What Gifted Adults Need
If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch. Anonymous
Everyday I work with gifted adults--practical geniuses, original creators and innovative contributors--helping them become more aware of the role giftedness plays in their lives--and how they can utilize their multiple talents, interests and abilities to create, and live fully, the life they imagine.
Wholeness 
We are not paying enough attention to trying to teach gifted people how to cope with their lives in the adult world. Far too many of them find their drive and creativity thwarted by persons or establishments who regard them as either silly or threatening. Marylou Kelly Streznewski For the most part, these gifted and creative adults--and most of those I come in contact with outside my practice--have no information about the interpersonal, intrapersonal and occupational effects and implications of their own giftedness, creativity, multiple abilities and divergent thinking. Once these gifted adults realize that their advanced development and multiple abilities, life long interest in learning, drive to make things better, and quest for growth are giftedness personified, they find it liberating!
The challenges they have been experiencing living their lives make sense and a whole new world of possibilities opens up for them.
Then we work together to create and fine tune the life they desire. Getting to know each gifted adult and creating personalized services tailored to their own unique needs, desires interest, and personal vision, is a wonderful and worthwhile experience--and one of the things I enjoy most about working with gifted, talented and creative adults.
I recommend it. Lynne Azpeitia
Permission To Be A Growing, Changing, Imperfect Person Many gifted individuals are born with a sense or understanding of how things (ideas, morality, justice) should be. They see more possibilities, imagine greater outcomes, and have loftier ideals than others. They can see from an early age what perfection looks like. As a result, their peers, teachers and significant others, hold inappropriate or overly inflated expectations for them. These expectations, whether directly stated or implied, are sensed by the individual and he/she responds by trying to be perfect in order to meet the expectations of others. But achieving perfection is difficult and often unrewarded by the outside world. So it is paramount for gifted individuals to try to develop realistic and satisfying expectations for themselves and others.
Sharon Lind
Loneliness & Isolation Is loneliness of the artist any different from the loneliness of the average person? Sometimes it seems that to be a "voice crying in the wilderness" is part of the artist's job description. The nature of having a unique vision is that no one else has it yet. I think we are given visions or inspirations precisely because no one else has them. Our job is to buck the trend of what already exists, to swim against the current, to bring the tablets down from the mountaintop or to embody some other suitably Promethean metaphor. But this could be said in every field, really. Inspired contribution is everyone's job description, not just that of the artist, and in as in all fields, some artists are better at it than others. Those who are best at bringing inspiration in tangible form, whether artistic, social or scientific, are often too busy attending their vision to think about whether they are lonely or not. Bandhu Dunham
IntroversionRevenge of the Introverts
Jeb Livingood
The future looks superficially grim for society's introverts. With the continuous enhancement of pagers, teleconferencing, cellular phones, and the development of personal communicators, a growing verbal inferno threatens to engulf the world's quieter individuals. Yet, silent as they may be, introverts can have a lot to say given the right forum. They've found that the internet can help them communicate in their preferred manner; a written dialogue with time to pause for thought and analysis....More
What Makes Gifted Adults Thrive?
- Collaborating with smart, talented and creative people who help them recognize and make the most of their unique talents, interests and creative genius.
- Working with therapists, counselors and gifted adult coaches who help them acquire the tools, information, understanding, confidence and experience they need to achieve their goals, have a meaningful and productive life and to realize their personal vision.
- Encouragement, support and guidance in understanding themselves and their abilities so they can have the success and happiness they deserve.
Lynne Azpeitia, M.A., Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist AAMFT Approved Supervisor
Provides Coaching, Psychotherapy and Consultation services to: at 3025 W. Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica, California 90404
(310) 828-7121 (626) 797-5977 Coaching, Consulting & Mentoring Available By Phone & Skype
Misdiagnosis of the Gifted Therapy & Coaching with Gifted Adults
Articles For Many, Being Gifted Brings Lifelong Struggle
Interview With E. Paul Torrance, Educator and Psychologist
How can parents tell If their children are gifted and what are the special needs of such youngsters? An expert offers advice on the unusually talented, and on handling their problems as they grow up.......More Underachievement & Perfectionism
Michael Cornale
Two achievement issues that seem to concern people in dealing with gifted students are underachievement and perfectionism. How do you define underachievement and perfectionism? They are not independent. They are both dysfunctional, both self defeating. Both represent an impractical approach to practical problems. Perfectionism tends to be.......More Profoundly Gifted Guilt
James Delisle
I have noticed what I have come to call PGG or "Profoundly Gifted Guilt," which is the feeling that, in some important ways, parents of extremely gifted children feel unable to adequately raise the child they have been given. These genuine feelings of inadequacy are simultaneously well meaning and ill-placed, for when we downplay our competencies as parents, we do a disservice to both our children and ourselves, as we underestimate the effects of our own importance on the lives of our children. More... Are You A Scanner?
Barbara Sher
Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. (You'll notice I didn't use the word "or," because Scanners don't love to do one thing or the other; they love them all.)
A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again. One Scanner I know proudly showed me a button she was wearing that said, "I Did That Already." To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe.....More
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