No one cares. (The greatest gift highly sensitive people take for granted)

I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't know how it felt.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks.

Mentally exhausted. Emotionally energized. Creatively wired.

Tears bud in my eyes as I type. The reason why, I’m not sure. But, I believe it’s important to write when you feel these emotions, to try and make sense of them. As I feel the tears subside before they can stream down my cheeks, I’m aware that I’m in public. I’m aware other people are around me. I’m aware that I’m making my feelings highly available and highly present.

My headphones blare with classical music, ambient and beautiful. It’s my addiction. I listen to these playlists on repeat, diving into the unraveling minds of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Vivaldi—my personal favorite, for I firmly believe no one commands the voice of the violin like him.

It’s this realization that forces me to sit with a reality many sensitive people don’t want to accept—that no one fucking cares.

This is not a nihilistic perspective. It’s not negative. It’s a very, very beautiful thing that no one cares unless you make them care. They are minding their own business. They have their own lives to pay attention to. They have their own responsibilities to manage. Their own strife, happiness, and loves.

Your close strangers don’t care.

I used to care a lot about what other people thought. When I was in my early teens, I loved my interests so deeply that when I shared them with others, it chipped away at my heart when they didn’t see the beauty in what I liked the same way I did.

I overcame that in my early twenties. It’s extremely powerful to be able to love what you love without the approval of others. To do what you want to do without worrying what others think.

I realize, looking back at those painful memories—rehearsing conversations in my head before they happened; dismissing my feelings to maintain peace in a broken, emotionally violent atmosphere; clinging to dissociation as it protected my rabbiting heart from exploding from within my chest when I was pushed against people, voices, and experiences that frightened me—have reminded me of how different things are.

My childhood would have been so, so much easier if I cared more about how I felt and less about what others thought. I didn’t give a fuck about my own feelings. I was a walking internal bomb. No one knew how I truly felt, because I was always doing whatever I could to make sure no one knew.

To protect monsters who hurt me—who have been deeply, savagely hurt themselves in ways I wouldn’t wish on anyone—I folded into myself and pretended everything was fine, fine, fine.

Today, the only way I still wrestle with this is when I provide work to clients. Even with proven results and happy clients, I feel like I shouldn’t be paid for my work. I feel like writing copy for enterprise brands, ghostwriting LinkedIn content for investors and entrepreneurs—and, soon, taking photographs of couples who value artistry more than glamorous weddings—has never once deserved a penny.

Every sales conversation felt like I was committing fraud. I wouldn’t call this impostor syndrome. I would call it more of an exploration of the truth, and ignoring the truth. I was highly aware that the numbers, emotional reactions, and visible outcomes were evidence that I was simply being cruel to myself.

But, in the end, it’s because if I don’t like my work, I don’t think it’s successful.

I care if my clients love the work, for obvious reasons. I want them to be happy, for obvious reasons. If my client is upset, I carry it on my shoulders and wear it like a chipped badge of Anxiety, Depression, and Please Don’t Hurt Me.

But… when they are happy, it doesn’t feel real. It never feels real, unless I like the work myself. Every word I write, photograph I take, and story I construct must fulfill my personal obligations as well as the expectations of the people I work with.

This is a huge reason why I find most client work exhausting. Meaningful, in the grand scheme of things, for the people I find myself lucky enough to write for, but incredibly draining.

I’m an introvert. I crave aloneness (not loneliness). I love writing my fiction in the quiet solitude of a Saturday morning, just minutes after whispering to my partner that I love him, and want him to enjoy time to himself, too.

(He takes that time, because I’m lucky enough to be in a relationship where we value our own time and our own bedrocks of creative energy)

It’s in my twenties that I’ve learned the most valuable lesson of all—as a neurodivergent, highly sensitive, slightly emotionally unstable person:

When I care about what others think, I fail myself.

When I care about what I feel, I create better outcomes for myself, and my clients.

This is an odd juxtaposition, as working in corporate—especially the last startup job I had—always involved completely disregarding my years of experience for the approval of others. The corporate world is brutal in that sense, for artistic people who take their work extremely seriously.

I’ve learned to not take feedback personally, which is massively important. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t mean I don’t spend twenty minutes crying after rough client feedback. Not because my feelings are hurt, but because I didn’t give them what they wanted, and I instantly start doubting my abilities to deliver what they wanted. I care about the work. I care about my clients.

If you’re a multi-hyphenate person who works for others, for yourself, or with clients, you understand the battle between not caring, and caring.

It’s valuable to care what your clients think, because their opinion matters. They’re paying you for your expertise. They trust you. You’ve earned their trust. So, when you slip, you feel like a failure—if you’re a little immature in that area, like me. I’m still working on detaching for the sake of my mental health, but I’m realizing it’ll take a long time before the work side of “not caring what others think” subsides.

It’s odd, because this is not the same as people-pleasing.

I don’t care at all what others think of me when it comes to my interests. I’m at a point where someone I deeply care about and tell me: “I hate everything you like,” and I will be genuinely unbothered by it.

I’m very proud of that.

But, I still suffer when it comes to creating professional work. My love of imperfection contradicts my love of delivering quality work that feels like it should be paid for.

But, in another sense, I’m not in love with literal imperfection, but interpretive imperfection—a kind of imperfection that’s beautiful and messy in its humanity, not destructive to the results it delivers.

As a highly sensitive person, I’ve always felt oddly at war between my head and my heart. I’m always overthinking. I have very little mind-body connection. I have zero spatial awareness. I’ve always been a bit awkward with how I move. Not by choice.

In the same breath, I’m always thinking so fast my mouth can barely keep up. I’m always daydreaming and thinking and getting distracted by the visions and stories running away in my head. I’m always wondering if this is a beautiful gift, or an extremely difficult beast to wrangle. (Most days, it’s both)

I had a plan when I sat down to write this newsletter.

As you can tell, it got away from me.

The main point I’m trying to make is that there are countless highly sensitive people out there who still give way too much of a damn about what others think.

The second point I’m realizing I should try to make as well, is that not one journey is linear. Sometimes, there are multiple facets you have to grow into. It might feel daunting, trying to master the ability to detach and not care what others think, but it might vary between your passions and interests. It might depend on the person.

Been thinking a lot about this lately.

I guess I want you to walk away with these questions:

“Am I creating this work because I care about it, or because someone else expects me to? Do I like the idea of this project? What will this project do for me? Am I too attached to how I feel about it? Or, am I doing meaningful work that might not matter to me at all, but matters immensely to the person I’m creating this for?”

Maybe that’s a valuable place to start.

Asking questions. Forcing ourselves to confront the hidden answers.

That might be the pivot we need.

Because, as I write this newsletter with my would-be tears fully wiped away, my senses clear, and my anxiety in a steady little thrum under my chest…

I’m coming to terms—a little bit, every day, in some way—that the art of not caring what others think might be the one thing that saves the hearts and souls of highly sensitive artists. Everywhere.

Be patient with yourself as you pursue this journey.

I’m very grateful I learned how to do it with one category in my life.

Now, to conquer the next one…

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If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Taylor, a writer, generalist, and photographer dedicated to unraveling the art and philosophy of personal branding, identity creation, and carving your footprint into the ethos for people breaking the rules.

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