I attended a concert recently where I didn’t know the band’s music but I knew their story so, instead of singing along to the music, I thought about their journey. I thought about the way a woman stating her mind can end in professional devastation, about the redemption story of rising from divorce, and about the power of sisterhood supporting each other through challenge.

The person I was with had a completely different experience, they just enjoyed the music.

In my work, I often have a chance to speak with the deep thinkers, the neurodivergent, the feel-everything-people, the connectors. Many come from a background where ‘highly sensitive’ was dismissed as ‘too sensitive’ and big thinking philosophical meandering were ‘different-bad’ not ‘different-neutral’.

There is power in reclaiming our hidden parts with affection. There is comfort in acknowledging and holding confidence in our differences. There is acceptance in knowing that noticing all the things is only possible because of one’s deep sensitivity.

This is what therapy is. It is noticing the scripts we carry, deciding what is outdated or no longer serving us, and updating those scripts to own our glorious, unique, different, sometimes-messy ways of inhabiting our world.