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It Takes One to Understand One…

In order to truly appreciate the unique social, relationship and career challenges faced by highly gifted adults, it’s important that a coach or mentor is able to relate to, and engage with their highly complex thinking patterns, uncommonly fast thought processes, heightened sensitivities and the resulting uniquely insightful perspectives.

Giftedness is more than just high intelligence as measured by IQ testing. It’s neurodivergence, or brain and mind function that differs from what’s considered to be typical. When combined with very high intelligence, this translates to thought patterns and processes that incorporate a remarkable number of quite relevant, yet widely overlooked considerations. This frequently results in perspectives, responses and reactions that most others simply do not understand and which often create great discomfort. 

It’s only natural that when seeking support, trying to relate their thoughts and feelings to people, including most mental health professionals, they are simply not able let these “flow”…their thinking often “fractures” and they abandon their effort to explain.  And that’s a real problem, particularly at those critical times when they most need to be understood.

It’s all too common to hear gifted people talk about experiences in which they sought support only to find themselves left with intensified feelings of anxiety and intellectual isolation.

Specialized support is essential to well-being

Because so few Counsellors, Coaches and even quite capable and experienced mental health professionals are either gifted themselves, or are sufficiently trained in gifted psychology, misdiagnosis and ineffective (often harmful) treatment and guidance is far too common. Typical misdiagnoses include ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, OCD and depression.  

It’s important to note that a person may be gifted and suffer from any of these or other conditions. Where it is mutually agreed that psychotherapy may be beneficial, my referrals are made to only those psychotherapists who are uniquely qualified to provide specialized support to gifted adults.

Understand your giftedness. Become more comfortable with your perfectly legitimate, quite relevant “normal” and more effectively navigate the unique and complex life and career challenges so very prevalent among gifted adults.