Benita thought her intellect would keep her safe. Then it failed her spectacularly. Was she using it wrong – or was there something she was missing?
Chaos around her and intensity within her led the teenage Lotte van Lith to an eating disorder. Now, having recovered and reintegrated, she helps gifted people express their intensity with self-compassion—and let loose their incredible creativity in the process.
From her earliest days as an intense, gifted girl, Benita Jeanelle spent her life trying to be who she was expected to be, and to achieve what she was supposed to achieve—until it caused her very personality to fragment.
How does openness to experience affect a person’s political stance? For Andrea, it’s caused her views to continuously evolve—as has her view on disagreement itself.
Many pay lip service to nonconformity, but if you’re really unusual, you’ve probably struggled with the implications of deviating from the norm. How should we balance the costs and benefits of our divergence? In this issue’s introductory letter, Third Factor editor in chief Jessie Mannisto links our authors’ takes on this challenge to Eleanor Roosevelt’s writings on how to be an individual.
We’ve divided the political world into a red team and a blue team. Where does a person belong when she sees not only shimmers of red in the blue and the blue in the red, but oranges, yellows, greens, and purples besides? One thing’s for sure: it will take courage for such a person to find—or keep—a political home.
Aurora Remember Holtzman has talked to lots of overexcitable adults for her podcast, Embracing Intensity, and she’s seen some themes in their stories. For starters, though they’ve all learned to channel their intensity in a positive direction, it never started off for them that way.