“Love yourself” is one of those pieces of advice that sounds great until you are the person sitting there thinking, okay, but how?

How do I love myself if I do not feel particularly lovable? How do I love myself if I learned to be hard on myself very early? How do I love myself if I have spent years ignoring my own needs, second-guessing my feelings, or trying to be acceptable to everyone else?

This comes up a lot in therapy. And my answer often surprises people: through actions!

I was recently reading about rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, because it is a term I have been hearing more often. A lot of what I found connected RSD with ADHD, which makes sense. Many people with ADHD describe intense sensitivity to rejection, criticism, or perceived disapproval, and having language for that experience can be helpful.

When I initially heard the term "Highly Sensitive Person" I'll admit, I thought it was a term that someone coined and then built a theory around. In other words, I didn't realize it was actually an observable trait. But as I learned more and more about this, and as this term kept coming up in different spaces, I discovered that not only was I wrong, but I really resonate with the concept! In fact, I'm not at all ashamed to admit, I identify as a highly sensitive person. Let's dig into what this means.

From the beginning of our history, back when humans saw ourselves as part of nature, not apart from it, we have been looking to the sky for clues, inspiration, and guidance. It's how we navigated across oceans and trekked over mountains. Long before we had phones, maps, weather apps, or GPS, we looked up.