Living with Intensity
Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults
A detailed and insightful perspective on intensity throughout the lifespan…
Gifted children and adults are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional.
This resource describes these overexcitabilities and strategies for dealing with children and adults who are experiencing them, and provides essential information about Dabrowski s Theory of Positive Disintegration. Learn practical methods for nurturing sensitivity, intensity, perfectionism, and much more.
Quality Paperback
Length: 306 pages
ISBN 10 digit: 0-910707-89-8
ISBN 13 digit: 978-0-910707-89-3
Praise for Living with Intensity
Living with Intensity provides something for everyone who lives or works with gifted children and adults. With chapters devoted to clinical work with the gifted, family dynamics, issues affecting specifically adults who are gifted, and research studies and applications, Daniels and Piechowski have provided a noteworthy and even essential contribution to the field of giftedness.
A detailed and insightful perspective on intensity throughout the lifespan. The section on adolescence should be compulsory reading for parents, teachers and counselors.
A valuable resource for anyone working or living with a person who is gifted. Dabrowski’s concepts of overexcitabilities and positive disintegration are helpful in understanding what might otherwise seem like inexplicable behaviors among some gifted children and adults. Living with Intensity, an apt title, provides practical insights to guide educators, psychologists, and parents.
Living with Intensity is a can’t put it down exploration of the multi-faceted sensitivities/intensities of gifted children and adults, which fuel their personal growth–if they are NOT misunderstood. It will assist all parents, teachers, and clinicians to understand and nurture the complex combination of intellectual advancement and overexcitabilities gifted individuals present, and avoid tragic misperceptions and misdiagnoses.
Living with Intensity is both a pleasant and instructive reading. It undoubtedly succeeds in its declared aim of making “highly complex material accessible without diluting its essential concepts” (p.265). Using a language that is easy to follow and being filled with illustrations and practical suggestions, this book is essential for all parents, teachers and counselors ‘dealing’ with giftedness and intensity. The message it advocates, that of listening to gifted children and adults, respecting and understanding them, is an imperative in today’s world both scarred by a series of misconceptions about the creative self and in desperate need of creativity.
The application of Dabrowski becomes clear for counselors, teachers, and parents. Nice examples of working with (not against, or trying to fix) intensity. This book is an ideal companion to Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (2008).
Purchase Living with Intensity
Buy directly from our publisher, Great Potential Press.