’t think to take photos of the various papers that were put in front of us as we were making those snap decisions. I expected that that documentation would be given to us later. And there was one point where I said, “So if we don’t agree to such and such today, we can never revisit it again in the future?” And our sales rep responded, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, the world is not coming to an end.”

And that is when I wish I had put my purse on my shoulder and walked out the front door. I was too exhausted and befuddled at the time, but in hindsight, I recognized he was implying that I was being unreasonable, maybe even hysterical, which tapped into my deep, deep fear – both as a woman, and as an HSP – of coming across as either. I mean, like, what could be worse than seeming unreasonable or hysterical?

And we did stay in that dealership all those hours because of sunk cost bias. ‘We’ve already invested this much time. If we leave now, it’ll all be wasted, so we have to stay.’ And then a few days later, we got both an emailed letter and a printed letter from the general manager. “I would like to add my sincere thank you for purchasing your new” – and then he lists the car – “from us. Any dealership can sell you a car. However, we strive to create a relationship that earns us a lifelong customer. We want you to choose to have your vehicle serviced with us, and most importantly, we want you to feel comfortable in recommending us to your family and friends. If we ever fail to live up to your desires and expectations, please call the appropriate department manager or myself, both Tom and I appreciate your business. If you were not completely satisfied with any aspect of your buying experience, I would be quite interested in hearing your reasons why. We know you had a choice of where to purchase your vehicle, and I’m very pleased that you chose us to be your automotive dealer.”

So we sat on that for about a month and processed it. This is what we sent back. “Thank you for your kind email. In it, you said ‘If you were not completely satisfied with any aspect of your buying experience, I would be quite interested in hearing your reasons why.’ We’ve been wondering if we should respond honestly to this for the last month, and ultimately, we’ll let you decide. Are you truly interested in hearing what our experience was like as two neurodivergent individuals? If not, that’s perfectly fine. No need to waste your time or hours. If you are, we now have enough distance from the whole experience to give feedback.”

And as of this recording, it’s been over a month since we sent that email, and we’ve heard absolutely nothing back. Now this raises a really interesting question that’s come up in the Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe recently: Should we actually tell other people that we are HSP? Or, in my husband’s case, he’s on the autism spectrum, and the overlap is the sensory processing sensitivity.

And it makes me think of the Safety Sorter, which is a visual tool that is in the book Overwhelmed, which is co-authored by Kathi Lipp and myself. The Safety Sorter really helps you figure out what kind of a person you’re dealing with, and helps you make decisions about how to respond to them. I’ll link to the safety sorter in the show notes for this episode, but I just want to quickly break down what the four categories are.

So at the bottom of the Safety Sorter is the Bully. You can recognize a bully because they blame, they shame, and they punish. The messages they send are ‘Who you are is unacceptable, and you’re to blame for all your problems.’

One step up is the Unsafe Person, and you can recognize this person because they presume, they dismiss, and they neglect. And the messages you’ll get from this kind of person is, ‘If you change, things would be better for everyone. If you want a better life,’ or in our case, if you want a better car buying experience, ‘you must be the one to change.’

Now, above the halfway point on the safety sorter is the Safe Person, and this is someone who understands, who listens, and accepts. The messages they’re sending are, ‘You aren’t crazy, you’re worth knowing.’

And then at the highest level is the Cheerleader, and this is someone who inspires and encourages and notices. And the messages they’re sending are, ‘You’re one of a kind. You’re invaluable.’

In my experience, both individually and with all the coaching I’ve done with highly sensitive Christian women, is that we really need to start with Cheerleaders and Safe Persons, and then we only ‘educate’ the Unsafe Persons and Bullies when we’re feeling very secure in who we are in Christ and we have practical support in place to help us process their reaction. And even then, I don’t even try to educate people unless I’m convicted that God is specifically guiding me to do so.

So that’s why I chose not to write a letter, even though I believe in the power of words. I prayed about writing the letter because sometimes we do that sort of thing, not because it changes other people, but because it changes us. But in this case, I wasn’t even convicted to write the letter for my own sake. Instead, I recognize my limited capacity, and I’ve chosen to put my energy into this episode of Grit ‘N’ Grace, which I believe will make a difference for you as an HSP sister, rather than spending hours crafting a letter.

We need to be wise where we put our resources, and really wise about who we’re vulnerable with and who we entrust information with.

This leads me to talking about vulnerability, and that was a huge piece of this whole decision-making puzzle. My husband’s mother went through a serious health decline from July through December of 2024, and she passed away in mid-January. As I’ve already mentioned, we had a family car transmission that died three days prior to the memorial service, and I was driving it at the time, and we were stranded, so that felt very, very vulnerable. And we ended up signing the papers at Dealership B exactly one month after the memorial service for my mother-in-law.

Throughout this time, my own father had been having ER visits, and during the decision-making process, I realized that I was having to become an expert and make a huge decision practically overnight. I realized this wasn’t just anxiety I was feeling, I was actually carrying what felt like a very large mental load. It was a lot of information in a very short period of time. I was trying to get myself up to speed in an area of life I’m not normally well versed in, and the people at the dealership who were supposed to be helping me, they knew way more than I did, and they were getting paid on commission. And so all of that combined to make me feel especially vulnerable during this time.

And then, if the manager had been interested in knowing our experience, I would also have shared with him the qualities of a Highly Sensitive Person. I might have used the term ‘sensory processing sensitivity’ rather than HSP, because that has such a strong overlap with autism.

So the first quality of an HSP is deep processing, the need for reflection. And again, in this situation, I thought we had agreed on our out the door price, and there were just so many things thrown at me that night at the dealership, too many choices that still had to be made spur of the moment.

The second quality of a Highly Sensitive Person is sensory overload. And more recently, I have learned the term sensory strain. And so in the dealership, the lights were absolutely glaring, the sounds were overwhelming, the music. And it was music we liked. They know their demographics, so it was music that we were familiar with, especially from the late 70s and 80s. But still, it was so incredibly loud.

And so the external senses were overwhelming, but also the interoception, that gnawing sense of dread, the paralyzing self-doubt, that gut punch feeling of being manipulated and lied to, the whiplash of second guessing ourselves while we were trapped in an environment that was engineered to create a sense of urgency.

Another piece of interoception was the headache I got within a couple of hours. I was dizzy from lack of protein, and I had a pounding headache, and I was feeling very, very disoriented by the end of being there for four hours, and then there was kind of a sensory chokehold response. I didn’t recognize this at the time, but I went from a fawn response to a freeze response while I was in that dealership. At first, I was trying to be conciliatory, and then I could sense myself just shutting down, which means that at that point, my body considered myself very unsafe, and now my body considers Dealership B an unsafe place to be.

This is a part of decision-making that we don’t talk about, but it’s also the part that my nervous system is not going to forget anytime soon.

The third key quality of a Highly Sensitive Person is the emotional intensity. And so on the one hand, there was excitement, right? I had found my car. It was a beautiful metallic candy apple red, but then mixed in with that was confusion and lack of clarity and too many choices. And then disappointment. They kept telling me the car was being detailed. And then when it came time for us to go home, and they gave me the keys, they said, “Well, we only have one guy back there. You can bring it back later this week for a full detailing.” And let me tell you, I was disappointed at that moment, because they had told me so many times it was being detailed, and then when they gave me the keys, they had to actually tell me it hadn’t been detailed. That disappointment shifted to very real disillusionment when I finally ordered a bottle of Goof Off and spent 30 minutes removing those extra sticky labels from the dealership that are on the window.

The fourth key quality of a Highly Sensitive Person is empathy, and oh my goodness, in these kinds of situations, it can really over-activate. I felt bad for Tom that night. Like, I know what it’s like to try to bounce between people you need to serve. I’ve been a classroom teacher. I know what it’s like when four or five different students needed me and I couldn’t take good care of all of them.

And then I didn’t want to make things worse or be a bother like in all situations. I wanted to be the least demanding person he encountered, especially considering that we had had a bit of a kerfuffle, which I described in Episode 288.

And here’s some notes that I took afterwards. I said, ‘I do not have relationships with any of these people. They have a car I want, but they, the relationships with them do not come with the car. But all of my worries and emotions are about the people and whether I’m doing the right thing or the wrong thing. But how many of them are self reflecting about me?’ And then in my notes, I typed in all caps, ‘NONE OF THEM ARE HAVING ANY EMPATHETIC RESPONSES TO ME AT ALL!’ It was all one way, empathy, zero, empathetic reciprocity.

And to quote my friend Kendra, who is a retired psychology professor, she had this one line in a recent email she sent out that I just, that hit me so powerfully. She said, “I’ve outsourced my autonomy for someone else’s authority.” And that happens so often when my empathy becomes overly activated.

And then the last key quality of a Highly Sensitive Person is noticing nuances. This is normally a strength for HSPs, but I was so depleted that night, I missed out on what I normally would have noticed. And when my freeze response kicks in, then my noticing nuances disappears. And so in this case, it backfired on me.

So those are just some things that I would have shared in an email had the general manager been interested. I would have shared how it felt vulnerable, I would have shared the qualities of an HSP, and I would have shared our lived experience.

Alrighty. So here’s my notes for next time. I like to think of these as love notes to my future self, and you can also think of them as permission slips.

One thing I mentioned in Episode 289 is I wish that I had audio recorded the conversations I had with Jonathon, my son, who went with me to all of the test drives. And I wish I had audio recorded our conversations to really capture those first impressions while they were fresh. But again, I’m not beating myself up for not doing it this time. I can discern, I can learn, and then I can return, to my list of notes for next time.

Another thing to put down was to schedule plenty of margin on decision day. The buyer of my little 2009 Honda Civic came to our house at 2:00 pm. Everything went smoothly. After that. I went to the bank to deposit the check, and then came home, and then we went to the dealership to pick up my new car, and on paper, it looked great. In hindsight, I’m recognizing selling my car would have been enough for one day. Selling my old car and getting the new car all on the same day was a lot.

Now, in terms of the dealership experience: eat before you go, which is always wisdom for an HSP. Pack snacks. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Bring a book or something else to keep you grounded. Wait in the car. That didn’t even occur to me. My husband’s car was parked right out front. If we had gone and sat in his vehicle, we would have had complete control over sensory input, and the bonus of that would have been they could have seen us as a flight risk. We could have turned the key in the ignition and driven home at any moment.

Insist on getting everything in writing. No on the spot decision making without documentation. Next one, predefine your limits. Decide in advance how long you’ll stay, and plan your exit strategy. And then the next part is really important, imagine yourself leaving, and that’s the thing I hadn’t done. I had told myself I could leave, but I hadn’t imagined myself actually doing it, so when I went from the fawn response into the freeze response, I could, literally, at that point, I could not move.

Now that I think about it, I almost would need to practice it at home. Set up a chair and pretend it’s the dealership, and then literally practice putting my purse on my shoulder, getting up and walking out the door.

Next one, set a timer to go off every 15 to 20 minutes. Re-evaluate your clarity and capacity each time. Next, notice when you start to fade or feel foggy. And then there’s a special note to this one: This may be your body’s way of signaling that you’re feeling manipulated. And again, I don’t think I had that word for it. While it was happening, the idea that I was staying hour after hour after hour in a location where I was being manipulated felt so inconceivable that I really couldn’t process it in the moment.

And then I love the next one, default to departure. When in doubt, walk away.

And then the last one here comes in the form of a little bit of a story. The day after we brought the car home, Daniel said, “I’m really surprised you got a car that doesn’t have a Bose sound system.” But he didn’t say anything about a Bose sound system before I bought the car. And here’s the thing: I didn’t start ruminating over it. Next time, I’ll either have him come with me, or at least I’ll sit down and brainstorm with him about what he considers vital in a new car. That makes total sense.

However, does any of that mean that this experience was ruined? Not at all. I can take notes for next time, and I can still stand my ground. So while many of these are specific to the car buying situation, they can easily be generalized into HSP survival strategies and thriving strategies for many, many situations.

Here’s what I’m realizing now that I’ve taken the time to actually take my notes for next time to equip my future self: I was avoiding doing all of this because I was afraid that the outcome would be post-decision regret, but because I’ve gone through this reflective process now, my regrets have been transformed into practical lessons for the future, and rather than fragmented thoughts rattling around inside my busy brain, I have distilled wisdom, documented and organized for easy retrieval. So that means I’m more able to fully enjoy post-decision satisfaction, not because I made the perfect decision, or because everything went so well – it clearly didn’t – but because this is where I’m choosing to focus my energy and attention now on all the ways I’m enjoying and benefiting from the intentional effort I did put into making this decision.

Now, if today’s episode has been resonating with you – especially the parts about learning from hard experiences without spiraling – I would love for you to consider joining us in the Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe. It’s a safe, faith-filled space where Highly Sensitive Christian women like you unpack the challenges of real life with grace and truth. We reflect together (without ruminating), support each other (without judgment), and keep learning how to embrace our God-given sensitivity in the ordinary moments of our everyday lives.
Come on in – we’ve saved you a seat! Just visit CheriGregory.com/cafe or tap the link in the show notes.
[Outro music]

Thank you for listening to Grit ‘n’ Grace: The Podcast for Highly Sensitive Christian Women!

I hope this episode leaves you feeling encouraged and equipped to thrive, and ready to equip your future self!

Be sure to follow in your favorite podcast app and share this episode with a friend!
If you’re brand new to the whole HSP concept, come take the “Am I a Highly Sensitive Person?” quiz — you’ll find that link in the show notes.
And remember: God created you sensitive; in Christ, you are always strong.