Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: The Characteristics of Emotional Intensity
“Emotional intensity” is a term used by Eggshell Therapy and Coaching founder Imi Lo. This article will look at what emotional intensity is, exploring the benefits and pitfalls of being an emotionally intense individual.
According to a report by Psychology Today, individuals who feel intensely are more likely to be labelled as gifted or highly sensitive. On the flipside, however, emotionally intense individuals are also more likely to be diagnosed or misdiagnosed with a mental illness.
Often described as attentive, sensitive, and caring, emotionally intense people can be exceptionally intuitive and perceptive at their best. Conversely, however, they are also prone to becoming overwhelmed by constant waves of social nuances and the emotional and psychic energies of others.
An emotionally intense person is someone who notices and remembers a lot. This can leave them prone to becoming overstimulated in new and chaotic situations. Psychologists believe that the ability to feel deeply often starts at a young age when a child’s emotion regulation skills are still developing, potentially leading to psychological harm associated with shame and loneliness.
Growing awareness of emotional intensity has generated much scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, psychologists have yet to agree on a single defining attribute. Experts believe that highly sensitive people account for 15-20% of the general population. Often regarded as gifted individuals, emotionally intense people are sometimes mislabeled as having a mental illness such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, emotion regulation disorder, or a chronic form of depression known as dysthymia.
The world is gradually embracing the concept of neurodiversity and the notion that certain people are “different” from the norm, with specific sensitivities, intensity, and gifts. However, this awareness remains somewhat limited, leaving many emotionally intense adults feeling lonely or misunderstood, plagued by self-doubt and with a lingering sense of loneliness.
Experiencing the world around them at an unusually complex and intense level, highly sensitive individuals typically feel incredibly alive, sometimes overwhelmingly so. They may have a constant stream of positive and negative feelings simultaneously, their mood soaring and plummeting by extremes within a short space of time. When moved, they are flooded with waves of joy. Emotionally intense people are passionate, even if this is not obvious from the outside. They tend to form strong emotional connections with not just people but also places and things, experiencing life with much nostalgia and tenderness.
Highly sensitive people develop grave concerns for others and the world around them from an early age. As an empath, they have an innate ability to feel and be affected by the energy of other people. In social settings, they intuitively identify with other people’s emotions, so much so that this can leave them at risk of becoming overwhelmed.
Emotional intensity has several significant benefits. People with above-average intelligence often struggle with emotional regulation. Known in the field of psychology as “emotional over-excitability,” this trait is strongly connected with giftedness. The Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski links emotional over-excitability to enhanced intellectual, imaginative, and psychomotor abilities.
Although giftedness was traditionally defined according to IQ, the current school of thought is that the true concept of giftedness is something much wider and far more complex. Gifted adults are usually more global and sophisticated thinkers who possess not only a greater capacity and hunger for knowledge and discovery but also experience enhanced sensual experience, feeling the fullest range of emotions on a very deep level.
Rather than a fault to be fixed or cured, psychology experts are rapidly coming to appreciate emotional intensity as a quality to be accepted, appreciated, and mastered. Whether a highly sensitive individual identifies as being gifted or not, emotional intensity is a trait that presents its own gifts in itself, encouraging emotional expressiveness and enhancing complex thinking, creativity, perception, and intuition.