Gifted adults are different from an early age
Being different as a child
One of the personal qualities that seems to be shared by most gifted children is being different and divergent – in terms of thinking, interests, values and behavior. Many gifted adults feel “wrong” or anxious about “not fitting in” even though being different can be a strength, a positive attribute.
In the movie “Nancy Drew,” the heroine (played with style and grace by Emma Roberts) uses and celebrates her intuitive and intellectual abilities as a teen sleuth, and accepts the fact she is exceptional, and does not fit in with her high school peers mainly concerned with cliques, clothes and boys.
[From my post Entitled to Be Exceptional]
“When I met her [actor Scarlett Johansson], OK, she’s 15, but she could easily pass for 30. She’s a very attractive girl, but she’s sort of a weirdo. I like that about her.” Terry Zwigoff – her director for “Ghost World” (2000) [From the page Eccentricity]
A childhood unexplained
In her article Counseling Gifted Adults – A Case Study, counselor Paula Prober writes about Susan, who “had known that she was different since she was seven. Her thoughts and feelings had never fit into the box that was comfortable and reassuring for most children.
“Her appetite for learning was insatiable. Reading was more nourishing than food. Thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing were better than Barbie.
“And she worried about everything: poverty, world peace, and the loss of the rain forests. It kept her awake at night. The adults around her said that she was too young to be concerned with such things. That didn’t help. To her classmates, she just seemed weird–certainly not birthday party material.
“All of these reactions confused and saddened Susan but no one was explaining to her that she was different because she was gifted: She had a mind running deeper and faster than most. No one told her that seven year olds don’t feel responsible for saving the world.”
Like many gifted adults, she “rediscovered” herself as gifted later in life, but also felt a strong need for emotional help, as Prober writes:
Discovering giftedness as an adult
“Forty-five years later, at age 52, Susan came to therapy. Raising her teenaged son, John, had forced her to confront herself. John had been identified as gifted in preschool. Susan started reading about gifted children and was quite surprised to find that she was reading about herself.
“When Susan first came to see me, I noticed her intensity immediately. Her penetrating hazel eyes were both anxious and skeptical behind her wire-rimmed glasses. At the same time, her affect was energetic and engaging…
“At that first session, Susan told me her reasons for therapy. She needed to understand how, if she was gifted, it affected her work and relationships and to find ways to ‘handle this better’ –to deal with the anxiety and deep loneliness she felt, to find friends who truly understood her, to communicate more effectively, and to keep her marriage from dissolving.”
“This was unusual. Most gifted clients come to counseling with the typical requests for help with depression, anxiety, relationships, and family dynamics. They do not suspect that they are gifted and even resist the idea, at first.
“They are often aware that they don’t ‘fit in,’ but they do not know why.”
Excerpted from article Counseling Gifted Adults – A Case Study, by Paula Prober, SENG / Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted.
Paula Prober, M.S., M.Ed., is a licensed counselor in private practice in Eugene, Oregon.
Her site is http://rainforestmind.com
She is author of Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Change the World Without Losing Their Friends, Shirts, or Minds.
Image from book Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential, by Marylou Kelly Streznewski (Also see my interview with her.)
Many gifted adults experience existential depression, anxiety and depression. For help, see Anxiety Relief Solutions.
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My profoundly gifted daughter is obsessed with Nancy Drew…your article provides me insight as to why.:)
A lot of people ask me what the value of being labelled ‘gifted’. I think this article demonstrates the point: for people who have spent a lifetime standing on the outside, there is some comfort in understanding why. Also, once people know they’re gifted, they’re less likely to believe that there’s something intrinsically wrong with them. I wonder how many gifted people don’t know they’re gifted and just think they’re weird?
I was raised to believe I was a troublesome brat who had to be kept away from people because I would say things that didn’t want saying. I was labeled a weirdo all through middle school and high school, and have been something of a loner all my life.
What I’ve come to see over time, and with help, is that I’m insightful and intelligent and have a way with words. If I disrupt people or disturb them, it’s because I see things they don’t and comment on things people deny or don’t see. I have an atypical job (musician) and live a lifestyle that does not correspond to marriage, family, a full-time job, and a suburban home. As such, I’m not subject to groupthink or into defending pillars of mainstream America simply because I participate in them. I look at all that from the viewpoint of an outsider.
Usually people are eager to hear my analysis and comments about anyone other than themselves, and I’ve been complimented on my ability to accurately describe people and states of mind. I also have ways to make people laugh with amusing commentary (it’s my bidness, after all).
But when I turn my focus on them, I become weird, stupid, without perspective, lacking compassion, overanalytical, hypercritical, even hallucinating. It’s interesting to see.
I also realize that I can absorb written material many times faster than others, and I always get the punchline of a joke first. I’ve been told that I notice things no one else notices, that I “ask too many questions” and that people have difficulty following me as I “overanalyze” everything.
I’m also musically gifted and have a knack for picking up languages and accents. Just being able to play music for a living sets you apart from others.
None of this helps integrate me into typical social encounters, but I’ve learned to regulate it–and be silent. That’s not a “gift”–that’s the wisdom that comes with age.
Thank you. I want to meet and to write or ghostwrite with this Linda Silverberg, since I’m a writer by profession.
I’m one of the many women who were discovered as “gifted” during childhood. I did well, socially included – most of the time through completing my undergraduate work. I’m a mother of a 13 year gifted son. All of my ex-husbands and some of my other romantic partners are adult gifted men. Some hate that term, especially as a label, others like it. I think I feel a bit like maybe I’m underachieving as an adult – I did not have that problem in childhood, etc…My Dad was a professor and my mother was a teacher who turned into a Head Mistress of a school. My father always said my mom had leadership ability and seemed insecure about being loved.
When I was 9, my best friends often told me I was “weird, but in a good way” except for the blonde girl who now teaches Phsysics in Toronto, Canada. She never thought I was that strange. Last month I got Luna Lovegood rather than Hermiane for my Happy Potter character – which surprised me, and not surprisingly my latest lover-man recently told me he sometimes dislikes my pronounced analytical thinking…He’s the jock – a smart but nutty jock, the computer programmer never called me over-analytical but he is very touchy about the word “gifted”. The smart women I know who are lawyers don’t have exactly the same problem because their job and paycheck validates that they are smart girls all grown up now, but they have other earmarks of what its like for women.
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