What's All the Emotion About?

                                                                                                        Photos by H. Meghan Amelia, 2011

I’ve been working, rather intensely, on a presentation I will be giving to parents later this month.  The topic is on highly sensitive and emotionally intense children.  As often happens during these projects, my own characteristics and challenges rise to the surface inviting a little reflection.  I’ve watched myself procrastinate a bit while listening to the voice in my head question, “Will it be good enough?” The emotionally intense tend to be perfectionists.  I’ve been a little overwhelmed by all of the ideas I’ve had—how do I distill this down to the just right amount of information?  Intense individuals can be at once very excited about ideas and feel worn out by having them.  And I’ve thought a lot about the intensities that live right here in my own home.  What do you do when it’s a yin-yin relationship?

Though I’ve spent a lot of time reading, thinking and writing about these topics in the past (revisit Dabrowski's overexcitabilities here), the information gets stored somewhere in my collective understanding.  So a little jolt of consciousness is provided when going through the process of taking specific details out of the mental filing drawers to synthesize into what I hope is something useful.

I wrote recently about sensitivity, so I thought I’d add a post on emotional intensity.  The most important thing for you to take away from this is that, among unique travelers, this characteristic is quite normal.  Here are some ways that it manifests in the individual:

• May experience extremes in emotions and move back and forth between them in a small space of time 
• May have explosive explosive emotions, periods of crying or overwhelming anxiety
• Extreme guilt may be experienced over perceived shortcomings when there is a lack of understanding in the emotionally intense individual--critical self-talk and self-doubt may result
• Physical manifestations may include fluttering of the heart, sensitivity to sensory stimuli, nausea and headaches
• Strong affective memory—ability to relive the feelings of an event throughout a lifetime
• Intense relationships
• Can be overwhelmed by rigid expectations and sensory overload of the work experience

What are some things you can do to help manage this characteristic?

• Build some structure into your day to reduce stress
• Establish clear communication and boundaries with friends, family and co-workers
• Learn to recognize when you’re starting to feel unraveled and engage in self-care (relaxation, time-out or deep breathing)
• Set reasonable goals and then progress toward completing them in comfortable chunks of time
• Celebrate what is wonderful about emotional intensity: the ability to connect deeply with others, the capacity to be moved by music, art and literature and the ability to live a passionate life--to name a few.

Know that much of what creates challenges for you comes from your reactions to situations not the characteristic itself, and you can learn skills to help you better manage this quality.

In what ways does emotional intensity create challenges in your life?  In what ways does having intense emotions enrich your life?

Adapted from Emotional Intensity in Gifted Kids by Christine Fonseca, Prufrock Press, 2011