Day 20: The Discombobulation Gene

Welcome to Day 20 of the July Intensity Project!

31 Days Toward Living with More Intensity & Creativity

You may be wondering, after having learned more about Dabrowski’s five areas of overexcitabilities, what any of this has to do with personal growth, much less living a more satisfying and fulfilling life. After all, being more emotionally and sensually sensitive can be downright painful. Intellectual overexcitability can lead to being profoundly misunderstood and a feeling of always being on the outside, looking in. Children who have psychomotor intensity often struggle to fit in with the more subdued requirements of the classroom. Having an overexcitable imagination is often seen as acceptable or is even praised in children, but by middle school, they are expected to save imaginative learning for art class or the playground.

So, what’s the upside?

Dabrowski posited that the very concept of nervousness itself as it applies to the overexcitabilities offers, for some people, the potential for positive growth:

“The essential characteristic of nervousness is an increased excitability, symptomatized in the forms of sensual, psychomotor, affectional, imaginational, and mental hyperexcitability. It consists in an unproportional reaction to a stimulus, an extended, long-lasting, accelerated reaction, and a peculiar reaction to a neutral stimulus.” (Kazimierz Dabrowski, Personality-shaping Through Positive Disintegration)

Before I continue with that passage, I want you to think about his description of nervousness. It is overreacting. Blowing things out of proportion.

My husband calls it the discombobulation gene.

Robin Marantz Henig’s New York Times article, “Understanding the Anxious Mind,” about Jerome Kagan’s longitudinal study of nervous, “high-reactive” babies, supports the idea of a discombobulation gene. Read this description of one of Kagan’s subjects whom he followed since babyhood:

“I don’t know,” Baby 19 says after a long pause, twirling her hair faster, touching her face, her knee. She smiles a little, shrugs. Another pause. And then the list of troubles spills out: “When I don’t quite know what to do and it’s really frustrating and I feel really uncomfortable, especially if other people around me know what they’re doing. I’m always thinking, Should I go here? Should I go there? Am I in someone’s way? … I worry about things like getting projects done… I think, Will I get it done? How am I going to do it? … If I’m going to be in a big crowd, it makes me nervous about what I’m going to do and say and what other people are going to do and say.” Baby 19 is wringing her hands now. “How I’m going to deal with the world when I’m grown. Or if I’m going to sort of do anything that really means anything.”

So, the question remains: What is the upside?

Dabrowski continues:

“This hyperexcitability is therefore a strong, uncommon sensitivity to external and internal stimuli; it is virtually a positive trait. Talented people, capable of controlling their own actions and fighting against social injustice, are characterized by a sensitivity to esthetic, moral, and social stimuli, to various psychic processes in their own internal environment. Each of the forms of psychic hyperexcitability mentioned is characterized by valuable, actual or prospective, properties.” (emphases added; Personality-shaping Through Positive Disintegration)

In other words, noticing and being sensitive to our environment—both external and internal—is the first step toward making any changes, either in ourselves or in our world.

Does this mean that Baby 19′s anxiety should be encouraged for its own sake, or that she should not be helped to deal with her discomfort? Absolutely not. Anxiety can be excruciating, even crippling. Not only can it interfere with personal growth, it can get in the way of everyday life.

However, could it be that we also might want to re-think our assumptions about the discombobulation gene? Might Baby 19 might be able, at some point, with the right self-understanding and support, use her nervousness to work toward causes she believes in, and to grow in ways unavailable to people who aren’t as sensitive to themselves and their world?

From Henig’s article:

“People with a high-reactive temperament—as long as it doesn’t show itself as a clinical disorder—are generally conscientious and almost obsessively well-prepared. Worriers are likely to be the most thorough workers and the most attentive friends. Someone who worries about being late will plan to get to places early. Someone anxious about giving a public lecture will work harder to prepare for it. Test-taking anxiety can lead to better studying; fear of traveling can lead to careful mapping of transit routes.”

Dabrowski proposed a self-education that helps people to understand, accept, and manage their excitabilities in our journey toward becoming our “true selves” and making a meaningful life, and this is what we will explore here over the next few days.

To begin, think about some really good things you have done with your life, or some personal growth you experienced, especially if it came after a period of internal struggle. How did overexcitabilities play a role? What did they help you to notice in yourself or in your environment?

Did you ever go through a period similar to the description of Baby 19? What happened then? How do you understand those feelings now? How do we know when such disintegration is debilitating or the seeds of positive change and growth?

Photo Credit: Joana Croft

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