Giftedness and Magical Thinking: How Magical Is It?
How many of us gifted pattern-finders and meaning-makers have been accused of magical thinking or something similar such as apophenia?
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Helping exceptional individuals reach their goals
Welcome to Bright Insight Support Network!
We take a whole-person approach to giftedness, twice-exceptionality and community-building as we educate about, advocate for, and support neurodivergent individuals.
As a grassroots organization, Bright Insight Support Network nurtures a network of individuals, communities, and resources to collectively support exceptional individuals in all environments.
Find Dr. Patty's Book
Intersection of Intensity:
Exploring Giftedness and Trauma
Order through your local, community book shops, on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Gifted UNLIMITED, Adlibris, or bruna, or at most other places books are sold, internationally!
Services
Therapeutic Coaching
One-on-one, relational coaching for twice-exceptional, gifted, and neurodivergent adults, children, and families.
All therapeutic coaching is neurodiversity-affirmative, supportive of marginalized populations, and offered by Bright Insight-vetted coaches and trained psychotherapists.
Virtual Groups
Join a virtual multi-week meetup for exceptional adults. Contact us to join the waiting list for the next groups.
Groups are geared towards psychoeducation, lived experience, mental health, philosophy, dialectic skills training, mindfulness, identity development, an introduction to giftedness, and more!
Bright Insight Table Talks
BITTs are monthly, virtual meetings that explore topics impacting gifted, ND, and 2e persons.
BITT schedules and links are posted on our Events page and on the Bright Insight Support Network Facebook page.
TESTIMONIAL
“...I have participated in the free-form “Bright Insight Table Talk” and more organized “Trauma and Giftedness” seminar groups that [Patty] has coordinated through Zoom. Patty is able to gently direct the discussion, if necessary, yet she excels in manifesting an extraordinary openness to contributions by members, allowing them to integrate themselves, their ideas into new insights...”
-Reuven Kotleras, Long-Time Participant
What Is Giftedness?
Though gifted and giftedness are commonly used terms in education, how it's defined and the characteristics of giftedness can vary depending on the setting.
The Columbus Group (1991) definition is a standard most educators and mental health professionals use to describe giftedness is: "asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally."
Dr. Patty currently defines gifted persons as complex, neurodivergent beings with a distinctly above-average ability and compulsion to develop new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. Expeditious learning can be attributed to a tendency toward processes of rapid pattern-finding and meaning-making where new (and interesting to them) material is retained after one to two repetitions of exposure. This pattern-finding and meaning-making also lends to the depth and complexity noticed in gifted persons. Along with a rapid ability and drive to learn, and in relation to depth and complexity, it is also noted that gifted persons can experience the world with great intensity or the blunting of intensity in sensual, psychomotor, imaginational, intellectual, and/or emotional domains, and develop in a way that seems initially asynchronous.
To be considered gifted, individuals are often identified as gifted in grade school, by a psychologist, and/or by a gifted peer group. They could also have an IQ over 130 (this number varies depending on IQ test and measures) or be members of groups for gifted individuals such as Mensa, InterGifted, The Puttyverse, or otherwise.
Many adults do not identify their own giftedness until they have gifted children of their own or gifted peers in adulthood (Kuipers, 2007; Milic & Simeunovic, 2020). Seeing themselves through their later identified children or peers is common and considered reliable in relation to earlier identification efforts (Kuipers, 2007; Milic & Simeunovic, 2020). Self-identification is also considered appropriate when evidenced in some appropriate or anecdotal manner.
RECENT ARTICLES
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