Hey Tabi!

Reframing Intensity: Passion, Not Peril

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 16

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Intensity isn’t always anger—but it can really help to know the difference!

In this episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook unpacks how to tell the difference between healthy intensity, destructive anger, and trauma-driven reactions.

If you’ve ever been told you’re “too much,” or if someone’s passion feels like a threat, this conversation will help you understand what’s really happening in your nervous system, and how to respond with grace, grounding, and discernment.

You’ll learn:
✨ What intensity actually is and why it often gets mistaken for anger
✨ How trauma shapes your body’s response to loud voices, passion, or energy
✨ How to recognize healthy intensity versus coercive control
✨ When and how to adjust your own intensity for deeper connection
✨ Practical grounding and communication tools to regulate your emotions
✨ A faith-based perspective on passion, boundaries, and emotional expression

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 This book is for every Christian woman who has been harmed sexually, whether that happened in childhood, adulthood, or even within your coercive controlling marriage, and you're longing to feel safe in your body again. We talk about the hard stuff, shame, desire, faith, and even questions like, is this sin or is this trauma?

You don't have to untangle it alone. Body & Soul, Healed & Whole is for you. Get a copy here today - https://a.co/d/8Jo3Z4V

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🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

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SPEAKER_00:

Have you ever been told you're too much? Have you ever shrunk yourself because someone told you that? Well, if you answered yes, then this is an episode for you. Intensity by itself is not a problem, but misunderstanding it absolutely could be. Welcome to Hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off-limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, and I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now, let's get going. So, welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby. I'm super excited that you are here. Today, we are diving into something that trips us up a lot in relationships and can get really confusing. We're going to talk about intensity. Here's the thing: just because someone is intense, it does not mean that they are angry. And just because you feel a big reaction in your body when someone is intense doesn't mean that you are actually unsafe. So we're going to unpack that difference a bit today. And I think it's going to help you breathe a little bit easier in your conversations. So let's get some definitions and some groundwork just under our belt here, which I think is super important. What do I actually mean by intensity? And I think it's always really powerful and important to define a word so that we all are on the same page. And this is something that we think that if we don't do it, we can get really tripped up. So I truly believe that clear is kind. So we're going to start with our basics here. Intensity is energy. It is passion. It's an urgency. It's someone leaning forward. So I tend to lean in a lot when I'm feeling quite intense and in an intense conversation, but you're leaning forward with conviction. You are maybe even taking someone's hands. You might raise your voice a little bit or get a little bit louder because you care deeply. Intensity, if we just kind of distill it down to an easier definition, is a volume dial. It's not a red flag necessarily. So we can turn the volume up or turn it down based on a given situation and how much intensity we might need to bring to the table. And I'm going to talk about how to know when to do that a little bit later. Anger, on the other hand, is a specific emotion. Anger is triggered by loss. It is triggered by something unfair. It's a sense of injustice or threat that we need to confront. So we should be, as God is, angry over sin, angry over oppression. All of those things would trigger the emotion of anger. Anger isn't always loud, and anger isn't always necessarily intense. Now it is the most intense of the emotions. I will say it comes very often with the largest presentation, but it isn't always loud and it doesn't always seem passionate. I don't know if you've ever been around anyone that was like angry under the surface and they were quiet angry, but they were definitely angry. Additionally, anger by itself isn't necessarily sinful or destructive. Anger is just an emotion. It is one of the ones that God has given us. And so we can be angry and not sin. There is a whole Bible verse that says that. I think, particularly for women, that can be a little bit tough because we are told we're not allowed to be angry. In fact, we are explicitly told that at times. However, it's not the anger that's the problem. It's what we do with the anger that can be problematic or potentially sinful. Because anger and intensity sometimes look similar from the outside, we can get a little bit confused. And again, for women, that can be especially true. In some circles, there are really strong opinions on how a woman should present herself. And I personally have been called aggressive in a situation where a man would have been called assertive. And it was interesting because the term used for my presentation in this situation was one that alluded to me being angry when I was not angry at all, actually. I was just very assertive and I wasn't going to back down from the position that I held because I knew the position I held was biblical. So that is something that is very interesting. So when a woman presents assertively or with a lot of passion and intensity, then oftentimes she can be labeled as angry when she is not at all any of those things. So why do we confuse this? Well, if you grew up in a home where raised voices meant danger or your nervous system, you know, was constantly addled by that, then you don't know the difference. Your body might say, intensity is a threat, and I need to figure this out and back off from it. And it's just your body trying to protect you. Also, sometimes we just don't have good words for things. And if we've never seen a healthy presentation of intensity that did not include anger, then we might not know what we're seeing. For survivors of coercive control, intensity often was used as a weapon. Whether that was by the abuser, whether that was by a church system or anyone outside, it absolutely could be used to dominate or to shut you down or keep you small. And so any intensity being directed in vicinity of you, even if it's that towards you, might make you feel really uncomfortable. So of course, your body is going to get jumpy when you feel that familiar energy until you kind of take a look around and see what you might need to figure out. Now, if you're trying to state your case or get help or confront an injustice and you were called too intense, then that might actually also have been an effort to silence you. After all, if you're seen as the problem, then the real problem, abuse, coercive control, abusive systems, doesn't have to be addressed. So I've been called a few things when my intensity level is high while I am fighting for a survivor. And I can promise you that none of them were kind words for intense or for passionate. Like I said before, a lot of times women in particular get called a lot of things that maybe a man wouldn't get called in a situation like that. Now, obviously, this is not a one-to-one where all women get called this and all men do this. That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying I've seen it frequently enough that I probably need to make mention of it. And again, not all places do this, but I've seen my fair share that do. So I do want to mention it. Even our culture plays into this. In some families or communities, passionate expression is celebrated. I think of some of my Latina friends that that would absolutely be the case. It is a very passionate community, at least my exposure to it certainly has been. And so it's celebrated. Passion is celebrated. In others, it's considered disrespectful or even scary. And sadly, often in churches, when passion or intensity is expressed, particularly by a woman, it can be considered problematic. And so goodness, no wonder we misread it. No wonder it's super hard to deal with and understand sometimes. So why does it matter that it could potentially be misinterpreted? Well, when we assume that intensity equals anger, then conversations can get shut down too quickly. We miss the heart behind somebody's words. And ultimately, both systems and relationships suffer. And we don't want that. You think about being in a therapy room or in a church meeting and someone is speaking passionately about injustice, you know, they might be, and this is true for both men and women, might be immediately labeled as angry or divisive. But what if they are just showing a deep conviction? What if they are showing a deep passion? Now, as long as they're being respectful, right? Intensity does not equal disrespect. You should not be disrespectful. It's a whole different thing. We should not be demeaning. Intensity does not equal demeaning anyone else. We all want to treat people as image bearers of the living God. So when I'm saying intensity, I am also not saying mistreatment. I can be incredibly intense and also very kind, very winsome, and very gracious to other people. I will never demean another person when I am intense. That just doesn't work that way. But if someone is labeled as angry or divisive when that's not what's happening, then we can really silence truth tellers. We can silence, you know, really good conversation and authentic connection. And that's not helpful. So what does healthy intensity look like? Well, intensity can actually be a gift. It is 100% a fuel for advocacy. It is fuel for art and leadership and for a deep faith. If I am passionate about God and if I hate sin the way he hates sin and I love people the way he loves people, then I am going to have a level of intensity that shows up with that. And it's going to motivate me and energize me to follow and do things that are helpful, hopefully, to the entire kingdom of God, right? That's the goal. Jesus and the apostles also exhibited intensity. So the Old Testament prophetess Deborah also comes to mind. She was intense. She's like, look, if you're not gonna go, then you know, then I'm gonna go with you. And then they'll say the victory was won by a woman. It's like, okay, cool, you know? And so she exhibited a level of intensity. I would say that Mary Magdalene, when she saw that Jesus had been raised from the dead, she had a level of intensity with her. And she was like, No, dude, seriously, this happened. Like, oh my gosh, I saw him in the garden. Like there was a level of intensity there. I would also think that Paul was perceived as quite intense when he said in one of the epistles, like, y'all think I'm coming in a mild-mannered way, and that I'm just gonna get there weak and that my letters are the only thing that are strong. But if y'all don't get it together, I'm coming just like this. And I think that it communicated a level of intensity as well. Intensity can be a holy spark. So instead of just shutting down, what if we actually learned to listen differently? What if we also, if we are a more intense person or we are bringing a little more intensity to the table, we know exactly how to moderate that. So let's talk about that now. What level of intensity do we bring to the table? Well, I'm gonna give you the therapist answer. It depends. It depends. So, how do we know is going to be really driven by the situation itself? So think of it like a dimmer switch, not an on-off button. We've talked about it being a volume button, right? So if you think about it in terms of the old like term volume buttons, right? Like you turn it up or you turn it down. So we want to know how to do that a bit. First, we're gonna check the setting, right? Where are we in this moment? A courtroom, a therapy office, a boardroom. You may still bring intensity, but how it plays out might look a little bit different. It might be a little bit more of a calm presentation. You might intentionally slow your speech or slow other things down at a rally, a worship service, or even a personal testimony moment, that might invite more energy. So how I'm going to present when I go to court with a victim versus how I might present when I am teaching a topic are going to be two different things. Now, there is a level of intensity that I'm going to bring when I have to walk into a church. But again, it's going to be appropriate to the situation at hand. So I am going to, for lack of a better word, read the room. I want to be heard and I want my point to be taken. Now, that does not mean that I am going to be any less powerful in my presentation. The volume at which I am turned up to is going to be what shifts and changes. It also is going to depend on the relationship. Again, some people feel safe with a higher volume of expression and some don't. I'm going to ask myself, is this going to help me be heard or is it going to shut somebody down? Now, there are times when there is still a risk of it shutting someone down and I need to be heard and the dial does need to go up. But I'm going to be very mindful of the person in front of me, who's the relationship, what is going to be helpful here, and that kind of thing is stuff I'm going to really consider. Notice your own body. So if you're leaning in with passion and your body is grounded and your breathing is steady, you feel planted, you feel rooted, you feel centered, you're probably fine. You're probably in a healthy level of intensity, even if the other party does not like it. If you feel tight, your fists are clenched, your jaws locked, then you might be sliding into anger. And also you might be going outside your own window of tolerance. So just in case you haven't heard that term before, our window of tolerance is what we can handle and stay pretty regulated. So if we think about it like a window, then we can do all kinds of things. And we go outside that window, then we have a much more difficult time regulating our own emotions. So we want to stay within our window of tolerance. And if I notice that my body is showing me signs that I am headed outside my window of tolerance, then I need to dial back because I'm headed in a direction ultimately that is not going to be helpful. And honor your values. Ask yourself: is the intensity that I am bringing to this situation aligned with truth and telling the truth in love, speaking the truth in love? Or is it spilling out in fear and frustration? And this is where if I have to go into a situation to confront something, I am 100% going to check in with myself. I am going to decide, is there any work I personally need to do before I can confront this or walk into this space? And if there is, then I need to do that work first before I go in. So again, I can stay within my values and within my window of tolerance. I am not ever going into a place to not honor the Lord and not honor the image bearers that are in front of me. So I am very intentional and very careful with all of these things. And I think that that is a really important piece. Am I going to come in with the intensity? Without question. But I am going to do it in a way that is God honoring. Intensity is the most effective when it matches the moment to the best of our ability. If we have too little, we might not get hurt. If we have too much, we still might not get hurt and our message gets lost in the delivery. I can tell you that the survivors that have worked for me absolutely know that I will walk into the gates of hell to help them without question and without batting an eyelash. I'm happy to do it. But sometimes that does mean I am bringing the full weight of my training, my education, my experience, and my personality to the table. It doesn't mean that I'm angry, but it does, however, mean that I fully intend to be heard and be taken seriously. And again, how loud my volume is on the intensity is going to be dictated by the situation, the relationships, and my own body and whether or not I'm within my window of tolerance. All right, so let's get a little bit practical here. If you are the intense person, 10 out of 10, totally me. Start with your body. Notice your breathing, your posture, and your tone. First and foremost, do a little bit of grounding. We have a whole episode here on Hey Tabby of grounding exercises. I will link to that in the show notes in case you missed it. But take some time to take care of you first before you enter into something else. Use clarifying language if you need to. If this is a person you have not dealt with before or group that you've not dealt with before, hey, I just want you to know that I'm not angry. I'm just really passionate about this topic. You can absolutely let folks know where you are coming from. And again, the way that we treat someone is as an image bearer of the living God. Even if we are frustrated by their positioning on something or something like that, we still treat them as an image bearer because they are. If you're on the receiving end of intensity, pause before making an assumption. Ask, hey, are you angry right now or are you invested in this? Again, clear is so kind. When we are clear about what we are trying to understand and we ask really good questions, conversations tend to go better. Whenever possible, do give somebody the benefit of the doubt both ways. It can be tough, especially if we're getting triggered, but I would encourage it really strongly. Check your own body's reaction. Are you triggered because of past experiences, or is there an actual threat? You really do want to get curious about things. I think taking a curious perspective is one of the best things that we can do overall for our own bodies for other people. When we are curious first, then that gives us more data to make a stronger decision. And remember, intensity is data, not necessarily danger, right? We really want to be mindful of that. I do want to acknowledge something important here. If you have been through trauma, intensity can in fact feel unsafe. I know that I already said that. And I want to just let you know that that's okay. You're allowed to set boundaries around intensity in relationships. But I also would encourage you to lean in and become a little more comfortable with safe intensity. I think that will serve you well. It'll also expand your window of tolerance over time. Coercive control uses intensity to dominate, but healthy intensity does not do that ever. So if you're wondering which is which, there's your ticket right there. Healthy intensity is always going to seek connection, truth, or expression. It is never going to try to take your personhood. Coercive control takes your personhood. Healthy intensity just wants to tell you what's going on, essentially. And you will see that in how you are treated again. If we are treating each other as image bearers of the living God, then we are always wanting connection. We are always trying to come in with the best of intentions. It doesn't mean we'll do it perfectly, of course, but we're certainly going to try our best. When you know the difference between intensity and anger and healthy intensity and unhealthy intensity, then you can really start to choose differently and enter into places differently and find things that are more life-giving for you. So here's our takeaway intensity does not always equal anger. It can. And sometimes people who are angry are also intense, and sometimes it doesn't. So getting more data and being curious can be really helpful. When we misinterpret it, it can rob us of connection. But when we learn to notice the difference and learn how to use intensity wisely, know when to turn our volume up and when to turn our volume down, it can open the door to deeper healing and healthier relationships. And I know if that's not been your experience yet, you might think, are you sure? Are you sure? But I promise you that it totally can. So if you want to dive a little bit deeper into this, I have got some journaling prompts for you that can help you just process through this a little bit more deeply. We'll put them in the show notes, but I'm going to read them for you here now as well. So think of a recent moment when someone was intense with you and you had that intensity directed toward you. How did you interpret it? As you look back on it today, was it anger? Was it passion? Was it something else? Just be curious. And if you don't know, that's okay too. Just kind of be curious about it. When you hear a raised voice or see big gestures, what happens in your body? Where do you feel it? What shape would you give it? What color? Really be curious about that. How do you show up when you are passionate? Do you shrink yourself out of fear of being misunderstood? Do you come in like a wrecking ball? Where do you moderate your volume? How do you know? Reflect on scripture. What do Jesus' moments of intensity teach you about passion versus destructive anger? What can we learn from our Savior? Which is always one of my favorite questions. Like, I want to look like Jesus. So I'm going to go look at what he did. So do that. What clues, what evidence in your world helps you know when to turn up the volume, turn up your intensity, or when to turn it down and when to step away. Really give yourself some of that. And if you've never really checked in and you don't know, this is a great opportunity to get curious and do a little work around this so you know when to turn up and down your volume. And I want to give you a glimmer prompt for this week. I do love a good glimmer. Glimmers are the opposite of triggers. They are the good things that we see. And a lot of times as survivors of various traumas, we tend to focus on the hard or the negative. And I want to invite you to intentionally focus on that which is good. We could say that it aligns with the scripture of setting your mind on things above. Again, that doesn't mean we ignore the hard, but we definitely intentionally focus on good. So write down two moments where you noticed that your passion or intensity was life-giving rather than threatening. So just give yourself a moment if you're like, I don't know, then be curious, see what you can find. I want to thank you so much for being here with me on this week's episode of Hey Patty. I am so grateful that you are willing to have these conversations with me. And remember, your intensity or someone else's intensity doesn't have to feel like a threat. It doesn't have to be a threat. It does not have to be perceived that way. Sometimes it is just the passion of our heart speaking more loudly. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend who might need to hear it. Please be sure to follow or subscribe to Hey Tabby so you don't miss an episode. And please go take the time to read it on your favorite podcast platform. This does really help people find it and helps us get more good information out there to people who need it. I'm so glad that you were here with me this week, and I can't wait to see you again next time. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-C-I, and you can grab it there. Look forward to seeing you next time.

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