Three words: You are enough. For an intense person in today’s fast-paced and demanding world, it is easy to feel like you have to tone yourself down. Are you feeling burned up, beaten down, and bummed out? Then you need to listen to this week’s episode of “Embracing Intensity.” 

This week’s guest is Starr Sheppard-Decker, a business coach, and spiritual leader with a passion to see women fully embrace their intense selves. Through spiritual searching and a dive into her own inner psyche, Starr realized she desired attention and acceptance from others, when all she really needed was attention and acceptance from herself. Hear Starr’s wisdom and heart for women with intense passions and a fire worth spreading. 

In this episode: 

• See how Starr’s passion for societal change has turned her into a teacher, spiritual leader, and life coach.
• Starr shares the experiences and revelations that changed her perspective on her own brand of intensity. 
• Feel great about how unique you are!
• See how intensity looks in the fast paced, energetic, deep inner workings of psyche and spirituality. 
• Learn how to live on the edge of cultural norms and present new ideas. 
• Break the idea of categories; redefine good and bad in your life 
• Find the right fit in your relationships. 
• Hear how Starr found spiritual development by seeking help and healing. 
• Learn grounding techniques and increase your emotional bandwidth 
• Deal with false beliefs and cling to what is true. 

Starr Recommends

A Woman’s Worth by Marianne Williamson

The Mandala of Being by Richard Moss

Links:

Starr’s Website

Session link

Embracing Intensity Community

XPress Your Power Store 

Aurora’s Website

This month I'm taking the month off and sharing reruns of my favorite episodes from season 1. This one is particularly timely because I've been having a lot of conversations about twice-exceptionality lately.

Impossible. The world seems to throw this word at you a lot, doesn’t it? For Intense, Exceptional, Gifted, and Intuitive people, our greatest strengths are often viewed as weaknesses and disabilities. When the world tries to label your dreams impossible, what can you do to harness your fire and show the world who’s boss? Wouldn’t you like to know there’s someone who has walked that hard road before, and come out the other end burning brighter than before?  

Dr. Melanie Hayes is the founder of Big Minds Unschool, a program that allows Twice Exceptional students to thrive in their own unique gifts. Melanie is also Twice Exceptional, and she knows what it is like to be a bright fire in a world that feels too small for her. After growing up with “impossible” dreams, Melanie learned to make her vision a reality. Now she is using her fire through coaching and Big Minds to change the world. This week, she will share her stories of growing up, success through unconventionality, and wisdom to inspire you to take the word “impossible” and transform it into a force of good.

Also in this episode:   

• Melanie grew up as an intense kid with a bit of an existential, otherworldly perspective.
• A fascination with twice exceptional minds.
• Working within the extremes of life, and when life doesn’t seem to want to work with you!
• Speaking up for intense kids in schools.
• Learning to trust yourself and your instincts.
• Why is it so hard to recognize our gifts?
• Overcoming fear and letting go of limitations.
• Life-coaching a holistic being.
• Roundabout career paths and connecting to the work you do.

Links:

Melanie Recommends

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Melanie’s Website

Big Minds unschool

Find Melanie’s Book on Amazon!

We Tried Normal

Join the Embracing Intensity Community

Support us on Patreon

Sign up for the Free Find Your Superpower Course

I'm taking the month of December off again, but this year I decided to try something different and share some of my favorite episodes from season one with an update from the interviewee! This week I'm sharing one of my most popular episodes of all time with Paula Prober!

As a child, were you deemed over-sensitive, dramatic, or over-emotional? Are you a deep thinker, intellectual, or intense creative? Perhaps that just means you are gifted. Join Aurora in this week’s “Embracing Intensity” as she interviews Paula Prober, an expert on the gifted population. Paula has journeyed through many disciplines from education to counseling and now to writing. Her interdisciplinary wisdom has led to a fascinating and enlightening perspective on the mind of a gifted individual. The gifted are often intense and excitable. Paula’s mission is to show the world how the gifted adult can seek healing and live life to the fullest.  

Inside this week’s episode: 

• Find out if you could be “gifted”
• Learn how to apply Paula’s analogy of the Rainforest Mind
• Find out how to discover ways to connect with your body and hone your wonderful giftedness
• What does the Argentine Tango have to do with giftedness? Listen to find out! 
• Learn strategies Paula suggests for taking care of yourself.
• Discover the Healing Arts, and the key to finding a good therapist.
• Hear how Paula changed her voice, and why it mattered so much to her! 
• Uncover how writing, meditating, seeking therapy, and SLEEP can help you embrace your fully gifted life.

Links

Paula’s Blog: Your Rainforest Mind

https://rainforestmind.wordpress.com/

Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Adults and Youth by Paula Prober

Paula Recommends

Belonging Here: A Guide for the Spiritually Sensitive Person by Judith Blackstone

Embracing Intensity Community

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Kazmiers Dabrowski was an early proponent of what we now call the neurodiversity movement. He asserted that what was viewed as "neuroses" were not an illness, but in fact a sign of high developmental potential! His theory of Positive Disintegration views the importance of falling apart, or disintegrating, before integrating into a higher whole.

This week, Chris Wells, Director of Qualitative Research at the Gifted Development Center, dives deeper into Dabrowski's life, what led to his theory and how it applies to us in the current day. 

In this episode:

• How Dabrowski's theory relates to the current neurodiversity movement.
• How his own life experiences and trauma impacted his theory.
• The importance of values.
• The three factors of developmental potential.
• How dynamisms, or the forces that drive our actions, serve as a catalyst to higher development.

Links:

Finding Treasure In Ruins Blog Post

Embracing Intensity Community

Gifted Development Center

I've been asked a lot about twice-exceptionality recently and especially on how to identify ADHD when giftedness is also involved.

In this episode:

• Characteristics observed in people who are both gifted and ADHD.
• Characteristics that may be common with giftedness, but are even more extreme when ADHD is thrown in.
• Assessment patterns I've observed with kids with ADHD.

Links:

Embracing Intensity Community

Brendan Mahan's ADHD Essentials

Do you talk to yourself the way you would talk to a loved one? In this interactive episode, Shannon Meade shares her thoughts on shifting our inner dialog to confront our own inner critic.

In this episode:

• What does your inner critic say?
• What would it look like to be an ally to yourself?
• Using affirmations effectively to shift how we treat ourselves.
• Connecting with your own inner child.

Links:

Tweak Your Self Talk

Queen of Ease

Embracing Intensity Community

Growing up in a family and community of intense and onside-the-box thinkers who "got" me for the most part, I took for granted how rare that actually is. When I found myself isolated when I moved to the PNW, I had my challenges, but I was able to rebuild connections because I had made them before and new that I could.

In this episode:

• How being isolated left me questioning my own social skills.
• Finding community in community theatre.
• Rebuilding after divorce. 
• Inspiration in seeing others find community. 

Link:

Embracing Intensity Community

Sometimes we hold back on setting goals out of fear of what might happen if we put our energy into something and it does not pan out the way we had hoped! This week on Embracing Intensity, Clinton Fetters of Distractonaut, shares a tool to help work through our fears so we can move forward on our goals!

In this episode:

• Reasons we may fail to set goals, or set effective ones.
• A tool to help work through our fear around goals. 
• Elements of a good goal.

Links:

Distractonaut Blog

Embracing Intensity Community

I saw Dr. Anita M Jackson speak on the stage at Spark Live last month and she shared that she was going through a major transformation right there on stage. After a multitude of achievements over the years, she was finally unleashing her full being to the world and fully embodying all parts of herself. 

I knew that Anita was accomplished and intense, but what I didn’t know until our interview was that she also was diagnosed with ADHD while she was working on her doctorate degree. She shares how her experience with ADHD and giftedness shaped the way she though in a way that isolated her growing up but led to deep connections as she was able to harness her own power. 

In this episode:

• How shutting yourself down leads to imbalance. 
• Connecting easily with others by seeing the good in everybody.
• Creating stories about being “too much” when the right community does not see you that way. 
• Caring less and less about what others think as we age. 
• The impact of being gifted with ADHD on school years.
• Sharing insights that teachers loved, but none of her peers understood.
• How learning about her giftedness opened the doors to possibilities.
• Mastering her intensity to overcome trauma.
• Her focus on achievement led her to disconnect with herself.
• How women over give to feel deserving of the things they may be afraid to ask for. 
• The pattern of crashing hard right before her next bigger calling. 
• Being the first woman in the family to earn a high degree, buy a house, travel internationally and not get married and have kids. 
• Big dreams that started out small.
• Personal habits that help use fire in a positive way.
• Calling in your inner circle.

Links:

Dr. Anita M Jackson’s website

Embracing Intensity Community

Support us on Patreon

Our 3rd anniversary snuck up on my until I started getting congrats on Linked in! I asked for ideas on how to celebrate and got some great ideas, but between getting sick and working on my usual day off, I decided to keep it simple. Let me know if you have topics you'd like to see covered on the show!

In this episode:

• I share about the origins of the Embracing Intensity Podcast.
• What you have to look forward to for the rest of this year. 
• Lessons learned from 3 years of interviewing gifted and outside the box thinkers. 

Links:

Embracing Intensity Community