**Content Warning**: Please be aware that sensitive issues such as suicide attempts, hospitalizations, police-related trauma, and drug use and treatment are mentioned. We’d also like to include a language warning for this episode.

In episode 8, Chris and Emma share their personal experiences of positive disintegration, in an intimate, honest (and brave) discussion. They connect these life stories with constructs from Dąbrowski’s theory, and explore the dynamisms which other people might be experiencing during their own times of crisis and disintegration.

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Below we are sharing links that are personally meaningful to us, and are relevant to the topic of disintegration and our own journeys.

From Emma:

Why You’ll Never Walk Alone – This is one of my blog posts which looks at how the lyrics to the song You’ll Never Walk Alone reflect how to deal with a period of disintegration, and why shared human experience means you are not alone in your times of trouble. It’s basically my shout-out to everyone going through hard times, encouraging you to ‘Walk On’.

The Secret Life of my Authentic OE Self – One of my first blogs where I talk about my past and how I struggled with what I called ‘hurricane-brain’, until I found Dabrowski and it changed my life. Really, this is the very-brief life story of me trying to cope with my intensities until I finally figured out who I was, and that I wasn’t alone

What is Positive Disintegration (and how do you cope with it)? – A video where I talk about positive disintegration, what it is, how I try and deal with it, and explain Dabrowski’s levels using Neo from the Matrix. It was my first stab at explaining positive disintegration on the channel, and it prompted Bill Tillier to contact me (without whom, I never would have met Chris), so I’m quite fond of it.

7 Omens that Herald the Dark Night of the Soul – This is from the website Lonerwolf, and describes disintegration from a different angle. They actually reference Dabrowski, and it becomes clear through the post that even if people have never heard of ‘positive disintegration’ they can still disintegrate! I found this post particularly comforting myself, and found it at a time when I was trying to make sense of my own process, and had just started researching Dabrowski.

You can reach me via email at [email protected]

From Chris:

The Primary Importance of the Inner Experience of Giftedness – This is a paper that I wrote in 2016 when I was first getting to know Michael Piechowski. It’s based on the autoethnographic work I did in 2014, and it gives a little more context to the issues I talked about in this episode. It was published in Advanced Development Journal in 2017.

Giftedness, Positive Disintegration, & Mental Health. A discussion with Jennifer Harvey Sallin from InterGifted on the Conversations on Gifted Trauma podcast.

When Learning about Overexcitabilities Changes your Life! (Gifted Unleashed podcast) – In this interview with Nadja Cereghetti, I touched on some of what I’ve been through when it comes to positive disintegration. It has resonated with enough people that I thought it was worth sharing here in case you want to learn a little more about me from a different podcast.

My page on the Dabrowski Center website has more about my recent and current work.

My keynote address from the 2022 Dabrowski Congress: How Did We Get Here? Mentors, Archives, and Building Community. [YouTube]

You can reach me via email at [email protected]. Please know that I often take a day or two (or longer) to respond to emails, but I promise I will get back to you as soon as I can. <3

* A transcript of this episode is available on the Dabrowski Center website.

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Adults with Overexcitabilities group on Facebook

Dabrowski Center and Positive Disintegration Podcast Community on Facebook

The Tragic Gift blog by Emma

Email us at [email protected]

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