What Is The Profile Of Gifted Adults?
Gifted or high potential adults don’t always know they are. Since they had an atypical childhood, it is usual for them to come of age feeling excluded, disconnected from an unstimulating, rigid and monotonous reality. People with bright minds don’t always manage to be professionally successful and happy.
Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, said that society’s biggest problem is that it is not given the chance to demonstrate its true potential. Almost a hundred years have passed since he said this sentence. However, the same problem still exists, despite scientific, social and psychological progress.
For example, figures like Carol S. Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford, report that a large portion of people still think that intelligent people necessarily succeed. However, gifted adults and children with high potential always live with the feeling that “something is wrong with them”.
They only notice dissonances in their daily life. Contradictions between what they feel and what others express. A distance between what they are looking for and what they are offered. They feel the world is too rigid and structured and their minds overly curious and maverick.
All these internal realities define, in general, these adults with high potential who still need an adequate orientation, effective mechanisms to build a more satisfying life.
Characteristics of gifted adults
First of all, there is one aspect that we need to clarify. There is no such thing as a cause-and-effect reality that shows us things like the fact that all gifted children will be unhappy adults or fulfilled adults.
It all depends on the environment, education, adequate adjustments that have been made or not in school, the bullying that may have occurred or social circle that has been enriching or not at the time of childhood.
Thus, gifted adults do what they can with their lives based on their personal circumstances. However, we must remember that if we do not nurture these exceptional gifts early on, they are unlikely to bloom as they should.
- Failure to identify a student with high potential is an obstacle to his future professional and personal achievement . The company itself is losing incredible potential.
- If we do not provide these people with means, if we do not open a path for them by providing them with adequate support, many will not have access to those scientific or artistic careers that would allow our world to progress.
Now let’s see what are the characteristics that define gifted adults.
Dissatisfaction because their expectations are frustrated
High potential adults can do good jobs. They can have a job that allows them to earn a good living. However, something is wrong with this monotonous, gray and challenging daily life.
- Their minds are full of great goals. They are very demanding people who face a reality that is too structured and not at all stimulating.
- Often, they end up having problems with their colleagues and superiors. Everything they have experienced in their schooling repeats itself. They ask questions that people don’t understand and can’t answer. Moreover, they are labeled as hyperactive, strange, non-conformist people …
High emotional sensitivity
Gifted adults experience a lot of disappointment. These are profiles who have great values and a very marked sense of justice. These dimensions make them feel frustrated because of a reality that does not match their patterns.
- Usually they try to hide their pain. They seek to lock it up, to keep it quiet, to wall it up. However, when disappointment and pain resurface, feelings quickly rise to the surface.
- Whether they like it or not, these profiles have high sensitivity. The slightest thing can hurt them and plunge them into an emotional whirlwind that turns them from joy to sadness in a very short time.
Need to connect deeply with other people
Studies like those published in the journal Behavioral Science and conducted by Dr. Francis Heylighen give us a summary of these everyday problems that are found in gifted adults.
So, an often very correct idea is that this personality lacks social skills. We believe that they often grew up surrounded by people who were not very open. Profiles who did not share their interests, who did not see the world in the same way. This prevented them from being able to socialize as they would have liked.
When they reach adulthood, they continue to feel this social vacuum. They seek an emotional and intellectual connection, with shared passions. They also want to feel a sense of complicity and need to learn, to challenge the established order, to bring something to the world …
To conclude, as we can see, this group of our society still needs a lot of answers, strategies and changes. Early detection in children and this psychological support in adults can open a path for them to feel fulfilled. The most important is that they achieve well-being and happiness.
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