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Giftedness often doesn't feel like a gift
Karolien Koolhof •
There is a persistent image around giftedness: that it is mostly easy. You pick things up quickly and you are often the smartest person in the room. Who would complain about that? Yet many gifted people only half recognise themselves in that picture. They notice that the word "gift" doesn't quite cover what they experience inside, and they sometimes feel almost guilty for not being more grateful.
That is because giftedness is something other than most people think. We usually measure it from the outside, by achievements and by an IQ score. But within the field itself, it has been viewed differently for decades. A widely used description, formulated in 1991 by the so-called Columbus Group, puts the emphasis not on what someone achieves, but on how someone experiences the world. In that view, giftedness is a combination of a quick, far-reaching mind and a great intensity, which together create an inner life that is fundamentally different from average. That word intensity is the key, and it explains a lot of what gets praised as a "gift" but sometimes weighs heavily on the inside.
Intensity
Thinking intensely and feeling intensely sound appealing, but they come at a price. When your mind is always on, it is hard to stop analysing, even when you would rather not. A remark that someone else forgot long ago, you keep turning over from every side. An injustice that others let pass keeps gnawing at you for days. That same sensitivity that makes you sharp and lets you see things others miss also makes you vulnerable to overstimulation and to the feeling that you are too much.
In the literature on giftedness that intensity is often described with the term overexcitabilities, coined by the psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski. It is a popular and recognisable model, though the evidence for it is less clear-cut than is sometimes suggested. What is widely shared is the observation itself: that many gifted people experience everything a degree more intensely than those around them, in their thinking and in their feeling.
Out of step
There is something else on top of that, and it is called asynchrony. In giftedness one line of development often runs ahead of another. As a child you already grasp abstract things you cannot yet handle emotionally. Your mind races ahead while the rest keeps pace at a different tempo. That can leave you feeling divided on the inside, and out of step with the people around you on the outside. You are too serious for the playground and too sensitive for the meeting room.
That explains an experience many gifted adults share, namely the feeling of standing just to one side of things. Not because something is wrong, but because you simply come in a different size. And that is more tiring than a gift is supposed to be.
Not a diagnosis
An important qualification belongs here, precisely because so much nonsense circulates about this subject. Giftedness is not a condition, and gifted people as a group are not unhappier or more unstable than others. Research shows this again and again. The intensity and the asynchrony are not symptoms to be cured, but characteristics of a certain kind of brain. The misunderstanding just works in both directions. Whoever thinks giftedness is purely a present doesn't understand why it can be heavy. And whoever treats it as a problem wrongly turns a way of being into a complaint.
The truth lies in between. Giftedness gives you a rich and quick inner life, with all the fine sides that come with it, from creativity to the ability to see connections others miss. But that same inner life needs maintenance, and it doesn't always fit smoothly into a world built for an average pace.
What it gives you to know this
The gain is not so much in a label. It lies in the understanding beneath it. If you grasp that your intensity is part of you, you trust yourself more when you keep chewing on something longer than others do. If you know that your mind needs fuel, you go looking for work and conversations that go deep enough to hold you, instead of settling for what is just a bit too shallow. And if you accept that you are sometimes out of step, you no longer have to work at being smaller than you are.
That is perhaps the heart of it. Giftedness rarely feels like a present you simply unwrap. It feels more like a characteristic you come to know, with sharp sides and soft ones. And once you recognise it for what it is, you have a good deal less about yourself to file down.
About the author
- Karolien Koolhof is a coach voor introverts and gifted individuals
- Author of the book Introvert Leadership
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