Many sensitive women refer to their behavior as "people-pleasing," but this label often carries a weight of shame that obscures the truth. In this conversation, I reframe this behavior not as a character flaw, but as a deeply wired survival strategy. It is a nervous system response that once kept you safe, calm, and able to rest in environments where your needs were not met.

I speak to the cost of this strategy: self-abandonment. When we repeatedly say "yes" to others while ignoring our body's signals, we deplete ourselves and lose touch with our own truth. I share my own journey of being recognized for my "selflessness" only to realize I was abandoning my own needs. I also explain how the depth of processing in the highly sensitive nervous system makes us prone to feeling others' experiences as our own, b ...