GT Adults : giftedness / exceptional ability / adult

"Take risks, and expect to make lots of mistakes, because creativity is a numbers game. Work hard, and take frequent breaks, but stay with it over time. Do what you love, because creative breakthroughs take years of hard work. Develop a network of colleagues..."

Washington University psychologist R. Keith Sawyer -
continued on Developing Talent blog

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The dark side of nurturing giftedness
“Parents’ obsession with ‘creating’ or ‘nurturing’ giftedness, Alissa Quart argues, has led to a full-blown transformation of middle-class childhood into aggressive skill-set pageantry. ... A chapter titled ‘The Icarus Effect’ presents child-prodigies as worn, depressed adults; ‘Extreme Parenting’ and ‘Child Play or Child Labor?’ show the bizarre (and often profit-based) forms prodigy-mongering is taking..."

> From review of Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child - by Alissa Quart
> more on the page: parenting

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"The first step towards building a strong social and emotion base is to recognize and acknowledge one's own strengths or gifts. For many adults this facet of who they are has either gone unnoticed, been ignored or was not expressed for cultural reasons.

"Look at those around you whom you believe are gifted. What characteristics do you share with them: intense curiosity, keen sense of humor, creative or artistic bents, sensual or emotional sensitivity, intense imagination, deep concerns about social issues, tenacious academic abilities, superior interpersonal skills, etc?"

> from article Fostering adult giftedness by Sharon Lind

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ADHD

Sophie Currier is a busy woman. There's all the family stuff at the home she shares with her partner and their 7-month-old son.

There's work — a teaching assistantship for a biochemistry course at Harvard University.

And there's school. After majoring in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Currier got a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard and is on track to earn her medical degree a year from now.

The striking thing is that Currier does all this not only with severe dyslexia — she couldn't read until she was 8 — but with ADHD as well.

> From article Hyperactivity, grown up
- by Judy Foreman

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“Those with Sensual overexcitability have a far more expansive experience from their sensual input than the average person. They have an increased and early appreciation of aesthetic pleasures such as music, language, and art, and derive endless delight from tastes, smells, textures, sounds, and sights.”

> from article: Overexcitability and the gifted,
by Sharon Lind
> image from book : The Doors of Perception,
by Aldous Huxley

> related page: Dabrowski / advanced development

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Sex appeal and smarty-pants

Q: Your character Dr. Lisa Cuddy finds House [Hugh Laurie] hot. Would you be attracted to a guy like him?

Lisa Edelstein : “Yeah, I like smarty-pants. It’s sexy when a guy is that witty and bright. Even at the cost of social skills. I have plenty of social skills of my own.

"I have known some guys like that in real life, and they never work out. But they were very interesting.”

> more on High Ability

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Emotional, imaginational and intellectual OE [overexcitability], apart from sensitizing and increasing overall psychological receptivity to internal and external stimuli, help one develop attitudes of prospection and retrospection...

...bring unconscious contents to one’s awareness...and allow for their processing and integration, thus freeing great amounts of psychic energy, necessary for creativity.

> from article: Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals - By Elizabeth Mika [page 2]

> image from: The Mission of Art by Alex Grey

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If a gifted adult was never identified as such in childhood - especially if he or she was considered an underachiever - the same gifted traits that can serve as the foundations of excellence can be misunderstood and misused.

When that happens in the workplace, being bright can quickly backfire if one is placed on the proverbial misfit list and exceptional talents can be locked down in organizational politics.

> from article Giftedness in the Workplace: Can the Bright Mind Thrive in Organizations? -
By Mary-Elaine Jacobsen, PhD

> Josh Kornbluth in his movie Haiku Tunnel

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out of step

Even when the individual is able to use her gifts to achieve undeniable career success, she may feel and appear seriously out of step.

Barbra Streisand, for instance is criticized for perfectionism, for demanding too much from those she works with.

Her well-known discomfort with public performance may come in part from the seemingly paradoxical self-esteem problems that often come with extraordinary gifts.

> from Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child - By Stephanie S. Tolan

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"I'm too sensitive to watch most of the reality shows. It's so painful for me."
actor Amy Brenneman

"It is clear that not all gifted individuals reach adulthood with their sensitivity intact. It takes great courage to experience the depth of one's emotions in an insensitive society."

> from article: The Universal Experience of Being Out-of-Sync

> related page: intensity / sensitivity

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