Giftedness

Understanding Giftedness There are many misunderstandings around the topic of giftedness, leading to the phenomenon often being minimized, if not missed entirely in the therapeutic work.

While commonly associated with exceptional success in a school context, giftedness is a multi-faceted trait that can equally help adults make sense of their unique experience in the world. 

A gifted person may

• prefer and seek out complexity in any aspect of their life: their work, their hobbies, as well as their choice of a partner.
• seek out nuance and depth in their experience, which may bring them a sense of feeling connected and engaged with the world.
• require frequent variation and change in their work and everyday life. They need to feel growth and have an experience of learning in all that they do.
• strongly prefer finding innovative and interdisciplinary solutions to a problem, which can lead to a struggle to work with existing structures, old ideas, and societal norms.
• have interests and talents in more than one area of life, which can lead to decision fatigue or an unclear life and career path, especially in our current environment of hyper-specialization. Often lacking systemic acknowledgment and solid guidance, their approach to life may be a trial-and-error of serial career attempts (what I call the Hummingbird Principle), which can lead to frequent frustration and late thriving.
• A gifted person may also have high existential intelligence (similar to intellectual sensitivity in highly sensitive people), which means that they require a sense of purpose and meaning in what they do in order to be able to do it at all, and continue.

Challenges of the gifted person

Some frequent challenges of the gifted person include

• Societal stereotypes leading to frequent misunderstandings: From “genius” to “nerd” to “snob”, difference can easily be perceived as superiority, making it hard for the gifted person to connect and build meaningful relationships.
• Perfectionism, or a preference of the idea over a tangible and fallible result, stifling their own meaningful growth and impact in the world
• Dull and repetitive environments can cause strong reactions in a gifted person, from loss of motivation to depression and even suicidality.
• Pointless activities, busy work, and made-up job titles can cause deep crisis feelings for the gifted person. In such a context, they may vastly underperform or make frequent small mistakes, because it can become near-impossible to maintain interest and focus given the circumstances.
• When a gifted person gets stuck in any kind of dead routine, be that at work or in their relationship, it’s bad news.

A gifted person in an unrecognizant and unsupportive environment may, in the long run, face

• profound loneliness, often a persistent experience throughout different stages of life, regardless of relationship status or career success.
• a heightened risk of exhaustion, health complications, and burnout
• one or more mental health diagnoses, commonly those of autism spectrum, AD(H)D, depression, and/or substance use disorder.
• Suicidality is a real risk in a chronically unrecognized and unsupported gifted person.

The Work

Giftedness frequently overlaps with high sensitivity (HSP) and other neurodivergent phenomena, making life both rich with possibilities and uniquely challenging. It is therefore essential to address your giftedness in the therapeutic work (as well as anywhere else), and 

• find ways to support your unique way of experiencing the world through meaningful relationships and purposeful work.
• navigate perfectionism and self-sabotage to allow for more personal and professional fulfillment 
• understand your exceptional or multi-exceptional nature (“2e” and more), and structure your environment to be supportive of exactly this.
• provide a deep and nuanced therapeutic container drawing from multiple areas of psychology, philosophy, arts & culture, and spirituality or the existential-human realm, to normalize and nourish you in your giftedness.