Conversations on Gifted Trauma

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin talks with clinical psychologist Kael Cockcroft about the origins of personality disordering, what it's like when giftedness and personality disordering overlap, and therapeutic and personal paths to wholeness. Personality disordering is about getting stuck in limited strategies for relating and surviving, due to restrictive emotional and relational environments as a child. Giftedness is about high intellectual and often emotional, creative and existential complexity. The combination of gifted complexity and structural personality rigidity make life particularly challenging for individuals in this overlap, but paths for change and thriving do exist, and Kael shares the healing wisdom earned from his extensive experience treating this population. Jennifer and Kael also discuss the challenges of giftedness and narcissism that are particularly dominant in highly disruptive subcultures, for example in the tech world, and how we as individuals and the collective need to take agency in how we relate to and educate the world about intelligence, narcissism and what true, embodied and wise paths to individual and collective thriving are. To learn more about Kael and his work, go to www.stormsedgetherapy.co.uk To learn more about Jennifer and InterGifted, go to www.intergifted.com If you're a therapist or coach who is interested in attending a professional training program with Kael and Jennifer on these themes, write to us at connect@intergifted.com.

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin and gifted therapist, coach & improv instructor Gordon Smith explore how humor and play are essential elements to our healing path. Healthy humor and the authenticity and spontaneity of playfulness allow us to connect to ourselves and to others in unique and deeply grounding and meaningful ways. We explore Gordon's journey from gifted kid to gifted therapist and why and how humor became a key focus in his work with the gifted population. You'll hear lots of stories from his gifted improv groups, learn a bit about humor theory, and laugh with us as we play around with some improv in the episode. For complete show notes and links to the resources mentioned in this episode, go to: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma. To learn more about Gordon, go to www.giftedandgrowing.org. To learn more about our work at InterGifted, go to www.intergifted.com.

In episode 13, Jennifer Harvey Sallin and Eva Bruchez take listeners' questions on healing from gifted trauma. They explore the role of “little t” trauma in the life of a gifted person, the long-term effects of childhood emotional neglect (including a lack of loving touch), and the complications of narcissistic parenting on gifted children in developing a strong sense of self in the world. They also discuss the sense of imprisonment gifted people can feel when they're constrained to the neuronormative box, as well as the creative trauma that can come about as a result of schooling in a capitalist system. In addition to addressing what kind of support and involvement gifted people can expect from others in their lives (friends, professionals, colleagues, family) as they progress on their healing journey, they emphasize the essential role of innate creativity, self-responsibility, and a willingness to embrace one's own unique experiences and path as an act of healing. We hope you enjoy it! Resources mentioned in this episode can be found here. Learn more about Jennifer Harvey Sallin & InterGifted at www.intergifted.com.

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin talks with psychologist and founding president of The Dabrowski Center, Christiane Wells, on the topic of giftedness, positive disintegration and mental health. Chris became an expert on Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration after learning in her 30's how much the theory positively reframed her experiences as a child and young adult struggling with what she thought -- and was told by mainstream psychiatry -- were various mental illnesses. Through the frame of overexcitabilties and advanced personality development, Chris realized that the traits she had considered proof of her "brokenness" were actually full of developmental potential and gave her a unique and meaningful perspective on what life is and what makes it worth living. As a profoundly gifted person, Chris had never fulfilled conventional expectations of what a "genius" should do and be, but with this new understanding, she realized that her combination of giftedness and overexcitabilities were calling her to a life of meaning far outside of the stereotypes of the competitive, successful gifted overachiever. Her giftedness is best expressed in deep emotional connection and bringing complex information about healing and wholeness to people in a way they can understand and deeply benefit from it. That's what she does now through The Dabrowski Center, via her Positive Disintegration Podcast, and in her private practice supporting gifted and overexcitable clients. In addition to hearing Chris's story, Jennifer and Chris discuss the the limits of mainstream views on mental health, the harm of normative stereotypes on gifted people, the differences between the intensity of overexcitabilities and the complexity of giftedness, how not all gifted people have overexcitabilities and not all overexcitable people are gifted, how gifted trauma and trauma from being overexcitable and misunderstood are different from each other, and advice and resources for listeners. __ You'll find the complete list of this episode's reading recommendations, including links to Chris's bio, at www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma __ To learn more about InterGifted and our community and services for gifted adults, go to www.intergifted.com. __ To support our podcast, consider making a donation at: www.paypal.me/intergifted.

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin talks with The G Word Film director Marc Smolowitz on the topic of intergenerational and collective traumas, how they affect giftedness expression, and how we can find empowerment and healing. Marc was born into a family of holocaust survivors, came out as gay in his teens, lost countless friends during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and even nearly died of AIDS himself when he was in his 30's. These family-line, societal and personal traumas intersected with and affected Marc's experience and expression of giftedness all along his life path, sometimes in very difficult ways and sometimes in very empowering ways. He shares his story with us, and how he has taken his various identities (some of which were born in trauma) and woven them together into resilient and rooted authenticity. He shares the role that community has played in his life, and how each of us has the opportunity to use the lives we've been born into and the adversity we face to ultimately strengthen our self-understanding, pride in our identities, and our meaningful connection to life and others. __ You'll find the complete list of this episode's reading recommendations, including links to Marc's bio and film company websites, at www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma __ To learn more about InterGifted and our community and services for gifted adults, go to www.intergifted.com. __ To support our podcast, consider making a donation at: www.paypal.me/intergifted.

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin talks with Dutch giftedness specialist, coach, lecturer, trainer and author Lotte van Lith. Jennifer & Lotte explore the types of loneliness a gifted person can experience, including intellectual, emotional, family, social, physical, existential, creative, physical and more. Giftedness is about exchange, and when we cannot share our giftedness, it can feel as though it isn't real or doesn't exist, and that can lead to feelings of deep isolation from humanity and from ourselves. Given our modern cultures have pushed us toward emotional disconnection and relational separation through restricted narratives about what life is, who we are, and what giftedness is, it is our work as gifted individuals to open up our minds and hearts to a broader understanding of ourselves, life, and our relationship to the various forms of intelligence that exist throughout the earth and beyond. The Art of Gifted Connection is, in other words, deep work that we do to become aware of, in humble awe of, and in grateful and generous communion with the complexity in and all around us - biologically, emotionally, philosophically, cosmologically. __ You'll find the complete list of this episode's reading recommendations, including links to Lotte's websites, at www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma __ To learn more about InterGifted and our community and services for gifted adults, go to www.intergifted.com. __ To support our podcast, consider making a donation at: www.paypal.me/intergifted.

In this episode, Jennifer Harvey Sallin and ecotherapist & coach Eric Windhorst explore our connection to our inner & outer nature, as well as to fundamental consciousness. When fragmentation caused by trauma keeps parts of us disconnected from what is true within us and around us, we can provide conditions to welcome the fragmented parts back home. Time in outer nature, compassionate attention to our inner nature, connection to fundamental consciousness, and importantly, support from loving people in our lives are the ingredients for healing and growth. Eric shares moving stories of clients' healing journeys, as well as deep insights for listeners on their own healing path. You can learn more about Eric's work at www.ericwindhorst.ca To support our podcast, consider making a donation at: www.paypal.me/intergifted. __ More information available about gifted adult development via www.intergifted.com.

In this episode, we conclude our three-part episode series on healthy boundaries by exploring the cultivation of inner organization. Particularly important in this discussion are educational trauma and various dominant ideologies which, when unnamed and unnoticed, make it difficult for us to show up in the world in an organized, generative and well-boundaried manner. We explore the process of self-reeducation and unlearning that many of us must commit to in order to recover our inner organization, employ healthy boundaries, and inhabit our place and role in the current world. You'll find links to resources mentioned in this episode at: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma To support our podcast, consider making a donation at: www.paypal.me/intergifted. __ More information available about gifted adult development via www.intergifted.com.

In this episode, we continue our exploration on cultivating healthy boundaries by looking deeply at individual, social and collective coherence and its role in helping us to be generative and boundaried adults. This is one of our longer episodes, and it reflects the importance of this topic in our world of quickly compiling and accelerating crises and conflicts. This is part 2 of 3 in our cultivating healthy boundaries episode series. You'll find links to resources mentioned in this episode at: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma _ For more information on gifted-specific coaching, therapy, assessments & community with us, visit our home page: www.intergifted.com. _ We are no longer able to respond to all the emails we receive with listeners' feedback and questions, but if you write to us we may address your questions and reflections in a future episode. You are welcome to contact us at: connect@intergifted.com.

In this episode, we explore an essential topic to gifted relating and gifted trauma: cultivating healthy boundaries. Specifically, we explore the roles of aliveness, coherence, and organization in helping us create sustainable relationships with our gifted and non-gifted peers. In this discussion, we especially focus on our quality of aliveness; what it means and how it can become distorted through trauma, as well as how to (re)learn to cherish and value our aliveness and use it actively as a solid foundation for cultivating healthy boundaries. You'll also get an update from us on what we've been working on since our last episode. Our work on climate response education and environmental regeneration and healing provide another important avenue to cultivate aliveness within ourselves in and in our connection to the world. We hope you enjoy this episode and stay tuned for our follow up conversations on the role of organization and coherence in cultivating healthy boundaries. _ Links to resources mentioned in this episode can be found at: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma _ For more information on our work, visit www.intergifted.com. _ To send us feedback and requests regarding this podcast, or to inquire about gifted coaching & mentoring with us, email us at connect@intergifted.com.

In this episode, Karin and Jen venture into an exploration of how gifted trauma predisposes us to strong and painful - and sometimes debilitating - reactions to the climate emergency. Karin shares her personal story of how she was affected by this and worked through it, and we explore together what a gifted person can do now to heal from the inside as well as contribute to the healing of the planet. It is a raw and real, and honest and hopeful conversation. Links and resources mentioned can be found at www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma Learn more about I Heart Earth and join us there at www.facebook.com/iheartearthmeditations For a gifted-specific or ecogrief-specific therapy search, reach out to us here: www.intergifted.com/gifted-therapy To share your story with us, email us at connect@intergifted.com.

Episode 4 explores our knowledge (and lack thereof) of our gifted-specific needs. To do so, we explore how in response to gifted-specific trauma, we often use symbols to represent ourselves to ourselves, and thus we get distanced from a present-moment awareness of our gifted-specific needs. It's a negative feedback-loop, and here we explore how it happens, and how to exit the loop and become aware of and dynamically responsive to your own gifted needs. Here's a part of our episode that summarizes our exploration quite well: "The main symbol that comes to my mind when I think about gifted trauma is the word 'alien'. 'I feel like an alien' is the most common gifted thing that I hear in terms of unmet needs. Symbolism can often be very comforting for us because it allows us to put a name to the pain and any of us who have practiced mindfulness know it's hard to sit with pain, especially when you have no idea how you're going to solve it. When you're not able to be aware of your gifted-specific needs, you don't know how to solve them. Getting your needs met requires that you be able to be aware of them first, and then you're able to take steps, you're able to identify resources, you're able to have courage to reach out, there's room for experimentation and failure. It's a long process, so if you can't even be aware of them to begin with, then there's no hope for getting them met. And that's where you start to see this hopelessness, or whatever immediate feeling, that gets into this habit of using symbols to explain the situation, like 'I'm an alien'. And it's a very accurate symbol, because how am I supposed to know what my needs are if I'm an alien? You can see how you enter into this symbolic representation of your own existence, of your own self, and it becomes this loop in your head: 'what does an alien need? I don't know'. So you go back to that hopelessness, but instead of having to feel it in your body consciously, you can just mentalize it into this image. And it's this weird mix of comforting and terribly tragic. This is something organizationally that I've been really committed to in my personal work and theoretical work on giftedness, and in creating and cultivating the culture of InterGifted: because of my own journey, it's been really important to have a strong philosophical stance that it's not cool to stay in the 'we're aliens' mentality because it's very dehumanizing. It can be an adaptive coping strategy during a time when you don't have resources to come back into your humanity and figure it out in a comfortable and safe way. But one of the issues in the rhetoric and dialog around giftedness is that there's been to some degree a cultivation of this idea that 'we're aliens', and I think that's a harmful stance to take because of the dehumanizing aspect. A lot of the work in coaching is about getting out of the symbolism of 'alien' and saying, 'yeah, I know that's how you've represented yourself because that's been to some degree comforting, but the reality is: you're human and you have human needs - you just have this extra other thing that is not commonly defined in regular human experience, and that's the gifted set of needs'". And then of course in the the episode, we go about exploring how you can discover what that gifted set of needs is and how you can be aware of them and meet them. -- You can find links to the resources mentioned in our episode via: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma Learn more about coaching, mentoring, therapy and our workshops and courses at: wwwintergifted.com To send us feedback, email us at connect@intergifted.com

In this episode, Jen and Karin explore the effects of gifted trauma on the body - shock to the brain, muscular and neuronal holding patterns and physical blocks, illnesses, disability and other longer-term bodily effects. All of these, in turn, affect our ability to self-care, to be healthy, to be fully present in our relationships, to be in touch with our intuition and to feel hope and a sense of clear purpose in life. They also affect the way we feel able or not able to access and enjoy our gifted mind. Thanks to an increasing scientific understanding of somatic modes of healing, we can nowadays include these comprehensive tools and frameworks into our gifted self-care toolkits, in order to heal, embrace and celebrate not just our gifted minds, but also our gifted bodies Resources and Links mentioned in this episode can be found at: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma To contact us for gifted coaching or mentoring, or questions or feedback, email connect@intergifted.com

Gifted trauma is often about disconnection from the world, due to feeling socially out of place, misunderstood, unappreciated or exploited. Thus, healing often requires forming nourishing and healing connections with others (especially others who are gifted and share similar minds, needs and experiences). But that is of course the paradox - how to find nourishing and healing connections with others in a world where you haven't been able to find them? We explore how you can know who to connect with, how to find them, how to connect with them meaningfully, and how to create a network of generative connections now and in the future for your healing and thriving. _ Links to resources mentioned in this episode can be found at: www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma _ For more information on our work, visit www.intergifted.com. _ To send us feedback and requests regarding this podcast, or to inquire about gifted coaching & mentoring with us, email us at connect@intergifted.com.

A series of conversations on Gifted Trauma with InterGifted (www.intergifted.com) founder & director Jennifer Harvey Sallin and InterGifted coach Karin Eglinton. "Gifted trauma" is the trauma that gifted (highly intelligent) people experience because of being ridiculed, ignored, rejected, misunderstood, out-of-place, left out or left behind, pressured, or excessively groomed as a result of their unusual minds. Gifted people's experiences of other non-gifted specific traumas are also unique, in the way they are experienced with extreme intensity. We explore all this - and the hope and healing that is possible - together from a personal development point of view. Learn more at www.intergifted.com & see links from the conversations at www.intergifted.com/conversations-gifted-trauma. For questions about getting support, or to give us feedback or request that we cover particular subjects in future conversations on trauma, write us at connect@intergifted.com.