Common Problems of Gifted Children, Gifted Adolescents and Gifted Adults
Underachievement:
You’re probably familiar with the most common cause of underachievement:
An inadequate curriculum, no advanced enough and too boring
Teachers who don’t “Get It”
A disappointing peer group: classmates who are just smart over achievers
But did you know, that underachievement also occurs when you unconsciously inhibit full use of your giftedness?
Learning Disabilities:
Did you know that learning inhibitions based on your discomfort with your giftedness can masquerade as learning disabilities or learning challenges?
True learning disabilities are assumed to be caused by innate neuro/biological deficits. In the twice exceptional syndrome, an individual’s giftedness is accompanied by a separate co-existing learning disorder. Although cognitive deficits can be measured and compared to statistical norms, these specifics can’t be used to “cure” learning deficits. Learning deficits can only be managed with compensation techniques and with requests for extra time for tests and assignments.
Our clinical experience has taught us however, that many 2e individuals are actually gifted individuals with learning inhibitions. Inhibitions are psychological/emotional processes that block cognitive and executive functions and prevent the full expression giftedness. They are not caused by neurological deficits. Instead, inhibitions in gifted individuals are caused by unresolved emotional conflicts about accepting the reality of their giftedness.
In other words, the learning problem in these gifted individuals is not a separate co- existing primary cognitive disorder but a displaced expression of a gifted individual’s emotional difficulty accepting h/h giftedness
A learning inhibition can be alleviated by addressing the unresolved emotional conflicts about the experience of being gifted.
Reading disabilities: dyslexia
Writing disabilities: dysgraphia
Math disabilities: dyscalculia
Perfectionism and Procrastination:
Perfectionism and Procrastination are often linked as bad habits but did you know that both can function as unconscious psychological mechanisms for restricting high levels of achievement
Procrastination: A common method that gifted individuals use to create external motivation.
Perfectionism: Setting impossible standards for performance instead of excellence as a yard stick ensures a limit on how much more you can achieve using your gifted abilities.
“I would never get anything done if it weren’t for procrastination.”
Behavioral Problems
Low motivation
Homework refusal
School refusal
Temper tantrums at home and at school
Difficulty with interpersonal relationships
“I always go at the speed of light, no one can keep up with me personally or professionally and that’s a serious relationship problem.”
Low Motivation
Familiar causes:
In school: “I just won’t do assignments that are too boring. They are existential threats to my sense of self”
“I need to curb my enthusiasm – I don’t want that brainiac moniker”
At work: “Projects that aren’t challenging and seem meaningless make me fall asleep “
Take a deeper dive: A psychodynamic framework can uncover deeper unresolved psychological conflicts about being gifted that can cause low motivation.
For example:
“I want to be in a place where I get more advanced work but I don’t want to loose my friends”
“The higher I go the bigger the payoff but the greater the risk of failure. I ‘ve almost never failed at anything.”If these problems persist they can develop into true psychiatric disorders:
Anxiety disorders
Obsessive compulsive disorders
Depressive disorders
Bipolar disorders
ADHD.
