Day Nine: Psychomotor Readiness

Welcome to Day Nine of the July Intensity Project!

31 Days Toward Living with More Intensity & Creativity

“Psychomotor hyperexcitability gives sharpness, speed, and an immediacy of reaction and capacity for action; it is a “permanent” psychomotor readiness.” ~ Kazimierz Dabrowski

Perhaps no other form of overexcitability or intensity can cause more challenges and roadblocks for children in school than psychomotor intensity.

I love the phrase that Dabrowski uses in Personality-shaping Through Positive Disintegration: “permanent psychomotor readiness.” It bypasses both “hyper” and “excitable.” Just as intellectual intensity is not exactly the same as being smart or good at school, psychomotor intensity is not the same as being hyper or having ADHD or being athletically gifted. We can begin to understand the differences by looking at the OED definition of “psychomotor”:

Psychomotor: Originally: involved in the production of voluntary muscular movements. Later also: of, relating to, or involving both mental and motor processes; cerebral and motor. [emphases added]

As Ken Robinson puts it so well in his now classic TED Talk on creativity in schools, some people just need “to move to think.” Watch (or re-watch) his talk here:

Michael Piechowski, in his book ‘Mellow Out’ They Say. If I Only Could. Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright, writes that clues to psychomotor intensity are “rapid speech, marked excitation, intense physical activity (e.g., fast games and sports), pressure for action (e.g., organizing), marked competitiveness, compulsive talking and chattering, impulsive actions, nervous habits (tics, nail biting), workaholism, acting out.” Like Dabrowski, Piechowski offers another wonderful alternative phrase to describe this trait: personal energy.

Casey, the author of the blog Raising Smart Girls, describes her experience of seeing her daughter’s psychomotor readiness and personal energy, and her resulting feelings:

“As I dropped off my two older daughters at school today, I gazed at my middle daughter in the rear-view mirror and contemplated her for a moment. She was chattering about something and looked over at me and smiled. I thought at that moment she looked absolutely radiant. Perfectly HER. I thought about how hard it is to preserve her unique self as a parent. She’s my child that is highly energetic, constantly chattering, always moving. It’s hard to parent a child with so much energy. I can’t keep up with her most times. She makes me nervous, except I’m almost certain I was like her in many ways as a child.”

Does Casey’s daughter remind you of yourself as a child? If so, how have those memories shaped you?

Here are some ways that adults might experience psychomotor intensity?

• You like to be involved in many activities and don’t like to “do nothing.”

• You may be (or be told you are) a workaholic.

• You are frustrated in situations where you have to stay still for long periods of time, such as car or plane rides or long lectures or weddings or funerals.
  

• You have nervous habits or tics, such as nail biting or hair twisting.

• You like to keep your world organized and spend energy keeping your living space to your liking (which is not necessarily the same as what other people think is well-organized!).

• When allowed to do so, you prefer to move around or stand as you work or learn, switching chairs or positions or moving from room to room.

• You are physically impulsive, often moving before you think as well as while you think.
  

• Your psychomotor intensity might be expressed more strongly when your emotions run high, such as pacing the room when you are stressed or needing more physical release of energy when you are worried about an illness in the family or intensely involved in learning something new.

Simply by changing the way we think and talk about traits of giftedness, we can go far toward using intensity in powerful and fulfilling ways rather than feeling overwhelmed, especially when the rest of the world tells us we are weird or, worse, broken.

Are you enjoying the July Intensity Project? Please tell your friends, retweet this and other posts, and spread the word! Get blog updates by “liking” the Everyday Intensity Facebook page or following @DailyIntensity on Twitter. Thank you!

• Day One: List Your Best Qualities…
• Day Two: Wonderfully Weird?
• Day Three: Got Personality?
• Day Four: Celebrate Your Way
• Day Five: Torrance’s Creative Manifesto
• Day Six: A Spork Divergent Thinking Exercise
• Day Seven: The Euphoric Rush of Everyday Life
• Day Eight: Intellectual Intensity

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