Giftedness & Authenticity

As a child, I got into trouble for being too energetic, too loud, too talkative, too inquisitive, too sensitive—too uninhibited and overwhelming. I lacked the knowledge to realise that I was just being and doing what any gifted, autistic child naturally would, and falsely concluded that there was something wrong with me.

Like any child, I needed to be accepted and loved in order to feel worthy of love. The only way my child self could imagine being loved, considering how others reacted to my too-muchness, was to dissect myself into “good” and “bad” bits, keep the good, and fix the bad by deleting or overwriting those parts of me. I would learn how to be “right” and "good", then I would be wanted and loved. Right? I worked hard to be a “normal” girl, but unfortunately for me, due to my then-undiagnosed autism, I proved to be a bad mimic. On top of that, my irrepressible spirit was impossible to subdue; no matter what I did nor how hard I tried, I never succeeded at being “like everyone else.”

The unnatural strain from what I was doing to try to force myself to fit in to be loved consumed me as I grew into my teens. The fact that no matter how hard I tried, it didn't work, caused me to start to develop a true sense of hatred for myself, and eventually even for humanity. I grew bitter, jaded, morose, cynical, aggressive and uncontrollable. By the time I was 18, I belligerently embraced the label of dysfunctional rebel I was typecast as.

I approached adulthood with deep dread. Being a versatile “multipotentialite”, the thought of being set loose to flounder in a world where I was expected to choose, be and do “a thing” for the rest of my life was a nightmare! Lacking relevant social modelling, support or guidance as a young gifted autistic woman, I had no idea who or what I wanted to be or do. I jumped at random job opportunities, qualified or not, and flew by the seat of my pants, but I rarely survived six months before I would quit from the simultaneous boredom and stress of repressing my creatively problem-solving self into a docile cog in order to avoid stepping on egos or challenge status quos!

As a solution to this problem, I committed myself to a life of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no meaningful direction, passion, purpose or motivation. I was unable to conceive of such things due to years of repressing and renouncing my inherent connection with my “inner GPS” of self-authority, security and direction. Without this essential self-awareness and access to my own purpose, I ran into so many problems trying to set up business that it became obvious that I needed to do something about myself. So I looked these questions square in the face: “Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want for my life?”

I spent the next decade dedicating myself to answering these existential questions. I poured millions of words into my journals and whatever money I could into personal development and business coaching. I hacked my own cognitive behavioural methodologies to increase self awareness, and eventually devised a cyclical methodology I referred to as “explore, experiment, express and experience.” I explored different identities, personalities, passions and motivations in my private personal development practices. Then I used my businesses and social media to experiment with and express those test-identities/passions/motivations for long-term fit and sustainability. I would then reflect upon my experiences in my private practice and apply my insights in the next cycle.

In doing countless iterations of this process, I noticed that life was constantly conspiring to provide clues—puzzle pieces—about me to me. I learnt to recognise them, intentionally collect them and diligently work on putting them together to connect the dots and make sense of the larger picture of who I was when I felt like I was being my most authentic self and having access once again to my "inner GPS". Over time, the puzzle of my passions and motivations started to become quite clear—it was made up of the themes of self-mastery and self-actualisation, identity, integrity and authenticity, courage and honesty. This clarity led me to seek the help that resulted in my autism diagnosis, which was a crucial piece of the puzzle of my self-understanding and gave me direction for the next years of my personal and entrepreneurial life. However, I still felt that something else was missing, I just didn't know what it could be...

The psychologist who had diagnosed my autism had suggested at that time that I was probably gifted, but I had rejected that part of her assessment. I had struggled so much in my life, and I knew so little on the subject, that I had no context for accepting “giftedness” as being part of who I was. It was only three years later when a friend suggested I look into giftedness again that suddenly, it became obvious that indeed, the psychologist had been right. I was gifted, I just hadn't previously been able to see myself as such due to the struggles I had had for so long. By the time I found InterGifted, I had by then done enough self-development work to be able to finally recognize myself as a gifted adult. With that recognition, I was bombarded with new information and contexts with which to reframe so many of my previous life experiences. The clues and patterns I had accrued over my years of self work rapidly began to make sense and like magic, the puzzle pieces of "me" started snapping into place with startling gravity and clarity.

Giftedness was the final and most crucial piece of my puzzle because my giftedness, more so than my autism, shapes how I perceive and experience every dimension of life, from cognitive function and emotional responses to the values and motivations that drive me—the basis of everything that made me different from “everyone else” my whole life.

I came to the vivid realisation that I had never been “wrong” as a person—I had simply been using ill-fitting social and cultural contexts of the non-gifted neuromajority to evaluate myself as compared to the norm. I’d been modelling myself after the wrong neurosocial tribe, turning to the wrong tribes for validation and affirmation, and judging everything about myself as “wrong” using invalid social data and contexts. Instead of being “wrong” or “bad”, I am just different—a member of a perfectly natural neurominority that is an expression of the natural diversity of the human species.

This realisation led me to an epiphany: “No one is stopping me from being me but me.” I was inspired by this premise and resolved to test it, and what started out as an experiment soon metamorphosed into the apex of my journey to my authentic self.

In my search to understand how to be an authentic gifted adult, I have found the etymologies of the terms "authenticity" and its related "integrity" to be highly instructive in themselves:

Authenticity and integrity, therefore, literally mean being and expressing one’s untouched, original and genuine self on one’s own authority.

Through my own work, I have come to experience authenticity and integrity as a mindset of self-security and freedom of choice that arises from one’s inherent source of self authority and direction:

Therefore, I see integrity as an internal experience, and authenticity as the external expression—two halves of the same whole of being. Authenticity is how we choose to express our experience of integrity within.

The road to rediscover and reconnect with my authentic self came with many hurdles. Here is some of the hard-earned wisdom I've learned on the road.

I always wondered how I would know if or when I had succeeded with my authenticity quest. After all, integrity and authenticity seemed like such intangible goals and outcomes. Turns out, the characteristics of integrity and authenticity are unmistakably verifiable mental and emotional states that cannot be forced or faked. Here's what I've experienced and what you can look forward to as a result of your own work on the journey.

How to connect with other authentic gifted people can be a challenge, and it's a challenge that takes courage on all our parts! If we are zebras living amongst giraffes, we can’t expect other zebras to find us if we’re disguising ourselves with brown and yellow patches to blend in with the crowd. If we want to find and attract other zebras, we need to wear our black and white stripes loud and proud!

We are a statistically rare percentage of the human population. We are hard enough to find as it is, but if we each are actively hiding who we are, if we are feeling incapable or unworthy of authentic expression, or worse, not even able to know ourselves authentically in the first place, that reduces our chances of connecting with and supporting one another one-thousand-fold. We need gifted people who give of their authentic selves and so are recognizable to us — we need their modeling, inspiration, creations, and pathos, for current and future generations. And we can be that for other gifted people in the world too, by having the courage and honesty to accept and love, experience and express, be, do and share who and what we are.