Day 15: Gifted And

Welcome to Day 15 of the July Intensity Project!

31 Days Toward Living with More Intensity & Creativity

Yet another barrier that often keeps people from appreciating and using their intensity is that they don’t realize it is possible to be “Gifted and.” Gifted and dyslexic. Gifted and autistic. Gifted and bipolar. Not Gifted but. Gifted and.

Having a learning disability or other diagnosis does not mean that an intense person cannot use and enjoy his or her gifts or that what comes after the “and” needs to control one’s identity. Consider this insightful interview with Abby, who has bipolar disorder:

“What enables me to thrive is being able to view this disorder as not just a challenge, but a gift and tool. I have learned so much from having it, and am a much stronger person because of it. It also augments my love of art and helps me break outside of the box—something many people with Bipolar Disorder (and many mental disorders, actually) have an easier time doing. I apply that to my art in all of it’s forms, and also with how I deal with others. (Or I TRY at least!) For whatever reason, years of not being able to figure out what I was feeling helped me strongly identify and empathize with others. THAT is a gift I’d not trade for the world.”

Or William Butler Yeats, as profiled on Dyslexic Advantage:

“Several of my uncles and aunts had tried to teach me to read, and because they could not, and because I was much older than children who read easily, had come to think, as I have learnt since, that I had not all my faculties…My father was angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.” – William Butler Yeats

But lest you get a permanent wrong impression of WB Yeats’ father, this was also said of him (from Eileen Simpson’s wonderful book Reversals): When John Butler Yeats finally realized how useless it was to bully his son to read aloud, when his son was clearly incapable of doing so, the father took over the reading himself…

And, to complicate the matter further, sometimes intensity and giftedness are misdiagnosed as something else, as the authors of Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, depression, and other disorders discuss:

“Intensity, sensitivity, idealism, impatience, questioning the status quo—none of these alone necessarily constitutes a problem. In fact, we generally value these characteristics and behaviors—unless they happen to occur in a tightly structured classroom, or in a highly organized business setting, or if they happen to challenge some cherished tradition, and gifted children are the very ones who challenge traditions or the status quo. Read More

Do you or does someone you love have a learning or other disorder? Do you think (or have you been told) that this means that giftedness and intense living must take a back seat until the problem is “fixed”?

What is your experience with being “Gifted and”?

On different note, some of you may be interested in the book giveaway I’m hosting on my other blog. To have a chance to win two free books, simply leave a comment on the post linked to below, and be a subscriber to “The Wild Thyme Unseen.” See you over there!

Yesterday I read an article about “20 Blogging Milestones” designed to help bloggers “figure out if you’re on the right path.” What I found inspiring about the list was all the small successes all of us, but writers in particular, might miss celebrating along the way or later forget altogether as we keep trying to climb up one ladder or another. Here are some examples from the article: Your first … Read More

Photo credit (fingerprint): Davide Guglielmo

• Day One: List Your Best Qualities…
• Day Two: Wonderfully Weird?
• Day Three: Got Personality?
• Day Four: Celebrate Your Way
• Day Five: Torrance’s Creative Manifesto
• Day Six: A Spork Divergent Thinking Exercise
• Day Seven: The Euphoric Rush of Everyday Life
• Day Eight: Intellectual Intensity
• Day Nine: Pyschomotor Readiness
• Day Ten: The Delight of Beautiful Things (Sensual Excitability)
• Day 11: Our Precious Imagination
• Day 12: The Key of Emotional Overexcitability
• Day 13: Gifted by any other name
• Day 14: The Gift of a Positive Word

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine