For the emotionally and intellectually intense, existentially anxious adult

Have you been told that you ‘see too much’, ‘hear too much’, ‘think too much’, ‘feel too much’?

Hello, and welcome.

This website is for emotionally and intellectually intense adults, those who feel deeply, think relentlessly, and live with existential awareness that others around them do not seem to share.

Intense curiosity, intellectual excitability, and emotional sensitivity can be blessings. They may not feel like a gift at times, but with skills and awareness, you can learn to harness your strengths.

We live in a culture that does not fully understand or embrace people like you; intense and passionate individuals are told they are ‘too much,’ ‘too sensitive,’ ‘too overbearing,’ ‘too dramatic,’ or ‘too emotional.’ Many are left feeling misunderstood and unable to make sense of themselves.

The questions this work helps you think through:

What does it mean to live well when you experience the world more intensely than most?

How do you make sense of having been told all your life that you are too much?

What have you been carrying that no one has been able to think through with you?

You may recognise yourself in this

You feel things others do not seem to feel, or feel them at a depth others do not seem to reach. You think relentlessly about questions most people set aside. 

You have known since you were young that you experience life at a different volume than the people around you. You have spent years editing yourself down to be palatable to people who could not meet you at full intensity. You learned, somewhere along the way, that being fully yourself was costly.  

You have watched people get on with their lives in ways that have never made sense to you. You have always been the one who says the thing no one wants said, even when you ended up getting alienated for it. You have looked for your kind of mind in books, in conversations, in cities, and found only fragments on the internet.

You have intelligent friends who can almost meet you, but not quite. You have read widely and found writers who spoke to parts of your experience but no one who could hold the whole of it.

You are not looking to be fixed. You are looking for someone to think with at the intensity you live in, without dismissing you as being too much. 

 

“The existential loneliness is the price we pay for being conscious of ourselves.”
– Rollo May

On Intensity

Intensity can be expressed and experienced in different ways.

You feel a constant stream of both positive and negative feelings, pain, despair, fear, excitement, love, and happiness.

You appreciate beauty more than most, and you can be deeply moved by art and music, and have bursts of creative insights.

You are naturally excitable and passionate, even if you do not show it on the outside.

You are sensitive to unspoken social nuances and intensely dislike dishonesty and inauthentic situations.

You may feel older than others around you, like an old soul.

You are highly driven and have been told you are perfectionistic, which can express as chronic anxiety and restlessness.

You have incessant internal dialogues; it feels impossible to stop your mind from running.

You live with existential angst, a sense of urgency, and a constant need to learn and explore.

You experience existential depression over meaninglessness, mortality, and loneliness.

Your psychological distress is sometimes expressed in the body, headaches, panic, sleep disturbance.

You may have been misdiagnosed or mislabelled by the mental health system.

You may have been identified as a gifted child or adult but never understood why you suffered so much.

You find that most conversations end at the surface, and the depth you want is something you are left craving.

For a fuller description of emotional intensity, see here.

Common Criticisms Faced by Intense and Sensitive Adults

“Stop thinking too much.”

“You’re too perfectionistic.”

“You overthink everything.”

“You are moving too fast, you are too ambitious.”

“You’re too critical of yourself and others.”

“Why do you have to question everything?”

“Why can’t you just let it go?”

“You take everything too seriously.”

“You’re too high maintenance.”

“You expect too much from yourself and others.”

“You’re too much.”

An Ode to Intensity: The Light and Dark of Being So Truly Human

Many people who come across as detached and stoic might be highly sensitive and intense adults in hiding. From a young age, the weight of their emotions can be unbearable, and so they learn to distance themselves from feeling, not as a conscious choice but as a coping mechanism. Often they cannot help it.

If you were emotionally intense from a young age, you tend to care too much and feel too much, and the degree to which you invest in a relationship almost always exceeds what the other side gives. You dive in too quickly, assume too much good nature in others, neglect the dark side, and prematurely use your imagination to envision a future.

As a young person without enough knowledge of what most people are like, you erroneously assumed that most people were like you. When you liked someone, you readily expressed your affection, surprising and sometimes burning others with your authenticity. This caused you to be called weird, or harshly rejected. Without the right guidance, the pattern repeats itself.

Highly intense people usually have a rough childhood of confusing episodes, not understanding why they were rejected or why their love seemed unreciprocated. They shut down, whether they want to or not. As much as they want to preserve their innocence and hope, their wounds will not let them.

Then you go through life with less intensity. Everything seems more lukewarm, with less vivid colour. You miss the days when you could live with so much vitality, but somehow you can no longer open your heart so easily.

Yet there are times when you catch a glimpse of your inner intensity. A moment of connection with another mind that finally meets you. A piece of art or music that lands somewhere most music cannot reach. A sunset that reminds you of what you used to feel.

These moments fill you with both wonder and fear. Wonder, because in that moment you feel truly alive. Fear, because you know everything ends, and you will be engulfed with sadness.

You are reminded of impermanence, of your own mortality, of the unbearable lightness of being. Every deep soul exchange, every touch with the beauty and the transcendental, can feel like a mini-death, the closing of a chapter that holds a piece of your soul.

Most people do not live this way. They glide through the days, barely registering the highs or the lows.  You carry with you, perpetually, existential loneliness.  

Working with Imi

Hi, I am Imi.

After a decade of clinical practice as a psychotherapist and art therapist, I transitioned out of the clinical world. Diagnosis-led work served a purpose, but sometimes the conversation people most need to have is about something else, meaning, what to do with intensity, moral sensitivity, existential angst, relationship mismatches, and how to live a life that feels congruent to who they are.

In our work, we will draw on philosophy, depth psychology, and your own life, to think clearly about the questions that matter most to you. This is an intellectual and working partnership for adults whose inner lives have outgrown what conventional support can offer.

Most of my clients have been intense thinkers and feelers for as long as they can remember. Many have read widely, tried therapy, even AI, but left wanting deeper and more challenging conversations. If that sounds like the kind of things you have been looking for, you can read more about how I work and what a session looks like here.

You can find more about my background, publications, and interviews here, and my personal journey here. 

Reviews, Testimonials and Kind Words

 Your Preferred Love Language is whatever you did not get in childhood. Sounds so simple, yet so evocative.’