Do you fit in? Alone or in clumps it looks like it from here

How much do you need?

Read on . . .

Take a seat in the sky and look down at people on the move. See how they respond when they get physically closer to each other. In Japan they’ll touch. In Texas they’ll stand a foot apart

Yet these are minor differences. The basic process of flowing around each other and occasionally clumping into groups seems to be a mutually understood way that humans transport themselves.

From up here in the sky, in other words, all of humanity appears much the same.

Suspect the visual

For most of us, seeing is believing.

Seeing doesn't always make it clear what you should be believing.

This means that because we all look much the same we can easily fall into a dangerously false assumption: that we actually are all the same.

Even though we’re obviously not all alike, the ‘uniform’ myth can appear to have some validity.

After all, vast industries are founded on it.

Pharmaceutical companies, aeroplane manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, defense contractors all build their offerings around a ‘standard’ human being.

Services such as banking, law, and psychology all structure themselves round the assumption that we want the same things: money, justice, understanding.

Yet we aren’t the same and we don’t want the same things.

Commercial gain, individual loss

These broad brush commercial and political approaches to assessing the human being work within limited objectives.

Seeing humanity as a money tree makes it hard to have a meaningful conversation.

The organizations concerned are not seeking truth but sales.

They are essentially systems for converting the energy of individual need into a more flexible energy: money. They know they can appeal to a big enough chunk of the population to grow year by year. That is the limit of their interest in the human animal.

You and I might see the great mass of population the same way. People with visions of huge consumer empires, such as Rupert Murdoch and Sam Walton, must do.

But seeing ‘us’ this way isn’t going to help you meet the perfect partner and fall in love. Or even help you get to know yourself better.

So take a closer look

Sometimes a man in a red dress is not a soldier.

Generalizing won’t offer guidance in selecting a sports team or even a specific lawyer for a specific task.

Clearly, some human activities cannot be conducted on a global scale.

In close-up, our superficial differences of height, clothing choices, and speed of movement become more significant. The dress on that woman is sending a signal. And (to avoid further accusations of sexism) so does the one on that man.

At a more intimate level, we see a human and its appurtenances. We make a judgement based on past experience. We think we have a workable idea of who s/he is.

And we’re usually wrong.

Who do you think you are?

If the visual/behavioral view of humans was comprehensive it would be easy for the world population to divide itself up into happy like-minded enclaves.

All the men in red dresses would line up here. All the women in black trousers line up over there.

Then subdivide: all the men in red dresses who are soldiers form a group here. Of these, all who abstain from alcohol can group there. Those who don’t smoke either, go there.

Play this game of group-by-category to its conclusion and you end up with one person in each group – and the world goes back to looking a lot like it does today.

What’s this got to do with being gifted?

Gifted individuals have a hard time, as they put it, fitting in.

What's weird about a soldier in a red dress? Meet Corporal Hodge.

Well, trust me, so does a teetotal male soldier in a red dress.

Yet when you see him in his uniform marching along with thousand of other soldiers you’d never know it.

And perhaps when he’s in marching mode he feels as if he’s fitting in just fine.

I think therein lies the lesson for us gifted folk.

The person is not the picture

The point is that the soldier is not a man in a red dress or a man in a uniform. He isn’t anything you can see to judge at all. Not even in his material expression.

He’s just like you and me: a notional space.

As we saw at the start, we each occupy a space. However, this is not just the volume of our body and the air/energy buffer around it. We are more than 8 cubic feet of flesh and bone.

Ours is a notional space that includes ourselves and our perception of our position in the world.

We could call it a sphere of interests.

It is likely to be greater than our sphere of influence.

I think it’s most useful to see it as our sphere of potential. This is where we ‘see’ ourselves operating.

I also believe that if it’s in your sphere, you can do it.

Volume of a space

If this is your natural space, how will you ever squeeze it into a suburban living room?

The volume of this space is directly related to giftedness. It is not measurable by ruler or calibrated beaker.

Instead, it is measurable by topic, or awareness, or understanding.

Go to a party. Listen to the conversations. Strip out any that are specialized because of work relatedness.

Your gifted friend is not the one discussing the quality of the peanuts in the bowl – unless it’s to link them to the spread of aflatoxins in the general population and some garden birds.

The general talk swings from the weather to the need to bring back capital punishment for children under ten.

Meanwhile, the gifted group is having fun exploring the likelihood that blocktime might offer the first credible basis for a scientific proof of astrological predictions.

Or enjoying the way a curtain’s shadow creates a profound feeling of warmth and suggestibility within them.

Unfortunately these things are discussed only within your space because you’re the only gifted person there.

So you’re bored out of your mind – which you’re filling with alcohol or cheese and crackers in a desperate attempt to achieve equanimity within and affinity without.

You’ve resigned yourself to another evening of failure to make contact; more self-condemnation for being inadequate with small talk; more self-hatred for being an alien etc etc.

Why can’t you be like everybody else?

"What on earth did I come for? I knew it would feel like a punishment."

“I’m a bit of a geek,”; “I’m such a nerd,”; “I’m something of an oddball.” and, most of all: “I’ve never really seemed to fit in.”

These are statements I hear all the time. Sadly, they often come in the form of self-condemnation, as if difference were a crime or at least a major societal defect.

In fairness, these words are not often said with conviction. You can tell there’s doubt behind the words, as if the speaker’s really saying: “I don’t actually think I’m a geek but I must be because I don’t know how else to explain how I feel.”

Over-sized sphere of potential

The truth is, of course, that you really don’t fit in.

If you could see the size and shape of your notional space you’d see it filled the room. So either there’s only room for yours or no room for yours.

And your space is you.

So there might as well be a sign saying: “Please leave yourself at the door.”

Having met that request by numbing yourself one way or another, you’re left bereft of anything to say. So your healthy pursuit of social interaction peters out once again.

And you go home kicking yourself for your awkwardness.

What’s to be done?

Our cross-dressing soldier might be able to help.

Can you spot the soldier in the red dress?

His ability to ‘fit in’ with the troops offers a guide to enjoying social interaction without having to poison yourself with ‘comforting’ substances or just sitting abjectly in the corner.

Before heading anywhere social:

• Start by calling up that wonderful resource: your giftedness;
• Envision yourself, not as free to roam the full extent of your space but as a soldier, temporarily subject to external and limiting regulation;
• Think about where you’re going, its nature, its awareness level;
• Ask what you want from it (this deserves a book in itself but if you have a clear idea where you’re headed you won’t expect too much) ;
• Strategize and stay focused on your goal.

In other words, instead of trying to fit the whole of your space into a room too small for it, select a subset of space relevant to your environment and use it to its full.

"I've always been fascinated with human sensitivity. Can you feel this?"

Or you might conduct a survey in such a way that your respondents are unaware of your intent but flattered by your attention.

Basically, it’s all about lowering your expectations. You are rare, so the chances of finding a soulmate are few. However, if you simply want to feel like an acceptable part of the human race, you can bring that about.

How to mess up

As in all things, it’s wise to take care.

When I set out to a gathering with the intention of feeling popular, or being loved or important, I almost invariably screw up.

"Let me delight you with my new invention! . . . Please!!"

As I head home afterwards I kick myself for being such a conversation hog, for being so insensitive, for forgetting my own instructions to myself.

It usually happens when I’m most anxious about the gathering in question.

However, when I go with the intention of making others feel good about themselves it’s a different story. I enjoy seeing them relaxing into a warm sense of their own lovability.

I may even have the fun of having them flirt with me.

And I go home – often quite early – with a warm feeling derived from the pleasure I’ve absorbed from others’ enjoyment of my words.

Job done. Reward received.

In conclusion

Know your space. Know the volume of potential you occupy in the world.

Then operate from a subset of that space depending on your immediate social environment. Make your choice of subset conscious, or you will feel distressed.

"When it comes to long-term relationships I insist on finding an exact match for all my space."

It will probably be hard to find a like-sphered partner but it is essential – in love or in work – for ongoing happiness and growth.

And if you ever find yourself in a room – or even a virtual ‘space’ – with a gifted equal you will discover that rooms have no walls and that the virtual can be real.

Go seek!

The parable of the sower has particular relevance for gifted adults because it highlights the vital – as in genuinely life-maintaining – importance of our environment.

"Then you ask why I don't live here? Honey, how come you don't move?" Bob Dylan "On the road again"

Gifted individuals have a great capacity for the state of what I call “easy survival” but we can find it very hard to thrive in a way that gives us a complete sense of fulfillment.

We typically blame ourselves for this. However, it is not necessarily due to our shortcomings as humans but may simply arise from the lack of resources around us.

Here’s the parable, via Wikipedia:

“Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some a hundred.

And he said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Isn’t that beautiful? “And some fell upon good ground, and did yield fruit . . . ”

Yielding your own precious fruit

Compared to us, a seed is a relatively simple life form. It may have a spirit but its resources for life fulfillment are basically limited by the skill of the sower.

Anatomy is destiny

We, however, are a different kettle of fish. We have all kinds of resources so that even if our sowers were less than mediocre, we have some capacity for improving the soil we landed on and also for moving to “good ground”.

This capacity is not absolute. We are constrained by the facts of our birth – Freud’s declaration that “Anatomy is destiny” is a valid rule of thumb – and determining what constitutes “good ground” is a massive challenge in itself.

Three-in-one

The challenge of finding the right environment is hugely complicated by our existence as biopsychospiritual entities. It means that a diet of phosphates, sun and water are hopelessly inadequate to our needs. To thrive, we must have access to at least three categories of ‘nutrient’ within our surroundings: physical, intellectual and emotional sustenance.

We could add a spiritual dimension to that. However, it seems to me that our connection to the universe is with us wherever we go so it’s not significant for this discussion of a more material ‘ground’.

In addition to needing three categories of nutrient we also, compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, place massive demands on our nutritional resources.

Again, the more gifted we are, the more demand we place on the available nutrients. Just as gifted athletes require more than average food, training facilities, time and sponsorship to thrive, so those gifted in other ways make their own special demands on their surroundings.

Virtually there

A worldwide web of enrichment or deception?

A major question lies open for me, having to do with the Internet and access to the world wide web. It can make an otherwise empty life seem tolerable and offers many rewarding paths lined with the kinds of ‘berries’ that gifted adults seek and feed off on their explorations.

I am concerned, though, that it may be a chimera: that its branches may hold false fruit in that they pacify our immediate restlessness without our being forced into action. It’s another variation on the old ‘golden handcuffs’ syndrome of working for a company whose reward system is just enough to keep you from leaving to discover something better.

Feed on . . .

I shall be taking a closer look at different aspects of gifted nutrition in future posts. I hope this one may have started you thinking and would love to hear your own ideas about what nourishes you and what looks good but ultimately tastes of cardboard.

Referring to the parable, who or what are your “fowls of the air”, your stony ground, your thorns or your good ground . . . ? Let us know.

Until I say the wrong thing. Then the door to his empathy slams shut, his wisdom is replaced by harsh judgment and I’m somehow left feeling as though I’d been cynically tricking him into thinking I liked him.

Such occurrences are not unusual in the world of the gifted. Often our societal presentation seems like a very thin veneer, just waiting for some circumstance to crack it and expose the defensive vehemence within.

Seventy going on seven

Seven and seventeen - but which one's which?

In many individuals, the contrast between the ‘old soul’ wisdom and the near-infantile wounded beast is often so great that – in therapeutic circles at least – it gives rise to all sorts of pathologizing. “He’s borderline” is a common cry; or: “Ambivalent attachment disorder” or some other interpretation.

In society at large, there’s a different form of judgment: “S/he’s old enough to know better!”

Truly, this is the “Seventy going on Seven.” syndrome: the daily occurrence of ‘ordinary aberrational behavior’. It won’t get you hospitalized or locked up, but it might leave your friends and colleagues a bit more wary of you than they were before.

Of course, it’s always more pleasant to find this behavior in others because that means we don’t have to look for it in ourselves. But it’s almost certainly there.

It’s not just ‘them’

That’s because psychological maturity does not follow the easy metrics of physiological and intellectual development. There are no psycho-birthdays at which you’re guaranteed to be emotionally a year older. There are no psycho-academic exams whose results will prove your growing mastery of interpersonal relations, say, or grief management.

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It's not fair! I'm only two!

However, a form of development does take place which I shall call emotional/behavioral (E/B) development.

E/B development has been studied under many different labels: moral development, ego development, personality development and emotional intelligence just to name a few. The work of those researching it makes one thing very clear: our E/B development is erratic and inconsistent.

Every researcher has come up with a developmental model consisting of a number of stages. And they all agree on these two facts:

• We don’t develop chronologically step by step; and
• Our development is not made manifest uniformly across all situations.

In other words, our E/B age – and thus the basis for our response to any situation – is dictated by the context in which the situation arises.

So, if I’m asked my opinion over a beer in the pub, I’ll sit back, relax, and give it to you from the peak of my E/B understanding. If I’m asked for the same opinion in an exam room with a limited time to respond and my life’s career hanging on the answer, I’ll regress to an earlier level of E/B development and try to give ‘them’ the answer they want me to.

This highlights a natural law of great significance: Under stress we regress.

Under stress we regress

How far do we regress? It depends on the stress level, but we can return to the earliest stage of development.

We can and do revert to complete infancy. Sobbing while in the foetal position is not uncommon even among adults so apparently ‘together’ that their judgments are revered by the public at large.

Ambiguous message: Regressive? Aggressive? or just Expensive?

Some forms of regression are less obvious. These include reaching for the booze, the cigarettes or other drugs, or heading for the stores. Those must-have shoes at that darling boutique are just another indication that something’s wrong.

Unless, of course, your livelihood depends on them.

What to do?

Like most things, it’s easier to see regression occurring in others than it is in oneself. So start there. When the person you’re talking to becomes fiery or adopts an inappropriately childish tone, don’t just react negatively. Recognize that they’re under stress and ask yourself (and perhaps them) what that stress might be.

Remember that there is no correlation between physical and emotional maturity, nor between intellectual and emotional maturity. Also, that the person who is wise in one environment may be a scared child in another. Not because of some defect but because that’s the way nature made us.

Finally, our tendency to regress is eased by consistent attention to self-examination. Not by harsh self-condemnation but by open-minded curiosity. The question: “I wonder what made me respond like that?” is a growth-step; while: “What the devil did I do that for?” will keep you firmly in whatever stage you’re currently held.