Have you been told you are too intense all your life?
Are you a fast learner?
Do you often feel out-of-place in social settings?
Do your intellectual abilities challenge people around you?
Are you an emotionally intense and highly sensitive person?
Are you an incredibly sensitive person, both physically and emotionally?
Do you ‘absorb’ other people’s feelings and energies to the point where crowds and social settings are overwhelming?
Do you set extremely high standards for yourself? Perhaps you seek perfection in yourself and others? Are you a highly creative person, to the point where others see your ideas as bizarre? Do your Random creative insights keep you up at night?
Do you find it difficult to be submissive to authority and arbitrary rules?
Do you have a strong need to be independent?
Are your ideas or perceptions labelled as unusual by others?
Do you get extremely frustrated when you witness injustice or corruption in the world and struggle to tolerate other people’s ignorance or apathy?
Do you have odd hours and sleep-rest cycle? Once you become passionate about a project or subject, your brain doest seem to stop. To other people, you seem obsessive.
Do you often question your purpose for existence?
Do you underplay your talents or abilities to appear ‘normal’?
If the answers to most of these questions is a ‘yes’, then you may be an intense and gifted person coping in a world that does not always understand you. Therapy for gifted is a relatively unknown specialism, not just in the public consciousness, but also unrecognised by mental health professionals trained in traditional psychology.
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
— Benjamin Franklin
BEING A GIFTED ADULT
Who is a gifted adult? Is it about being extremely cerebral, being able to perform highly complex thinking tasks or retain vast amounts of information? Is it being born with an innate ability to express through art and music? Is it about being intensely attuned to the spiritual realm and experiencing a deep connection to nature and humanity? An intense person can be that and so much more. (For a detailed description of what it means to be an intense person, please see here).
Unknown to most, intensity — emotional, intellectual and physical — is a universal characteristic of gifted children and adults (Lind, 2001; Tucker & Hafenstein, 1997). Your immediate reaction on seeing the word ‘gifted’ might be to cringe. It is a loaded term in our society and is misunderstood by most. The traditional definition of ‘giftedness’ has been limited, often associated only with IQ, or traditional talents such as music or sports. The reality is, there are infinite forms of extraordinary abilities not captured in the conventional conception. Many emotionally intense people, for instance, possess a high level of interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and spiritual intelligence.
HEALING FROM GIFTED TRAUMA
From a young age, being extraordinarily intense might have brought you many unnamed trauma and wounds, even though it was not your intention to alienate yourself, you are treated with others wariness. Just because you were identified as ‘gifted’ does not mean you have the understanding and support you needed to thrive in the world. Just like eggs require the right temperature to hatch, and seeds need the right soil conditions to germinate, so do the gifted ones, who are most likely also intense and highly sensitive people.
From a young age, you raise deep and complex questions around existential themes such as death and the meaning of life. You are also extremely attuned to global and environmental issues. Still, when you share your thoughts and ideas with your peers or adults in your life, they might have looked at you with puzzlement, responded with apathy or dismissed you for being naive.
Being an ‘old soul,’ it has always been hard for you to feel a sense of belonging with people your age. You have struggled to find people who can meet your intellectual rigour, emotional depth and interests in spirituality. As a child, both your classmates and teachers were intimidated by someone who tends to raise non-mainstream ideas, speak up when others remain silent and is highly inquisitive. You are under enormous pressure to meet the high standards set by teachers, parents, coaches and mentors, but at the same time, you may face attacks from your peers for being a show-off. The treatment meted out to you in the playground, revealling the typical ‘tall poppy syndrome,’ which amounts to ‘cutting a person down to size.’ Jean Peterson’s research revealed that two-thirds of gifted students had experienced bullying by eighth grade, which is more than double the incidence of bullying in the general population.
On top of your struggles in school, your home might not be a safe place. Due to your heightened sensitivity and natural empathy, your parents might have leaned on you for emotional support, to the point where the roles between parents and child are reversed. You had to step up as the mini-adult in the family to take care of the others while being deprived of a carefree and innocent childhood. It may not be that your parents maliciously try to harm you. Still, because you intuitively picked up on their distress and vulnerabilities, so you took it upon yourself to provide love and support for those who are close to you.
The combination of bullying , alienation, and trying to reach the impossible standards set by others and yourself can be debilitating. Because you are exceptionally sensitive, you are also more traumatised by the usual rough and tumble of traumatising childhood experiences. These psychological injuries, unfortunately, do not just disappear as time goes by. If remain unhealed and unprocessed, you may carry them into your adulthood. They may show up as the following emotional and behavioural issues:
· Existential Depression: For gifted people, rather than depression caused by chemical imbalances, they are more likely to experience what is known as existential depression. Existential depression comes from seeing the discrepancies between how things could ideally be and how they are now. It comes from witnessing not just the injustice, dysfunctions and hypocrisies in the world but also other people’s apathy and ignorance. You may have grand visions about how things should be, but your ideas are not shared by others around you. This puts you in a lonely and powerless position, which perpetuates and exacerbate existential depression.
· Under-achievement: As an intellectually intense and rigorous person, even a child you naturally stood out; however, you might have been told to or have gradually learned to adapt yourself to avoid attracting envy and hostility.
The grown-ups in your life might have intentionally mistreated you to ‘level the playing field’ with your siblings and peers. They may also do that to silent you so you would not raise difficult questions or challenge their authority. Theories and research show that people would go to great lengths to down-regulate other people’s envy and hostility (Parrott in Smith, Merlone & Duffy, 2016). Eventually, with these implicit social training, you have defaulted to hiding your brilliant ideas, downplay your achievements, stifle your voice, or even to appease others. When playing small has become the way you are, even when you want to step out and shine, you do not know how to. Your self- sabotaging behaviours may include things like turning down a promotion, not going for romantic or career opportunities, extreme self-consciousness or social anxiety.
· Being forced to conform: Being unusually fast, rigorous and curious, it may be difficult for you to focus on one thing, or to take the conventional life path dictated by the mainstream society. You may be forced to take up stereotypical gender roles or make career choices that are not true to your nature. Being confined by our society’s limited ideas about what ‘success’ means, you may not get to do what genuinely excites you or make your soul sings. If due to social adaptations, you have silenced your true self, you may experience an intense mid-life or quarter-life crisis, or be faced with depression or a critical illness later in your life.
· Deep Loneliness: Finding true peers or romantic partner is often a challenge for the gifted. You get bored and under-stimulated easily, and may have trouble finding people who can keep up with you. You need a lot of alone time to process your thoughts and creative ideas and are likely highly independent and value autonomy. You may find it hard o meet someone who meets you at your intellectual, emotional intensity and at the same time, be romantically appealing. Finding a lifelong partner may be harder for you than others, though when you do identify people you can trust and be with, the relationships are deep and last a long time.
· You are hyper-empathic: You have a tendency to ‘absorb’ other people’s feelings and energies even it is not your intention. This can make crowds or social settings overwhelming or draining. You may also mistake what you have absorbed from others as your own emotions. As a result, you may have thought you were ‘ too sensitive’ or were ‘imagining things’. This can be made worse if you have been treated with gaslighting or scapegoating in your family system. You become framed as and believe that you are ‘the problematic one’ who ‘creates troubles for themselves’.
· Procrastination: Do you find yourself postponing what you know is important to you? Perfectionism is a common trait of gifted people, and this can paradoxically cause you to delay or sabotage the very task you know you need to do. Your low tolerance with boredom may also cause you to delay routine tasks that do not catch or sustain your interest.
· Creative Blocks: Many talented artists, muscisians, writers and performers find themselves stuck in periosds o stalled creativ This can be caused by negative self- doubt, being overly critical, and the fear of failure. It may take practise and self- knowledge to eventually find an ideal sweet spot where you are in ‘flow’, and are neither burn-out nor bore-out; overly drained or under-stimulated.
· Imposter Syndrome: Do you feel awkward when others compliment you or hold you in high regard? Do you sometimes feel you do not deserve any of the credits that are given to you, and that you are living a lie? The feelings of intellectual fraudulence are termed as Imposter Syndrome. Gifted people are prone to intense self- scrutinising and you may focus on your flaws as a way to improve yourself. There is a discrepancy between how you see yourself and how others see you. The truth is, You may not be good at everything, but that does not make you a fake. If all your life, people have tried to put you down or attack you for your achievements, it can be hard to internalise a sense of innate goodness or confidence, making you more prone to toxic self- doubt.
“Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.”
― Roman Payne
“As a bird with beautiful feathers is the target of hunters, so the gifted are targets of the envious.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo
THERAPY FOR GIFTED ADULTS AND INTENSE PEOPLE
Perhaps, you have kept your gifted adult trauma a secret all these years but have finally realised that you want some external support to cope. If you do decide that it is time to seek coaching for your giftedness and intensity, you may want to weigh in the following factors:
Does your therapist have experience in working with gifted and intense adults?
It is estimated that only about five per cent of the population falls under the category of being intense or ‘gifted’. At the moment, there is little research on the challenges of being an intense person, or how they think, feel, and behaves Many intense people are repeatedly misdiagnosed with labels such as PTSD, Bipolar, ADHD, or Borderline Personality Disorder. It is crucial that you work with a therapist who has worked with and have a nuanced understanding of your unique challenges, without resorting to dogmatic labels and categories.
Can they keep with you?
You have a fast-moving, expansive and wandering mind that is capable of highly imaginative and abstract thinking. When you process a situation, you want to discuss both the intellectual and philosophical aspects of reality. Intense people such as yourself often display high cognitive abilities, with a questioning nature. That can make the job of a therapist or coach even more challenging; as everything they suggest will be questioned and analysed by you with an unusual intensity. Therefore, you want someone who with healthy esteem, would not take your challenges personally or be overly intimidated by you.
You want to know if the person you are baring your soul to has the openness of mind to accept your thoughts, humour, and can keep up with your fast-talking and fast thinking ways. You are responsive to a new idea only when you are gently nudged in a particular direction, rather than being pushed to accept certain conclusions.
An adequate gifted adult therapist will be able to acknowledge and support your gifted intuitions, perceptions, and thoughts. They will encourage you to speak and think as you naturally do and champion your unconventional way of being. If you feel that your coach is uncomfortable with the way you are or project their own anxieties onto you, you may find yourself replicating your family dynamic replicating in the therapeutic relationship, where you have to take care of their feelings and protect them. While this may be a natural process at the start due to the nature of our projections (known as ‘transference’), if the pattern is not addressed or reversed it could become toxic, traumatising, and eventually hamper your progress and growth.
Are they flexible?
Since you are wired differently from the norm, your mind works in unique ways. Your emotional state can rapidly move from messy, and dreadful, to an all-out existential crisis. Since you are a profoundly analytical person, when you begin the journey of stepping into your true self and healing, you may have mini break-downs driven by intense intellectual or emotional processing. At this phase, you may need someone accessible for contact or are happy to work with you flexibly. The traditional psychotherapy model of meeting once a week at a set time may not work well for you.
Is your therapist asking the right questions to understand your life story?
Someone who is experienced in working with intense people will be able to peel the layers of your emotional responses to ascertain the extent of your unique trauma. They will spend considerable time to understand your present and past experiences, your achievements, the tendency towards underperformance, and your interpersonal relationships.
Ideally, the gifted adult therapist your work with will have niche knowledge on the particular dilemma and ambivalence an intense person face; some common themes may be: the tug-of-war between freedom and loyalty, or between authenticity and belongingness, the ‘survivor guilt’ you may have for outsmarting others or for leaving a dysfunctional home, etc.
Do they see through your facade?
You may have spent your entire like trying to appear ‘normal’ or hide the pain you feel. You are used to being the emotional caretaker of others that you don’t normally reveal your vulnerability. Given that you might be a high achiever in the world, the inexperienced therapist may perceive you to be ‘quite sorted’, and neglect to see the burden of pain, shame and trauma you carry.
Being lauded for your talent, your vulnerable side escapes their radar. Sadly, this perpetuates your pattern of pain-avoidance and counter-dependency (To solve everything on your own and to never count on anyone). If your therapist or coach does not have the ability to challenge your stoic facade at the right time appropriately, you will continue to put a wall up and won’t progress.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan’s egg!”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling
Are you ready to seek guidance and advice ?
Being different and misunderstood all your life have created a deep sense of separation and isolation. The early trauma you experienced as a gifted child does not disappear on their own. As an intense and highly sensitive person, you have a vast capacity to love and to give, and you have tremendous potential that is waiting to be harnessed.
Perhaps so far, no one has witnessed the pain of being constantly told that you are ‘too much’.
Perhaps most people only know to lean on you, and few have reached out to you or step up to be your rock.
Perhaps you have reached a point in your life where you know without the right kind of healing, and guidance, you will remain stuck and be wasting your potential.
If you can find the right person to work with, they can offer you a valuable healing relationship, through which you can grow into the person you are meant to be. Ideally, they will allow you to reach deep insights about your past and present, and at the same time, give you practical steps to help you channel your creative potential. In this process, you will have a deep understanding of your unique qualities and learn to embrace them. Slowly but surely, you will realise that you are not ‘defective’ you are ‘distinctive’.
Treat your coach, mentor or therapist like you would any other meaningful relationship in your life. If they do not understand your extraordinarily complex, multi-layered, and sensitive thinking, do not hesitate to keep on looking. At the end of the day, you are not investing in them but in yourself. You are putting resources into optimising your one and only life so that you can become the best version of yourself with no regrets.
For more on high sensitivity, emotional intensity and giftedness, please visit www.eggshelltherapy.com
