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Over Acceptability and Intellectual Needs
Welcome to ADHD Gathering, a podcast, highlighting diverse narratives within the ADHD community and amplifying strength from real ADHD folks. I’m your host Ying, also known as ADHD Asian Girl across all social media.
It’s been a while since I’ve recorded a solo podcast episode and I want to create a lot more solo podcast episodes.
Since it’s been a while, some quick external update is that I’m still working as an ADHD coach. I still accept one on one coaching clients. I’ve received a coaching mastery reward from the biggest, ADHD coaching platform .
As well as I was featured in Self Magazine in March on an article about, realistic tips that makes meditation more accessible, for ADHD Brains. I was featured alongside with, industry leader like Jeff Warren. I finished editing all the interviews that took a really long time, and now I understand how to work with creativity with my ADHD brain a lot better. All of the beautiful interviews with, the diverse guests I’ve invited to my podcasts are alive on all podcast platforms, on YouTube .
The internal update is I have been going through some social frictions. That all accumulated to a huge self-reflection and discovery moment that happened around mid-November of 2025. I start to recognize that, I might have signs of being on the autism spectrum, and I definitely have, certain traits of overexcitability.
What is overexcitability
The overexcitability is what I want to talk about the most in this particular podcast episode. So what is overexcitability? This comes from a Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski, and he lived in the 20th century. He. Lived through the First World War, the second World War, and he passed away in the 1980s, so this is his theory about human development.
And it’s not a theory that’s based on linear time. Oh, when you are around adolescent, this is what you do. Or when you’re a young adult, this is what you do. This is a much more complex theory. Reminds me a lot about hero’s journey that self-development as a journey. This episode particularly, I’m not going to talk about the bigger picture theory.
I will link to resources that explain more in depth about the theory. What I really wanna highlight is within this theory, within the developmental potential Dabrowski talked about something called overexcitability. So this is a word he made up, in polish.
In literal translation, this word actually would mean super excitability. It means. That this person may require less stimulation to produce a response, as well as stronger and more lasting reactions to stimuli.
This stimuli includes internal and external stimuli. And this response might be internal and external as well. And this is from the book called Living with Intensity, which explains Dabrowski theory more in detail. There are five forms of overexcitability in Dabrowski theory, psychomotor, Sensual intellectual imagination, and emotional. And here are some brief definition from the book. So psychomotor overexcitability might look like movement, restlessness, driveness, and augmented capacity for being active and energetic.
I already was like, this definitely sounds like there is an overlap with representation of hyperactivity in ADHD. Sensual overexcitability, enhanced refinement, and aliveness of Sensual experience. Intellectual overexcitability, thirst for knowledge, discovery, questioning, love of ideas, and theoretical analysis.
Search for truth, imagination overexcitability. Vividness of imaginary richness of association facilities for dreams, fantasies, and inventions. Animism preferences for the unusual and unique emotional over excitability. Great steps and intensity of emotional life expressed in a wide range of feelings.
Great happiness to profound sadness or despair, compassion, responsibility, self-examination. So when I read this list of overexcitability, I immediately recognized I have definitely four out of five of these overexcitabilities. I definitely have, Sensual emotional imagination and.
Intellectual overexcitability. The only one I don’t have is probably psychomotor. I don’t have that I always have to be on the go. I can wake up at 4:00 AM type of energy
and why am I talking about the overexcitability? I think for my audience, the late diagnosed ADHD folks, I believe a lot of us have these over accept abilities that we require less stimulation to produce a response. And the book, talks about over excitability, means that life experiencing a manner that is deeper and more vivid and more acutely sensed overexcitability.
They may be thought of in a distinct mode of experiencing or as channels through which flow, the color tones, textures, insights, visions, emotional currents, and energies of experience.
This is really how I experience the world. And I would bet a lot of my audience of late diagnosed A DHD folks feel this way too. This over excitability makes life feel so vivid, and I know over excitability is defined as we need less stimulus to produce a response. And I actually want to pivot to talk about these categories of overextend ability as needs.
rethinking about how I met my needs
That actually I have these intensity needs and the needs of depth. After I read more into the theory. I start to reflecting a lot about why I did certain things I did, and recognize that, there were a lot of things I did.
I thought it was for Sensual needs, or I thought it was for emotional needs or imagination needs. Actually in the end, for me it’s about intellectual needs, that intellectual overexcitability, that’s thirst for knowledge. So this is the first discussion I want offer to you is reflecting on how you have done things so far in your life or your preferences and try to tease out which category of need for you is the most important.
Think about these category of overexcitability potentially as these intensity needs, depth, needs . So I did these reflections. I realized for me, like when I was, dating around, I really thought, I was just really interested in relationships and I am interested in connecting with humans.
And I thought it was more for, social and sensual needs. But in the end I recognized I love dates that will go into museums, try to do something new together or take a class together or watch a documentary together.
. This is potentially me being on the autistic spectrum as well. Just recognize, that’s the intellectual overexcitability. That’s the thirst of knowledge that’s coming out. For example, I recently experienced a Saturday night that I was just sitting with my partner we’re sitting side by side.
He was working on some work stuff. I was reading the book, living With Intensity. I put on a old Disney movie in the background for satisfying my Sensual needs. And we were just focused on doing our own thing and once a while we will babble to each other about what we were working on and somehow that counted as bonding for me.
And I recognized my intellectual overexcitability that thirst for knowledge actually, determines what counts as bonding for me. If me and my partner were just watching some random TV shows and if there was no discussion after we finished the show, just doing activities together wouldn’t necessarily count as bonding for me.
That’s just so interesting for me to reflect. So I invite you to explore a little bit of out of all the intensity needs, which one might be the one that’s the most foundational, that’s driving everything.
type B ambitious, ambitious without the psychomotor overexcitability
The second part of discussion I really wanna emphasize is I tried my best to see if there were research done about out of all the different overexcitabilities. Do people have all of them? Do people have more of one. I found some data out of the people who were studied, that measured overexcitability, a little over half of the folks have the psychomotor overexcitability, that restless intense amount of physical energy. And around half of the people don’t have that intense physical energy.
Why am I emphasizing this category? ’cause I think the current success culture self-improvement culture and or just the culture I exist, in the United States of being more, doing more. All the advice we’re hearing out there are dominated probably by people who have psychomotor overexcitability.
That’s why we’re hearing Advices of get up at 4:00 AM and run marathons and travel all the time and host people all the time and do so many hobbies. Honestly just Hearing about those things makes me feel exhausted. So I was oscillating between wanting to imitate that and just could not do it because I don’t have that psychomotor overexcitability.
I know I don’t have it. I may be able to overcome my body’s need for eight hours of sleep a couple of days if I have a really important project I’m on. But really I need eight hour of sleep. I am naturally not somebody who move super quickly.
Especially if I’m not caffeinated, I’m quite, in my thoughts and just floating around, that’s my natural state.
All that’s to say, I think there are a lot of people probably are like me, or like my partner. We call ourselves the type B ambitious people. Like we are ambitious. We want to achieve things, not so much of How much money we want to make or how many things we want to own, but more so that we fundamentally love what we do and we care about what we do, and we want to continuously improve our craft.
We wanna continuously solve problems. We wanna continuously make the world a better place. We are ambitious in that way, so we can be a little workaholic at times and at the same time, we don’t have the psychomotor overexcitability, so we wouldn’t be the ones that’s popping up in all the parties, or we wouldn’t be the ones that are hosting people all the time, or travel all the time or run marathons.
And I just wanna put this model out there it’s possible you might be a type B, ambitious people. That you have this drive to improve your craft, to put your gifts out there in the world to improve the world. And your version of success may look drastically different from the mainstream culture of what success looks like, and that’s completely okay as long as you are following your vision and you’re meeting your needs.
coaching philosphy: accomplish more by doing less
And I think a lot about why my philosophy of coaching is about helping people accomplish more by doing less. I have to be very intentional about what I put on my plate. I already don’t have as much physical energy as my brain would love to have.
So I internally am constantly living with this gap of my brain is intensely curious about things and want to read. I want to create, want to solve problems, and my body is just oh, we are tired. So that means, I’m very intentional about any external demands or responsibilities or social gatherings I will take on.
I’m intentional about which external things actually nurture me and with the things that I might have to do, but doesn’t nurture me to the same extent what’s the amount of exposure I can tolerate without my physical energy just gets drained too much.
So I constantly think in this very intentional- prioritization energy- conservation type of way. I do think that comes from my economic training in always being very clear about what’s the current constraint, my physical energy is always my constraint.
And with that constraint, how can I find a strategy that helped me to optimize for what I truly want in life? Which is that thirst for knowledge and I wanna grow, I wanna learn more. I want to improve my craft. I want to contribute meaningfully to the world and a side note for the needs.
intuition need
I love different category of overexcitability. Still I feel like there are part of my needs that are not necessarily covered in these categories. For example, one of my needs , intuition needs, that i’m not following the clock. I’m allowing myself to move in this, slower movements, just exists in nature and have empty space on my calendar so that intuition will come to me. And that’s partially why I am recording podcasts again. ’cause I recognize I really long for just talk and see what gets channeled in it. Doesn’t mean I don’t structure or organize my podcast episodes.
I still do. And at the same time, how I’m recording these podcast episodes are very much just free flowing, speaking and channeling in the message. And that’s a need. I’m recognizing that I have this intuition needs that requires, empty space on my schedule and not following clock time
it’s very different, from that intellectual needs of thirst for knowledge.
rethinking how I structure my weekends, evening, travel
So once I recognized these needs, how I’m thinking about it is radically rethinking about how I structure my, weekends and my evenings. I probably will plan. Fewer, out and about concerts type of dates and more time just allow myself to read books, at home or read books at a coffee shop.
And I actually, looked through Coursera and EDX again, about the courses I was interested in, a few years ago and found courses I’m still interested in and probably going through some history courses on my own to satisfy that thirst for knowledge. And also recognizing like even travel, I thought it was for Sensual needs.
Not really. It is actually for, intellectual needs as well. I always would sign up for guided tours. I wanna learn the history about the place, I wanna learn the culture. So just recognizing all of this is making me rethink about how I plan my year, how I plan my free time, even plan my travel.
novelty needs, which one doesn’t have diminishing marginal return
And that leads me to the final discussion I wanna talk about is novelty needs we all know ADHD brains crave novelty and I’ve been reflecting on what truly is novelty. If we dive it deeper borrowing these categories from overexcitability and thinking about, okay, exactly what are we seeking for novelty.
I used to think I was seeking sensual novelty, like I do like beautiful things. I like, good food, I like a good bottle of wine . And I do like to read a new story like that imagination novelty or going deep diving to a movie or show.
Or emotional novelty. I think that’s why I was really interested in, relationships when I was younger, getting to know new people, forming that new connection.
And at the same time, I’m recognizing that for me, actually the most important novelty needs is the intellectual, thirst for knowledge. And that’s the only novelty needs I can continue to pursue that. I don’t see sharp decline of marginal return. Again, this is economic terms. Marginal return is the extra revenue gained from adding one more unit of variable input while keeping other inputs fixed. I will say it as if I allocate an hour of time and energy to pursue something, which category of these will give me more return? And I’m recognizing that the intellectual category is the category that the marginal return doesn’t diminishes.
All the other categories, like if I keep dining out and to eat at restaurants or keep traveling you do hit a peak. And then afterwards the extra unit of joy that comes from extra unit of, effort start to diminish.
And that’s a pattern that’s well recognized in economics .
But for me, cognitive needs, that’s the only category of needs that actually, the more I pursue, the more I get out of it. The joy I get when I can sit down for an hour and a half, just dive deep into, an dense book, like Living with Intensity and there are so many terms I’ve never heard before and theories I’ve never was exposed before.
And feeling like my brain is literally being stretched. And once I have these new concepts, then I can reflect on my life and, think about my own choices from a brand new perspective, that level of joy out of effort is so huge. It’s so huge. And what I love about this particular category is, the more I pursue the thirst for knowledge, the more that different areas of knowledge connect in my head and that make me make associations that maybe other people and haven’t thought about. I get more joy out of every ounce of effort I put into my quest for knowledge.
what needs am I trying to satisfy on social media
Yeah, I was recognizing that, when I browse on social media, really, I’m looking for three category of things. One is new knowledge, like I’m looking forward to learn something new. A new idea I’ve never been exposed to before.
The first is cognitive needs. The second is the sensual needs like seeing beautiful videos or beautiful places. The third one might be social connection of oh, this is what people are doing. But primarily for me, social media is looking for new knowledge and looking at beautiful things.
And that makes me go back to read reference type of books. Like, I’m reading wine Folly, it’s information about wine and it’s not really meant to read, cover to cover. So I would just read bits and pieces of it. And they scratch a very similar itch when social media just gives me a new piece of knowledge I never seen before. It’s the same feeling of when I read Wine Folly and recognize I never learned this attribute about this particular grape before. Again, that’s partially why I’m suspecting I probably am on autistic spectrum because this is the type of joy I have.
The reflection really is to invite you to think about out of these category of needs like psychomotor that’s physical energy emotional, sensual, intellectual, imaginative, which category for you, you truly have that. The more you pursue, the more joy you get out of them.
And do you notice when the marginal returns start diminishing? That means for every unit of effort you put into it, you might pass a certain point that you get less and less joy. I probably will record another, podcast episode on Dabrowski’s Theory about positive disintegration soon hopefully.
summary
For now, this episode really is about the developmental potential within, this theory. And within the developmental potential we talked about overexcitability. What are the five categories and, how I reflected how am I meeting my needs? Talked about, energy conservation, because I don’t have the psychomotor overexcitability and how the current success culture are dominated by probably people who have a lot of physical energy.
I talked about my own needs that are not, covered, by these category. One of them is intuition needs. And then finally, I talked about which category of these needs for me, the return of joy does not diminish.
I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please leave a review or the podcast platform you’re listening to and I am accepting one on one coaching clients. So if you’re interested , please book a free consultation call and I will talk to you next time.
Resources:
- Booking a free coaching discovery call with Ying, an award winning ADHD coach & meditation teacher featured on Self Magazine
- Download a free ADHD emotional regulation menu
- Check out more podcast episodes
- Check out this podcast episode’s transcript
To learn more about Dabrowski’s theory, check out:
Dabrowski Center’s podcast episode on Overexcitabilities and Dabrowski’s theory. Book recommendation: Living with Intensity
Another podcast episode ‘Meeting Intensity