Are You Intense?

Foreign welcome back to Sex Love Power. I'm Michelle Zenberry Christensen, and I invite you here each week to join this conversation because we potent, brilliant, ambitious women need to be talking about how to create the intimacy, the passion and the fulfillment that we yearn for and about what's actually happening in our hearts, minds and bodies. This podcast is where I drop the seeds of the conversation, and then you talk back by dming me on social media, leaving a message at 206-659-9865.

Or if you want to go all.

The way, joining the Secret Society, our private membership site on Mighty Networks. Now, today, I want to talk about intensity. And once again, I have invited my dear friend Dr. Jessica Pullens to join us. She and I have shared these traits of intensity since we've known each other.

And that's a mighty long time.

And we can recognize, and you may, too, as we talk about the signs that we were a lot dating way back into childhood and adolescence. The reason we need to talk about this is that a lot of women don't realize how intense we are for other people, even though they really do kind of tell us all the time. So when you understand your intensity, then you can start to work with it in ways that neither pathologize yourself nor run over other people. We want to make this a positive frame. It has a lot of gifts, and apparently it's not going anywhere either. So let's dive in with Jess. Thanks so much for being here again, my friend.

I'm so happy to be here talking with you. I love it.

So tell us about how you learned about intensity and how you started to see it in yourself and other women.

As you were listening. As I was listening to you do the intro, I had a literal flashback of the first time someone told me I was intense. And it was getting ready to do a piano recital as a young person. And I was really, really scared, and I didn't want to go do it. I think I probably hadn't been practicing enough. I was essentially on the verge of panic. My dad took me aside and said, you are really sensitive. You're having a really intense experience. To this, I think you might be starting your period. I was 7.

I was thinking he was nailing it. He's hitting it out of the park until he miscribes the intensity.

You're just hormonal. He was suggesting I was PMSing because I was so upset. I was 7 years old. I didn't get my period for 5 more years. So apparently from the time I was at least seven. I carried some traits that made me look like a premenstrual person.

Right, yeah. Raised hand. Me too.

Yes.

And that reminds me of a story I'll put in right here. My daughter was about 18 months old, and I was talking with my sister, and I was like, sarah, do you think Mira feels things more intensely than other people? Or. Or do you think she just expresses herself more loudly when she is feeling something? You know, she's a baby still. And I'm just like, this kid is a lot. And my sister goes, have you met us?

It's both. It's both. I was gonna say yes, yes, and yes.

So that's intense. In a nutshell.

Right?

And then.

And I remember when I first met Mira, I felt that ball of energy emanating off of her. And she was a little girl. She was like three or four at the time. I think when I first met her, there was no negativity there. There was nothing bad. It just felt like a force of nature.

Yeah, right.

It's like a visceral sense. It's a felt sense, this force of nature person.

Yeah, we felt it in utero. My massage therapist and I would talk about her, like, as the little dragon. She's just like, amazing power, energy. And astrologers have told me that, you know, like my hot love revolution, you know, an astrologer was like, she is hot love. And it's like, if. What if growing up, you and I had had parents that didn't think we were PMSing, but instead thought that we had this fire inside us that we needed to learn to wield in helpful ways so that we didn't get burnt and other people didn't get burnt?

How do you let it drive you, but also learn to modulate it? Like, how do you use your powers for good?

Right, Exactly.

I believe Spiderman once said, with great power comes great responsibility. Spiderman.

Thanks, Spidey. Ain't that the truth? And that's really. That's who this podcast is for, is women with great power. And our power can kind of throw us around sometimes and can be really confusing when other people, you know, like, as you're listening, raise your hand. We can see you in our. In our mind's eye. Like, have people told you you're too much? Have you felt like, damn it, why can't men handle me? Why can't anybody kind of meet me and match my energy, my intelligence, my speed? What is the deal? And that was the other wrong with them or me?

Exactly. Am I too much? Am I Too much. And then you can start to feel ashamed of it. Right. And start to try to hide it. And I remember a couple other examples like that where I remember, I think in AP history in 11th grade or 12th grade, and there was a certain person. Oh God, I can't remember his name.

Mr. Moore. Short, dark hair. Yes, Mr. Moore.

And we were in there with several people, one of whom I was interested in dating. And I was better at the topic than he was. And I made a conscious choice not to speak as much in class so that I couldn't. I didn't run the risk of looking too smart so that he then felt intimidated, so that he wouldn't be interested in me. So I remember that. That's another intensity piece. Right. That can come with giftedness, I think. And of course, we were in a room full of gifted people.

Yeah. How many times do we have to carefully make ourselves small? Not even for like, I'm thinking of various dipshits I dated who for sure, you didn't want to. You didn't want to try to feed that guy out of the fire hose because he was not. It was going to blow him across the room.

But even when they were so cute. But they weren't the bright.

Yeah. Anyway, I mean, it was, it was for the other attributes that I was seeking his company. And so do we digress? You're there in a room full of smarty pants and you still got to tone it down a little. Because tone it down, you're concerned too much that you're. Yeah. Right or wrong. How many times I'm sure that other women listening are like, uh huh.

And it reminds me of the story I was telling you about, I think.

Yeah.

Yesterday, where I was probably like 25 and working as a secretary in a mental health clinic post college. And one of the older male therapists there, who I just adored and we had a really good relationship, was talking about how it would be a very unusual or rare man that would be able to sort of be in a relationship with me successfully, that I was just too much, too intense, too smart to just too much energy. And he was trying to say it in a way that I think let me know that he saw me. Like he was trying to say, I know this about you. You're a lot. In a good, charming, wonderful way. You deserve someone special. The way I took it in at the time is I am unlovable. I'm too much. I'm gonna just overwhelm people. And then subsequently had some experiences like that in dating as well, but I think also what we were talking about before, you said, what are the 246 signs that you're an intense person? And I said, I think there's one sign. It's that you have been told by more than one person that you are intense or intimidating. Right. And so I think many people listening to this have been told by more than one person that they are intense or intimidating, have felt themselves to be too much in a situation, have felt their energy might be out of proportion, have seen people shrink back, have seen and been bewildered by it, because it doesn't match how we conceptualize ourselves as good, kind, benevolent people. Well.

And it's not enough.

Right, right, right.

We're simultaneously told that we're too much. And I even think of you at the piano recital there at 7. You said today, maybe I hadn't practiced enough. And I was thinking, like, would there be enough practice for me? You know, like, I.

Right.

It's so hard to know when I am prepared enough, when the podcast episode is good enough or any of those things, because my imagination can go so much further and faster than my physical reality. There's all more that could be done in my imagination and that. So that's part of intensity as well, where your vision makes it almost impossible for you to live up to your own standards. So it requires so much grace to be able to live expansively, spaciously, comfortably inside that I have to go, well, of course. Of course. My where the podcast will be two years from now is different than where it is today. And that's right. I have to proceed with kindness toward myself right now.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And then I want to also make the distinction that the intensity that we're talking about for this audience is a sort of very specific. Hard to define, but I think a kind of specific thing where we're talking about people that bring a lot of energy to a situation. We feel strongly and we express strongly.

Right. And we think quickly, probably.

We think quickly.

It's emotion. It's physical sensation. We're oftentimes sensitive to loud noises, sensitive to textures. We smell things a lot, and smells are important to us. Good smells are important. Avoiding bad smells is important. Light can sometimes be a thing. Getting startled, you know, for me, being a passenger in a vehicle. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

We're volatile.

Even caffeine and sugar. Right. Yeah, exactly.

And so in the chemistry sense, we respond in a big sense, in a big way.

Vividly, vividly. So highly sensitive people are in this. We've touched on the fact that gifted people are often very intense. That's just something that goes with being cognitively or academically gifted and then neurodivergent people. So people may be on the autism spectrum, people with adhd, those types of people. We happen to fall into all three categories, but we're not necessarily catching the intensity that can come with psychiatric illness. So, for example, a personality disorder or a person in the throes of an addiction, those types of things. That's a different level of intensity. And I think the thing that distinguishes those experiences from what we're talking about is those experiences cause real distress and suffering for the whole environment. I think in the case that we're talking about, we can have shame and confusion about them. It can cause some fallout our relationships, but ultimately it's a force for good. Right. I think that's the main idea.

And we may have been pathologized for it and even misdiagnosed or something like that. But, yeah, who we're talking to is just the kind of strong, passionate, powerful women committed to aliveness and who sometimes maybe you felt like you were too much or people told you that you were the other little kind of. There's a Venn diagram and there's. Maybe they don't all overlap, but definitely, yeah, justice excluded. Pathology from what we're talking about is like, where you really need more help and more support than a podcast episode can provide. We're talking about the just everyday challenges of being a passionate, intense woman. And then maybe kind of in the overlap between those, you may have been a jackass at times. I know I have. My muchness has come out of my mouth in ways that made me obnoxious or what one of my mentors, Cherry Real, calls unbridled self expression. Well, I thought it or I felt.

It, and I thought you needed to know.

And so I told you real quick right away. And in a way that, you know, come to think of it in retrospect, anyone might have responded poorly to.

So I can't tell you how many years it has taken me to smooth out the rough edges of my sense of humor, because it used to really be caustic. And I would say things thinking they were funny, they were not funny, and sometimes they were hurtful. And so I realized that's part of my intensity, is my sense of humor, and I'm trying to wield it with more nuance and grace. I'm trying to be a bit more bridled, let's say.

Yeah, yeah, that's It. That takes a lot of energy, right?

Yeah, it does.

I love it because it's turning us into bodhisattva level conscious beings. And I just want to extend so much compassion for women who are in different places on that journey of learning how to bring, to heal this huge power that they have inside them emotionally and linguistically. And I know you to be hilarious. And I also know that feeling myself, of cat, of nine tails, of my sense of humor might have just wrapped around somebody and taken them down when that wasn't at all what I intended.

Never. Never.

My brain whipped out and took them out. I remember once telling Kurt, I really thought it was he who was off. I was like, you treat me like I'm like an allergen. I just feel like you treat me like I'm pokey. If you've ever seen an allergen under a microscope, they look like pine cones.

Stabby.

They have these. Yeah, stabby edges. And I thought that he was erroneously treating me like I had stabby edges. And what I learned to see later was, oh, I do.

I'm a little bit on the stabby side of things.

I provoke that kind of reaction in anybody as close to me as this guy is. And by the grace of God, not that many people are that close. But being that close with somebody who's stuck around has helped me, as you said, polish off the rough edges of it, so that I am a little.

Bit intense people by default. We don't know that we're intense. We don't know that we're intense until we get feedback from other people that we're intense. We have. It's just our baseline. Right. The thing that the allergen metaphor makes me think about is that there is a felt sense of energy emanating from us that other people receive. The recoiling or shying away or getting into a defensive posture physically is other people's attempt to protect themselves from that energy that's emanating. We can't quantify it. We don't necessarily have non woo woo language for it.

There's too many jewels coming through. My Geiger counter is going crazy.

That's right.

There's no measuring it.

Well, intensity in physics is a measure of energy. And I think it's so interesting that that's the word we use to describe the force that emanates in and out of some of us.

And it.

It can overwhelm some people. I like the idea of talking about it in terms of a force or energy or even, you know, having the like, we're maybe we're kind of baby Jedis and we just.

The Force is strong with this one. Absolutely.

And I mean, I think that it is.

It's pointing to something metaphysical that, you know, maybe 500 years from now we will really get. And you'll be able to recognize that, just as, you know, now we can measure IQ, however imperfectly or whatever. We know how tall a kid is, but we'll also know how much juju Girls got going on. And so she can just recognize that and know that. Oh, yeah. The people who are going to be closest to me are going to need to be people who can handle this, and I'm going to need to build the skill set so that I direct it. Literally. Firestarter came to mind. I don't remember that much about that movie or book.

Oh, I do.

Yeah. Could she control it?

That was the Stephen King book and the Drew Barrymore. And when she got angry, basically the environment around her would burst into flames. The whole point of it was another.

PMSing 7 year old. Right.

Another PMSing 7 year year old. And Carrie comes to mind, actually. Similarly, the Stephen King novel Carrie.

I wonder if Tabitha is an intense woman. We need to call, I would bet, a bajillion dollars.

Or his mom.

And Steve.

Let's blame him.

Steve has been writing about it. I'm not even blaming him. Like, if you could be the muse for someone as prolific and creative as Steve. Let's do it.

There's two kind of major characters there. Yes. Carrie, when she would get angry, she had telekinesis. Right. So she could move junk around and throw people and all kinds of things. It was unleashed in puberty, which is interesting. And the Firestarter girl, I think.

Younger than that.

I don't want to go too far afield from it. But the Firestarter character, they were actually trying to protect her because the CIA, who Stephen King called the Shop, was trying to make her into a weapon. So they recognized the energy in this character and they were trying to weaponize it.

But all of these are metaphors. I mean, like, I was talking with somebody the other day who knows a woman who worked for Donald Trump. And I mean, I think he has weaponized intense women.

Yeah. Kellyanne Conway, good example.

Yeah. And other women inside the Trump Organization running his businesses. So for sure, our powers can be used for good or for evil. They can absolutely make us huge powerhouses in our careers. I want women to start to see from this episode. Oh, can connect some dots of. Right. So that happened in My childhood. That person said that to me. Brings to mind another thing my dad used to say to me. I worry that you're too smart to be really happy.

Oh my God.

He's like, I'm not as smart as you are. And I think it makes it easier to be content. He didn't mean it as a negative prophecy. I mean, it was right on. Like I could see it. And it actually, I think that kind of helped me bridle some of it, some of the overthinking. I think that's what he was talking about. You see too much. You take in too many of the details aspects of life. You can see what other people's motivations and their complexities are. And you just have this onslaught. It really is like white water.

It'll cause you suffering.

Walk in a room is a lot.

Yeah.

Oh, I gotta filter that. I've got to shut down. I've got to have enough alone time and quiet time. There were just basic self care standards I needed to learn to meet so that I could use it for good and not evil and not burn out and stay regulated.

That's a key to it. And I talk about regulating the nervous system a lot with my patient, especially people who are very intense and women who are very intense need to develop a toolkit to have at hand to regulate when things are starting to go haywire.

Yep. And that's exactly what I do with my clients too, because people come to me with relationship problems. And what we need to learn is, I call it settling down. Because settle down together is sort of this phrase that we use, like, you know, set up a little shack out by the railroad track and settle down and make a home together. But we gotta learn to settle down. You know, a lot of people do.

Settle down, get married and make a.

Home together and have not settled down. And makes it hard to come together sexually. It makes it hard to take the risks that you need to take in order to communicate well or to express yourself erotically. Inability to adequately regulate has you lose contact with your prefrontal cortex. When you're wigged out, the chances of having satisfying, nourishing connection with the other person go through the floor.

You can't connect from that space.

We can't connect when we're jangled, when we're not settled down. And that's the bottom line. So whether you're an intense woman or not, learning those self regulation skills is crucial to having the kind of connection, closeness, communication and intimacy that you yearn for both with your beloved and everyone. In your life. I hope this interview has been helpful for you in looking at intensity in yourself and those around you and seeing that it's yes, a double edged sword, but also a force that we are just now getting the language for and that may be recognized as a reflection of a beautiful gift, not just something that overwhelms us and other people. So will continue to help you build skills in managing who you are and all the beautiful talents inside you. I hope that if you're enjoying the podcast you will subscribe because I do.

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All right, that's it, darling.

I wish I could hug you right now.

I'm so grateful that you let me in to tickle your earballs and I hope create some new sensations, new thought forms, new possibilities in your life and your mind and your body. Thanks for tuning in. I'll be back with more same time next week. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.