Common Conflicts of Gifted Children, Gifted Adolescents and Gifted Adults
Superior abilities and sensitivities are frequently experienced as both powerful assets and annoying disabilities.
Desires for friendship and intimacy conflict with privacy needs.
Leaps of creative insight can often seem less reliable than knowledge gained from logical cognitive processes.
Feeling grateful for supportive parents and mentors conflicts with feelings of resentment for the prolonged dependency required to develop expertise.
Feeling proud of a superior endowment but feeling ashamed and frightened of envy and retaliation.
Conflicts about gender identity: wanting to explore masculine and feminine qualities but feeling confused and embarrassed when attempting to do so.
Feeling exhilarated by the inner forces of giftedness but afraid of feeling out of control.
Conflicts of the gifted polymath: Desires to explore and master many ideas of interest conflict with desires to excel in only a few.
