Sensitivity is a gift. Highly sensitive people possess the fine tuning to be keenly aware of subtleties in their physical and emotional environments. We’re extra sensitive to smells, sounds, even light. It’s important to us that our environments are not just functional, but beautiful.
We intuit connections between things, and feel others’ emotions so keenly, that we are often quite conscious of what’s going on underneath the surface.
But when we see the elephant in the room and point it out, we learn quickly that it makes some people uncomfortable. So it can be pretty frustrating when others want to talk about things like road construction, while one person in the room is secretly angry with another, someone else is feeling hurt, and we see deeper connections in the interaction everyone is having.
What do you do with that kind of complex perception?
Maybe, after a while, you clam up. You stop bothering. You sit there, bored out of your mind, or filled with anxiety from the emotions you’re picking up, knowing that if you try to address what you see, the other people in the room would either look at you like you were crazy, or get angry that you described the elephant at all.
But all that does is drain your energy and hide your wisdom.
Being highly sensitive is really like speaking a different language. And part of the beauty of high sensitivity is that it can be translated through artistic expression: writing, photography, composing, painting, acting—any kind of self-expression that translates your complex experience into something others can experience in their own way.
Let the wisdom of your sensitivity infuse your life—and art.
Your sensitivity may help you beautify the environment for yourself and others. It may compel you to write about highly-charged topics in your mission to tell the truth, however uncomfortable. Your sensitivity may flow from your fingertips to into a painting that moves someone to tears.
In whatever way you are meant to, express your vision for the rest of us.
We not only want it, we need what you have to share with us.