Is Your Different Drummer Insane or Are You A Gifted Adult?

Once there was a fish. Respectable. Hard working. Kind. Intelligent.

A very fine fish, really.

But it had been trying to live in a tree.

Sound familiar? 

I recently read The Gifted Adult by Mary-Elaine Jacobsen, Psy.D. and want to give you my take on it as I found it to be a worthwhile read and have recommended it to several of my clients.  If you are familiar with Wellspring Coaching's famous fish in the tree here, this book made me realize that my most favorite clients (yes, I have them) have been a certain kind of fish in a certain kind of tree. It's long been a running joke that my practice niche is "Misfit Toys" and this book, formerly entitled "Liberating Everyday Genius", goes a fair distance to explain just how accurate that is. 

The Gifted Adult is an outgrowth of Jabobsen's disseration research.  We are all familiar with the term "gifted" when it comes to children but you really don't hear it applied to adults very often.  And what about those gifted youngsters who had the misfortune to be born before schools recognized them and knew a bit about how to keep them happy and engaged?  When I was in school the only gifted service was the opportunity to go to the classroom a grade or two ahead when it came time for reading. For my husband, this meant three years of 6th grade reading (with the same reading list every time!).  I pity the teacher who had to deal with his hyper little class clown sharp mind by the time that 3rd year came around, but I sure would like to have been a fly on the wall when she tried!

Where did all those kids go? What happened to them once they hit adulthood?

Well, it turns out, a lot of them have felt a bit out of step with their peers and have been fluctuating between trying to force themselves to be normal by shutting themselves down and berating themselves("But everyone else seems so happy. What's wrong with me?") and not giving a rip ("Screw it. I'm the smartest one here. Too bad I'm not smart enough to hide it. Fire me, go ahead, this place is whacked anyway.") In short, that leaves a lot of people (Jacobsen estimates between 5-10% of the population) feeling lonely, confused, wracked with self-doubt, irritable, questioning, stalled, inconsistent, frustrated and wondering if the drummer they have been desperately trying to march to is, well, insane.

So what are the characteristics of a gifted adult? 

Jacobsen writes at length about what IQ tests are and are not so let me just say it isn't about having more intelligence or having some superiority in that sense as much as this is about having multiple "intelligences" and being wired differently, from a psychological point of view, from the norm.  Jacobsen postulates that gifted adults have:

• Multiple intelligences: We tend to learn quickly and can do a variety of things well.  The eight "intelligences" discussed in the book are relational/interpersonal, self (ability to introspect), nature (sensitivity and attunement with the natural world), musical, verbal, visual-spatial, kinesthetic (body awareness/athleticism) and logical (reasoning skills).
• Gifted Traits: These are personality characteristics that are more pronounced, perhaps dramatically so in the gifted adult and include Intensity (Excitability and Sensitivity), Complexity (Complex Thinking and Perception) and Drive. Jacobsen indicates that these qualities can be so pronounced in some that misdiagnoses of A.D.D. and various emotional issues are possible.
• Advanced Development: This includes Humanistic Vision (a compelling sense of service to others, on whatever scale), Mandated Mission (a need for self-actualization and persistent drive to figure out the answers to existential questions) and Revolutionary Action (taking steps to make the world different in some way.

Now, not all Gifted Adults are actualized, which is Jacobsen's chief concern. If you think there is something wrong with you because you are too intense, too paralyzed in deciding which one course of action to take in life, too much in your head (gifted adults have lots of "too's") you may not be making many revolutionary actions. Jacobsen says that is a problem.  She suggests that those very same sensitivities and thought differences gifted adults have are strengths, not liabilities, and with proper care and development can be harnessed and directed for the good of all of us, whether used to improve life within one's neighborhood, one's workplace, one's larger community or the world at large.

Should you read the book?

If you have ever received, or given yourself these criticisms, you may want to consider it:

1. Why don't you slow down?
2. You worry about everything!
3. Can't you just stick with one thing?
4. You're so senstive and dramatic!
5. You have to do everything the hard way.
6. You're so demanding!
7. Can't you ever be satisfied?
8. You're so driven!
9. Where do you get those wild ideas?
10. Who do you think you are?

As for the Dragon Slayer, here, this book has given me much food for thought as to how I might better serve my clients, and you, my readers.  If you have been frustrated by too much "been there, done that" when you read personal development books and blogs yet continue to keep reading (because you are compelled to develop yourself, after all), I agree that there is a gap between where most information leaves off and where the mountain top yogis begin.  There is no shortage of great information out there to help most people make significant improvements in their life.  That's a good thing. But gifted adults need more. We need to be challenged, inspired, stimulated intellectually and psychologically and to be spiritually well fed.

That existential loneliness, frustration and self-doubt along with the pendulum swing between empassioned rants against the state of the world and tossing up one's hands when no one around seems to share that passion...it's no fun. At all. I've been there (often), I know.  I realize that not everyone was born a dragon slayer. Not everyone is driven by that relentless quest for self-actualization.  But for those of us who are, we can't help it and it ain't changing any time soon. It's just the way we roll.

To you, by babies, I dedicate this blog.  You want self-actualization? Well, it's not an easy road but more are travelling it than you might think. I happen to know quite a few and we'll be making sure you have some eyewitness accounts, tales from the road, references, tips, jokes (you WILL be needing that sense of humor) and directions to wayside inns along the way for you.

This is The Dragon Slayer's GUIDE TO LIFE, after all.

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Comments

[Douglas Eby]

Thanks for such a stimulating article. As I note in my post Do gifted and talented people get appreciated and supported?, many people achieve eminence for their exceptional abilities, but many more aren’t acclaimed in public ways. Introversion and other common traits among gifted people can lead to “negative” social reactions and interactions with people who aren't so gifted.

[Laura Young]

Right on, Douglas. Hey, e-mail me the link to your article. It doesn't link in your comment here and I'd like to check it out but it's Sunday and I don't feel like working that hard to find it. LOL. E-mail link is in the top of the left sidebar.

[Candace]

1. Check, I don't know! I just can't! 2. Check. Why do you call it "worrying" all the time? 3. Check Um...NO, how BORING. 4. Check. Yes, another word would be ALIVE. 5. Check. If you speak about taxes and paperwork, yes, and this one I just can NOT figure out. 6. Check. Maybe, but I do reward you for that, don't I? And I am demanding on myself too. 7. Check. No, thank GOD. What then, would be the point of anything at all? 8. Check. Born that way I guess. 9. Check. I am able to access both sides of my brain at the same time and hold incongruous thoughts simultaneously, and I think like an artist. 10. OK, NO, not this one. And thank goodness for that, what would have happened if someone would have said this to me when I was younger?

[Peter]

OK, now that I've read the book I can say it: You need a group on this.

[Laura Young]

Yeah, Candace, does make you wonder what would have been different, doesn't it? And P, I am right with you on this. Trying to dope out in my mind where on the plate to put it but definitely it's in the mix in my head.

[Nicole]

I just wanted to say thank you. I happend upon this blog while researching information on gifted adults. I am a 33 year old female and allof my life I was told that I was gifted. The funny thing is I never understood what they meant. I could never be gifted. Gifted kids got all straight A's and were smart beyond belife. I seemed to be the one in trouble all of the time. I was certinaly not a genius.

I am currently working with a therapist, and again he seems to repeat the same thing I have heard all of my life. " You are very bright and gifted individual." Until now I couldnt see how that was possible, however now I see the same qualities with my son. I figure this book can help to shed light on a subject that I have been to affraid to research in the past. Again I thank you.

[Anonymous]

I loved the analogy of the fish! This describes just how I've felt my whole life... And like Candace I can relate to so much of that list. I would like to propose another one: "wow you're so intense..why don't you ever lighten up?" thanks for acknowledging that giftedness exists in adults as well as kids.