"Other people are put off by your intensity" - what?!

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That's what a friend said to me.

Intensity? What does that mean?

Story of my life.

It functions on several levels simultaneously, I think. Talking too much about one thing, being too excited or agitated about it, talking too loudly, standing too close to people, forcing eye contact.....

I noticed it today when I was scrolling through my facebook feed. I was attracted to liking certain opinion pieces because they held opinions I agreeed strongly with. Then I realized that I was in an agitated state, and in that agitated state I am attracted to controversies. I think it is a way of letting off steam. Unfortunately, what one ends up doing is transmitting one's internal feeling of stress to other people. There is a saying by Maya Angelou, if I get it right, that "people don't remember what you say, they remember how you made them feel". So often they won't really know themselves why they feel uncomfortable around you, and then they'll come up with all kinds of theories. But 'intense' is probably pretty accurate.

Some other ways of being too intense:
- Being too expressive, gesticulating a lot
- Providing way too much information at once (think of it like a firefighter's water hose of data directed in to someone's face, not pleasant).
- Interrupting
- Talking about intense topics (any politics, religion, personal family issues, death, philosophy)
- Not agreeing or giving affirmation of a person's thought or feelings in a positive way

Also, I think it's the way we talk. We like exchanging data, analyzing it, and the Truth. That stuff is way too intense for NTs. They need way more time to process data because they also need to compute how information makes them feel and what it means to them personally (meanwhile data is just data to us and we harbour no additional subtext with it).

So when the data floodgates open and because our conversational style of exploring a topic, NTs consider us aggressive, combative, unyielding, arrogant, and yeah intense. You think you're having a friendly discussion, meanwhile you're missing all the cues that they're agitated, upset, or feeling bullied and attacked. Just speaking from personal experience

My dad called me "too intense" when I was a teenager -- a time when MOST people are probably at their most intense!

I am intense but it's who I am. I feel things intensely and express intensely as long I'm comfortable around that person or situation. I do talk "too much" when with someone I'm comfortable with. On the other hand I can be mute in group settings.

I have strong opinions and some degree of black and white thinking, although I can see things more flexibly at times.

My emotions run deep and are very clear. I'm not the neutral, robot aspie type, I'm an emotional aspie type, and when around friends or family I tend to express that. And when I'm hurt or upset it comes out. I think in my case my dad also meant it in terms of my meltdowns and shutdowns.

I'm also creative and you can't really be a person making art or music or writing lyrics worth their salt while also being a person who kinda doesn't really have any strong feelings about anything. . .it kind of goes with the territory or I probably wouldn't be experiencing a motivation to create the art in the first place.

I agree with Voxish. I don't just get intense with my emotions, but I can get really annoying very easily. In group situations I don't talk at all because I either dominate the conversation or I'm just silent. The only way to stop coming off as "too intense" when I am talking about something I'm excited about is to just not talk at all. I'm actually pretty quiet most of the time, though, unlike how I am here on this forum!

I can be extremely talkative, particularly when it is about the topic that I am interested in and know a lot. I try not to open my mouth now unless asked. It's safer to be quiet sometimes.
I am quiet in a social situation because they talk about things that I am not interested in and I have nothing to say anyway. I sit there daydreaming...

never understood this until a few people eventually told me that i was way too intense for them. made me wonder wtf was going on, so i asked a few more people and got the same response.

sometimes i notice me doing the intense/animated/focused/data intensive talking, sometimes i don't and other times i can figure it out (but usually pretty slowly). only really happens when the topic of discussion is something i am interested in, otherwise i'm usually quiet or dismissive.

been trying to preface discussions with "i can get a bit rant-y, tell me if it gets too much".

Do you remember what the presentation was about?

Some dumb made-up country thing, I think^^^^^