Too Smart for Your Own Good (1) Why?

Increasingly often I find myself talking for the first time with a client and realize from what I hear that he/she probably has an intelligence above average. 

The I ask few question to make sure and with that extra confirmation I approach the topic with the client. I do this carefully, knowing out of experience that the first reaction is more often than not :'I don't really think so.'

The reason I mention it to my clients when I notice signs of an above average intelligence is that there are some typical psychical traits that often accompanies such intelligence. Unfortunately these traits are not all jolly and supportive of the happiness of the person involved. These traits are often the reason the person came to see me in the first place. You could say they are side effect of the intelligence.

Knowing that what you struggle with has to do with a gift that you have, that as most gifts has side effects, helps put things in perspective and release a personal attachment to the problems and the origin of the problem.

I found out all this myself when in 2018 my youngest daughter got diagnosed with an intelligence above average. I call it a diagnoses because it comes with strings attached as I was saying in the previous paragraph. 

Some have more side effects than other, some have more flexibility and adaptability than others, however, it feels to me not a big stretch of the imagination to call it a diagnoses after 4 years that I see clients that suffer from these side effects. Even if the clients don't know that what they struggle with comes from their hyper intelligence until I point that out to them. 

Long story short, the interest was awoken in me because I needed to understand better how I could help my daughter to enjoy her gift, so I started to read, listen to podcast, watch video. 

Before no time, I started to attract in my practice people that turned out to be  gifted without knowing it. I realized that the most adaptable they were the less likely to be diagnosed. Furthermore, many of my clients come from outside The Netherlands,  from countries were there is less knowledge on this matter altogether. 

I have been sharing for years information about above average intelligence so that these talented people, often with an incredible richness inside and extraordinary courage and wit, can enjoy their intelligence and put it to good use for themselves and for the world. Now it is time to put down some of this information.

I will write some blogs where I share a summary in English of the best material I can find in Dutch with regards to this theme. The research on this topic is much further in The Netherland and Belgium and there is a lot of material in this language.

This blog is more to explain the reason why I will write these summaries.
I will also add the link to the video, just in case you can understand Dutch, so that you can enjoy the all talk.