To avoid being seen as too weird or different, and to fit in better with others, gifted children often learn to stifle or cover up their unusual cognitive and other abilities. As adults, many still follow a pattern of hiding.

When she began directing in the forties, Ida Lupino sometimes claimed not to know the best way to line up a shot or specify a line reading, explaining “Men hate bossy women. Sometimes I pretend to know less than I do.” [From my article Gifted Women: Identity and Expression.]

She was working in a more restrictive and even misogynistic era (the photo is Lupino directing a scene in her movie “Mother of a Champion,” 1951), but some research on contemporary gifted girls and women indicates they often suppress their advanced abilities.

But covering up, not acknowledging, or discounting our talents and abilities is not just something done by girls and women.

“Unfortunately most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them,” Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton declare in their book Now, Discover Your Strengths.

“Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers, and by psychology’s fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.”

Discounting or disparaging

We may even discount or disparage our exceptional perceptions, sensory processing and other aspects of giftedness as “flaws” – especially in the face of negative social reactions and ignorance on the part of medical professionals.

Sally M. Reis, Ph.D. “found that gifted girls do not want to be considered different from their friends and same-age peers. Indeed, a tendency exists for many females, regardless of age, to try to minimize their differences.

“For many gifted girls, however, the problem becomes more difficult as they become women and their talents and gifts set them apart from their peers and friends.”

But there is also a more insidious problem: “In addition to hiding abilities, some gifted and talented women begin to doubt that they really have abilities.”

From her article Internal barriers, personal issues, and decisions faced by gifted and talented females.

In some talent domains or fields, being different and exceptional is much more supported – such as entertainment. The photo is Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar at age 11 for The Piano. [From my post Anna Paquin and others on realizing multiple talents.]

Hiding is not limited to U.S. culture.

A recent article in the Gifted / talented news feed says “It is estimated that five per cent of the population below 14 years, or about 445,000 Malaysian children from all socio-economic strata and ethnicities, are likely to be gifted and talented.

“Raising a gifted child is not easy. ‘They do everything at the wrong time,’ says one parent. A gifted child told me that he likes doing things that others cannot do. But he does not like it when others tease him, call him names and won’t play chess with him any more.

“He is excited about astrophysics, but he is lonely in learning about it because other children are not as enthusiastic. Hence, he finds it hard to sustain social interactions. Afraid of being ridiculed, teased, resented or ostracised, he goes to great lengths to hide his giftedness.”

From Nurturing the gifted and talented, by SHARIFAH HAPSAH SHAHABUDIN, New Straits Times Mar 16 2009.

Back to the idea of gifted adults and hiding giftedness.

In her article Giftedness in the Workplace: Can the Bright Mind Thrive in Organizations?, Mary-Elaine Jacobsen (author of The Gifted Adult) points out, “Exceptional intellectual and creative abilities can lead to highly successful careers, sometimes in multiple fields… From time to time relatively unfettered bright minds alter the direction of their domain as a whole. Stories of eminent figures fascinate and inspire us.

[Photo: Barack Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School.]

“At the same time glorified images of illustriousness can imply that early in life those who are truly gifted know exactly what they are to do with their lives and pursue their rightful lifework unimpeded — all the way to the full realization of their potential and the rewards of eminence.”

She cautions, “However, the transition from full-time learner to full-time worker can be a bumpy road indeed, and can easily engender deep disappointment instead of the anticipated coming-of-age gratification.”

In her article Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child, Stephanie S. Tolan notes, “The experience of the gifted adult is the experience of an unusual consciousness, an extraordinary mind whose perceptions and judgments may be different enough to require an extraordinary courage.

“Large numbers of gifted adults, aware not only of their mental capacities but of the degree to which those capacities set them apart, understand this… Thinking independently may seem foolhardy or antisocial.”

Feeling frustrated, tied down

She adds, “But for the adult whose life circumstances do not readily provide an arena for the positive use of these abilities the result may be a feeling of frustration, lack of fulfillment, a nagging sense of being tied down, imprisoned, thwarted (Roeper, 1991; Smith, 1992).

“The middle management employee who has the ability to see and devise solutions to various company problems may be seriously frustrated in his job because a boss who lacks that ability does not allow the expression, much less the implementation of those solutions.”

She adds, “The suburban housewife, who has raised several children and worked as a volunteer for innumerable civic associations, may find herself restless, bored and frustrated when the children have left home. Social activities do not fill the void, nor does the sort of routine job she may be tempted to pursue to get herself out of the house.”

Another issue she brings up in her article Self-Knowledge, Self-Esteem and the Gifted Adult is self-identification: “Many gifted adults seem to know very little about their minds and how they differ from more ‘ordinary’ minds.  The result of this lack of self-knowledge is often low, sometimes cripplingly low self esteem.”

Tolan and others point out that it may require great courage, fortitude, and assertiveness to craft a life that allows and encourages the expression of exceptional abilities. But it is worth it.

As Barbara Sher puts it so poetically, “Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do – can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.”

See Barbara Sher articles.

Also see the pages Self-limiting and Hiding / silencing abilities & talents.
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03.17.09   |  
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