Gifted & Traumatized: Navigating the Intersection of Intensity – Patty Gently, Imi Lo

 

This episode features Patricia “Patty” Gently, an expert on giftedness and trauma, who shares her personal and professional journey. As a twice-exceptional individual herself, Patty discusses her experiences with dyslexia, ADHD, and auditory processing struggles, and how they shaped her path.

Motivated by her twice-exceptional daughters, Patty founded the Bright Insight Support Network to provide resources and community for gifted individuals, particularly in Tucson, Arizona. The organization transitioned to virtual platforms during the pandemic, offering online support groups like the Bloomers, a safe space for gifted adults to connect and navigate shared challenges.

The conversation delves into Patty’s book, “Intersection of Intensity,” which explores the unique ways gifted individuals experience and process trauma. She explains how their intense cognitive and emotional capacities can lead to both rapid learning and heightened sensitivity to trauma. Patty emphasizes the importance of recognizing these differences in therapeutic settings and advocates for inclusive language, such as “neurodivergent” and “intense,” to describe giftedness.

Drawing from her expertise, Patty discusses effective therapeutic approaches for trauma, including EMDR and somatic work, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach that addresses both mind and body. She also highlights the importance of co-creating therapy with clients, acknowledging their expertise in their own experiences.

Finally, Patty addresses the complexities of identifying giftedness in adults and encourages self-identification and seeking community support. She invites listeners to connect with her through her organization’s website and the Bloomers Facebook group, and shares her future projects focused on identity development and parenting with trauma, showcasing her dedication to supporting the gifted community.

 

Patty’s new book: https://www.amazon.com/Intersection-Intensity-Exploring-Giftedness-Trauma/dp/1953360378

 

Transcript (AI-generated, so I apologize for any mistakes you may find!)

Imi

Yes. Before we dive in, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit more about yourself and what you do, especially in the gifted space.

Patty

Okay. Well, yeah, that’s a multidimensional, like, layered answer, right? So, you know, initially, as far as gifted, you know, I was assessed as a young person, so I was identified as gifted as. As a young person, and I’m twice exceptional. So I think that led to my family and other people going, oh, gosh, Patti’s gifted. What? And so I also, along with the giftedness, I have, like, dyslexia, probably some fun ADHD type stuff, auditory processing struggles and stuff like that. And so I’ve always been a member of the gifted and twice exceptional community, neurodivergent community of people. You know, before that was something we were even familiar with. However, as I matured, you know, I kind of moved away from that, you know, only a little aware of my own giftedness until I had children, and then it came back, you know, full force. So I also have. Have two daughters who are beautiful, twice exceptional individuals. Eventually, you know, I parented and I taught library, and I was a school nurse. As an EMT, I’ve done a lot of kind of different things. And I finally went back to school to become a therapist.

Imi

So I have my masters in clinical mental health counseling and my doctorate in developmental psychology. And before I even finished my doctorate, I started up an organization called Bright Insight Support Network in Tucson, Arizona, because we were just really lacking support there. So this organization, you know, I was already supporting people in my therapy practice. However, this organization really sought to offer some scaffolding around a local community that lacked support. And I eventually, during the pandemic, it went very virtual, and there was such a need for gifted adults, especially where that virtual, the bright insight table talks, which is kind of our core program, is just a once a month get together for gifted individuals. That was really meeting a beautiful need for gifted adults, virtually because we have a hard time finding our peers. And that led to eventually, people joining a group called the Bloomers, which is a Facebook group. We’ve got, I don’t know, 1300 people in there or so. And it’s just this beautiful group of the outliers of outliers, you know, the odd amongst the odd and just lovely, quirky individuals, and some of which haven’t found a good spot to fit anywhere.

Patty

And so this group is, I think it’s home for a lot of people, and it’s this great thing. So aside from that, I offer groups, I do individual coaching and therapeutic coaching, because as a therapist working internationally, I can’t, you know, work under licensure. Let’s see. I write, I present, and then, of course, I have my book that just came out. Intersection.

Imi

Yes. That’s why I approach you.

Patty

Yeah. And so I just gave you this, like, litany. I can’t, like, leave anything out because it’s so important to me. So I’m on the neuroscience advisory board as a Tui specialist for California brainwaves, I do free mom hug. I’m a state chapter leader for free mom hugs, which supports LGBTQIA community. So. So there you go. That’s the. Like I said, it’s a litany. So that’s what I’m up to these days.

Imi

Wow, that’s a lot that you’ve done in your life that can really see a common threat in there.

Patty

Yeah.

Imi

Oh, well, congratulations to your new book and tell us what make you write it.

Patty

Oh, yeah. Well, I’m an individual with complex trauma, and I’m gifted. So I have the intersection of intensity. How. The book is titled an intersection of giftedness and trauma. And then, of course, became a therapist. So working with people and understanding therapy, particularly as an eye movement desensitization and processing therapist emdrhe and working with also gifted community. I just saw that there’s such a profound difference in how gifted individuals show up in therapy.

Imi

Right. Well, we need to hear all about that.

Patty

Yes, indeed.

Imi

And bear in mind, sorry, a lot of our listeners may not identify or even like that word. I mean, I call it intensity, although it does have a huge overlap with what would consider a skeptimist. So, yeah, use whatever vocab. But I do. I don’t want people to feel excluded because they, oh, I’m not gifted, or they might still be sitting on the fence wondering.

Patty

Yeah. And let me. Yeah. Do you mind if I speak on that? Please?

Imi

Oh, please. You can speak on anything. This is just a chat. There’s no outline.

Patty

Oh, wonderful. Yeah. So, yeah, there’s so much struggle with the word gifted, and I broadened it to neurodivergent an awful lot in the book and in my own world, to be more inclusive of all the dimensions of how we show up as humans in the world. And intensity is a huge part of that. So really looking at intensity in the book and for myself is such a huge part of how. How people identify and how people actually see themselves in this process. When we’re looking at trauma and we could say intensity, trauma and giftedness, however, it can just as easily be said trauma and intensity. Because when you are intense, and I don’t mean that as a judgment of oh, too intense. You know, it’s when you see the world with great intensity. Way Dabrowski operationalized, over excitability is over, as in more than so, over excitable is more than the typical level. Excitability, as is experienced by the general populace. Right. And so when we’re told as intense individuals, that we’re too much and we show up in the world in a way that’s a, that’s, you know, we need to. We need to slow down or quiet down or that sort of thing, or, oh, gosh, you’re so in your head, or you’re, you know, you’re too much.

Patty

It’s. We need to remember that we’re. We’re more than. We’re not too much. And so I love, I’ve come to love the word, even though I’ve written about not liking it initially for the same reasons.

Imi

Thank you for the clarification.

Patty

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Imi

So you wrote the book because you noticed that intense people, overexcited people, gifted people show up differently. How so?

Patty

Yeah, you know, show up and experience differently. Right. A lot of this about the experiencing. So gifted individuals, neurodivergent individuals, and we could really, we really can look at neurodivergence and intensity. They tend to lean towards pattern finding and meaning making, and all humans do that. Right. We make sense of the world by creating patterns that we then code in our brain. Recall later with giftedness, there’s a rapid recall and a density in the neural networks. And so sometimes it’s really fast. So sometimes people go, oh, I just know this, and people go, oh, you can’t possibly just know that. And the reality is that they learn in a lot of times, one to two repetitions, new and interesting to them, information. And so really, this stuff comes very quickly. And gifted individuals can receive a lot of judgment because of that neurodivergence. In general, if we pull over to maybe the autistic side, autistic individuals have more synapses. They experience less synaptic pruning in youth. And so these synapses mean more neurotransmitters are moving through their brains more rapidly at a higher rate. And so the experiencing of what happens when we have that sort of activity in the brain is quantifiably different.

Patty

Qualifiably different, too, because the experience and the way it looks is different. Right. So how does that affect how we code in our brains? The input we get that feels and is traumatic. Well, it’s gonna look different. Right. So what comes in and is experienced as intensity is also often coded in our brains more intensely.

Imi

That makes a lot of sense.

Patty

Yeah. Okay. And now I’m going to, like, calm down and wait for your next question because I can just. I can just talk and steamroll if I’m not careful.

Imi

Holy shit. Don’t wait for my rubbish question. Go with your flow. That would be the best. What’s next on your mind? Go for it.

Patty

Oh, no, you know, really, it’s just like, I could keep going and going this, but then you’ll end up with me talking about the entirety of the book. Right. So, you know, that would be a four hour, then that probably wouldn’t be.

Imi

Very good for your book sales.

Patty

Oh, you know what? Honestly, any way people can get this information? Okay. That’s the other reason I wrote this book. The community, neurodivergent community, gifted community. There was such a craving. There was such a gap in the literature with giftedness and trauma divergence and trauma intensity and trauma. Such a gap in literature where people are like, hey, what do you know about this? Where’s a good book for this? It didn’t exist. I mean, it’s touched in different books. Like your book, for example, does a great job of looking at intensity with gifted adults especially, or neurodivergent, intense adults, specifically, giftedness and trauma. Intensity and trauma was missing as far as something that’s completely inclusive of the entire topic. And actually, I almost hate saying that because your book is really great with that trauma in the title, though, you know what I mean? And people really having a place to point towards that. And I presented on giftedness and trauma for many years before this and really acted as the outline for this book. So because the community was craving it, we were asking for it. Yeah. So if people hear this and they get what they need from this and they don’t need the book.

Patty

Cool.

Imi

You know, incredibly generous of you. It’s a. One of the gifts of traits, I.

Patty

Think it could be. Yeah. And really, you know, if somebody’s excited about my work and my book, they’ll recommend it to somebody else. It’ll still get out, you know what I mean? So we just got to share because it’s so craved.

Imi

When I first saw the title, I haven’t. I feel like I have an immediate resonance and understanding of it, but a question popped into my mind. I wonder if you. It’s a very nuanced question, so I’m trying to phrase it, right. Do you see a difference, do you see a difference between those who are gifted and then traumatized versus maybe, sorry, I don’t know why they have to be dichotomized. They’re not. Okay. Lots of questions pop into my head. Number one is, are gifted people more prone to specific types of trauma? My own theory says yes, especially family trauma, because just by and in school, just because they’re different. So they are almost not attract, but, you know, they might, this is not back up by any statistics, is my assumption. Like, they might be more likely to go through a specific type of trauma just because they are different and neurodivergent. So there’s that. But there’s also the idea that people who are gifted and they just happen to be traumatized, like they’re just born into a family with alcoholic parents or something is happening, or they’re just, you know, purely unlucky, something happened to their siblings.

Imi

So do you differentiate them? Do you think there’s such a thing? Like, for instance, I know Jennifer in intergifters. She talks about gifted trauma, and I don’t know her official definition of that, but that, to me, sounds like what I was saying in the former case, where it’s a specific type of trauma that the gifted people are more likely to have. Anyway, I’ll let you speak if my question is clear at all.

Patty

It is. It’s beautifully clear, and it’s something that we talk about a lot within the community. And I’ve had, I’ve spoken to Jennifer, Jennifer Harvey Solin a whole lot about that, because we’re peers and we are on the same page with that in a big way. She calls it gifted trauma. I don’t tend to do that. That’s one way that I kind of diverge from how Jennifer frames it, even though we have a lot of alignment with how we work, because I want to be very careful not to say gifted trauma or autistic trauma or ADHD trauma, because it can go, we can end up saying in our brains, oh, because I am gifted, I am traumatized. And that may be true for some people. However, I like to separate them and offer the. And. Right. So I would say in a response to your question, yes and yes, we see within the gifted community, the neurodivergent community, that there is probably, there’s a lot of accounts of, say, bullying, right. Because gifted kids show up very different, and a kid that shows up very different may be a target of bullying in an immature social system where all the kids are kind of learning how to make their social worlds work.

Patty

And while a gifted individual is prone to that, I would say, you know, is it their giftedness or is it the fact that they’re a marginalized population in a society that’s not set up for them? You know? So I’m very careful about. I’m sorry.

Imi

Well, sad.

Patty

Ah, thank you. Yeah. Because anybody who’s marginalized and divergent in a way where they are a mismatch between their person and their. And their environment, they are potentially prone to mistreatment or at least misunderstanding. We see that with any marginalized population, which is why I tend to pull back from that and say gifted, neurodivergent, racial minority, LGBTQIA, any marginalized population has an increased probability of trauma in a mismatched society, a mismatched environment. So with giftedness, the type of stuff we see. Right. We do see an increase of probability of a lot of things, a great probability of misunderstanding, bullying, depression, and anxiety related to family dysfunction. Sure. However, yeah, we see that in the human population as well. So I’d hate to say it’s because you’re gifted. Right. It’s broader to me.

Imi

Yeah, that’s very clear. I think it’s quite important to have these things clear in our mind as, like, a philosophical backbone as we work. So we’ll continue on this, actually. So does trauma manifest in so many ways? Do you think there are particular types of it that particularly affect or impact gifted individuals? Why? Might they be more susceptible or are they not? Or are they actually more resilient, or both?

Patty

Right.

Imi

The floor is yours all.

Patty

Again, you’ll hear me saying, and so much, or all of the above. Right.

Imi

You wrote a book called Intersect. Well, actually. What’s your book called? Maybe it’s also good to tell our audience that intersection.

Patty

Thank you. Yeah. Intersection of intensity. Right.

Imi

Why that works.

Patty

Intersectionality is so important, looking at where things overlap, interact. I’m a big fan of Broffenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which basically. Go ahead.

Imi

Oh, no, sorry.

Patty

That.

Imi

What pops into my head is feminism.

Patty

Yeah.

Imi

Also theology and cultural studies. I mean, I hope you know, you know, feminism is not just about women and women. It’s a whole thing about post modernism over, turning the paradigm. I don’t know if we’re using it because I’m not familiar with the ecological theory. I’m more familiar of about all. I know the word from cultural studies, so you may have to elaborate on that.

Patty

Oh, I will. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Bromfenbrenner, he did ecological systems theory and then later, biological ecological systems theory or bio ecological systems theory. And what it is, if you can imagine different rings of systems that operate in our life, and at the very core, us, ourselves as humans, are our own system, right? I have my own biology and neurology, and the way I show up in my world is a system in and of itself. And then I have, you know, moving out from that. I have the next system of maybe close friends and family and moving out from that. Maybe if I’m a child, my school or my church or my larger family moving out from that, my local community moving out from that, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s all these different systems. However, Bromfront Brenner’s theory also considers how those systems interact and those interactions interact. And we have this multi layered, multi dimensional ecological system that is so different for every single person. And so it’s really effective for any human, including the marginalized and the different and the neurodivergent and the intense. And it basically says, your experience is so unique because you have all these systems in your life, including the very core system that is you, that just showed up on this earth the way it did and has its own neurology and biology.

Patty

So that intersection, intersectionality of different cultures, different ecological systems, when we look at that and allow ourselves to consider that what happens is this beautiful bias reduction, right? Where we go, ooh, this thing I thought was true, maybe I can challenge that, right? Maybe I can look at it a little different and allow my mind to broaden to where I can accept an experience that is different than my own. And we want to do that a lot with intense individuals. When we are told that you’re too much, right? Because we’re in therapy, too much is something that we need to scale back. Oh, well, you’re too emotional. We need to scale that back. Let’s work on some emotional regulation skills. Well, emotional regulation skills are never a bad thing. I’m not saying they are. What I am saying is, what if we looked at this and went, oh, you’re an emotionally intense person. How beautiful are you that you show up in the world this way? Let’s look at how the world looks for you that might differ from what you’re told it should be. So, yeah, that intersection, it really comes down to bias reduction.

Patty

It’s, hey, this may look a little different than what you’ve been told it should be, and that’s okay. I don’t know if I even answered your question or had one.

Imi

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about answering my questions anyway. My questions are just there to spark thoughts, and it can go anywhere.

Patty

The best kind of interview. I love it.

Imi

I wouldn’t even call it an interview. It’s just a chat.

Patty

Yeah.

Imi

Beautiful intersection. Yeah. I think it’s not an immediately understood word in that context, but when you expand on it, it’s actually really, really deep. And I’m sure your book answered a lot of those questions.

Patty

Absolutely. And the book goes back to that word a lot when, oh, here’s another intersection. Oh, the way you interact with your environment is another intersection. The way you take in stimuli and then process it and, you know. And here’s then also this intersection with maybe a different difference you have, like maybe a racial and ethnic difference than your immediate environment or sexual orientation. You’ll see common themes with common marginalized populations. And then also we go into other topics that go, hey, here’s another intersection. And another intersection, Oprah, you get an intersection. And you get an intersection anyways. And we all have them, so it’s important.

Imi

Well, your book delves into the unique responses of the gifted brain, the trauma. Now, this is an area that I am clueless about. I can’t even say I’m very interested in all the neurobiology. So can you share some key insights without using too many jargons for idiots like me? Health neurobiology of gift. Actually, you mentioned it just now, earlier, a little bit about the synapses, but I think some people would be interested in knowing the neurobiological side of it.

Patty

Yeah, wonderful. And I’m glad you asked, even if it’s not your area of interest and the wonderful thing to know. And I think it’s wonderful. And it may not be. Some people may want, like, really deep. Right. Talk about neurobiology. And I don’t go too deep. I kind of scratch the surface on a lot of things in this book, so it could be kind of an overview of everything there is an insight into a bright mind is a good one for a lot of neurobiology. In this book, though, I do talk briefly about there are quantitative differences with the gifted brain volume wise. There’s greater amount of gray matter, there’s more interactive, intense, dense white matter in the brain in a gifted individual, which they’ve seen with these fmris. Really what that boils down to is a complex network. And so without going into the details about what all that means, we can say we have quantified that there’s a complex network of neural activity in the gifted brain, which could explain why we ended up doing quotation marks. We see gifted individuals as so smart, right? Sometimes we go, oh, well, you’re smart. You can handle anything.

Patty

And there’s some. You know, there’s some that’s not to be thrown away, however, that ends up being a judgment on gifted individuals and gifted kids. Oh, you’re so smart, you can handle anything. We don’t need to offer you support. They’re just fine. Oh, just fine is defined in the book. Actually, just fine is my glossary of terms, because so many of us heard that growing up and just fine meant we got to be ignored or neglected. So, with this wonderfully complex neural network, there can be this rapid learning. We can come to rapid conclusions. However, sometimes, if we can learn, let’s say, and I didn’t learn calculus fast, so this isn’t me. But let’s say we can learn calculus really fast because we’re really interested in it, right? We have some aptitude in that area, and we can learn calculus in one to two repetitions and take that in really fast. We’re like, good. What’s wrong with being gifted? Why are you complaining? Well, I can also learn trauma really fast.

Imi

So that’s the link. Yeah, yeah. Memories become really vivid.

Patty

Yes. Really. And because I’m looking for those patterns and making meaning out of them, I can quickly code. I heard.

Imi

That is such a good point.

Patty

Yeah. And it’s a. And we are not somehow immune to coding things incorrectly. Right. Grew up, mom and dad told us how awful we are, and instead of going, oh, no, but I’m a good person, we may have coded, I’m awful, I’m awful. I’m awful, we learned it rapidly, and we started applying it and finding those patterns and making meaning with that core self talk now in place. So every time we take in information that can be attached to I’m awful, it now coded intensely in our brains.

Imi

That’S where your EMDR background becomes really handy, because it’s all about how our memory system got it wrong and somehow got things locked in a pocket in our brain. Doesn’t come out. And if your brain is so prone to forming these strong associations, probably get locked in there really, really vividly, stubbornly.

Patty

And intensely. And intensely. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’m sitting here laughing, but I’m just loving that you’re using the most brilliant words. Stubborn. Intensely. Absolutely. And how many of us have been called stubborn? Right.

Imi

So. But then, is there anything good to it, like, in terms of trauma healing? Yes. Also good. To, you know, having a fast brain and learning and do they also learn the healing faster? Maybe. I’m trying to give people some hope.

Patty

Right. And I so appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. There’s good news at the end of the story. Right?

Imi

Get to it, please. I’m kidding.

Patty

No, you’re fine. You’re fine. I love it. Please get to the end of this because it sounds really hopeless. And I know Stephanie Fu, who wrote what my bones know if people are familiar with that one. And I highly recommend that for folks who have experienced complex post traumatic stress disorder or any sort of complex trauma. She does this, too. Her book is so intense. Intense. And then she gets to this beautiful end that’s not over. Right. And she’s going to write another book. Oh, yeah. So in this book. Yeah. Talk about the difficulty with trauma and intensity. And one of the last chapters of the book is about post traumatic growth, and the two chapters about that before that are about what do we do about it? How do we work with trauma and intensity so that we can heal. Right. And Francine Shapiro, who developed EMDR, would say, look back and not stare. And I really love that because with EMDR processing, people are worried. And for folks that aren’t familiar, EMDR is just eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which is more about bilateral stimulation. So you might, some people pat their shoulders back and forth.

Patty

Some people feel buzzers. But the bilateral stimulation while you’re processing trauma helps kind of open up the mind to look at things differently. And I know it sounds almost cheesy, however, anybody who wants to have a conversation, whatever works. Yeah, it works great. And I talk about it more in depth in the book so that there is understanding of how and why. It’s not voodoo magic. It’s beautiful. Neurology and biology. Right. There’s a neurological reason. Anyways, there’s this opening up that happens that allows us to reprocess these past messages that really got cemented in our brains, that we learn very quickly. And then these lovely, intense individuals have this intensity and this ability to intensely and beautifully reprocess. So the last few chapters talk about what that might look like with top down processing, you know, more skill building and bottom up processing, which would be like a more psychoanalytic approach or EMDR or things that really internal family systems is another great approach where we’re looking at what’s under the surface of this. And as quickly as we can code and take a new information that can maybe encode trauma, we can also take in new information and potentially encode healing.

Patty

Now, is it that simple? It’s work, just like for any person, it’s work. And yeah, there’s a great also capacity with developmental potential, which is a Dubrowskian concept. With that great developmental potential comes a great potential for healing. And so, yeah, it’s important to consider when we’re talking about this topic.

Imi

We’Re drawn to very similar models in thinking, well, I do wonder that would be a diversion. I do wonder what other models you’ve drawn to and what informed your work, but we should go back to your book too.

Patty

Yeah, I’m sure. Okay. Oh, yes, I can be brief with that. Like ecological systems theory, Dabrowski’s theory, positive disintegration all day long, I constantly, it’s so relevant. I have my own identity development theory that I developed through my research. Basics like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are so, you know, important to me. Erickson’s psychosocial development, and looking at those stages, those are probably the top ones right there.

Imi

So going back to trauma, in related to giftedness, you talk about the concepts of asynchronicity and compensation. Can you expand on that?

Patty

Yeah, and I would love to, because this is a soapbox I stand on sometimes, and you just gave me a platform. Asynchronicity is really looked at as this within a person. It can be a difference between functioning in different domains. Right? We have a person, a young person, maybe, who can’t tie their shoes and they can do advanced algebra. And so to the rest of the world, that will look asynchronous. How come somebody who’s so smart and so capable, how come they can’t tie their shoes? And we would see that as asynchronicity. We may see it also between self and environment. Right? This asynchronicity where it’s like, oh, developmentally, you should be here and your way up here, or vice versa. Right? And so with the gifted population and the Columbus group definition of giftedness looks at asynchrony as a part of that, where there seems to be this mismatch between developmental levels, you know, achievements, that sort of thing. So it’s one thing we look at to identify this population. And as you can imagine, that asynchronicity also can cause some struggle when people look at that and go, oh, you’re different, you’re weird, you’re asynchronous.

Patty

How come you can do this and not bad, and so enter in judgment and the potential for some difficulty? We have to be careful there because the one question I ask often is asynchronous. According to whom we end up judging people ourselves, because it’s like, oh, you should be able to do this. You should be able to do that according to this pediatric group or this, this World Health Organization or, you know, and so pulling back and doing the bias reduction of, hey, just because this entity is calling you asynchronous doesn’t mean there’s something wrong. It means there’s something different than what may be typical. Now, compensation. And sometimes we call it gifted compensation. And any person, again, any human, compensates for difficulties using the skills they have. And with gifted and intense individuals, what we see is that, like, for example, I’ll use myself as an example. I’m dyslexic. I can’t spell. I wrote a dissertation and a book and I can’t spell worth beans. It’s really harsh for me. Reading can be difficult. And nobody knew I was dyslexic growing up because I had this fantastic vocabulary, because if I couldn’t spell a word, I’d come up with a synonym that I could spell or get close to right.

Patty

Writing my dissertation, I couldn’t spell it good enough for spellcheck to pick up on it and correct it. So I’d find a synonym and I’d put it in there. That’s a compensatory skill. I compensated for my struggle with my keen ability to adapt. For me, that was my type of compensation. And what happens, especially with gifted youths, intense individuals. Intense youth is they compensate and we go, what are you talking about? They don’t have a problem. They get all a’s, or, they did fine on this test. And inside they’re struggling, they’re self judging. It’s like you’re holding this brick, and this brick is only so heavy for a little while. And after you’ve been holding it for so long, it feels like your arm is going to fall off and you don’t even know why. Right? And so, yeah, we end up with really worn out kids and young adults who don’t know why they’re so worn out, because they’ve been compensating all this time and told they’re just fine. Or told, hey, if you’re so smart, why can’t you spell? I was called lazy so often. Right.

Imi

But it reminds me of autistic masking.

Patty

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s a lot of masking in with individual. If you’re just talking about intense individuals, if we’re showing up in a way that seems in too intense for the majority of the population. What’s the chance we’re going to mask that intensity? And with individuals who are, who have this trauma, let’s say they grew up holding their intensity was too much, too much, too much, and they got in trouble, or they experienced some really more intense trauma because of that too muchness. What happens is they end up blunting that intense.

Imi

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s what I personally been through and talked about. I think I wrote some articles about emotional numbness, which is a really painful condition to have. You know, someone used to be very passionate. They laughed deeply, they felt a lot of things, and suddenly it’s almost as though they’ve lost themselves. They couldn’t laugh anymore. They feel nothing about anything. They become, I don’t know, I call it losing a libido, to use a psychoanalytic language. Like, you actually might become asexual, but you also lose motivation and desire and assess for life, and then your wife starts complaining that you’re an unfeeling person, etc. Etcetera. And I always think not everyone, but for a lot of people, that is a result of the trauma of having been told that you were too much and not just having been told. I think when people were younger and gifted people, when they haven’t learned the emotional regulation skills, the intensity can be very painful.

Patty

Oh, yeah, yeah. Especially when there’s that mismatch. Now, if that intensity is just across the board celebrated, you know, and they’re cry, even if they’re crying uncontrollably, crying uncontrollably can feel painful. However, if we strip away all the judgment of that, we can work through it in this way that’s very natural. And so. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and not just being told, also just, you know, if a child gets neglected, even as they’re too intense and too much to deal with, that still codes in their brain.

Imi

It’s still a message. The message is still sent. It’s what’s not said, what needs to be there but isn’t.

Patty

Yep, you’ve got it. And then you end up, you know, I, we would, you know, go to a theme park or something. My kids would say, you know, my daughter would say, mom, are you excited? And I go, well, I’m. I’m really looking forward to it. She goes, oh, that’s right. You don’t do excitement. Right. It’s taken a lot of work for me to connect with excitement, with pointy emotions in my own life. Even so, I’m very familiar with this phenomenon myself, for sure. I didn’t think. I grew up not thinking. I got angry, like, oh, no, I don’t get angry. A better person if I didn’t. And I also knew I’d be more safe if I didn’t.

Imi

For me, I went through a period of numbness. Well, when I say period is years, but it was really painful. Like, I felt like I’ve lost myself. And it’s not something that you can use your will to say, oh, you know, be passionate again. Yeah. It just needs to wait for your system to heal and feel safe enough.

Patty

Yeah, yeah. And plug for EmDrhenous.

Imi

That.

Patty

That can really help with that process. Yeah. I was an EMDR client and. Yeah. And I have to be careful. I don’t have to be careful. My therapist was awful, and I’ve done so many, so much work with, with clients who have had awful experiences with therapists and then were processing therapy and therapy because unfortunately, they were harmed in some way during the therapeutic process. I had a horrible therapist, but the EMDR worked. So even though I let go of that therapeutic relationship, she was full fidelity EMDR. And the EMDR did wonders for my system. Wonders. Yeah. And then I became a EMDR. I was already a practitioner, and then I became an EMDR practitioner after that because I’m like, there is some amazing. We have access to an amazing tool that I need to know about.

Imi

So that really is wonderful. Yeah. I was trained in it, but I never really used it very much.

Patty

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Imi

Because I moved online quite soon after and becomes a bit difficult to do it online.

Patty

Oh, it can be wonderful online, but that can be a conversation for another.

Imi

Like tapping and things like that.

Patty

Maybe you know how you can screen share?

Imi

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patty

I pull up. I pull up an EMDR light.

Imi

Ah, interesting. Yeah, that’s something I can. Yeah.

Patty

I can share a link to an app with you outside of this. We’ll do that later.

Imi

Well, on this topic of healing, let’s talk about that. What else have you found to be helpful when it comes to healing?

Patty

Somatic work of any kind, I think is super important because trauma, for folks who are familiar with, like the body, keeps the score and such books, we know that trauma is often is coded in our minds and also in our bodies. So if you are yelled at when you’re younger for giggling too much and somebody raises a hand to you and you flinch and you tighten your shoulders every time somebody giggles, you may tighten your shoulders and not even realize it. And then this happened. When you were four and then you were five, and then you were six and you were tightening your shoulders, and then you became 16 and you were still tightening your shoulders when people giggle. And then you go, I don’t like to go to comedy clubs. I don’t like to be around people who are too joyful because it makes me feel uncomfortable. And you don’t even know why. And so you go to, you maybe do your own somatic or movement work, or you go into a therapist who does some sort of somatic work, which is worked into EMDR. Also, there’s like somatic experiencing and other modalities that really do that work.

Patty

And you start to go, you know, the therapist says, oh, you know, you seem really upset. Where do you feel that? Oh, I feel it in my shoulders. I feel it here. And they do the work to really explore that experience in your body. Now with EMDR, you may actually connect it to an experience that happened earlier. So you can reprocess that and release that experience. With somatic experience, it may look different. It may be just a releasing a current understanding of what’s there at the moment. You know, and I’m not in, to be clear, I’m not a somatic experiencing practitioner, which is an actual modality. So I may not, I may not be doing it justice. However, the point being, we do this bodywork. I mean, this is why, you know, some people may have the experience of going to massage and crying. You know, they get this body. It is very common. Yeah. And sometimes there’s this release that happens with certain types of massage where it’s like, you know, and I have these clients going, I don’t know why I cried, but I sobbed during my massage. Yeah. It’s because the body’s releasing something.

Patty

Yeah. So this matic movement, nature, anything that, that allows our brain to go to a different place and look at the world differently. If you’re so privileged that you’re able to travel, and if you’re not, and even if you are reading and exploring, exposing yourself to different stories, it allows us to open our minds to different possibilities. And that imaginational over excitability is so important because we can see different, and if we can see different, we can see healing.

Imi

Well, that’s beautifully said. See, I get nature, but so many gifts of people are hyperintellectual. Probably part of their compensation methods.

Patty

Sure. Or, I mean, I’ve met people who just are, they showed up on this earth as intellectual beings.

Imi

You know, what I meant is they often struggle to connect with their bodies?

Patty

Yes. Yeah, definitely. And there are some, you know, there’s some groupings of people who really don’t, like, connect. You know, there’s terms for it and stuff, you know, people who have Alexa, Somia and Alexis. I may be saying those wrongs, but there can be a disconnect and a struggle to connect with the body. And when we’re hyper intellectual, that can certainly be true. And if we have experienced, been held a lot in the body, it may be even increasingly so, because really doing that work or acknowledging it can be painful. So it’s easier to ignore. So there’s a lot of various reasons why we may ignore our bodies or not be connected to them. And that’s why movement, when I say movement, movement can be really important. Because even if we’re not hyper aware of what’s going on in our bodies, or maybe not much is going on there, movement can help release some of that. So even just taking a walk, dancing for some people, yoga, exercise of any sort, any sort of movement can be really important for, to help just keep really even keep processing, moving. Francine Shapiro, who did EMD, who developed EMDR, realized how it worked when she was on a walk one day.

Patty

And she was, she was, not only were her feet going back and forth, but her eyes were too. And she was realizing during that process how she was able to process through things more easily. So that movement is important. And to be clear, somebody’s not really great at connecting with their body. That doesn’t rule them out from healing. It doesn’t even rule them out from EMDR and other types of processing. Somatic experiencing might not be ideal for them, or it may be exactly what they need because they want to connect more with their bodies. That’s something you co create with your therapist, or you figure out through the reading that you do or the podcast you listen to.

Imi

Good to know if someone is not even sure if they can be considered gifted. I know we’re walking away a little bit from trauma and going back to some more basic tenants, but I am curious, how do you help people work out that difficult relationship with that word without? Because sometimes they just don’t find the right things for themselves when they’re still dancing around this whole identity struggle.

Patty

Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you asked that because honestly, the title, the word gifted is problematic in of itself because, you know, I think. I think someone in our group yesterday said gifted is what you are after Christmas. I mean, and gifted also gets, gets attached to a sense of elitism, right? Oh, better than more special, more capable, blah, blah, blah. And it’s definitely not better than every flavor of human on this earth exists for a reason. I strongly believe that. And gifted is one flavor of human. Calling it gifted almost imposes an elitism, though, for sure. So I even love looking at like, neurologically complex and intense really is more, more appropriate for me. And we’re kind of stuck with it. It helps us identify, you know, like peers. So, you know, we have a hard time throwing it away. However, as far as identifying, particularly with, well, no, let me back up to gifted kids. You know, we identify gifted kids in school largely when they perform well per our social standards of performance, right. So they take this test and they do well or they’re getting aids and it’s like, oh, man, we are missing a big chunks of folks.

Patty

Big chunk of folks, particularly minorities. Particularly. I have so many black and hispanic friends from my melting pot of a home in Alaska from when I was younger. And I’m like, wait a second, you know, me and my whiteness, my white, you know, my blindness, I’m like, wait a second, they didn’t assess you for the gifted program and these brilliantly intelligent individuals in my world go, oh, no, nobody even asked.

Imi

That is so sad. But it makes so much sense. It doesn’t surprise me.

Patty

Yeah. And so, so many people are left out of that process and it’s hard because, like, we do use like for say, the cogat or other, you know, assessments to find kids who are gifted and we need some way to try to figure it out. I would love more of a like, diagnostic checklist and it’s not a diagnosis, however, you, hopefully people know what I mean when I say a checklist of also traits because our IQ tests are also normed. Very white, very western. So we’re going to naturally miss people, non english speakers in the United States. We miss so many. So yeah, this assessment can happen in elementary school. And a lot of gifted adults say, oh yeah, I was assessed in elementary school. That’s when I was fine. Found I kind of forget it and a lot weren’t. And then what happens is that in adulthood, some people have children and go, oh my gosh, my kids, so unique and intense. And somebody told us that they’re gifted and I am seeing all the same qualities of myself. And so they’re identifying that they’re gifted. And sometimes we have peers who are identified as such and they go, oh, yeah, of course, so and so, of course you’re gifted.

Patty

And they go, what are you talking about? I couldn’t possibly be gifted. You know, that’s Einstein, right? And then, of course, with the stigma attached to it. Oh, I don’t want you to call me gifted. I don’t think I’m not full of myself. I don’t want that label placed on me, even. And so for me, self identification as gifted is plenty. And if other people are pointing you out as gifted, maybe take a look. We have folks in the bloomers group who came in and said, well, I don’t even know or think I am gifted. However, they found themselves in this group and they haven’t removed themselves from it. And if you’re not gifted and you’re in that group, you’re welcome. And you. You may be just bored or annoyed. It’s like, well, these aren’t my people. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. And at the same time, it’s like, oh, if you’re in there and you go, wow, I found these peers and they talk about things in a way I’m interested. You may want to look at it. And even if you don’t love the word, there’s people in that group that hate the word gifted.

Patty

I mean, and it’s bloomers, gifted and twice exceptional adults to e adults, which is giftedness and another neurodivergence or a different divergence from norm. To really simplify it, so many people in there don’t like the word and don’t use it and aren’t sure they should be identified that way. And at the same time, by looking at it, by reading intersection of intensity or reading blog posts about this, they go, oh, learning about Dabrowski, right. Oh, there’s this thing about me that is now all of a sudden explained and accepted. And so that work can be so powerful and helpful. So, label of gifted aside, if you can use it for the value of being able to know more about yourself and others, it can be so helpful.

Imi

Helpful. I hear you.

Patty

Can we?

Imi

I have the question. And then slip my mind.

Patty

I’m glad I’m not the only one that does that. I get really wrapped up into a topic, and then I’m like, oh, there’s a great thing to say, but I’m also really paying attention.

Imi

Exactly. And I was distracted from it.

Patty

Never mind.

Imi

Come back. Ah, I remember now. Family trauma. Do you think if the people are prone to particular types of family trauma or not?

Patty

That’s another yes. And I’ll pull back and start by saying relationship trauma. When you have intensity and there’s a mismatch between you as a person and your environment, you are prone to judgment. And families as a system can also be prone to judgment or found ways to adjust that weren’t healthy. And if you have a lot of intense people within a system who are maladjusted, for lack of better words or have had trouble adjusting to their environments, you end up with conflict within that system. So my initial answer is yes. I mean, there’s definitely the possibility of family struggle. Tricky family. Right. Family dysfunction.

Imi

Here’s too, if that’s the case.

Patty

Absolutely right. And now we’re looking at, this is where Bromfield Brenner’s ecological system comes in. Right. Because you now have maybe a mismatch within the smaller system and because of, because of, and in addition to that mismatch within that smaller system, you may struggle more with the larger system because really, it’s within family that we first learn to interact with other humans, and we take our knowledge of that system and apply it to other systems. And, man, that can make life really, really tricky. So, yeah, initially I would say yes. Now the research behind that is varied. Right. It’s really hard to pin down. Oh, yes. Gifted families are definitely more dysfunctional than regular families. Like, what’s a regular family? I mean, we could, we could also easily say that most families have an element of dysfunction there. So we’re also looking at intensity. If we have a relational difficulty within a family and that family has this intensity, well, then that difficulty may indeed be intense, too. Right. And there’s that intersection again. Hopefully that makes sense.

Imi

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So personally, what have you found in your clients to be the, I know you mentioned various, the most helpful healing tool?

Patty

Oh, well, I always integrate EMDR. However, with some clients, I do what’s called, like, full fidelity EMDR, where I absolutely follow the protocol set out by Francine Shapiro. And that’s through EMDRA. So. EMdr International association. Yes. And so it’s full fidelity training, a script even. And for some people, that’s so helpful. Now, for some of my other clients, integrating a full fidelity EMDR isn’t really the best thing for them. They need something different. And so I use an EMDR framework to really inform how I interact with them. However, the processing may be more verbal and less of the bilateral stimulation. However, you can see as they process, like the movement that’s happening with that. Ultimately, whatever modality is used or however therapy is co created with that client, I have to say co created because, and really any good therapy practice should be co creation. Co creation between client and practitioner. However, it’s so important to lean into that with. I hate seeing with gifted individuals and intense individuals. It’s true. And gosh dang it, that’s best practice across the board. So I’m really big on that. However. Yeah. Acknowledging the personal experience and expertise of your client, no matter what you do, I will never be more expert of you than you are.

Patty

And really humbly acknowledging that and offering things as experiments or suggestions. Oh, well, so are you saying that x, y, z, my client may go, yeah, exactly that I feel so seen. Or my client may say, oh, no, no, no, it’s not that at all. And I offer them an opportunity to correct me and expand on that. And that way there’s this relationship where if I step in some mud and cause harm in my own life, if I say something that’s hurtful for them accidentally because I’m human, they feel like they can come back to me and said, hey, that hurt.

Imi

And then we.

Patty

Absolutely have the power and the safety right to do that. And then we engage in this immediate repair. Right. That is a microcosm within this relationship of, hey, you can do this in your world. Seek safety, seek compassion, seek curiosity, and then allow for that and make sure you’re able to get that. And if it’s not a safe, compassionate, curious relationship, maybe it’s not a relationship you want, but we co create that in therapy. So whatever modality is used that’s so important to stay at the core.

Imi

Yes, I remember John Fredrickson has a book called Creating Safety. I think the title is just wonderful.

Patty

Perfect. I may not be familiar with that book, and now I’m going to have.

Imi

To read it because that’s quite specific about fragile clients. But I just think it’s a lovely title.

Patty

Yeah, obviously. I agree.

Imi

Obviously.

Patty

Yeah. And we do that in bloomers, and I do that in the book. I really talk to the reader in this book about, hey, we’re talking about trauma. Check in with your nervous system. And I have a check in at the end of each chapter also to say, hey, how are you feeling? How are you doing? Let’s look at this, this and this in relation to this past chapter’s topic. And, you know, giving people permission to rest, to sit with information, to take a break if they need to, all that stuff is super important. So co creation, obviously, and safety is obviously so important to me.

Imi

Well, I think we’re coming towards the end of the session. Great. Thank you so much for your time today. Yes.

Patty

Yeah, I really appreciate it.

Imi

This is who should get your book. And who should get in touch with you?

Patty

Everybody.

Imi

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Who specifically would benefits more from your, do you think?

Patty

Anybody who feels marginalized in particular intense individuals who feel marginalized in their world. People who are gifted or gifted adjacent. I had somebody.

Imi

I know that word, gifts adjacent.

Patty

Yeah. Well, we may not feel like we’re gifted ourselves and yet we want to read this book because someone in our life we feel is gifted or we want to pass it off to someone. And what I’ve seen is people, they’re like, oh, I want to read about this other person. The simple fact that they have interest there may be mean. It’s about them also. Meaning the person who’s reading because of another person, maybe the person who needs to read it anyways. That’s confusing. So, yeah, gifted and gifted individuals. Gifted and gifted adjacent individuals. Those who feel like they are intense individuals. Sometimes we say highly sensitive people, you know, HSP’s, anybody who works with gifted practitioners, therapists, teachers, parents. I mean, I really tried to keep the book broad enough that you can wear different hats as you read it, even if you have a lot of different roles in your life. So there is a broad enough application. Those with even just complex stress disorder. Complex post cPTSD, complex post traumatic stress disorder. Good golly, we’ll get something out of this. So, and I’m. I don’t mean to oversell. Right? I just. I try.

Imi

You should sell. You should let the world know about it. There’s no oversell.

Patty

My, my aim was to make it accessible and applicable to so many different people because often we put giftedness in this box of, oh, only you get to have this. Only you get access to this because you’re super special and elite. And that’s not necessarily the case. This has a more broad application. So I would encourage people, if it even looks interesting, grab it. If it doesn’t land with you, it may land with somebody else in your life you can pass it off to. Or if nothing else, if you think somebody would find it interesting, tell them about it. Because I really do feel very positive about this book and the way it can reach people and help them feel seen in a world where they maybe haven’t. So, yeah, it must be such a.

Imi

Good feeling where you have created something and you have so much faith in it that you feel you can really stand behind it. And I can really see it in you when you talk about your work like you genuinely believe in it. It’s wonderful to have that. Very happy for you.

Patty

Well, yeah, and I love. I love to touch base with people about it if they want to. I do speaking engagements and stuff like that. I also just, you know, if somebody wants to take the chance of shooting me an email to, you know, share something about the book or ask questions about it, you know, obviously, if that. If this. This offer becomes too intense, it’ll take a while to get back to people. Intense in that, like, lots of information starts coming in. However. Yeah, accessibility is super important to me, so they can look for me on bloomers, gifted and tui adults. I’m active. I’m an admin.

Imi

I kept mentioning bloomers, but I don’t think everyone know what it is.

Patty

Yeah, sorry about that. Bloomers, gifted and Tui Adults is a Facebook group, so if you’re on Facebook, you can look for that group. If you’re gifted, curious even, you can go on there and kind of explore the group to find, you know, if this is a nice place that meets. That meets a need for you, and it may not meet the need for every gifted or twice exceptional person, it has a certain flavor like any other group. Right. However, you can find me on there, you can ask questions about giftedness, trauma, the book even on there, and a lot of people will chime in. You know, it’s very community. Also, though, on Brightinsight support, there’s a contact page. There’s information about me on there. There’s information about the organization which really seeks to really, I guess, just offer scaffolding and resource share and act as this network of support for the community, gifted, neurodivergent, and otherwise marginalized populations. And on that contact page, if you send a message, it actually goes to the bright insight email, which I monitor. So it ultimately comes to me so people can find me there. There’s a blog on that site that has a lot of other information about giftedness, trauma and other topics.

Patty

So, yeah, I try to be accessible. I have so many hours in the day. Oh, and if anybody ever sends me a message and I don’t get back to you within 48 hours, I somehow messed up and answered you in my brain or forgot to put send because I’m also extremely human and fallible. So please follow up. If you send something and I don’t get back to you, I intend to.

Imi

Medication?

Patty

Yeah. Yeah. I’m saying it out there. Like, if I don’t reply, send it again or send a reminder, I am human. I need all the help I can get.

Imi

I think it’s incredibly generous that you would offer that, but thank you so much.

Patty

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it’s what we do.

Imi

Yeah. I hope we can stay in touch and touch base again, please.

Patty

Yeah. This is wonderful. I feel some.

Imi

Is your next project. Are you still on this?

Patty

Well, this will always be. My next book is.

Imi

Oh, you already have the next book. Awesome.

Patty

Oh, yeah. The next several are already set up. I’m actually gonna be putting out a book of poetry and reflections. That one I’ll probably.

Imi

Oh, that would be so lovely.

Patty

Thank you. Yeah. And that one will happen in between other projects. The next book that will be through a publisher is identity development theory, which is the theory I was talking about earlier that I developed through my research. And so that one has had a pretty profound impact on folks. So going to be writing a book about that, and after that’s going to be one called the traumatized parenthood.

Imi

Oh, that sounds really relevant and important and not talked about enough.

Patty

Yeah. Yeah. It’s. That one’s a passion for me because I work with so many people with trauma who are also parents, and it kind of sounds like, oh, the traumatized parents. You’ve been traumatized by your parenting, and that can happen, and that will be looked at. However, it’s. I have so many clients that go into the parenting process with their own trauma, and they feel an immense amount of guilt that they didn’t realize it was there until they started parenting or they parented and didn’t heal it all the way and they thought they had. There’s all this guilt attached to that. And, yeah, we want to heal so we can show up for the people in our lives in the most beautiful way possible. And, you know, I want to. I want to pull back the stigma and the stealth self stigma from that, because that can be a really hard thing to work through as a parent, so.

Imi

Well, then, congrats. Look forward to it. This is not your first book, is it?

Patty

It is my first book.

Imi

And you ready? The next one lined up.

Patty

Good.

Imi

I love the confidence. Yeah.

Patty

Yeah. Sometimes things sit in my soul long enough that they just spew out of. Yeah.

Imi

It’s time, maybe.

Patty

Yeah.

Imi

Thank you so, so, so much for your time today. Stay in touch, and I’m sure we will touch base again.

Patty

Oh, I hope so. Yeah, absolutely. I do feel kindredness with you. Yeah. A lovely human you are.

Imi

Thank you. Let me cry. All right, well, take good care of yourself, and we’ll get in touch when we do.

Patty

Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much.

Imi

Have a good day.

Patty

You too.

Imi

Take care.

Patty

Bye.