This interview is with Maria Hill, the creative visionary behind the lovely Sensitive Evolution website (previously called HSP Health). Maria’s new book The Emerging Sensitive, is a wonderful contribution to our understanding of sensitivity. In the book, Maria puts sensitivity into its larger cultural context. Many of us live in environments that don’t support or understand our sensitivity. This affects our very experience of life.
In The Emerging Sensitive, Maria Hill shines a guiding light on how HSPs can start reclaiming their sense of home and how they can start bringing forth their gifts into the world.
Hi Maria. We know that you are the creative force behind the wonderful Sensitive Evolution website (previously called HSP Health) and are also an abstract painter. Can you tell us a little more about your own journey as an HSP? How did you start your lovely site?
Sensitive Evolution (HSP Health) are recent endeavors for me. When I was young I knew I was different. I did not have the same interests or focus as everyone around me. That was actually helpful because my family was extremely dysfunctional. I kept trying to understand why they were so miserable all the time, tried to make others happy and tried to keep myself safe and none of it worked. They operated on the belief that there was always something you could do which is true in a way but that thinking does not help unless everyone sees themselves as a part of the solution to any problem.
As a result of my early experiences I knew I had to raise myself, and question everything. I became an independent, creative thinker at a young age and so it is a skill I have built over time. I am constantly connecting the dots and trying to understand when they do not connect. I started my website to create a resource for people like me and it has evolved over time to what it is today bringing all that I have explored and learned into my writing.
Your wonderful new book The Emerging Sensitive puts sensitivity in a larger cultural context. Since many HSPs live in societies that are focused on materialism and achievement and feel out of step with them, how can they start going about reclaiming their own sense of belonging?
I think it has to start with your values and skills. Values worth supporting include health, quality of life and well-being for all. There are businesses, organizations and industries that support those values. However your skills can intersect and support healthy constructive values will help you start to make a meaningful and satisfying life. Locating people in meetups and other groups with similar values can help also.
Your book nudged me to think about how the larger culture has played into my own life. I went along with the system in my 20s, but constantly felt like a fish out of water in my corporate career. Do you think that HSPs, being in a minority, need to actively look for more alternative ways of being, whether it is in their careers or their lives?
Most highly sensitive people need to work at a pace that suits them. The current economic system is fast-paced and aggressive and often not a suitable work environment for HSPs. I think that the existing system offers us the opportunity to develop skills that we can then apply to an endeavor that is close to our hearts. The challenge is to find a business/organization which will not be depleting. There are organizations with healthy values and attitudes toward people but they are in the minority right now but they are out there. Another alternative is to develop a skill that lets you work part-time. Starting your own business can work also.
In The Emerging Sensitive, you talk about how HSPs excel at energy awareness and looking at the big picture. You also talk about how HSPs are not tactically oriented and so, struggle with the “Middle Earth” — the area of our daily lives. Could you share anything that you might have learnt in your own life that makes your daily life easier or puts it into a different perspective?
I think HSPs have to work at being balanced, grounded and destressing. I have been doing Transcendental Meditation for 20 years which helps. I also think Ayurveda offers the best hope for health. They have created a daily schedule which will keep you are healthy as possible and have great herbs to relieve stress and support the nervous system. I also use a Bioelectric Shield which blocks EMF and negative energies.
It helps to find ways to develop perspective so that you do not get lost in all the conflicting energies around you. Systems like Spiral Dynamics help you to make sense of the world around you so that you can make wise choices in relating to others. Spiral Dynamics is a framework for understanding the various stages of individual and cultural development so that when you work with people who are different, you take those differences into account and can be wiser about your goals and expectations of others. It also helps you to let go of old situations where you may have unresolved hurts or pain because it provides you with some understanding about why a relationship or situation did not work the way you wanted.
How was the process of writing this book for you? Can you tell us a little bit about your journey of incubating and developing this project? What did you learn from this journey?
It actually took me only several months to do the writing of the book but I think it has been incubating my whole life. When the writing is ready to be done it can be effortless to write and although it was not totally effortless, I was easier than I expected given all the horror stories I have read about people writing a book.
You are a lovely abstract painter, and I have become extremely interested in how colors and art help us metabolize our emotions, especially the so-called negative ones. How do you think of your art, and what place does it have in your life?
I am glad that you like my work. I love to paint and plan to do more in the future. My work is about both shapes and colors. It is about perception, experience and the integration of them. In some ways the shapes are portraits of how we process or have processed our thoughts and life experience. The colors are an expression of that processing. I can draw new and unique shapes limitlessly. So I plan to develop them further.
Is there a way in which you define success that might be different from how it is normally defined? How did you come to understand what success means to you?
Great question! I put inner peace first which requires self examination but I think it is worth it. Being right with the world is important. I also think coming into your own by developing your unique gift and giving it to the world is important also. So essentially success is about owning and developing your contribution to the best of your ability. When you do that, you are right with the universe and the universe is right with you.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss my book and ideas. I appreciate it.
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