During my time at Naropa University, I was introduced to the term: intense personality. People who come off as forceful, overbearing, who are often told to “lighten up”... these folx can be displaying intense personalities. The classification is not meant to define people with mental illnesses that intensify an otherwise calm and rational personality, but instead it describes people who are otherwise mentally healthy, but don’t employ an internal governor for their feelings, thoughts, and impulses.
Again, we’re not talking about folx with mental disorders, we’re talking about people whose lives are IN disorder… and not because their lives are more or less in disorder than the lives of others, it’s because they understand their lives to be that way. All highs are extremely high, and lows are inescapably low. With the extreme ends of the intensity spectrum as one’s only options, one cannot help but experience the world like that.
It’s never pleasant to be around folx like that. In fact, it’s exhausting. Personally, when I interact with intense personalities, I often feel like my emotions have been fed on, like I’m the victim of some kind of emotional vampire.
How, then, do we control the impulses that create those intense reactions? How can we heal our ego-rooted need to go to extreme with our reactions?
By applying reason, philosophy and grounded theology, as well as reconnecting to what is real beyond our own biased filters.
Much like the goal of meditation is to control the naturally arising thoughts in our minds and not to stop them (since that’s impossible), the goal here is to recognize our impulses and be in right-relationship with them, neither over-identifying with those impulses, nor pretending like they aren’t there.
Intense personalities and impulse-driven people act before thinking.
We diligently practice to do the exact opposite.
(See y’all tomorrow)
Again, we’re not talking about folx with mental disorders, we’re talking about people whose lives are IN disorder… and not because their lives are more or less in disorder than the lives of others, it’s because they understand their lives to be that way. All highs are extremely high, and lows are inescapably low. With the extreme ends of the intensity spectrum as one’s only options, one cannot help but experience the world like that.
It’s never pleasant to be around folx like that. In fact, it’s exhausting. Personally, when I interact with intense personalities, I often feel like my emotions have been fed on, like I’m the victim of some kind of emotional vampire.
How, then, do we control the impulses that create those intense reactions? How can we heal our ego-rooted need to go to extreme with our reactions?
By applying reason, philosophy and grounded theology, as well as reconnecting to what is real beyond our own biased filters.
Much like the goal of meditation is to control the naturally arising thoughts in our minds and not to stop them (since that’s impossible), the goal here is to recognize our impulses and be in right-relationship with them, neither over-identifying with those impulses, nor pretending like they aren’t there.
Intense personalities and impulse-driven people act before thinking.
We diligently practice to do the exact opposite.
(See y’all tomorrow)
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