Michele Christensen 0:04
Hello, exquisite one. Welcome back to Sex.Love.Power. I'm Michele 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 Conscious Couples’ Circle, our private membership site on Mighty Networks.
And today, I want to talk about intensity. And once again, I have invited my dear friend, Dr. Jessica Pullins 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!
When you understand your intensity, 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, is not going anywhere either.
So let's dive in with Jess.
Michele Christensen 1:39
Thanks so much for being here again, my friend.
Jessica Pullins 1:41
I'm so happy to be here talking with you. I love it. (laughs)
Michele Christensen 1:46
So, tell us about how you learned about intensity and how you started to see it in yourself and other women.
Jessica Pullins 1:53
As I was listening to you do the intro, I had a literal flashback of the first time someone told me I was intense (laughs)... and I 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. And my dad took me aside and said, "You are really sensitive.
(laughs) You're having a really intense experience to this. I think you might be starting your period."
I was seven! (both laugh).
Michele Christensen 2:32
I was thinking he was nailing it. He's hitting it out of the park... Until he misascribes the intensity: "you're just hormonal!"
Jessica Pullins 2:41
I think he he was suggesting I was PMSing because I was so upset! I was 9 years old! (Laughing) I didn't get my period for five more years! (laughing).
Apparently, from the time I was at least seven I carried some traits that made me look like a pre-menstrual person.
Michele Christensen 3:01
Right? Raises hand. Me too.
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 do you think she just
expresses herself more loudly when she is feeling something? You know, she's a baby still. And I was like, This kid is a lot. And my sister goes, have you met us?
Jessica Pullins 3:28
I was gonna say yes.
Michele Christensen 3:30
Yes. And yes. So, that's intense in a nutshell, right?
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, when I first met her. There was no negativity; there was nothing bad. It just felt like a force of nature. It's like a visceral sense. It's a felt sense. This force of nature person.
Yeah, we felt it. My massage therapist and I would talk about her as the little dragon. She's just this amazing power energy and astrologers have told me that my Hot Love Revolution, you know: An astrologer was like, "she IS hot love."
Jessica Pullins 4:14
Ohhhh....
Michele Christensen 4:18
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...
Jessica Pullins 4:31
Right! Right!
Michele Christensen 4:32
Skillful ways, so that we didn't get burned and other people didn't get burned.
Jessica Pullins 4:36
How do you let it drive you but also learn to modulate it, like how do you use your powers for good, right?
Michele Christensen 4:41
Exactly.
Jessica Pullins 4:42
I believe spider man once said, With great power comes great responsibility.
Michele Christensen 4:46
Thanks, Spidey! (Laughs)
Jessica Pullins 4:49
(Laughs)
Michele Christensen 4:52
Ain't that the truth!? And that's who this podcast is for: women with great power - and our power can kind of throw us around sometimes.
Jessica Pullins 5:02
And it can be really confusing when other people -- as you're listening, raise your hand. We can see you in our mind's eye. -- have people told you you're too much? Have you felt like, "Dammit, 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? Is something wrong with them or with me?"
Exactly. "Am I too much? Am I too much?" And then you can start to feel ashamed of it and start to try to hide it.
And I remember a couple other examples like that. In AP history in 11th grade or 12th grade, there was a certain person. 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 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 remember that that's another intensity
piece that can come with giftedness, I think. And of course, we were in a room full of gifted people.
Michele Christensen 6:27
Yeah. And how many times do we have to carefully make ourselves small? Not even for -- I'm thinking of various dipshits I dated who for sure, you didn't want to try to feed that guy out of the firehose because he was not... it was gonna blow him across the room!
Jessica Pullins 6:43
They were so cute, but they weren't bright. Yeah, anyway.
Michele Christensen 6:47
I mean, it was for the other **attributes** that I was seeking his company. And so - Do we digress? Even when you're there in a room full of smarty-pantses and you've still got to tone it down a little because...
Jessica Pullins 7:03
You've got to tone it down.
Michele Christensen 7:04
You're concerned...
Jessica Pullins 7:05
Too much.
Michele Christensen 7:07
Yeah, right or wrong. How many times? I'm sure that other women listening are like, "uhuh."
Jessica Pullins 7:14
And it reminds me of the story I was telling you about 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 be in a relationship with me successfully that I was just too much. Too intense, too smart, just too much energy. And he was trying to say it in a way that I think let me know that he saw me. 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 going to just overwhelm people."
Michele Christensen 8:10
Yeah.
Jessica Pullins 8:11
And then, you know, 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're 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.
Michele Christensen 8:56
Well, and as "not enough," right?
Jessica Pullins 8:58
Right.
Michele Christensen 9:00
Simultaneously told that were too much AND not enough. I even think of you at the piano recital there at seven. You said today, "maybe I hadn't practiced enough." And I was thinking, "Would there be enough practice?"
Jessica Pullins 9:12
No.
Michele Christensen 9:14
It's so hard to know when I am prepared enough, when the podcast episode is good enough, or any of those things.
Jessica Pullins 9:20
Yes.
Michele Christensen 9:21
Because my imagination can go so much further and faster than my physical reality. There's more that can be done in my imagination.
So that's part of intensity as well, is where your vision ...
Jessica Pullins 9:33
That's right.
Michele Christensen 9:33
Makes it almost impossible for you to live up to your own standards. So it requires more grace to be able to live expansively, spaciously, comfortably inside that.
I have to go "well, of course, where the podcast will be two years from now is different than where it is today. And that's okay!"
Jessica Pullins 9:51
Right.
Michele Christensen 9:52
I have to proceed with kindness toward myself right now.
Jessica Pullins 9:55
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 very specific, hard to define, but specific thing,
where we're talking about people who bring a lot of energy to a situation. We feel strongly and we express strongly right, and other people...
Michele Christensen 10:24
We think quickly, probably.
Jessica Pullins 10:25
We think quickly.
Michele Christensen 10:26
It's emotion. It's a 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. For me being a passenger in a vehicle. We're volatile!
Jessica Pullins 10:52
Substances. Even caffeine and sugar, right?
Michele Christensen 10:54
Yeah. And so in the chemical sense, we respond in a BIG way to stimuli.
Jessica Pullins 11:00
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.
Jessica Pullins 11:12
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(laughs).
Michele Christensen 11:24
Yeah.
Jessica Pullins 11:25
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 in our relationships, but ultimately, it's a force good, right? I think that's the main idea.
Michele Christensen 12:02
And we may have been pathologized for it.
Jessica Pullins 12:05
Mm hmm.
Michele Christensen 12:05
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.
Jess just excluded pathology from what we're talking about - Situations 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 passionate, intense woman.
And then maybe 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, Terry Real calls, "Unbridled Self-Expression."
Jessica Pullins 13:00
(Laughs).
Michele Christensen 13:00
"I thought it. 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.L
Jessica Pullins 13:15
(Snickers) 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 it 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.
Michele Christensen 13:43
Yeah, yeah.
Jessica Pullins 13:44
That's it.
Michele Christensen 13:45
That takes a lot of energy, right?
Jessica Pullins 13:47
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 heel" this huge power that they have inside them emotionally, linguistically... I know you to be hilarious. And I also know that feeling myself, where the cat o' nine tails of my humor might have just wrapped around somebody and taken 'em down, when that wasn't at all what I intended.
Never. Never.
Michele Christensen 14:19
Just 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 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.
Jessica Pullins 14:35
Stabby
Michele Christensen 14:36
They have these - Yes, 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!"
Jessica Pullins 14:47
"I'm a little bit on the stabby side of things."
Michele Christensen 14:51
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.
Being that close with somebody who has stuck around has helped me, as you said, polish off the rough edges of it.
Jessica Pullins 15:08
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. 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-woowoo language for it.
Michele Christensen 15:42
"There's too many joules coming through."
"My Geiger counter is going crazy!" There's no measuring it.
Jessica Pullins 15:49
Well, intensity in physics is a measure of energy. And I think it's so interesting that the word we use to describe this force that emanates within and out of some of us. 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 force" like maybe we're kind of baby Jedis and we just have forces. You know what this one?
Michele Christensen 16:14
Absolutely. And 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 now we can measure IQ, however imperfectly. We know how tall a kid is, but we'll also know how much juju a girl's got goin' on, 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.
Jessica Pullins 16:49
Oh, I do.
Michele Christensen 16:50
Yeah. Could she control it?
Jessica Pullins 16:51
That was the Stephen King book and Drew Barrymore (Laughs).
And when she got angry, basically the environment around her would burst into flames. The whole point of it was ...
Michele Christensen 17:03
Another PMSing seven year old, right?
Jessica Pullins 17:05
Another PMSing seven year old. And Carrie comes to mind actually, similarly, the Stephen King novel Carrie.
Michele Christensen 17:10
Steve! I wonder Tabitha is an intense woman.
Jessica Pullins 17:13
We need to call her...
Michele Christensen 17:14
I would bet a bajillion dollars.
Jessica Pullins 17:17
Or his mom? Let's blame the mom.
Michele Christensen 17:18
Steven has been writing about it. I'm not even blaming anyone. If you could be the muse for someone as prolific and creative as Steve? Let's do it.
Jessica Pullins 17:27
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...
Michele Christensen 17:45
Younger than that.
Jessica Pullins 17:47
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.
Michele Christensen 18:02
But all of these are metaphors. I was talking with somebody the other day, who knows a woman who worked for Donald Trump. I think he has weaponized intense women.
Jessica Pullins 18:13
Kellyanne Conway. Good example. Right?
Michele Christensen 18:16
Yeah, yeah. And other women inside the Trump Organization, running his businesses. So for sure, our powers can be used for good or for evil.
Jessica Pullins 18:25
Yeah.
Michele Christensen 18:26
They can absolutely make us huge powerhouses in our careers. I want women to start to see from this episode "Oh!" Connect some dots: " "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."
Jessica Pullins 18:43
Oh, my God!
Michele Christensen 18:44
He's like, "I'm not as smart as you are. And I think it makes it easier to be content."
Jessica Pullins 18:51
Hmmmm!
Michele Christensen 18:52
He didn't mean it as a negative prophecy. I mean, it was right on. I could see it. And actually I think that kind of helped me bridle some of it. Some of the over-thinking.
Jessica Pullins 19:01
Yeah.
Michele Christensen 19:00
I think that's what he was talking about. "You see too much. You take in too many of the details, all 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 whitewater!
Jessica Pullins 19:02
"It'll cause you suffering."
Michele Christensen 19:11
Just to walk into a room is a lot. "Oh, I've 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.
Jessica Pullins 19:31
And stay regulated. That's the key to it. I talk about regulating the nervous system a lot with my patients, especially people who are very intense. Women who are very intense need to develop a toolkit to have at hand to regulate when things are starting to go haywire.
Michele Christensen 19:48
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 to mean "we'll set up a little shack out by the railroad track, settle down!" And make a home together, but we gotta learn to settle down.
Jessica Pullins 20:09
We have to settle the f down.
Michele Christensen 20:10
You know a lot of people get married and make a home together and have not settled down. And makes it hard to come together sexually.
Jessica Pullins 20:17
No.
Michele Christensen 20:17
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.
Michele Christensen 20:59
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 we'll 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 not want you to miss a single episode. If you go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen and hit the subscribe button that'll make sure that you get notifications every time a new episode drops. There are new episodes every week. And our audience is growing and one of the things that really helps that happen is reviews. So please, wherever you listen, but especially on Apple, please do leave a review, give us five stars and say a little If you can about what you're taking away from this episode or other episodes of the podcast. That would mean the world to me.
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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 ear balls and, I hope, create some new sensations, new thought forms, new possibilities in your life in 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.