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Article Excerpt
Abstract: Gifted children are often identified by their insatiable curiosity, advanced mental ability, intensity, and thought-provoking questions. But what happens when these children become adults? What are they like, and do they have any particular mental health needs? This paper uses a case study of one particular gifted adult to explain the typical issues these clients bring into counseling.
Key Words: giftedness, perfectionism, multipotentiality, advanced development
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Most of us can recognize precocious children by noticing any or all of the following: thought-provoking questions, advanced vocabulary, avid reading, unstoppable curiosity, creative thinking, and unusual mental, academic, and/or musical abilities (Webb, Amend, Webb, Goerss, Beljan, and Olenchak, 2005). If we've worked with them in our counseling offices, or raised them, we find other traits: advanced empathy, intense emotion, hypersensitivities, and perfectionism (Mendaglio & Peterson, 2007). But what happens when these children become adults? And if they come to us for therapy, what do they need and how can we help?
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The concept of giftedness, especially in adults, is unclear, complicated, and controversial. M. Streznewski (1999), in her book Gifted Grownups, says it's a "finely tuned and biologically advanced perception system and a mind that works considerably Faster than 95% of the population." Typically, we associate giftedness in adults with high levels of achievement. But it is not that simple. In fact, the gifted person is as likely to be the high school rebel as he or she is the valedictorian, the CEO, or the Nobel Prize winner (Jacobsen, 1999).
In adults, as well as in children, giftedness is a whole-person phenomenon. Being gifted affects not only the cognitive and academic aspects of individuals, those qualities that we usually associate with giftedness, but also their emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. It is more a set of traits than a list of achievements, traits that don't always make life simple or successful. Throughout their lifetimes, these individuals experience both the blessings and burdens of being gifted (Roeper, 1999).
Over my 29 years of working with this population, I have found certain issues that come tip repeatedly in therapy. The main challenges include painful schooling experiences, high levels of sensitivity and intensity, existential depression/advanced empathy, perfectionism, multipotentiality, and difficulties with relationships (Mendaglio & Peterson, 2007). When a therapist recognizes the characteristics that often accompany advanced development and explains these traits and their effects to the clients, this explanation, in itself; can have a profound impact on the outcome of therapy (Jacobsen, 1999).
Case Background
Susan had known that she was different since she was 7. 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....
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