Empowering yourself and your giftedness does not come easily; it takes will, courage, time, and energy. Yet, the more the path to transcendence is challenging and complex, the more its results are fulfilling.
Giftedness is a very unexplored area in the world. While we would expect a society that strives for progress and innovation to be committed and enthusiastic about discovering, developing, and supporting gifted children, teenagers, and adults, this is virtually unheard of anywhere in the world. While some countries are more developed than others in talent support, most are already chasing talent identification. While some theories try to put giftedness in compartments, there is no breakthrough in the world on how to tap into this immense inner potential.
Areas of intense perceptions or experiences of giftedness
Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist who has worked on the emotional development of intelligent and artistically gifted children, has observed that these children experience the world much more intensely than others.
He identified areas of intense perception or experience of giftedness:
the intellectual – the intense activity of the mind, a tendency to pinpoint deep issues and solve problems, self-reflective thinking.
Emotionally intense perception and experience – intensifying feelings and emotions, tense somatic problems, affective expression, ability to relate deeply in relationships, ability to discriminate one’s feelings and emotions.
Imaginative – allowing the imagination to run free, the ability to live in a fantasy world, such as the writer of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling.
Sensitive intense experience – heightened ability to sense sensory perceptions, perceive aesthetic pleasures and sensitively express emotional tension, for example, overeating in times of emotional distress.
Psychomotor intense perception and experience – excess energy and use of physical activity as a valve in the face of emotional stress, often misdiagnosed as ADHD.
Later, the spiritual or existential intensive perception was added, which involves experiencing the world spiritually and being able to communicate with the all-encompassing highest intelligence in the universe.
Common traits of giftedness
In addition to each individual’s unique gifts, we can also identify some common characteristics of giftedness.
Curiosity and energy – an unquenchable desire to know and understand more, an infinite number of questions for apparently simple things, the rejection of standard answers, the integration of ideas and information into new knowledge, a passion for finding solutions to complex situations, the ability to concentrate and to master and manage large amounts of data, and the flow of creative energy is characterized by a “creative trance.”
Speed – recognizing and understanding complex ideas, relationships, and patterns and reassembling them faster than others. The gifted “enter” into an idea, formula, or invention and understand and manage it from within.
Sensitivity – gifted persons are often hypersensitive to smell, sound, a touch of rough fabric, etc. This category also includes emotions and feelings, which most gifted individuals are ignorant of or have repressed and are therefore in a constant state of social and emotional anxiety.
Boredom and humor – the gifted are unbearably bored by routine tasks, both adults and children. Humor is a hallmark of above-average people. Often gifted people connect through humor and understanding the same jokes.
Atypical – gifted people work faster, ask questions more persistently, annoy and upset more people, think more deeply, and have more significant achievements and deeper falls in life. The feelings of alienation present in every gifted individual are often repressed and denied because there is no real visible reason for being different. Moreover, if the gifted person is not recognized as above average, they perceive the environment and others as at the same level of giftedness. Due to the lack of recognition and neglect of talent, many genius minds are currently “asleep” because they do not recognize themselves as geniuses.
Living with giftedness
I have been providing professional advice on giftedness, giftedness recognition, and giftedness support for many years. Over the years, I have incorporated ancient wisdom and modern psychological science into my method of unlocking inner gifts and potentials and empowering the gifted.
Recently, a world-famous American photographer asked me for help because he had been suffering from physical, emotional, and mental problems for many years. His intelligence quotient is sky-high. However, he does not know how to handle his intensity and does not use it for creative development. His photographs of world-famous personalities scream art that borders on the eccentric. The photographs are stunning, and the portraits are at the same time haunting, exposing the sitter to infinite depths. Photography is an art that requires the interplay of talents in many dimensions. The presence and focus on a moment in time are intense and require a full flow of creative energy. However, if a person cannot recognize their gifts, remove inner blockages, and channel creative energy correctly, it is not long before they collapse under their intensity.
Thus, on the one hand, giftedness brings extraordinary gifts, but on the other hand, it burdens the gifted person with feelings of alienation, misunderstanding, and rejection from others. The most significant indicator of giftedness is the phrase uttered by every gifted child, teenager, and adult: “I’m not gifted.” I have heard these words many times, and over time they have turned into an acceptance of oneself and one’s potential, a willingness to demand more from life and take one’s place in this world.