What exactly does it even mean?
Being “gifted” sure sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? It often is, but it can also feel more like a burden than a blessing. For those who either don’t recognize their giftedness or don’t fully understand what it entails….who struggle with heightened reactions to stimuli or difficulty fitting into conventional educational, social, or workplace systems….life can be exceptionally challenging.
Giftedness encompasses various definitions, but they all highlight common characteristics. Essentially, it reflects divergent cognitive and sensory functions, leading to enhanced awareness, greater interconnectivity, and heightened intensities. It’s nothing mystical or supernatural; it’s simply a different “wiring” that results in meaningful differences in how gifted individuals experience, process, learn, and perceive the world.
Being gifted certainly doesn’t mean that you’re “broken,” but the ongoing stress of trying to fit in without understanding why this is often so difficult can be overwhelming.
Gifted people can be found in all walks of life. They are leading major corporations and living on the streets…they are university professors and high school dropouts, introverts and extroverts, high achievers and under-achievers. While their life experiences vary widely, they share a distinctively different mindset that presents common challenges across family, social, educational, relationship, and career contexts. They often grapple with thoughts, questions, and insights that extend beyond the typical scope of lessons or discussions.
Common traits and characteristics of gifted individuals include:
- Intuitive Empathy: An acute sensitivity to the emotions of others and a resulting tendency to absorb those energies.
- Strong Moral/Ethical Values: An aversion to dishonesty or injustice and a deep commitment to ethical standards.
- A Compelling Need to Serve a Greater Purpose: A drive to contribute meaningfully beyond oneself.
- Perfectionism: Very high personal standards, possibly reinforced by high expectations from others. Difficulty in achieving perfection can lead to self-doubt (“imposter syndrome”) despite demonstrated uncommon abilities.
- Heightened Sensory Sensitivities: Discomfort with chaotic environments, competing sounds, or visually aggressive stimuli, along with elevated emotional and sensory intensity.
- Complex Mental Imagery: An extraordinary ability to comprehend highly complex systems, connections and interdependencies. An extraordinary ability, therefore, to understand underlying influences and to predict outcomes.
- Boredom with Routine: A need for intellectual stimulation and a tendency to experience feelings of intellectual isolation.
- Insatiable Curiosity: A drive to understand and connect everything at deeper levels.
- Stronger Connection to Surroundings: Acute awareness of nuance and an appreciation for natural environments.
If this describes you, discovering the gifted community and the resources it offers can be profoundly transformative, as many others have found.
Gord Sherwood 