Gifted & Talented Adults

Woohoo!! So I'm really excited to be a part of this group. I'm just going to get into the thick of things...


Giftedness and existential depression!! Who has it!!! A raise of hands, anyone??
I know that Im approaching this in a way that is perhaps sensational. I think it's important, as someone who is gifted, and with various experiences experimenting with coping mechanisms for depression, existential depression, paranoia, emotional sensitivity, and social anxieties that I do make light of it. It is burdensome, yes, and it is a part of me. I am no longer disposed to approaching the topic with political correctness, but rather with interest and concern for real conceptual elements of it. I'm at a point in the process where I'm questioning and trying to understand this condition of being depressed and learning more about how it relates to being gifted so that I can apply some of the knowledge to moving forward positively. I'm also very young and am barely at the cusp of confidently expressing my identity while still exploring it. I am, quite literally and tangibly finding myself and taking incredibly edgy risks--things that I've never done before and Im not confiding with anyone, nor am I considering the influence of other people's perspectives any more seriously than my own. I am taking a risk by being insecure in others and more secure in myself (not completely but pretty fundamentally). This strategy of transforming my depression has been helped by learning about giftedness and how the things that others may reject are things that I desperately need to be embraced, for example, perceiving very sensitively. I am learning how to cope with that rejection by overly embracing my giftedness. I'm also learning about dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and feel less lonely in that regard, while also modelling my existential depressive state after the unilevel and multilevel disintegrations that are covered in the theory.
Finding support is absolutely nourishing in a volatile environment, one that is volatile in contrast to being acutely sensitive. Can any of you in this group relate your experiences as being gifted to any aspect of what I just described?

Hi, I am new here, and noticed that there are aren't any recent posts except for one. Would anyone like to introduce themselves, too?? :)

(This is just a rant. Rants are emotional outbursts. They are not meant to be reasoned with logically. If the rant does not appeal to you, just skip it and go on to the next message.)

Sometimes I really wish I wasn't smart -- sometimes I get really tired of being three steps and two standard deviations ahead of people around me. I'm not "better" than they are; it's just that I'm often quicker and I notice details and inconsistencies and contradictions a lot faster than they do, and I get so frustrated at having to explain what I'm talking about over and over when it's bleedin'' obvious if people would just look at the information in front of them. Sometimes it would really be nice just to be like the people around me instead of being a freak.

There is a philosopher's saying, "Better to be Socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied." Yeah, maybe. But some days being a satisfied pig would be really nice.

[end rant]

An interesting post on Eric Raymond's blog:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2426

I am not the researcher, but I thought it might be cool if folks from the community participated in the study in the hopes of facilitating better therapeutic experiences for gifted people in the future.

Also there are some interesting thoughts on their site. The author's biography talks about her journey toward becoming a clinical psychologist focused on educational contexts and giftedness and/or learning disabilities.

I added a link to the last post to their page on twice-exceptionality: being gifted and having cognitive issues.

Peace and joy to the community,

Adj.

Request for Research Participation: Cheetahs on the Couch

I am a doctoral student in clinical psychology, and an educational therapist specializing in work with people who are gifted and twice-exceptional. For my research project, I am doing an exploratory study about the quality of the working relationships gifted clients experience in psychotherapy. My goal is to help therapists better understand how to work with these clients.

If you consider yourself cognitively gifted and have ever been in individual or family psychotherapy, whether for reasons related to your intelligence or not, I am interested in hearing your story about your experience of the therapeutic relationship. You can share your story by filling out an open-ended questionnaire, and some participants will also be selected for telephone or video-chat interviews.

Children and adolescents can participate, with permission of a parent, but must be able to provide their own first-person narratives.

All responses will be treated as confidential. You can participate completely anonymously if you choose.

Only responses received by 31 March 2010 will be included in the doctoral project. However, I will continue to collect data until 31 January 2011, to enrich the data set for possible future publications. As a thank-you, participants responding by 31 March will be eligible to receive one of three $25 Amazon.com gift certificates in a random drawing.

For more detailed information and an informed consent form, or if you have any other questions, please contact me directly, or visit the following URL:

http://www.davincilearning.org/ske…

Feel free to forward this letter to individuals or groups who would be interested in participating, or suggest places where I might post it myself. (Please do not spam, and respect the guidelines of any mailing list or forum where you post it. Please do not forward this as a chain letter.)

Thank you very much!

-- Aimee Yermish
doctoral student, clinical psychology
Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology
educational therapist
da Vinci Learning Center
aimee@davincilearning.org

Finally Equal:

I'm really starting to get tired of people repeatedly telling me that it is unrealistic of me to want to be among like-minded souls. I want so badly for that to be possible - it would feel so nice to be understood. But everywhere I turn, every person I reach out to for advice and support - they all tell me that I'm "expecting too much", or they accuse me of "wanting the world to change to fit me" and I feel even worse.

I need some advice as to where I would be able to find like minded souls in person, that I could share fun and good times with. I feel so lonely.

"State schools admit they do not push gifted pupils because they don't want to promote 'elitism'"

I'm joining just to post this, I hope I'm not being a disturbance but it looks like the right community for a question I've had in mind, but would prefer to remain anonymous in asking.

Often I would read some piece about gifted people and feel it is profoundly unfair. I don't believe you have to be gifted for high-level intellectual pursuits. I felt uncomfortable in the presence of other gifted people and felt they were holding me back -- as a human being. I'm not underachieving per se, but I also never was a good student (my achievements lie elsewhere -- something being mandatory was, to me, an obvious reason not to do it). I don't feel I belong among gifted people and this is my main problem. I like intellectual pursuits, but so do many of my non-gifted fellow grad students. Getting things on the first go was fun, but it was mostly fun because it meant I could teach so much to people and learn so much from them. I never minded tutoring, in fact, it was the only activity making school less of a tiring, dreadful walk to death.

Is there something wrong with me ? Have you all always identified with gifted people ? Do you think it changes as one grows up and grows old ? I feel bad because I know how it is to be treated as different and I feel I am doing just that in believing 'gifted people groups' are just for blowhards to pat themselves on the back. I know I am the one being unfair, yet I can't help but think it's discriminatory to make intellect the privilege of a few. I'm not consumed by wanting success, or by my own world (I'm a biologist though.. so my own world and the real world overlap a lot). I'm rather normal, socially, compared to the children they show on TV; if you don't see my birthdate, you won't know something's off. Everyone seems so different, and it makes me feel like I should be that way too, since we share some number on an arbitrary scale.

Can you explain that ? Really, I would just like to read that someone's felt the same way at a time.

As there were so many response to my previous post I thought i would thank everyone who replied in another post.
You explainations have helped clarify what I'm feeling and that i shouldn't try to change, hopefully over time i will become more comfortable with other people, I'm better than i used to be however still far from most.

I really appreciated being able to get information from real people rather than just reading a scientific report, which can sometimes feel like they are generalising, as even i know that intelligence differs over every spectrum.

Thank you all, i was not expecting such a large response considering that no body had posted in months.