You’ve known you’re different for a long time. You’ve been told you’re too intense or too sensitive over and over. When things don’t go well, you may find yourself taking more responsibility than others say is rational. When things do go well, you may find yourself crediting success to things outside of yourself and rushing to the next task without enjoying the moment.

You’ve been told “You’re overthinking it” as you seek to understand things that people around you accept without question. Your anxiety manifests in sleeplessness, perfectionism, overwork, and profound feelings of loneliness.

You feel capable of so much, and you want to do it all. At the same time you often feel paralyzed by all that possibility and find yourself escaping into books, movies, alcohol, or exercise.

The simple truth of it is this – People with full scale IQs north of 130 make up only about 2.2% of the human population. You are three or more standard deviations from the norm. When 95% of people are in the first two standard deviations, and they’re the ones setting the social norms and rules, they’re not designing a world for outliers like you.

Overthinking, intensity, and sensitivity? These are features of your gifted experience, not bugs. Exploring and accommodating these features is the work of the gifted person. In a world where your strengths have been pathologized and marginalized, your task is to know yourself better and become yourself more fully.

It isn’t easy. The sense of isolation and difference is real. Figuring out how to live your best life when you’re feeling isolated and different as well as multitalented and exceptional? That’s hard work.

The good news is that you have everything you need to make the journey to fulfillment. That powerful consciousness of yours is equipped to learn what it needs to learn in order to flourish outside of the norm.

This journey of yours will require rethinking what the neurotypical world has taught you. It’ll mean daring to grow into your best self even when that means embracing your quirks, oddities, sensitivities, and intensities.

I’m here to help. I offer counseling services to gifted adolescent, adults, and families, so you can have an experienced person to accompany you through an evolution of self-understanding and optimizing your human development. I offer coaching services, too, for those of you who have come out of deficit and are ready to blossom into the next iteration of yourself.

Your sensitivities are amazing. Your intensity is full of life. Your overthinking can be superthinking. Your differences can make your life exceptional.

If you’re interested in taking a different perspective on your gifted experience, let’s work together. The life that’s possible for you is within your reach.