Intensity Was Never the Problem

Notes on intensity, responsibility, and who does the containing.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček for Unspash+

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Opening Note

I wrote this a couple of months before publishing Mapping the Territory of Coherence, when I was first noticing everything I’d long suppressed and had forgotten was there. At the time, it felt like a flood, destabilizing, as if I’d opened a valve I might not be able to close again. I didn’t know whether what I was experiencing would settle or spiral out of control.

It settled.

And writing that longer autotheory piece on coherence was, in and of itself, an autistic flood—a massive gestalt that needed to emerge as a single, fused ball of meaning. After completing that first phase, another similarly sized and layered ball of meaning followed immediately, and I still haven’t had the space in my life to linearize it. I will when conditions allow.

The processing that accompanied the writing moved it through my system. On the other side, I feel everything in the moment, not later, after I’ve tucked it away and let it build to the point of bursting or hurting my body.

That looks like finally feeling and showing joy at full volume, grieving when it arrives, and being passionate without apology. To my surprise, I stay coherent. The bigness no longer costs as much as it did when the dam gave way. I process somatically and emotionally as things happen. I didn’t even know that was possible.

It is now clear that initially forced, then conditioned linearity caused the suppression. It wasn’t just about emotional intensity. My natural state processes multiple streams simultaneously, recognizes patterns across domains, and moves in integrative bursts rather than in sequential steps. For decades, I translated that into forms others could follow without ever learning what worked best for me.

The expectation, especially since I chose an analytic profession, was that everything needed to be linear. I learned it well, as you’ve likely noticed in my writing style. I got really good at translating myself. But translating yourself outward does nothing for what’s inside. It eventually becomes extractive of the self. What it has always cost me to produce output that is sequenced to other people’s liking is that I’d often hold back a whole bunch more, layers of meaning that, to me, were always fused to what I shared. And when there’s nowhere for the rest of it to go, it causes fragmentation and distress in my brain and body.

The primary issue, I now understand, is that I was forcing the linear translation layer to completely override my nonlinearity. I didn’t choose this consciously, but I adapted over decades to achieve a complete override, based on the feedback I was receiving from the world.

When that structure collapsed along with my coherence, I didn’t just lose the container. I lost my tolerance for distortion. I could suddenly feel how much force it had taken to run my cognition in emulation mode. And I had no comfort left in pretending my natural state was a problem to be solved.

What surprises me is that I’m not entirely sure how I got from there to here. I didn’t achieve this through willpower or technique. All I can say with confidence is that the reading and writing I’ve been doing here on Substack is the primary medium of this change. Something has shifted in my nervous system, my relational field, and what I was willing to accept as true. And now I live on the other side of what I’m about to describe.

There’s a part of me that still wonders: Will it slip again? Can I trust this? Or is coherence at this intensity something I’ll always be checking for, like you check a wound to see if it’s started bleeding again?

I don’t know yet, but what I wrote then is still true. It documents something real: the moment I realized that intensity itself was never the problem. What follows is that moment, unedited.

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I’m writing this while still inside something I don’t fully understand. I can see the shape of what was happening, but not where it leads.

I’ve written before about containment. About how I learned to compress cognitive creativity, curiosity, and the constant pull toward new complexity into tighter, more controlled forms. That was the visible part. The part that read ‘discipline, competence, and maturity’.

What I’m only now beginning to understand is how much more I was holding back.

It wasn’t just ideas. It was intensity of every kind.

Joy I’d forgotten could feel like this. Grief I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge. Passion and desire I couldn’t name. I kept trying to list them, as if naming them would contain them. It didn’t work. All of it was present at full volume, whether I acknowledged it or not. For the last few weeks, I have been treating that intensity as something to manage. Something to sand down. Something to translate into a form others could receive.

I kept reaching for metaphors. Container. Compression. Volume control. Nothing quite fit. Then, what if it’s not about size but about force? Flow? What if it’s a river?

The force moving through my nervous system is a river.

Not chaotic. Structured, even when swift. Powered by snowmelt, storms, and underground springs, constantly receiving input. Sensory details. Relational signals. Emotional data. Meaning. Patterns. Context. The world doesn’t arrive quietly.

For most of my life, I had been building and maintaining a dam.

The dam was suppression. Control. Professionalism. Politeness. Learning to restrain everything so that what flows downstream is manageable. Calm. Appropriate. Something people can step into without fear of being overwhelmed.

Downstream, people saw steadiness. Insight without overwhelm. Emotion without spilling, at least most of the time. Intensity, but safely packaged. I was praised for being grounded, articulate, and composed.

Upstream, the pressure kept building.

Dams don’t eliminate force. They store it. Concentrate it. Press it relentlessly against their restraints. My mistake was not realizing how long I had been standing in for the dam.

When the containment loosened, it wasn’t just cognitive creativity that surged forward. It was everything.

Joy that spills. Grief that roars. Passion and desire that refuse to be discreet. Anguish that has a voice and intends to use it.

Expression in this state is often too much for people.

Not because it’s unregulated or wrong, but because many people are used to limited flow. They expect emotion to trickle, meaning to be portioned, and intensity to arrive already softened.

Here’s what makes this complicated: I don’t want to hurt anyone, ever. The containment wasn’t just something imposed from outside. I deliberately chose it repeatedly because I understand how force affects others, displaces them, and can even fill a room with intensity.

There’s an additional layer to consider. The input itself carries weight. I don’t merely produce force, I also absorb it. Environments respond with the insistence of physical contact.

Rooms evoke mood vividly. The intense brightness of overly illuminated spaces makes my eyes tense and constantly hunched. The visual chaos of a crowded shelf creates cluttered noise. The layout of a room forces my mind to watch every exit. Strong perfumes that irritate my sinuses. Multiple sounds from voices, electronics, and everyday life overlap and stream.

Relationships constantly convey information, even without words. Subtle shifts in posture. The unspoken tension of conflict. The weight of expectations traveling in silence. People express frustration, grief, disappointment, love, joy, and care through these unspoken cues. These cues also reflect how burdened the world feels for everyone.

For years, suppression involved double effort: restraining incoming information and preventing what wanted to exit. Containing both the intake of details and the visceral reactions to them.

No wonder the dam eventually failed.

I’m still figuring out how a sustainable release will be possible. I’m not idealizing excess or wanting to overwhelm those around me. I do not seek destruction. My current questions are: Where should I go from here? How can I be accountable for my own intensity as well as for the people around me? I haven’t figured it out yet.

What I do know is that coherence isn’t quiet. It’s dynamic and proportional.

The work now feels more like design than control. Embracing volume without hesitation while maintaining focus on structure and impact. But I still haven’t figured out how this design manifests in practice.

Intensity is not the problem.

It never was.

The problem was asking something this powerful to act as if it were small. The problem was also that it made it my sole responsibility to manage, without acknowledging how much work that required or what it cost.

If I never find people and places where this is met rather than managed, I’ll eventually stop trying. I’ll become the person who lives at the edge of things, too much for the center. The village witch at the edge of the woods.

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Closing Note

I wrote the middle part of this essay months ago, while trying to determine if achieving coherence at this level was even possible. I wasn't sure if I would find people and places where this could be embodied rather than just managed.

I have.

The readers and writers I’ve connected with on Substack over the past few months have done something I didn’t expect: they’ve received the force without flinching, engaged with complexity without asking me to simplify it first, and met intensity with curiosity. That was something I had never experienced before, except in small pockets spread out over years.

That changes something fundamental, not just what I’m willing to write, but also what I’m starting to believe is possible elsewhere. If it can happen here, in this strange and generous corner of the internet, maybe the village witch doesn’t have to stay at the edge of the woods after all.

Thank you for that. For reading with care. For staying. For showing me what it feels like when the river is allowed to flow.