Ever since I started my copywriting company in 2015, the way I really wanted to do things never quite synced up with the expectations of my clients, my colleagues, my business coaches, hustle culture, marketing bro’s, etc.

For a long time I thought it was me—that I was a weirdo who didn’t have what it took to make it in the “real” world.

But slowly, thanks to writers like Kelly Diels, the work I did with my business coach Stephanie Hayes, and my own innate stubbornness, I realized it wasn’t me that was fucked up—

And in 2019, I discovered that I was officially a Highly Sensitive Person.

I took Elaine Aron’s online assessment, and I fucking crushed that shit.

I started reading, learning, and talking about High Sensitivity—it’s a trait, not a diagnosis or a syndrome or a collection of “symptoms.” It’s most simply described as a stimulation threshold that’s lower than the rest of the population.

The trait itself is neutral—it just is—and any stigma around it comes from our culture. It can often lead to misdiagnosed anxiety disorders, and is frequently mischaracterized as introversion or shyness, which may correlate, but aren’t entirely accurate.

This information was literally life-changing for me. It recontextualized my entire childhood; it helped me understand & befriend my depression in new and wonderful ways; it woke me up to the demands I was placing on myself, and why I had an ugly-cry, bathroom-floor meltdown at that podcasting conference in Atlanta.