My perspective: struggle is inherent to the human condition...but so are joy, beauty, growth, transformation, compassion...none of these are restricted to GT or non-GT individuals.
I have had many, many students, some GT, others disabled, a few both, who have privately expressed the same sense of isolation, difference, and rejection, going back for years, but who then found their people in our nontraditional secondary setting, and were able both to experience the relief of being accepted and understood, and to turn their struggles into compassion for others on the margins.
This is a story I have now heard so many hundreds of times that I have concluded that it is the perception that everyone else fits in easily that is the misconception. We know our own stories, and the tears others do not see, but others have their own hidden pain, as well. Our own struggles are a pathway to empathy for others'.
