Social reactions
Actor Richard E. Grant commented in a recent interview, “You only learn about yourself, it seems, from how other people react or what they tell you about yourself. From the get go I’ve been accused of asking too many questions and being too passionate and extreme about what I like or what I don’t like….
“It’s like gorgonzola cheese - I’m probably an acquired taste! You know, I’m right in there. And it’s not something that I really have control over so much as just that that’s, you know, the DNA of my personality.”
[From comingsoon.net interview about his autobiographical film "Wah-Wah" which Grant wrote and directed]
Actor Jenna Elfman noted in an interview, “If you’re passionate, people get suspicious. It’s much cooler and safer to show nothing and be glib, because if you’re not showing anything, no one can nail you. That reflects a really low responsibility level in my opinion, and it’s not the way we’re gonna change things on this planet. If you’re passionate, you take responsibility for being what you’re feeling.”
Someone in a posting on a gifted adults group brought up a danger of stifling yourself: “Do you give up the greater part of your vocabulary because it isn’t understood and it sounds pretentious?”
Mary-Elaine Jacobsen, PhD thinks “Gifted adults need an advocate who champions their differences, not someone who unwittingly reflects inapt urgings to ‘slow down and stop being so touchy, driven, overly-responsible, and intense’, to impersonate the social norm.” [from her article: Arousing the Sleeping Giant: Giftedness in Adult Psychotherapy.]
In her article “If You’re So Smart, Why Do You Need Counseling?” Deborah L. Ruf, PhD quotes a “45-year old woman” on some of the complex aspects of social reactions: “Some saw me as a person with rare insight, others thought I was crazy. It was very hard to see it clearly. I was often confused by the variety of responses. Even reading about giftedness and having my own children identified [as gifted] was confusing.
“Seeing a list of characteristics made it very clear that I was probably in the gifted range, yet it was hard to accept. It feels like I am boasting, or somehow trying to claim something I have not earned. There is something bad about claiming to be smart, it is arrogant and boastful. I have less confusion now, but there are still beliefs that make it hard to say I am anything but average.”
It may be a cliche, but we do need to see and be ourselves, to celebrate whoever we are, despite what others think or how they behave.
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