Positive Disintegration Podcast

About Positive Disintegration Podcast

What if your emotional intensity isn't a problem to solve, but a pathway to growth? Positive Disintegration explores how inner conflict and breaking down can lead to profound transformation. Hosts Chris Wells and Emma Nicholson dive into Kazimierz Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration, examining giftedness, neurodivergence, and the journey toward becoming your authentic self. www.positivedisintegration.org (https://www.positivedisintegration.org/s/pod?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Emma Nicholson and Chris Wells

Category

health & fitness · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

25 Oct 2021

Latest episode

8 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 91 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   8 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   The Third Path of Relationships

   Host Chris and guest Emma Seiter explore the necessity of understanding for love, discussing Emma's evolving relationship theories and the power of prioritizing values over triggers in connection.

2. 

   23 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Positive Maladjustment, Applied

   Hosts Chris and Emma explore lived experience as the foundation for understanding positive maladjustment, sharing personal insights on empathy and perspective-taking.

3. 

   31 Mar 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Voices at the Margins

   Episode 83 includes something we’ve never done before on Positive Disintegration. It’s a conversation among seven neurodivergent podcasters—recorded as part of a peer-reviewed paper that has just been published in Neurodiversity journal. The paper, “Voices at the Margins: Podcasting as Neuroqueer Collaborative Autoethnography and Epistemic Healing,” positions podcasting as a research methodology within critical neurodiversity studies, and this conversation is the data. The seven of us—Caitlin Hughes, Chris Wells, Emma Nicholson, Bee Mayhew, Sheldon Gay, Marni Kammersell, and Teena Mogler—sat down together to explore what podcasting makes possible that other forms of research and advocacy cannot. What emerged was a conversation about voice, belonging, lived experience as expertise, and the kind of knowledge that forms between people when they’re allowed to think out loud together. Rather than following a rigid script, we were guided by five open-ended questions that Caitlin designed to hold space for relational dialogue and reflexive sense-making. We talked about the inaccessibility of traditional knowledge spaces, what it means to reclaim lived experience as valid and generative knowledge, and the truths that live in contradiction, tangents, and half-finished thoughts. We also explored how this kind of podcasting ripples outward into neurodivergent community and belonging. The paper identifies nine resonances that emerged from the recording, including voice as epistemic repair, messiness as method, lived experience as expertise, multiplicity and difference as community, and humor and play as co-regulation. If you’ve ever felt like this podcast gave you permission to be unfinished, or helped you see yourself outside of yourself—that’s the ripple we’re talking about. Read the full paper (open access): https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330261437265 (https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330261437265) Published in: Neurodiversity, Volume 4, Special Issue: Towards a Critical Turn in Neurodiversity Studies: Bridging the Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences *A PDF of the transcript is available here (https://dabrowskicenter.org/voices) (https://dabrowskicenter.org/voices) The podcasters in this episode: * Caitlin Hughes (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary, multi-exceptional Australian social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate. Late-identified as Autistic, ADHD, Gifted, and PDA, Caitlin co-hosts the Divergent Dialogues (https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/) podcast and brings a lived experience-led perspective to their work. They are committed to fostering epistemic healing through relational ethics, narrative reclamation, and accessible, lived experience–driven knowledge creation. * Chris Wells (they/them) is a multi-exceptional, nonbinary, and neurodivergent writer, podcaster, and developmental theorist specializing in Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. They co-host the Positive Disintegration (https://www.positivedisintegration.org/), cosmic cheer squad (https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/), and PDA: Resistance and Resilience (http://pdapodcast.substack.com/) podcasts, and are the founding president of the Dąbrowski Center and co-creator of the Positive Disintegration Network. Chris brings lived experience and a deep commitment to reframing neurodivergence through a developmental and relational lens. * Emma Nicholson (she/her) is a neurodivergent Australian Senior Business Analyst, creative and advocate, identifying as gifted, Dyscalculic, with all five overexcitabilities (psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional), as well as bisexual and Heathen. She co-hosts the Positive Disintegration Podcast (https://www.positivedisintegration.org/) and serves as Vice President of the Dąbrowski Center. She is driven by an unkillable passion to demystify positive disintegration and share hard-won truths to help others feel seen and supported. * Bee Mayhew (she/her) is a multiply neurodivergent (late-identified AuDHD, former gifted kid) writer, narrative collaborator, and communication coordinator for PDN Media. She co-hosts cosmic cheer squad (https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/) podcast and has a background as a hospitality specialist and business owner. Bee’s work centers on collective narrative-building and neurodivergent storytelling through activist, community-rooted practice. * Sheldon Gay (he/him) is a Black Gifted speaker and podcast host of I Must Be BUG'N (https://sheldongayisbugn.com/) (Black Underrepresented/Unidentified Gifted and otherwise Neurodivergent). Sheldon is guided by the belief that learning to deeply and wholly Love oneSelf, cape and kryptonite, is the path to finding, creating, and maintaining Love everywhere we go. * Marni Kammersell (she/her) is an American late-identified neurodivergent (Autistic, ADHD, PDA, gifted) parent of neurodivergent children. She is an educator, researcher, writer, and consultant, and co-hosts the PDA: Resistance and Resilience (http://PDApodcast.substack.com/) podcast. Marni is dedicated to honoring neurodivergent experience through relational, self-directed, and nervous-system-informed knowledge practices. * Teena Mogler (she/her) is an Australian AuDHD social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate, as well as co-host of the Divergent Dialogues (https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/) podcast. As a mother to neurodivergent children, Teena is passionate about amplifying neurodivergent voices and disrupting epistemic injustice through lived experience-led, neuroaffirming, and critically reflexive knowledge practices. Find the podcasters: * Divergent Dialogues: divergentdialogues.substack.com (https://divergentdialogues.substack.com/) * I Must Be BUG’N: sheldongayisbugn.com (https://sheldongayisbugn.com/) * Positive Disintegration: www.positivedisintegration.org (https://www.positivedisintegration.org/) * cosmic cheer squad: cosmiccheersquad.substack.com (https://cosmiccheersquad.substack.com/) * PDA: Resistance and Resilience: pdapodcast.substack.com (http://PDApodcast.substack.com/) Connect with us * Positive Disintegration on Substack (http://www.positivedisintegration.org/) * Visit the Dabrowski Center website (https://dabrowskicenter.org/) * Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/positivedisintegrationpod) * Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/positivedisintegration_podcast/) * The Positive Disintegration YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@positivedisintegrationpodc401) * Adults with Overexcitabilities (https://www.facebook.com/groups/424880678836389) group on Facebook * The Tragic Gift blog (https://www.tragicgift.com/) by Emma * Email us at positivedisintegration.pod@gmail.com * Please consider donating to the Dabrowski Center (https://dabrowskicenter.org/), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. * Find Positive Disintegration Merch (https://www.bonfire.com/store/dabrowski-center/) If you enjoyed this episode on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/positive-disintegration-podcast/id1588576001) or Spotify (https://spotify.link/vrfAiQIbFDb), please remember to click on the stars and leave a rating or write a review. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.positivedisintegration.org/subscribe (https://www.positivedisintegration.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

Inside a recent episode

The Third Path of Relationships

Published 8 Sept 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] You're holding someone else to an impossible standard. You're with yourself 24 hours a day and you're actually inside your own head. Expecting someone else to do it is just, well, it's absolutely unfair. And yet we don't flip that round and go, you can't possibly know that much about another person. And yet it does not stop you loving them. So what's to stop them loving you? And I think making that differentiation between cognitive understanding and emotional understanding through empathy because you can come across someone in the street that you don't know, someone sitting at a bus stop crying, and you can feel empathy and you can connect with that person and go up and ask them if they're okay and be that ray of sunshine in their life for that small moment. that's really the kind of connection that's important. […]

Who has been a guest on Positive Disintegration Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Autum Romano
• Emma Nicholson
• Gordon Smith
• Dr. Stacey Freedenthal

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

18,870

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

43 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

114 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 75 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

83

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

92

Contact Positive Disintegration Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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• 

  Neurodiversity Podcast

• 

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  PDA: Resistance and Resilience

• 

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  Hidden Brain

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  Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Questions about Positive Disintegration Podcast