The Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur - The Secrets of Your Health Could Lie within this Movement

 JW: Welcome to Simplifi Health. This is Dr. Jill Wade. It is my pleasure today to have a guest that I think is going to blow your mind, Heather Dominick is incredible with what movement she is making right now so without further ado, I want to welcome Heather to the program.
HD: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here with you, Dr. Jill.
JW: Where Are you, Heather?
HD: I’m calling in from Manhattan in where I live which is kind of odd as a highly sensitive but ironically it works out very well.
JW: For our listeners who maybe have never even heard of this highly sensitive concept, I would love for you to explain a little bit to them.
HD: Sure, absolutely. First of all, I am Heather Dominick, the Creator of businessmiracles.com and Founder and Leader of the Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur movement since 2010. What that really means is that I have been self-employed since 2004. In 2010, I brought my business across the million dollar mark for the first time and it was an absolutely awful experience.
Whenever I talk about this, I always like to really make it clear that it wasn’t the income generation that made it such an awful experience, but the way that I went about it. I was absolutely exhausted, extremely overwhelmed and really entered into a dark night of the soul and in that dark place, I just withdrew from everything and anything except pouring my love into my clients that I was serving at that time.
It was that dark place that brought me to be connected with Dr. Elaine Aron who is the founding researcher when it comes to everything about highly sensitive people. I have never even heard the term highly sensitive at that time. Once I understood what it was, it didn’t really surprise me that I was highly sensitive. But what surprised me when I took one of Dr. Aron’s assessments was how highly sensitive I was. Because I’m a real believer and one of my foundational principle teachings has always been that your ideal client is a version of you, I brought one of Dr. Aron’s assessment into a group of twenty-five women entrepreneurs that I was working with at that time. I had them all take the assessment, and lo and behold, every single woman in that room was also highly sensitive. Now again, that didn’t surprise me because of my foundational principle of teaching but what surprised me was how much they did not want to be highly sensitive.
JW: It just sounds bad, doesn't it?
HD: Exactly. They really sigh, “I have a weakness and I saw it as a negative label.” That was really what really began my journey in terms of really researching, developing, teaching, and training for the highly sensitive who desires to be successfully self-employed. Here we are, I’ve been doing that work ever since.
JW: What I want to share with everyone, I met you probably about two years ago-ish. As soon as I met you, and I heard you for the very first time with an entrepreneur group that we belong to together, I immediately knew just by the way you were describing your journey and your message that I really thought, “Oh, my gosh I am a highly sensitive entrepreneur and I have been for years and maybe just maybe that was part of the answer to why my overall health had been kind of having this roller coaster up and down effect for basically my entire career of twenty-five years in dentistry.”
So my theory at that point very quickly became, “Wow I think that people who are drawn to being health-care providers of any kinds, of nurses, doctors, dentists, hygienists, even team members that want to try to serve people like that, teachers, things like that, they all may be, maybe not all, but many are drawn to those particular careers and opportunities because they are highly sensitive. What's your theory on that, Heather?
HD: Absolutely. That was a big part of what really again brought me on this journey, is the deeper I went into Dr. Aron’s research, I really saw that those of us who are highly sensitive first of all are brought into the world this way per Dr. Aron’s research so I always like to say that being highly sensitive is not something that your parents did to you and you didn’t pick it up on the playground.
JW: You didn't catch it.
HD: Or it’s not because of that weird drink you had at that college party, literally the way that your nervous system is wired which is different from 80% of the world who are not highly sensitive. For those of us who are, our nervous system is wired to literally take in information at a more intense level, that’s information from all sensory aspects.
Now, that can really have us in our HSE shadows, what I refer to when you don’t know how to really work with this highly sensitive nature or it can really have you at what I refer to as your HSE strength, when you do really know how to work with your highly sensitive nature in support and in service of the work that you do. That brings me to sharing that Dr. Aron has really identified that those of us who are highly sensitive, we are here to be what she refers to as the royal advisers of the world. We are, because of again, the honing, the makeup of nerve wired to be excellent coaches, excellent healers, excellent service providers. So your intuitive sense that a lot of practitioners in that health arena most likely are highly sensitive is absolutely spot on.
JW: And being a, let’s say, a highly sensitive person, healer, or a service-oriented type of person, it’s not a bad connotation, it actually gives you, in my opinion, this kind of almost intuitive-like manner of being able to really read your clients, your patients, the students and actually be able to read them if you want to say and actually change how you are going to present something or how are you going to talk about almost like right on the spot.
HD: Absolutely. Again, that really goes back to whether you’re operating from your HSE shadows or your HSE strengths. So for example, some of our HSE strengths is that we are able to really read or intuit subtleties within an environment so that might be sound, it might be light, it might be any types of smells. We can intuit what our patients, what our clients need and just naturally, automatically adjust the environment to fit those needs.
We also, one of our HSE strengths is we are very intuitive by nature. We are also, other HSE strengths deep listeners, we are deep thinkers, we are deep feelers. When you know how to really access these strengths and have them working for you in your practice, in your business, absolutely, these are literally superpowers that allow you to be that excellent dentist, that excellent health practitioner, again, that excellent coach, healer, etc.
Now the issue is when you don’t really know how to channel your highly sensitive abilities and that has you more on the HSE shadow side and so that is when we start feeling the HSE shadow of overwhelm. For example, when we’re taking in too much information, too much energy, too many emotions from our patients, from our clients, even from our loved ones or we fall into the HSE shadows of perfectionism, and that then lead us to the HSE shadow of procrastination and I could go on and on. So yes, absolutely, it equips you to be that best dentist, that best health practitioner as long as you really know how to access those abilities and use them as strengths.
JW: I think you just described it beautifully. On occasion, I've heard you describe maybe even as a child or growing up, maybe that you felt different, didn't quite understand why you felt different from some people. Can you kind of expand on that thought?
HD: Yeah, absolutely. According to research, [inaudible 00:10:38] of us who are brought into the world, born into the world highly sensitive. That’s pretty easy math that you realize that the other 80% of the world are not highly sensitive. And that also the other world is designed for the 80%. For those of us who are highly sensitive, we are having a different experience than the other 80% which often as children or even as adults who are not yet conscious to this highly sensitive aspect about ourselves feel odd, feel strange, feel left out, feel kind of weird, feel like we’re not enough because we understand, even if unconsciously, we understand we are having a different experience, we’re having a different nervous system sensory experience on the other 80%.
That is what has led most of us to go into what I refer to as our HSE coping mechanisms, coping mechanisms that have helped us cope in our life with the fact that we’re not the other 80% but actually then end up working against us if we want to be successful entrepreneurs, health practitioners included in that of course.
JW: Absolutely. Heather, I know like for me, the first time I heard about this, I was blown away. I didn't even really know what to think about it. It was such a new concept that I'd not heard anything about ever before. What I want to do is I want to encourage everybody to actually go to your website and actually take the quiz and then I would love to invite you back and have another podcast episode after people have had the opportunity to go out and see if they are registering as a highly sensitive person and then I want to explore this some more, would you do that with me?
HD: Absolutely. I’d be so happy to do that.
JW: Wonderful.
HD: They can access the quiz really easily at hsequiz.com and I get feedback all the time about how folks are just blown away by the quiz. The way that I’ve designed the quiz is that once you take it, you will receive your results which will let you know if you are somewhat of a highly sensitive entrepreneur, a super highly sensitive entrepreneur, or if you’re like me, a super uber highly sensitive entrepreneur. Then you’ll receive a success guide, a free success guide to download and depending on where you fall somewhat, super, or super uber, the guide will support you in getting started on this journey.
What I also really hear from folks, once they take the quiz is a beginning to embrace this highly sensitive nature and no longer see it as something to avoid, something to ignore, something to feel bad about, and something to see as a weakness like those original twenty-five women that I had guided. So I definitely encourage everyone if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “Hmm, that’s interesting,” then just go to hsequiz.com and you’ll definitely find out more about yourself and again how to really begin to work with that part of yourself.
JW: And I truly highly encourage everyone to do that as I found too that I was a super uber highly sensitive entrepreneur. It actually created so much awareness for me and such a relief in some way that it made sense like some of my past decision-making, basically what Heather calls the shadowing kind of tendencies to retreat back and try to regroup, just the amount of awareness and then a way to kind of just be in the moment and realize what's going on, and then rather than fight it, just learn the way that you ease into it and be in that present moment has really made a huge difference not only for me personally but also for the businesses itself. So, Heather, I want to thank you personally for that growth that you've given me and I'm just super excited to share that with so many of our other listeners and to let them be on the journey with you as well.
HD: Beautiful, yes. It’s such an honor to see the shifts that you’ve been able to make once you’ve really understood and embraced your highly sensitive self and that’s what’s most important is that for those of us who are highly sensitive, it’s not that we can’t create financial success as a person who’s self-employed but we do need to go about it differently and especially if you’re interested in a way that is of high service, [inaudible 00:15:59] do it, but just differently which you have so beautifully done, Dr. Jill Wade so I’m excited to share this with more of your community.
JW: Thank you, Heather. I know you need to run but I know this will not be the last time that you are a guest here at Simplifi Health so I appreciate your time and effort in getting on the call today and we will do this again sometime soon.
HD: Yey! I look forward to it. Thank you so much.
JW: Thank you. For those of you who would like to hear more about how to get in touch with Heather Dominick and her training, please visit youniversityhealth.com. For those dental professionals who would like to continue to learn more with us, please visit relevancehealth.com. This is Dr. Jill Wade, keep smiling from the inside out.