I’m so (over)excited! May 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, societal commentary.
Tags: adulthood, overexcitabilities, social skills, socialization
2 comments
I’m not sure why, but whenever I hear the word “intense”, I think of some hippie smoking pot and saying something like, “Whoa, that’s like, so intense, dude!” The problem with this image is that it’s exactly the opposite of what I should be thinking of. What I really think I should be thinking of is…me…on a normal day.
I’ve read a lot about Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities as they apply to children. It had never occurred to me to think about what they would mean in terms of being an adult or myself in particular. I see so much of it in terms of education and children, but little in terms of how it affects adults. On the other hand, if you have these overexcitabilities (OEs), they don’t just go away when you become an adult…at least in my experience.
I’ve started realizing that having OEs means a couple different things, most of which is generally explained in Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. That is, you have to deal with a lot of psychological upheaval and you constantly question things. You try to change your way of thinking about things to create some sort of internal consistency which then decreases the amount of internal discord you’re dealing with. So you deal with problems and come out a different person on the other side.
Going through the process changes how you look at things and interact with the world, and this is where it starts to get problematic. First, the vast majority of people don’t ever go through the process or, if they do, they end up ‘reintegrating’ back at the lowest level. This level is generally where your behavior is either average social behavior (conforming) or psychopathic (completely self-indulgent). Ignoring the latter, we can say that the average person, having generally been comfortable going along with society’s rules, ends up being very uncomfortable around someone who has rejected some or all of society’s rules for their own internal validation system.
In other words, when you interact with a ‘normal’ person, you’re going to come across as weird.
Adults who have OEs, like kids, are going to come across as having intense personalities. Maybe they’ll be really good at being laid back and letting things go, possibly as a result of the whole positive integration process. But what if they don’t? I can imagine that people with these OEs may not be able to keep their interests, passions, opinions, or intelligence under wraps. In fact, it’s likely they may feel it’s unnecessary to do so because they reject the notion of social conformity as a good thing.
As an adult, I’m much happier because I generally have a choice in whom I can hang out with and how I spend my time. I also feel like I’ve been able to find like-minded individuals who are open to being ‘weird’. However, I’ve also learned that it doesn’t mean being an adult will be super easy. In addition to all of the normal adult stresses in life, interacting with diverse people has become a major issue. Someone who feels strongly about anything and refuses to shut up in an effort to conform is going to find themselves upsetting others, even if inadvertently. And having the internet as a soap box means you’re more likely to get someone riled up. On the other hand, it’s also a great way to find people who aren’t put off by your lack of social mores.
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, older son, societal commentary.
Tags: adulthood, college
There have been a few interesting comments in regard to the discussion about going to college or not. On some of the other blogs I read, the discussion has more than once come to the fact that an 18 year old is really not in a place to decide what they want out of life.
I’m not sure I can buy that one. I started my first job at 14. I moved out of my parents place at 17 1/2. I knew where I was going to college, I knew what I wanted to major in. I knew that I could support myself because I’d already had a job for 3 years.
I won’t say that any of it came out the way I planned. On the other hand, I don’t think my parents should’ve coddled me. (There are other things I think they shouldn’t have done, but coddling wasn’t a problem.) I think that at 18, one should no longer depend on their parents. Eighteen-year-olds are legally adults, and I think there’s a nasty kind of psychological damage that goes along with supporting kids excessively beyond that point. I’m not saying that parents should cut all ties, but they should be preparing their kids to support themselves and live on their own by that point. I have seen too many people end up with unhealthy co-dependent relationships with parents, and later on, other people, because appropriate boundaries were not set when they became adults.
I believe that a lot of this is because, by allowing a child to remain dependent longer, you are communicating to them that they aren’t capable of handling the responsibilities. Teenagers already have enough confusion about when to act like an adult and when to act like a kid. I don’t think this needs to be confounding any longer than necessary: once they are an adult, they need to be responsible for their life decisions. And, ideally, a parent will have been increasing their responsibility as they got older so that it’s not a sudden jolt at that point.
I’ve been thinking about this because my older son is now the same age as I was when I started working. I’m not going to force him to get a job, but I am going to tell him that if he wants something beyond lawn-mowing money, he’ll have to consider it. Likewise, I am not going to tell him he has to go to college. I am fortunate that he’s already expressed an interest, so we’re going to be having a talk soon about the realities of college financing and the importance of grades and extracurriculars for finding scholarship money. Likewise, he needs to think about the alternatives: if he’s not going to college, how is he going to support himself once he’s done with high school, where will he live, etc.
In four years, he’ll legally be an adult, and I need to both let go and make sure he’s ready to take on those responsibilities. And yes, at 18, I think he had better be prepared to make those decisions. I know this makes me sound like an old kraut because I am prone to saying things like, “When I was your age, I was taking care of this or that.” On the other hand, not letting him learn about these responsibilities now will deprive him of the opportunity to the same thing when he is my age (which, according to him, is very, VERY old).
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I’m so (over)excited! May 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, societal commentary.Tags: adulthood, overexcitabilities, social skills, socialization
2 comments
I’m not sure why, but whenever I hear the word “intense”, I think of some hippie smoking pot and saying something like, “Whoa, that’s like, so intense, dude!” The problem with this image is that it’s exactly the opposite of what I should be thinking of. What I really think I should be thinking of is…me…on a normal day.
I’ve read a lot about Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities as they apply to children. It had never occurred to me to think about what they would mean in terms of being an adult or myself in particular. I see so much of it in terms of education and children, but little in terms of how it affects adults. On the other hand, if you have these overexcitabilities (OEs), they don’t just go away when you become an adult…at least in my experience.
I’ve started realizing that having OEs means a couple different things, most of which is generally explained in Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. That is, you have to deal with a lot of psychological upheaval and you constantly question things. You try to change your way of thinking about things to create some sort of internal consistency which then decreases the amount of internal discord you’re dealing with. So you deal with problems and come out a different person on the other side.
Going through the process changes how you look at things and interact with the world, and this is where it starts to get problematic. First, the vast majority of people don’t ever go through the process or, if they do, they end up ‘reintegrating’ back at the lowest level. This level is generally where your behavior is either average social behavior (conforming) or psychopathic (completely self-indulgent). Ignoring the latter, we can say that the average person, having generally been comfortable going along with society’s rules, ends up being very uncomfortable around someone who has rejected some or all of society’s rules for their own internal validation system.
In other words, when you interact with a ‘normal’ person, you’re going to come across as weird.
Adults who have OEs, like kids, are going to come across as having intense personalities. Maybe they’ll be really good at being laid back and letting things go, possibly as a result of the whole positive integration process. But what if they don’t? I can imagine that people with these OEs may not be able to keep their interests, passions, opinions, or intelligence under wraps. In fact, it’s likely they may feel it’s unnecessary to do so because they reject the notion of social conformity as a good thing.
As an adult, I’m much happier because I generally have a choice in whom I can hang out with and how I spend my time. I also feel like I’ve been able to find like-minded individuals who are open to being ‘weird’. However, I’ve also learned that it doesn’t mean being an adult will be super easy. In addition to all of the normal adult stresses in life, interacting with diverse people has become a major issue. Someone who feels strongly about anything and refuses to shut up in an effort to conform is going to find themselves upsetting others, even if inadvertently. And having the internet as a soap box means you’re more likely to get someone riled up. On the other hand, it’s also a great way to find people who aren’t put off by your lack of social mores.