By Lisa Erickson, MS, LMHC

Lisbeth Salander is the fictional heroine of Steig Larsson’s trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

As the heroine, Lisbeth Salander embodies certain characteristics of giftedness, and these characteristics help her survive terrible, long-term physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

What helps Lisbeth Salander survive her ordeals?

Good problem solving skills mediate trauma.

Lisbeth Salander survives traumas that might lead to addiction or the suicide of a less resilient character. Giftedness contributes to her resiliency by aiding her problem solving, which increases her ability to cope.

> Continued: 3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor

“I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid. I’m not sure I’d want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make.” Steven Spielberg

There can be many flavors of insecurity, self-criticism, stress and anxiety related to being gifted, talented and creative.

Some experiences, such as a degree of perfectionism, may help refine our talents.

Some anxieties – like an overbearing level of perfectionism – can be crippling.

n an interview about his new book Mastering Creative Anxiety, creativity coach and psychologist Eric Maisel, PhD comments, “First of all, so much is on the line. For someone who’s self-identified as a writer, painter, composer, scientist, inventor, and so on, [their] identity and ego are wrapped up in how well [they create] – and when what we do matters that much, we naturally get anxious.”

Michele Kane, Ed.D., an Associate Professor and the President of the Illinois Association for Gifted Children, gave a presentation on Stress and Anxiety: Helping Gifted Kids Cope – which also has helpful perspectives for us adults.

She points out that stress is universal and experienced by everyone, and that “Being bright, talented, creative, motivated, smart, ambitious, and even good looking can add to the stress in your life.”

“Academic success and drive aren’t enough to make life manageable. The world is too complicated and intense, and it’s changing too fast.”

She notes “There are no easy answers, simple solutions, or quick fixes for managing stress” but says, “You can learn to understand why your life gets oppressive, depressive, stressed or otherwise unhealthy. You can learn to live in a new and better way.”

Here is more from her presentation:

Sources of Stress for Gifted People

SITUATIONAL
conflict between our values and the values of others (what is and what ought to be)
interpersonal disharmony
lack of intellectual stimulation or challenge
challenges beyond our capability to respond
threats to emotional or physical well-being
lack of resources to accomplish a task
time constraints

SELF-IMPOSED
setting excessively high standards for ourselves
fear of failure
fear of success
negative self-talk
emotionally loaded/highly evaluative beliefs about ourselves and our environment
believing that everyone should love, respect, and praise us
buying into others’ negative evaluations of us
catastrophizing
worrying

EXISTENTIAL
global concerns (e.g., nuclear disaster, war, poverty, world hunger, the environment, etc.)
idealism
anger at fate
isolation
need for meaning and purpose

Strategies to Help Gifted Kids with Stress

• Share resources for meditation and visualization; explain the effect on the body
• Explain the biology of stress; determine which how the body sends signals
• Encourage deep breathing and exercise to minimize personal stress
• Supply biographies of notables that were able to resolve personal situations
• Promote experiences in nature as a way to self-soothe

For much more, see the PDF of her presentation: Stress and Anxiety: Helping Gifted Kids Cope – and the site of The Gifted Education Cooperative.

More strategies to relieve stress and anxiety

Eric Maisel notes that in his book Mastering Creative Anxiety, he presents “a menu of twenty-two effective anxiety management tools, enough tools that everyone can find at least one or two that will work well.

“The simplest is to remember to breathe; a few deep cleansing breaths can do wonders for reducing anxiety. The most important anxiety management tool is probably cognitive work, where you change the things you say to yourself, turning anxious thoughts into calmer, more productive thoughts.

“And creating a lifestyle that supports calmness is also very important: if the way you live your life produces a lot of anxiety, that’s a tremendous extra burden on your nervous system.”

Some of my related posts:

Creative Anxiety – So Much On The Line

Managing Creative Anxiety: Change Your Thinking

Sensitive to anxiety

Guided Imagery and Emotional Health

More resources

PureCalm is an herbal remedy I use occasionally for anxiety and irritability

Anxiety Relief Solutions site – a variety of non-drug products, programs

Guided imagery and biofeedback program developed by Doctors Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish and Andrew Weil: Relaxing Rhythms Guided Training Program

Article: Creative intellect as a marker for genetic predisposition to high anxiety conditions, By Charles Linden – “Our data shows us that anxiety sufferers all share a superior level of creative intellect.”

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By Edith Johnston

I have lots of ideas.  I am intelligent and inquisitive with lots of interests.  Yet, I am insecure and everything seems incongruent as I move through life.

Does this sound like something you experience?

Being a multi-talented individual, or said another way, a smart person, can lead to this kind of experience.  It is even more profound because of the intensity of the experiences.

So, if this is me, how can I change the experiences to have less anxiety, frustration, and the frequent need to withdraw?

I have the desire to be me, ask all kinds of questions and express ALL my various talents and interests. How can I make that happen?

Living life is not easy for anyone.  Living the intense life of a gifted person can be overwhelming.

Steps to enjoy each day more include: understanding yourself, overcoming the mixed messages, developing your multi-talents and weaknesses, expressing your gifts with balance, and connecting with yourself and others.

We can look at the pattern of being a multi-talented person and identify key pieces of the pattern to integrate who we are and our expression of our being.

Understanding involves knowing the characteristics of being gifted and how it applies to us.  We need to understand we are different and that is okay.  We are not crazy or weird or pathologically afflicted.

We are high ability individuals with curiosity, high energy, drive, seeing patterns, thirst for knowledge, strong tendency to non-conformity, heightened perceptions, high ideals & values, greater emotional highs & lows, and many talents, ideas, and interests.

We want to overcome our need to fit in and doing so by being mediocre.

We need to respect our intensity and manage it to facilitate interactions with others.  We want to assess ours and others expectations realizing we are not perfect and need not be perfect.  We can ask for help and guidance.  We can excel and we can fail.  We can grow and develop.

We grow by developing our talents and abilities.  We expand who we are by recognizing our weaknesses head on.  We want to know how to learn.  We need stimulation, practice, and a venue to apply our gifts.

And yet because of our insatiable drive we need to have strategies for balance in our life.

Expressing our gifts can be personal.

The magic, the mystery, the ecstasy of performing, of creating, of solving, of inventing, whatever it is, can be sufficient and pure joy.  Other times expressing our passion to resolve a world issue is all encompassing.

We need to make a contribution, improve the world and/or leave a legacy.  Our talents demand to be expressed to complete who we are.

The void and the chaos can be made sense of as we connect with ourselves and with others.

Connecting with others similar to ourselves allows us to be intense, ask questions, get excited and have fun with minimal need to contain our abilities.  Yet at the same time we need to connect with our community at large to make the impact we so desire.

Connecting the dots within our lives lets us see the pattern of the natural kaleidoscope of the moment.  Life is beautiful with order and a multitude of colors.

Enjoy your many talents and abilities today and everyday!

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Edith Johnston PhD LPC has worked with individuals to develop their potential, dreams and careers for over 30 years.  For her the question has never been whether you can or can’t, but how to.  As a gifted adult with experiences of hiding her gifts, her current focus is creating opportunities for personal development of multi-talented individuals.

“How To” Life consultants, LLC provides information, teleseminars, workshops and individual consults.  More information is available at www.howtoinlife.com

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Related books:

Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright

Related post: Excitabilities and Gifted People – an intro by Susan Daniels

“I did not perform well socially in junior high. I was a strange girl and I was in a lot of pain because of that, like most teenagers.” Claire Danes

Elaine Aron, PhD comments on some of the consequences of being very sensitive as a child: “…family and school problems, childhood illnesses, and the like all affected you more than others. Furthermore, you were different from other kids and almost surely suffered for that.”

[From post: Sensitive and suffering as a teen: Claire Danes on being shy and high achieving]

If identified early in life as gifted, a prodigy, a Wunderkind, genius etc – that label can be another kind of burden, along with not fitting in socially.

Many highly talented people do achieve great things or feel creatively fulfilled as adults, but there can be many challenges on the way, including coming to terms with an identity as ‘gifted’ or ‘exceptional.’

In her article Growing Up Gifted Is Not Easy, Elaine Aron (author of The Highly Sensitive Person) writes about people being put into a role as a beyond-human exemplar, which can start in childhood or as a teen.

She writes, “There’s one thing about archetypes: No one can be identified with an archetype without being greatly damaged by it. It’s just too much.

“Women who identify with the Great Mother, or are identified by others with Aphrodite (e.g. Marilyn Monroe), for example, or men who identify with the Hero (JFK, Martin Luther King Jr.) will sooner or later try to do things or be expected to do things beyond human capabilities, or be scapegoated for failing, or martyred in some way.”

From post Gifted, talented and archetyped

Both idolized and resented

In her article Young + Brilliant, Blessed + Cursed Patti Hartigan writes about young people with exceptionally high levels of intelligence often struggling “to balance the life of the mind and their place in the regular, workaday world, a struggle that intensifies as they reach adulthood.

“Starting with their first social or academic encounters, they face conflicting reactions to their talents. On one hand, they are viewed as anomalies, strange beings who don’t fit in with other children and who are sent out to the school hallway (or, in one humiliating case, to the classroom closet) to work independently.

“They are often resented by teachers and peers. Such treatment can do irrevocable damage, especially for those who are awkward or shy.

“At the same time, learning comes so easily that they are used to excelling, and they are frequently singled out for their extraordinary abilities.”

They are no longer alive to ask, but maybe my parents had some awareness of these kinds of problems – not that I was a prodigy, by any means – and chose to pretty much ignore my differentness, except for allowing my grade school to advance me a couple of grades “on account of my height” as they explained it.

Why bother acknowledging your gifted qualities?

In her post Gifted Adult – Pros and Cons of a Label Elisa notes, “There is a lot of debate about whether it’s good to apply the label ‘gifted’ or bad.  Certainly a lot of people reject the label, possibly because gifted is a terrible word and there is ambiguity as well as misconceptions about what being a gifted adult is.”

But, she adds, “For me, having the experience of my life explained by someone else, having words put to it, is affirming.  To re-consider some of the qualities that I thought were particular to me as part of a shared experience is helpful.  I think differently and have emotional responses that are are often out of step with people around me.  I appreciate having some context for my unusual perspective and I am less likely to see it as ’something wrong with me’ personally but to recognize it within the framework of my being a gifted adult.”

Life coach Lisa Lauffer affirms, “There is a point to exploring giftedness as a grownup, and this is it: if you are a gifted person, you can only live the life you were meant to live if you acknowledge and integrate your giftedness into your adult life.” [From her post Exploring Grownup Giftedness: What’s the Point?]

One aspect of that recognition is authentic, positive self esteem.

Stephanie S. Tolan notes in her article Self-Knowledge, Self-Esteem and the Gifted Adult, “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.”

It may not be comfortable, or help us be as “ordinary” or compatible with the majority as we may feel we want to be, but recognizing and accepting ourselves as exceptional can help us realize our talents. Isn’t that worth some discomfort?

gifted adults, gifted adult information, gifted adult personality, psychology of giftedness, high ability, high aptitude

Talented people often choke under pressure because the distraction caused by stress consumes their working memory, a psychologist at the University of Chicago has found.

Highly accomplished people tend to heavily rely on their abundant supply of working memory and are therefore disadvantaged when challenged to solve difficult problems, such as mathematical ones, under pressure, according to research by Sian Beilock, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

From Highly accomplished people more prone to failure than others when under stress
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gifted adults, stress and talent, gifted adults characteristics, stress and giftedness

“Anxiety keeps me humble.”

AIDS researcher Anthony Fauci, MD notes that pursuing excellence in your life and work is not without emotional challenges:

“One of the by-products of being a perfectionist and constantly trying to improve myself are sobering feelings of low-grade anxiety and a nagging sense of inadequacy… This anxiety keeps me humble.”

Perfectionism is a catalyst

In his essay “A Goal of Service to Humankind,” Dr. Fauci continues: “I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.. I consider myself a perpetual student. … I believe in striving for excellence. I sweat the big and the small stuff!

“I do not apologize for this. One of the by-products of being a perfectionist and constantly trying to improve myself are sobering feelings of low-grade anxiety and a nagging sense of inadequacy. But this is not anxiety without a purpose. No, this anxiety keeps me humble. It creates a healthy tension that serves as the catalyst that drives me to fulfill my limited potential.

“This has made me a better physician and scientist. Without this tension, I wouldn’t be as focused.”

Dr. Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. His research focuses on HIV/AIDS, asthma, allergies and other ailments. He advises the government on the global AIDS crisis and threats related to bio-terrorism.

His essay is in the new NPR book (and audio CD) This I Believe: Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
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Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Articles: anxiety / fear / courage
Anxiety relief products and programs
Books: anxiety relief
Perfectionism
Perfectionism page 3
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Anthony Fauci MD, gifted adults characteristics, dealing with perfectionism, gifted adult books