Gifted and Growing Blog

It’s Me!!??

ByGordon Smith May 29, 2025May 31, 2025

(This piece originally appeared as an article for the Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented. It is written for all of the parents who realized their own giftedness after their children were identified as gifted)

It’s Me: The Moment

My son was identified as gifted by his school. He was having sensory issues, and they couldn’t teach him anything. He kept acing every test without trying. He was disrupting the class, too, but anyway, we had him evaluated, and it turns out he’s got a GAI score of 146. So my husband and I started reading whatever we could find about giftedness. I was reading about Bore-Out one night when it hit me. My eyes didn’t blink for a full minute… “It’s me. That’s me.”

You were digging around to learn how to help your gifted child become as happy and as healthy as they could be. You read the books and listened to the podcasts. You attended the trainings and joined the organizations. You were on a mission to optimize all that intensity of theirs into a fulfilling life. You just want your children to live in their fullest expression.

Positive Disintegration Podcast Ep.75

ByGordon Smith May 27, 2025May 29, 2025

Positive Disintegration Podcast has been a centerpiece of gifted information and community for over three years, and @Chris Wells and Emma Nicholson have been so generous with their time and insights. I had the pleasure of joining them for Episode 75 (and an epic vulnerability hangover that prompted another evolution for me personally). Have a listen, and please share with anyone you feel would be aided by it.

“Gordon shares how his rediscovery of giftedness helped him make sense of his life and deepen his work with clients. The conversation dives into the challenges of unmasking in front of others—especially family—and how the safety of group spaces can empower people to become more fully themselves. Gordon introduces his unique group offerings and the powerful “Magnum Opus” exercise that facilitates self-discovery through poetry and flow state.”

Poetic Reasoning – guest post from Laura Hope-Gill

ByGordon Smith January 5, 2025January 6, 2025

Poetic reasoning is a creative process rather than a scientific one. Whereas the scientific method insulates the subject of study from imagination and progresses incrementally toward a conclusion, the creative process starts with intense imagination regarding the subject and omnidirectionally guides both us and it through time-space toward deeper understanding of everything.

Whereas scientific reasoning values control, poetic reasoning values connection. Whereas scientific reasoning accumulates evidence, poetic reasoning explodes in the heart and deepens throughout a lifetime and beyond.

This article invites you into Poetic Reasoning and our eight-week course for gifted adults to explore creative consciousness. Begins Jan. 19, 2025.

Age of Intuition: Poetic Reasoning

ByGordon Smith December 17, 2024December 17, 2024

This eight-week series beginning January 19, 2025 elevates and centers the creative and imaginational dimensions of your gifted consciousness. Forget every rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter thumping your English teacher forced upon you. None of that is central to poetry’s curative properties now known and practiced in psychology and clinical medical practice. Poetic Reasoning invites you to develop skills of surrender and to open doors of self-discovery.

Participants will engage and practice Poetic Reasoning in a safe, supportive, and critique-free community. We will practice and open to the use of poetry as a tool of exploration. You will transcend your resistances and perfectionistic habits. Wider perspective, intuition, creativity, and freedom from the neuromajority’s constraints on thinking comprise just a few of the benefits. Meaning, awe, wonder, and delight are others.

Creative Approaches for Gifted and Otherwise Neurodivergent Adults

ByGordon Smith December 1, 2024December 1, 2024

I’ve learned that there are alternative, unconventional approaches that can move people from pathology paradigms to expansive, growth orientations. These creative approaches, long given side-eye by traditionalists, are now being proven. I intend to bring more of these expansive processes into the world of ‘mental health’. New offerings in 2025 reflect these evolutions. You’re invited.

Bringing Gifted to the Mastering Counseling Podcast

ByGordon Smith April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

I tell some of my story, describe some of the gifted experience, and discuss ways to help gifted clients through counseling, coaching, and Improv.

People Who Get Me: A Gifted, Neurodivergent, Group Coaching Experience

ByGordon Smith April 3, 2024April 3, 2024

Once you’ve realized that your giftedness has everything to do with the way you interact with the world, the next, inevitable steps are toward recalibrating, reorienting, and living a life more aligned with who you are. This group provides gifted adults a space to explore their neurodivergences in a virtual room full of other outliers. In my years working with gifted people, I’ve seen that loneliness is the most common affliction of the uncommon, and People Who Get Me (PWGM) is designed to be a balm and a laboratory.