Simply defined, resiliency is the ability to bounce back from adversity. It involves several components, including the following:
- Mastery
- Connections
- Emotional Intensity
Gifted individuals, both children and adults, are hardwired in ways that present unique challenges to overall resiliency. And while these posts will take a look at some of the inherent problems facing the GT population, I do not want any reader to interpret this to mean that GT individuals are MORE prone to resiliency challenges. I would actually argue that the very nature of giftedness may serve as a well of internal resources helping improve resiliency for most.
MASTERY
Mastery specifically refers to a person’s ability to understand and analyze the cause/effect relationship between effort and results. It involves how a child views his or her individual ability to master the environment; whether or not he or she believes that working hard will, in fact, lead to improved outcomes.
Mastery involves the attributes of optimism (the ability to see the glass as half-full and feel positive about the future), adaptability (the ability to change and adapt to environmental/situational changes), and self-efficacy (different from self-esteem, this specifically relates to a person’s belief that he or she has the ability to perform successfully in a given situation).
As seen from the definition above, there are several areas in which gifted kids may struggle related to the very nature of giftedness. Some of the more typical challenges may include the following:
Optimism –
- Feelings of inadequacy due to a mismatch between ability and previous achievements
- 2E situations
- Perfectionism and the belief that making errors means you are not gifted
- Fear of failing resulting in poor risk taking
- All or nothing belief structure (“I either know it all, or don’t know anything”)
Self-efficacy
- The belief that teachers/parents have unrealistically high expectations for performance
- Same rigidity, perfectionism, and fear of failure discussed above
- Inflexible in thinking processes
- Intensities (you will see this come up a lot)
- Resistance to accepting help
- Resistance to change
- Like minded peers vs. typically developing peers
- Difficulties developing relationships in general related to giftedness
- Introverts vs extroverts
- Perceived Support vs Real Support
- Rigid and narrow definitions of friendship, support, and/or expectations
- Adaptability issues like those discussed under Mastery
- OEs (intensities)
- Rigid thinking (yes, this does keep coming up!)
- Resistance to change
Emotional reactivity refers to how a child reacts emotionally to adversity or problems. We already know that Gifted Kids are highly intense. But this emotional reactivity, while actually a good thing, does bring with it the potential for difficulties in the area of resiliency. Some factors that impact a person’s overall emotional reactivity is the depth of their intensities, the time it takes them to emotionally bounce back from a set back, and the level of impairment the emotional intensity may cause.
Gifted children, being more intense than their non-gifted counterparts, have some unique challenges when it comes to emotional reactivity and intensity, including:
- Extreme Intensity
- Rigid thinking that makes recovery difficulty
- Lack of emotional tools
- Build an emotional tool bank
- Teach your child an emotional vocabulary to discuss feelings, and then discuss them regularly
- Discuss perfectionism and imposter syndrome issues openly and often
- Discuss and work through fear of failure concerns
This is an amazing post. I don’t understand where the rigidity comes from if there is in fact a more complex view of the world?
Thanks for this post. It’s a relief to see someone discuss the relationship between giftedness and emotional intensity. If you know of any good books or websites that offer specific tools, activities, suggestions for helping gifted kids develop resiliency, I would love to hear about them.
So I went to a regular therapist to discuss my daughter’s problem with rigidity leading to frustration and outbursts. He said to tell her she was not allowed to think this way (?!) I thought that really wouldn’t work on my kid! Way to shut down communication. So the whole family is working on being “flexible.” She is in charge and we all recount our moments of flexibility (could be coping well with setback or whatever the problem is) from the day and she decides how many stickers we get. Oh, and we are each allowed to yell in frustration once a day so we don’t try to be perfectionists about our flexibility. She is 9. We also have stones we put in a bowl at mealtime to recount happy and sad moments from the day so we get it out and don’t ruminate on it later.
We will soon be visiting a therapist for the gifted who specializes in rigid thinking and perfectionism. I got her name from the Summit Center but I think we are doing better since we started these practices I described above.
We had a similar experience with an unhelpful therapist. I love the strategies you guys came up with, though. Thanks for sharing them.