Dr. Chris Wells Explains the Theory of Positive Disintegration

Debbie: 

Hey Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Wells:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Debbie: 

I’m really looking forward to getting into all of this. And we were just talking before I hit record, we’re really just gonna kind of scratch the surface. So listeners, this is gonna be a fascinating conversation, I can already tell you, because I really started to go deep down the rabbit hole of Chris’s work, and I’m just so excited to just introduce it to you in this conversation. But Chris is a way to get started. I’d love it if you could tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing. I know it’s very, your work is very connected to who you are inherently in your personal why. So could you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now?

Chris Wells:

Sure. Well, it is a long story, but I will do my best to be concise. Well, now I am a writer and a researcher and a podcaster, but I came to the work that I’m doing now, both as a parent of a kid who was twice exceptional, you know, gifted and disabled. And that discovery really blew my mind because I had been identified as a gifted kid, but then didn’t bring that label with me into adulthood because when I was like 20, I had this huge breakdown that led me to multiple hospitalizations and I was in and out of the mental health system for years. And so by the time I had my own child, I was doing well. You know, I was around the time when I rediscovered giftedness, I was probably like 39. And thanks to my son, our issues with him, it just led me down this huge rabbit hole myself. And I was a doctoral student in psychology at the time, and I discovered this research methodology called autoethnography. And it just opened up my eyes to seeing things in a different way. It just was really earth shattering to make that discovery, to realize that I wasn’t broken. I mean, it’s a long story, but in the process of exploring giftedness and twice exceptionality, I discovered Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration in the gifted literature. And next thing you know, I’m like becoming an expert on it and rethinking my whole life and eventually coming off of psychiatric medication, completely changing the way I parented and basically did everything in my life from that point. And so, I mean, hopefully that wasn’t too confusing, but that’s how I got to here.

Debbie: 

Yeah, through your own self discovery process. And I didn’t realize that it was also through your child that you learned kind of more about who you were. That is obviously the case with so many of us listening and in this community. And it is such a fascinating time, I think, because of that. And I like how you said the next thing you know, I was like, pursuing this whole area. Like it just, you know, it sounds like it was when you first stumbled upon this theory of positive disintegration that it was like, this aha moment, did something just click for you and truth bumps? Like, what was that like?

Chris Wells:

You know, interestingly at first, I really had a resistance to it. I read it, it was this chapter from Michael Pihovsky and I didn’t love it at first. I thought it was, you know, it was overexcitabilities and I read it and I thought, well, this is ADHD. Or like, I already had accepted myself as an ADHDer. And so when I came to his work and read about overexcitabilities, it seemed very positively slanted. And so I kind of I just kept trying to ignore it. It’s funny when I think back on it, but I kept doing searches that would bring me his titles, Michael’s, and I was just like, no. What else? Who else? But eventually I paid attention and it was probably when I also started doing kind of a deeper dive into Dabrowski and what he said.

Debbie: 

So I just want to talk about some concepts generally, because I have a feeling a lot of listeners are familiar with Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities. I mean, I know of them, certainly within the gifted community. I know that it is this idea, I shouldn’t even define it. I’m going to ask you to do that. But that is the context with which I understand those excitabilities as these kind of traits that some gifted people have. Or maybe you could take it. I’m going to toss the baton to you. Can you kind of explain those overexcitabilities for us?

Chris Wells:

Sure, absolutely. So there’s five types of overexcitabilities. And de Bruyne is not the one who coined that term. It existed long before him. But it really came from this idea of nervousness. And nervousness is at the heart of the history of other kinds of neurodivergence, but it’s only a term that we talk about or have talked about in gifted education for like the last 40 years. And so it’s a heightened responsiveness and kind of a lowered threshold to stimuli. And so since it happens in these five domains, they’re psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional. And certain combinations look more like ADHD, certain combinations look more like autism. But the reality is that these overexcitabilities are at the heart of all types of neurodivergence. And yet this is not something I knew, 2014 when I first discovered it, I initially came to this literature and thought, oh, I must not have ADHD, and my kid must not have ADHD because this is a characteristic of giftedness. This is just my giftedness. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. At the time when I was exploring all of this, a couple years later in 2016, there would be two papers that came out in the gifted field. That really threw, it’s hard to, how do I wanna describe this? It kind of threw a wrench into my own plans for the work I wanted to do because these papers said, well, it’s not overexcitability, it’s really openness to experience. 

And so there was some controversy in the gifted field, but by that time, I was already very confident that what we were calling overexcitability was at the heart of, like I said, ADHD, autism, and beyond. I mean, if you look for neuronal hyper-excitability or over-excitability in the neuroscience literature, you’ll see it tied also to sensory processing sensitivity and dyslexia. And so it’s really, it’s truly at the heart of everything we consider neurodivergent now. PDA, I’m sure too. I mean, I say that’s another term I discovered in my 40s where I was like, oh, hello, that explains why I’ve struggled to work my whole life for other people. But these overexcitabilities can lead to positive disintegration, and that’s how they’re connected with this theory. But that part of it kind of got lost to some extent in the gifted world, where people were just considering it a characteristic of giftedness. And so part of my work, it turned out, would be really diving down the historical rabbit hole, learning Polish, working with Michael Pichowski to translate Polish texts, and also exploring the history of ADHD and autism, which helped me make a lot of these connections.

Debbie: 

It’s super interesting and as you were explaining that also, and we’re gonna get into the theory listeners, I’m getting there, but I wonder about nervous system regulation and polyvagal, because that is something that I feel is a big piece of the conversation in the neurodivergent space now. So is there a relationship or overlap between having these over excited excitabilities and having a nervous system that’s more wired for threat.

Chris Wells:

Yes. Oh, thank you so much for bringing that up. Absolutely. And when you read Dabrowski, so Dabrowski died in 1980. I mean, he’s been gone for a long time. But when you read his work, in one book in particular from 1972 called Psychoneurosis is Not an Illness, he was talking about the autonomic nervous system. He was talking about the very issues that we are now connecting with polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation as a part of experiencing positive disintegration. And again, this is something that is really unexplored among or outside those of us who are very close to the theory, I would say.

Debbie: 

I want to then pivot and talk about this theory of positive disintegration. Okay, so I just have to tell you I was earlier today before this interview, I was listening to your podcast, I was on the subway with my 19 year old, twice exceptional neuro diversion human. And I said, Oh, check out the name of this podcast. This is what I’m researching. And my kid said, what does it involve and how do I do it? And I was like, I gotta write that down because I love that. There was something about even this idea of positive disintegration that was very interesting. So can you explain again, you have a whole show that you have 50 plus episodes, you’re talking about this. But in a nutshell, in a way that my listeners could understand, what is the theory of positive disintegration?

Chris Wells:

Well, the theory of positive disintegration is huge. And so I’m going to do my best to distill it down to, it is an alternative to the mainstream view of mental illness, really. I mean, Dabrowski, when he first, when he was first exploring positive disintegration and nervousness for himself. All of that early work for him came from suffering. He lost a friend when he was a teenager to suicide and he experienced over-excitabilities. And so you can really see in his early work how that influenced him. His medical thesis was on the psychological conditions of suicide. His PhD dissertation was on the psychological basis of self-mutilation. So he saw that having an intense experience of reality made you more likely to have what was considered neuroses or psychoneuroses at the time. And those terms predated our modern taxonomy of mental illness. And so if you look back at the history of DSM, for instance, DSM-1 is basically all about psychoneurosis. And so that was that was Dabrowski’s language at the time. And he saw that if you were somebody going through what was considered psychoneurosis, there were positive developmental implications there. And it didn’t just mean that you were crazy or mentally ill, but that this could be a process of you developing a more authentic self and like creating a personality. But unfortunately, it often wasn’t supported well. And so, you know, It wasn’t always positive. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. Disintegration can be negative or pathological too if it’s not adequately supported.

Debbie: 

Okay, so yeah, yeah. That is what I found so interesting, and again, listening to some of your other shows. And you acknowledged this was part of your own journey, that things that you thought at the time were mental illness were not actually mental illness. Could you talk about how you shifted your thinking about your own experience as a result of this new knowledge?

Chris Wells:

So that’s kind of where it came from. Sure. I’ve been through disintegration many times in my life. And one thing that I’d like to say is that it’s very individual. Everybody’s experience of this is different. And for me, it turns out that I’ve had many experiences of it. But I would say that there are people who maybe only have one huge earth shattering disintegration in their life. But for me, it began when I was a kid. And so one of the terms in Dabrowski’s theory is dynamisms. And there’s unilevel and multilevel dynamisms. Again, the terminology is a lot to get into in a podcast episode. But when I was young, I had feelings of guilt and shame that shaped my behavior to some extent. And so my early disintegrations happened like maybe before middle school, middle school, then I had another one in high school. And they were I mean, they were times that I considered mental illness when I was that age. You know, I mean, for sure in my high school journal, I was writing about having a mental illness and believing that I always would have it. I had a lot of anxiety and, you know, having strong overexcitabilities that literally produced the feeling of anxiety. And so, but that’s something that I just saw myself as always having, like I would never be free of it. I would also have mood swings, periods of depression. But then when I was 20, I had a huge disintegration that really was devastating. And it was less positive, clearly, than the one I’d had in high school. It really brought me to my knees. And at the time, I just, it was like, I couldn’t make a decision. There was so much hesitation and indecision, and I ended up making suicide attempts. That’s what led me to be hospitalized for the first time. And after that, I mean, I went through more serious disintegrations and I was in and out of the hospital many times and just saw myself as broken. I had gone from, you know, I published a book when I was 20. I had been perceived as a very gifted young person who was now like an utter failure on disability for mental illness for several years. 

And finally, you know, I kind of, well, in Dabrowski in terms, I developed a hierarchy of values. My values started to guide my behavior and it brought me out of addiction and being sick. You know, I decided that I could have a life, that I would have a life, and kind of started creating my own path before it was present. You know, I just started walking in the direction I thought I needed to go and things started to unfold for me.But then still it would be many years before I discovered the theory and kind of had a reframe. It’s just, I kept going to the psychiatrist for years and taking medication. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 19. So that’s what I was being treated for. And finally, when I discovered the theory, I started questioning everything, including with the provider I had at the time. And I think it’s pretty clear to me now that I don’t have bipolar disorder. And I just, I haven’t taken medication for years. You know, I learned how to tend my own nervous system and how to be in the world without, I don’t know, thinking of myself as broken. The more I changed my own thinking about myself, I mean, the more I became who I am now. But it’s tricky because, you know, even though you have a vision of who you might be, it’s not easy to get from point A to point B.

Debbie: 

Yeah, and so my understanding then is that this disintegration or disintegrations, because you said this happened multiple times. And it seems like that’s kind of like a complete stripping down of self or… And so what I’m understanding is that it is through that disintegration process, you were able to then ultimately make this kind of turn to go down the path you wanted to. So it was because of the disintegration that you were able to get on the right path for yourself. So am I getting that right?

Chris Wells:

Yeah, it’s well, and again, it goes back to this word dynamisms from Dabrowski. So there’s multiple kinds of dynamisms and some of them are the ones that break you down. And, you know, some of the processes of disintegration are terms that we still use in modern times like dissociation. I really struggled when I was in my 20s with dissociation. You know, we had one podcast episode where I described having this imaginary world because it’s true that when I had such a powerful imagination that it’s like I was living in this fantasy world along with my actual reality. Sometimes this is called a paracosm. There’s names for it, other terms based on who’s talking about it. But yeah, these mental processes were part of the disintegration. But then ultimately, there were what Dabrowski would call higher level dynamisms that allowed me to do the rebuilding to come out of that place where I had just, You know, all of my, it was like my psychic structures had completely broken down and who I had been before just didn’t exist and you know, I was kind of operating this period of years where I didn’t know who I was. And it was, I mean, it was tough to look back and be like, well, you know, I used to be this gifted kid and now I’m this mental patient. You know, I just, I didn’t know how to reconcile that and move forward and it took a long time. And ultimately, I met my husband who was like this stable presence in my life who, it was that relationship with him that, that helped me finally, um, like move away from being sick, I would say, and mentally ill.

Debbie: 

And do you, sorry, let me start that question over. So you went through this process, the more positive aspect of the disintegration and kind of figuring things out and being more in aligned with who you are and having a deeper understanding of who you are and maybe being more integrated, right, with your identity. And it sounds like that happened before you. Really stumbled upon this theory, is that correct? And so the theory then, when you learned about it, where you’re like, oh, that’s what I’ve just spent the past 20, 30 years of my life experiencing.

Chris Wells:

Yeah, it happened in… It didn’t happen all at once, I guess, I would say. You know, at first, I discovered Michael’s work like I described. And yeah, I mean, as soon as I came to the theory, I recognized that it was another way of viewing mental health struggles or mental illness, you know. But it was confusing because the fact that it was tied to the gifted world made it feel like maybe this couldn’t exactly be what I thought it was. And so it took more of a deep dive and it took reading Dabrowski, which came a couple years later, you know, and that was like another whole rabbit hole to go down to read his work. But then in Dabrowski’s work, I recognized aspects of what I had considered mental illness in new ways, especially this imaginal world that I described. You know, Dabrowski was describing people like Kafka, and their imaginal worlds. And I was like, oh my gosh, like that’s what I went through. And it really, it blew my mind, but it didn’t, it wasn’t like an immediate recognition or change, like it took me time and effort to do the digging into myself and the theory to get to, I guess, where I needed to be.

Debbie: 

I wanna talk a little bit more about the mental health implications. I don’t know if implications is the right word, but the way that we can think about mental health through this new lens, we’ll do that after a quick break. I’m like, this is not for the interview. I just like, I’m taking all these notes and like I’m trying to, in my brain, be like, okay, oh no, this question, it’s just so fascinating. So I hope that the way I’m doing this is okay, that it’s like following enough of a thread for you, okay? Okay. So I’m gonna talk about mental health because that is something I think a lot about. I work with so many families raising neurodivergent kids and especially the parents of teens and young adults. It’s just really pervasive, these kids are struggling with anxiety, depression, gender dysphoria, it’s a very complicated time to be a young person. And a lot of the conversation we have is surrounding modalities that would support kids and like is CBT effective or DBT effective for neural diversion people and there are so many different ways to approach this and so I’m just wondering you know in terms of this idea of positive disintegration how can this be used whether it’s in coordination with other modalities do you see it as more of a of a framework or maybe even a self-knowledge thing that we want to help young people understand more about who they are through this lens? How do you see this theory supporting the mental health journey of kids who are really struggling?

Chris Wells:

I think it’s gonna have an important place in the coming years to support young people and mental health. But right now what we’re lacking is a bridge between the past and the present, which is something that I’ve been trying to do myself. But it will help and it’ll have to be kind of a multi-pronged approach, I think. Part of the problem is that gifted is so fraught and gifted ed, you know? And so, I mean, part, like if there’s one thing I’m sure of at this point is that we need to help gifted and twice exceptional young people understand this difference that they have, that it’s not only an educational label, this is a different way of being a neurodivergence in its own right. And when it’s combined with other kinds of neurodivergence, it’s messy, you’re never gonna get that one perfect expert out there who’s gonna give you the labels that you want or need necessarily, but that we need to rethink labels and think of them as ways of being or identities rather than diagnoses or something to treat and fix. So I think that the theory can help in that way because I do think that one of the beautiful things about over-excitability is that people recognize themselves in it so easily. It’s not pathologized and yet it can apply to many different kinds of, or combinations of neurodivergence. Then, Dabrowski felt that it was really important to have people guide other folks through positive disintegration, who’ve already been through it before. Just personally, one of the things that I’m trying to do this year with the Dabrowski Center, is get people together who I know and trust who work with the theory in their practices as coaches and therapists and parents, and to say, how can we take this theory as a tool and apply it in practice in some new way to help support people outside of the existing systems we have that often feel broken to me? You know, mental health. Mental health and education as systems are both so problematic that I don’t think that we can count on them to make these changes or fix anything in our lifetimes.

Debbie: 

Yeah, and it is such a mental health piece in particular, you know, you said that you, you just kind of accepted that you were a mentally ill person. And, you know, I hear that from so many young adults and teens as well. They own that identity, I’m broken. You know, they’re on lots of meds, they’re open about it, they communicate with all their peers about this stuff, but it can become a really strong identity hook. And so, I find it inspiring and so interesting just to hear about your journey and to think about different ways of approaching it that aren’t gonna pathologize what’s going on. But it’s such a, I could just see knowing the interaction I’ve had with the mental health professionals who seem, many seem to be. What’s the word? What’s the kind word? Many just seem to not be up to speed, even on neurodivergence, right? So everything is kind of viewed as a disorder.

Chris Wells:

That’s right. And that was me when I was young. I absolutely embraced myself as a mentally ill, was sure that medication was the way forward and that’s where I was looking. I was always searching for the right combination of pills to fix me. It didn’t occur to me how much agency I had in the process and that I was the one in control of my life. And so it’s tricky because when you’re dealing with somebody who has real symptoms of mental illness. I mean, you want to validate that and say, yes, I see you’re suffering, but let’s not get too attached to it because the only way out of your suffering is by not staying attached to it and being willing to do the work to grow through it and get to the other side of it. These labels are not something that you have to hold close to you forever.

Debbie: 

Mm hmm. There was an interview I listened to on your show, and I don’t remember the guest’s name, but he said, if a person is totally stable, there’s no motivation for development to change. And that really struck me as a complete reframe for anxiety and depression, that they could actually be a sign that this is actually a growth spurt. This is a person who is in the middle of you know, to bring Kafka right, who’s in the middle of a transformation.

Chris Wells:

That’s right, totally. I mean, if you’re experiencing anxiety, it’s your body telling you something and you need to pay attention to it and figure out what it is that’s making you feel this way and move forward. And of course, there’s many different reasons why you might feel anxious. And so, you know, that’s, I mean, I just made something sound simple when it’s not. I mean, obviously it’s more challenging than we can articulate at this moment. But yeah, like there’s growth there and not everybody feels it. It was fascinating to me when I discovered the theory to think about the fact that not everybody has this experience that I have of being overexcitable. But I can tell you that since discovering the theory, I’ve completely changed the way that I experienced reality. Like doing all of this work has helped me resolve my own anxiety, which is amazing. Like I just never thought that I could be somebody who was free from it. And I really don’t feel it anymore. I did feel a little bit of anxiety before we met and recorded, which was funny because I thought, oh look, like now I’m feeling empathy for my guests. Like I forgot what it was like to feel nervous about a podcast recording, but like I don’t feel anxious anymore in my life. And I just, I didn’t have that experience of not feeling it until I was almost 50, which is mind-blowing to me. Like I didn’t think that it could go away.

Debbie: 

Hmm. Mm hmm. I’m. Yeah, and that makes me I mean, going off the interview a little bit, but like, I’m wondering how you reflect on your 20 year old self like, I, you know, I can imagine there, there’s must maybe sadness there. Just deep empathy for the young person you were who was was struggling so much.

Chris Wells:

It took a long time to get to the point where I could even see my younger self with self-compassion. I realize now that 10 years ago when I discovered the theory and I was in this auto-ethnographic process I still had a lot of anger about my younger self and I wasn’t even ready to look at the past with any empathy or self-compassion. And now, yes, I see. I see how much trauma there was, how my parents’ trauma impacted me. My father was an alcoholic. I’m able to see his trauma now. Just having these new lenses and perspectives that I’ve had from over the past 10 years, beyond the theory, but even being trauma-informed, understanding neurodivergence and being neurodiversity affirming, all of that just helped me reframe everything. And now, yeah, when I look back, I definitely wish that I had somebody at the time who could have helped me from a non-pathologizing lens.

Debbie: 

Mm hmm. Yeah. And it’s you know, I’m so grateful that you do the work that you do and that you’re bringing all of this lived experience into your mission and the way that you show up for people. So I know that you’re certainly paying it forward. But you’ve been through a lot. You’ve been through quite a journey. And it is really inspiring to me as the parent of a kid who struggles to kind of see where you are and to learn more about your story. So I really appreciate that. Before we go, I’m just thinking in terms of practical applications. So for parents who are listening to this and who are intrigued and thinking, okay, how do I get my kid to positively disintegrate? I don’t, I’m assuming it doesn’t work that way. It’s a more organic experience. But what would you want parents to kind of know or consider when they are engaging with their neurodivergent kid, their kid who is struggling with mental health challenges? Like how can they take this information and use it to support their child and their family?

Chris Wells:

It helps to have community for one thing. You know, I would, I would encourage them to think about joining a group. Like we have, uh, my co-host, Emma Nicholson started a group called adults with overexcitabilities. And, you know, consider joining a group like that where you can connect with other adults who have children who are going through this because that helps. And, you know, when we’re there, so that’s kind of becoming our official podcast group on Facebook. I had one too, but I think that Emma’s is thriving in a better way. But it’s really important, I think, if you want to embrace positive disintegration as a framework and lens to, I mean, it goes hand in hand with everything that’s truly neurodiversity affirming at this point. Understand that these aren’t issues to be treated so much as understood and support it properly. I mean, I think that that’s critical. And so while we don’t necessarily have enough print materials at this point, I mean, and there are, they do exist. Like living with intensity, it’s kind of, it feels a little dated to me at this point because it doesn’t talk about 2E in it, which is my biggest beef. And then Michael Pichofsky’s book, Mellow Out is a great resource. That in fact, I would say that one is even more important if you’re the parent of a kid who’s experiencing overexcitabilities and disintegration because Michael’s book really brings you through all of the five types of over-excitability in that book and frames it within a personal growth perspective. So much of growing through positive disintegration is your own auto-psychotherapy and finding your own path forward, this is where we can help as parents by giving our kids the tools and just the love and the support to be there. And I would say that, I mean, your book helped with that so much. I would tell them to read your book differently wired. I mean, I remember getting that book when it came out and thinking, yes, like this goes hand in hand with the theory because these are reframes of kind of conventional wisdom where you’re tilting and you’re saying, okay, but, and giving a new perspective, and that’s what this is. This is really just an alternative to conventional wisdom to some extent.

Debbie: 

That’s great. Thank you. Thank you for that. And Mellow Out, you’re the second person to mention that book to me in the past week. So I’m making a note to0 – I have not read it yet, but I’m now going to read it. And I will include links to the resources we talked about. I’ll include links to Emma’s Facebook group that you just mentioned in the show notes. Is there any other place that you would want people to check out your work to connect with you?

Chris Wells:

Well, aside from the podcast, the Dabrowski Center website has an archive of Michael P. Hufsky’s work. We have some of Dabrowski’s work. Posi is Bill Tillier’s website that has all the Dobrowski material available from Bill. And so, you know, these are places where you can learn more about the theory.

Debbie: 

Awesome, thank you. I think we did pretty good, I’m just gonna say. We covered a lot of ground in a short period of time, and I understood pretty much everything that you said, so I hope my listeners had the same experience. Listeners, I will have a lot of links in the show notes, including some of my favorite episodes of the Positive Disintegrated Podcast, or Disintegration Podcast, so if you wanna explore more, definitely check that out. Chris, thank you so much. I really just appreciate you. I’m excited for the work that you’re doing. I think it’s such a service to so many families and it’s nice to see people doing their passion work too. So thanks for everything that you shared today and for coming on the show.

Chris Wells:

Thank you so much for inviting me. And I would say all of that to you too. Thank you for everything that you do and that you’ve brought to the world.