Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Why would they call this a gift?

Look, I'm not going to talk about this, but La Texican, you are over-generalising by phrasing this as instructions. Good for you if what you're saying has worked for you, but it is not universally applicable, believe you me.

I agree that those specific instructions probably apply only to your situation, La Texican, but they are a good example of setting boundaries. Setting boundaries within difficult relationships can be scary, but I've found that it can also be freeing. Both parties then have the opportunity to break out of the painful pattern.

Part of what I've had to work on though, is accepting that I can't heal my parents. That is really work that they will have to do themselves. So we may never have the relationship I longed for. That's a sad thing, but I don't have to stay locked into that painful pattern with them. I can grow up.

Syler,

I'd get this book ON TAPE and listen to it. Don't read it. LISTEN to it as it seems most of your issues revolve around oral communications. The author describes in social and biochemical terms how emotions form and their basis.

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/0553375067

And then read this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Adult-Children-Alcoholics-Janet-Woititz
/dp/1558741127

And this one

http://www.amazon.com/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-World-Psychopaths/dp/1572304510

and then this one

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Letting-Go-Hazelden-Meditation/dp/0894866370


After that, you need to see depictions of healthy relationships and healthy male role models. Films are good as are many of the books. I'll let some others chime in on this.

I do think you need to get counseling from a licensed Psychotherapist. They can help you to rewrite the script in your mind - and most are highly intelligent. You can google for some with work with gifted adults. I know a number of adults who are much happier and much more productive as adults since they spent a year or two working through their issues.

I'll leave you with one thought:

The masculine role model you had as a young boy is so revolting as to want one to not grow up or become a dad or man if that is what it means to be a dad and a man.

I know I'm jumping in very late, and I don't intend to make a whole lot of comments here. Let me just say, Syler, that the frustrations and isolation you're describing are really common in the GT adult population, particularly the men (I can think of one respondent in my dissertation research who was in a *very* similar situation to yours and had very similar life experiences). (You might try reading Barbara Kerr's book on smart boys / men... I haven't read it yet, but her work on the female experience of being GT is pretty interesting.)

My dissertation was on the experiences of gifted folks in psychotherapy (http://www.davincilearning.org/sketchbook/research.html), and what was really sad was how many folks described psychotherapy experiences that merely recapitulated the isolation and misunderstanding they experienced in the rest of the world. However, others described therapy as having been extremely helpful (often they were the same people, who had had some rotten experiences and then some terrific experiences, which was nice, because it meant that I could answer critics who said, "maybe these clients are just narcissistic jerks who can't form decent therapeutic relationships with anyone.")

Okay, so I'm well on my way to being a Real Live Shrink, so I think that psychotherapy is a fine and dandy thing that can help a lot of people. I see a therapist myself, no shame in it. You don't need to have something "wrong" with you -- there are entire schools of psychotherapy (most notably the humanistic and psychodynamic, which are where I like to spend most of my own time as a therapist) which emphasize just understanding yourself better as you make your journey through life and exploring the world of relationship with someone who is safely *not* directly involved in the rest of your life.

For that kind of exploration (as opposed to short-term symptom relief and coping strategies and such, where any good listener was sufficient), what I found in my research was that it really does help for a gifted person to have another gifted person as a therapist, and for that therapist to have really done a lot of their own work about metabolizing their own cultural experiences of being GT in a world that is not really made for us (some of the nastiest screwups have come from GT therapists who appear not to have done that work and thus lash out at the GT clients).

I don't know where you're located, but perhaps if you post a general geographic location, someone will know someone who has been helpful to them or to someone they know.