Mapping the Emotional Landscape

How emotional overexcitability became my compass, not my curse

For decades of my life, I felt like I was too much. I've been told that I’m too intense. Too reactive. Too easily hurt. Too quick to cry, and too slow to let go. For a long time, I believed it. I thought my emotional depth was something to manage, minimize, or medicate.

What I didn’t know back then is that what felt like a flaw was actually a form of intelligence. That emotional overexcitability wasn't evidence of disorder, but a sign of potential development. A force that could overwhelm and destabilize, yes, but also one that could guide. If tended carefully, it could become transformational.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This series traces that transformation across five distinct phases of my life. Over the past several years, I’ve been reviewing decades of journals, revisiting old memories, and compiling what I call retrievals: curated collections of search results from my archive that track the appearance of specific words or phrases over time. These excerpts help illuminate how my emotional self has evolved, revealing patterns, shifts, and insights across different phases of my life.

What began as qualitative research has become something more intimate—a kind of emotional archaeology. And now, I want to share what I’ve uncovered.

These five phases emerged through the lens of relational–developmental autoethnography (RDA)¹, the method I introduced in my recent paper and post. RDA is a practice of tracing growth through lived experience, especially in relationship. By working with my personal archive, made up of journals, letters, interviews, and more, I’ve charted how emotional overexcitability (OE) developed across distinct periods of disintegration and integration.

Emotional OE is an intensified sensitivity to feelings, both one’s own and those of others. It shows up as heightened responsiveness in relationships, a deep need for connection, and strong emotional memory. For me, it has always been relational in its expression: my emotional life came alive most vividly in connection with others.

When it isn’t supported or understood, emotional OE can look and feel like anxiety, depression, or rejection sensitivity. That’s one face of it—raw, overwhelming, and often mistaken for pathology. But in other circumstances, it becomes something else: a developmental force. The same intensity I once misread as mental illness was also the source of deep self-reflection, moral awareness, and transformation.

This is why Dąbrowski considered emotional OE so important. It’s not simply “feeling too much.” It’s a way of experiencing life that, depending on how it’s lived, can either overwhelm or become the very fuel for growth.

Across the series, I’ll walk you through each of the five phases to illustrate how emotional OE changed and evolved over time, and beyond that, to show what it taught me about attachment, rupture, grief, ethics, and love. In each post, I’ll share brief excerpts from that phase and reflect on what they reveal with the help of Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration.

Here’s the trajectory we’ll be following:

• Phase 1 (1989–2006): Emotional survival, fragmentation, and suppression

• Phase 2 (2007–2013): Anger, boundary-setting, and the awakening of moral agency

• Phase 3 (2014–2015): Reflective depth and the integration of insight

• Phase 4 (2016–2022): Complexity, grief, and the long arc of repair

• Phase 5 (2023–2025): Emotional sovereignty, spiritual clarity, and service

I offer these not as stages to be copied or idealized, but as one map among many. If you’ve ever been told you’re too much or felt like your emotions disqualify you from belonging, I hope you’ll find something here that resonates.

Below, we begin with Phase 1—the longest period chronologically, and the quietest emotionally. The phase of barely holding on. The phase of almost disappearing.

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Phase 1: When Feeling Is Too Dangerous

This phase spans the longest stretch of my life—seventeen years from 1989 to 2006—and yet, when I gathered emotional excerpts from those years, they filled only five pages.

That scarcity spoke volumes. It’s not that I didn’t feel deeply. I did. But I didn’t have the tools, the safety, or the self-trust to stay present with what I felt. My emotional life during these years was intense, overwhelming, and largely inaccessible. I wrote around it, intellectualized it, numbed it, and sometimes tried to destroy it. In many ways, I was documenting a life I couldn’t yet bear to feel.

This insight came through the retrievals. When I searched my archive for the word emotional, the results shed light on how I described feelings, reactions, sensitivities, grief, and inner states. A related retrieval for emotions offered a slightly different lens—one that revealed more about my efforts to regulate, analyze, or recover emotional experience.

The Ache of Knowing Something Was Wrong

In 1990, I already knew something was deeply wrong, even if I couldn’t name it. At seventeen, I wrote:

“Life is very cruel. And I guess I was never taught how to properly cope with my problems. I don’t know if that is my fault. For two years drugs like alcohol and pot were absolutely a part of my daily routine. No one knew or cared enough about me to do anything about it. I guess I kept it to myself pretty well. Unfortunately, I suppose, it hurt me in the long run. What was my reason for living supposed to be anyway? I wasn’t happy. I was angry and lonely. I had many friends, but I was always alone. No one could reach me. I am my own best friend. I have no really major influences…When I’m a little older, or at least a little more mature, hopefully I won’t have such depressing problems.”

The bluntness of these lines reveals the despair of a teenager who already sensed isolation was the core wound. I had friends but felt entirely unreachable, cut off, left to be “my own best friend.” My only hope was that maturity might somehow rescue me from problems I couldn’t face.

That summer I added:

“I have a myriad of emotions that I need to sort out. I'm pretty confused. I wonder why my life is so fucking difficult? I wish I could just do my high school years over again. In fact, how about starting at 12. It was around there that everything started to get screwed up.”

Here I could locate the timeline of collapse—“starting at 12”—but not its causes. What comes through most strongly is the sense of confusion and futility: that my life was already spoiled beyond repair before it had even begun.

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The Paradox of Clarity and Chaos

Even in avoidance, I showed flashes of insight. I wrote:

“It must be a signal to Bob [therapist] the way that I change the subject away from my parents or my childhood. I inadvertently do that, usually because it takes too much emotional energy to drag up those memories. I hate putting the effort into something that is bound to be painful.” (July 1990)

This is the paradox of Phase 1: I could see what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop it. I had clarity about my patterns, but no safe way to break them.

By 1997, I was describing the effects of coming off medication:

“It's Friday and not a fucking minute too soon. Thank God this week is over. I feel really funny today. I haven't quite identified what it is yet. I don't know what to do with myself. So I figured I'd write in here, because that gives me something to do. I feel much more emotional than I do on the Tegretol. Or Depakote or lithium. I think it's going to take some getting used to. Right now, I have all the time in the world. I haven't thought about killing myself since yesterday afternoon. That's a good sign.”

Here again, I could narrate my inner shifts with striking precision, almost clinically, while still measuring progress by how long it had been since I last thought about suicide. I could map my inner world in detail, but I was still swallowed by it.

The Hunger to Feel, the Terror of Feeling

A constant thread in Phase 1 is longing to feel fully while also fearing the consequences. I wrote:

“I realized tonight that I really want to cry, but I can’t. I cannot do it. The last time I even came close was last year while I was talking with Dave. I wonder if I can be that emotional with him now.” (1990, age 17)

This captures both hunger and inhibition: I wanted tears, but I couldn’t easily access them, even with someone I trusted.

When I did gain access to stronger feeling, I clung to it as proof that I was alive:

“My session with Phil [therapist] was interesting. He doesn’t like the real me—because I don’t sit there in a depressive stupor now. I tell him what’s on my mind, and I don’t settle for anything less than what I want. Phil said, ‘We used to have nice conversations.’ I’m not interested in having pleasant conversations with the man. He’ll just have to get used to this—the way I am. He tried to argue that it isn’t the real me, it’s me with a chemical imbalance. I beg to differ. I’m not the person I was with my mind trapped by that restrictive drug. I’m willing to take the extra emotional intensity that comes with my illness. It’s my burden, not his.” (1997, age 24)

Here, I defended my intensity fiercely. I didn’t yet see it as developmental, but I knew it was part of my identity and resented anyone who tried to medicate it away.

Pressure to Breaking Point

When feelings couldn’t be contained, the pressure erupted in self-harm:

“I cut my arm. To relieve the emotional tension that's inside of me. While I was looking for a Band-Aid I ran across a bag with a tiny bit of pep in it. I dumped it onto this notebook, thought about it for a minute, and blew it on the rug. Man, what temptation. I'm just a fucking mess right now. I can't believe I cut myself. At least no one can see it. Life is killing me.” (1998, age 25)

Later that day:

“I hate myself right now. I really do. I feel terrible. I feel guilty, angry, hurt, sad, and pathetic. My mind won't leave me alone, either. Cutting my arm did not provide me with any relief. Thank God I didn't do that pep or I'd really feel like shit right now. I don't know what to do. I truly feel like an emotional wreck. I wish Dr. B would call, but it's Sunday. I'm such a fucking asshole. A needy asshole.” (1998)

These entries show how quickly intensity turned into desperation. When nothing else could contain it, I turned it inward. The cycle was predictable: unbearable pressure, an act of release, immediate shame, and longing for someone else to rescue me.

The Relational Lifeline

What distinguishes emotional OE from general emotional volatility is its fundamentally relational nature. Even in my darkest periods, connection could break through the numbness:

"183 days clean today. I had a most excellent day today. The first thing I did was go to see the Holms² and it was great. I made amends to them finally. While I was talking to Mrs. H about the guilt I felt, I started crying. I feel so good about it... I don’t think I ever cried face to face with her. I’m human now. I feel and have emotions." (1991, age 18)

This entry reveals something crucial: the emotional breakthrough didn’t happen in isolation but in the context of a trusted relationship. The Holms were among several adults who served as emotional lifelines during this phase—people who could mirror back my humanity when I’d lost sight of it myself.

Glimpses of the Developmental Force

Even in the depths of Phase 1, moments of insight emerged that pointed toward what emotional OE could become.

In 1996, I wrote:

“I cried hard earlier. I just needed to release some mental anguish. That pain that Bob always said was holding me back. Well, I’m sick of being held back—if it takes crying, so be it. I have to allow myself to feel the whole range of emotions, not just through some selective process. That’s the only way I can hope to develop my real self.” (1996)

Two years later, I recognized the same truth with even more clarity, linking it directly to risk and choice:

“I have a different perspective on things now. I don’t feel like a failure. I feel like I finally do have a future—as long as I maintain my sobriety and some emotional stability. I realize that I’m taking a big risk going off Tegretol, but I want to experience my full range of emotions. I can experiment with myself—I’m going to be as safe about it as I can possibly be. I’ll continue to chart my moods in my mood journal. I have faith that things will continue to get better. I’m doing the right thing, I’ve to keep it up, that’s all.” (1998)

These entries show the seeds of what would eventually become developmental dynamisms: dissatisfaction with myself, the drive toward authenticity, and the recognition that growth required feeling fully rather than selectively.

The Silence as Self-Protection

These entries weren’t reflections—not in the way I understand that word now. They were distress signals, fragments of emotional overwhelm that had no developmental structure around them. Most of what I wrote kept a protective distance. I was describing what had happened to me, while not yet locating myself within it.

In Dąbrowski’s terms, this is what unilevel disintegration often looks like. Emotion floods the system, and there is no structure to hold it. There’s no inner hierarchy to say: this is more meaningful than that. No developmental direction has yet taken hold. There is suffering, but no synthesis.

And yet, the seeds were there. Even in my most fragmented states, I was reaching for connection, meaning, and truth. Looking back, what strikes me most is not how broken I was, but how much I endured without breaking entirely. The silence was self-protection. My emotions had gone underground, waiting for safer conditions.

This is also where my journals reveal something that seems to be missing from the way OE is usually described. Across these five phases, my emotional overexcitability itself reveals levels. In Phase 1, it was raw, overwhelming, and fragmenting—an unrefined intensity that destabilized more than it guided. Later, that same intensity would transform into discernible dynamisms: dissatisfaction with myself, responsibility, and empathy. In other words, what began as emotional flooding eventually differentiated into developmental forces. Overexcitability was the raw material; the dynamisms were its products.

In the next post, I’ll turn to Phase 2: the years when I started fighting back and finally began to listen to my emotions. But I wanted to start here, with the silence and the ache beneath it, because this is where the story truly begins.

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1. It is worth noting that the five phases I describe don’t map directly onto the TPD levels of development. They are my way of tracing change across time, not an attempt to redefine the theory’s levels.

2. Throughout these posts, you'll see journal entries that mention trusted adults, mentors, and friends from my journey. I've chosen to leave some names as they appear in my writing and to use pseudonyms for others, depending on people's comfort with being identified. I've done this to preserve the authenticity of my journals while also respecting privacy and to honor the role these relationships played in my development.