Healing Gifted Trauma: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes
This will probably surprise you because it’s something that goes on behind the scenes but I often really struggle with writing.
The reason I write is not because it comes easy but because it challenges me to grow and the process of writing helps me better understand my own mind and integrate and share things I am learning about. Several weeks ago my writing process caused quite a “parts storm” and I used the experience to do some deeper exploration and healing. The experience feels worth sharing with you…a sentiment that is actually a direct result of having unburdened a young part (keep reading to see what I mean).
I’ll start with an overview of what can happen when I try to translate my thoughts into a coherent piece of writing.
When I find a topic of interest I immerse myself in it, reading books, articles, listening to podcasts and generally consuming a lot of information in a relatively short period of time. Eventually I reach a point where I have synthesized enough of the information and have some original thoughts I want to write about and share. So I open my laptop to begin to write and that’s when it gets messy. I realize that what I want to communicate cannot be easily translated into words. While I love words I happen to be more of a visual thinker. I process information and learn better with images, symbols, diagrams. (This is probably why I became an art therapist first and why I love exploring dreams!)
My fingers try to type words while my mind goes into a brainstorm of thought forms that branch out from one another in various directions. All together these thoughts and images form a larger mind matrix that is beautifully complex and multi-textured but sadly cannot be translated linearly without losing some of its integrity. In order to communicate my mind matrix into words that follow a straightforward path, and make sense to people who are not me, I have to do a lot of thought pruning and translating, which can feel excruciating and overwhelming to some of my parts.
I have some parts that resist pruning because they love complexity and don’t want to have to simplify things. These parts have to do with giftedness and are just the way my brain is. I have other parts that don’t like pruning because they are terrified that if I don’t include ALL the points of view or ALL the branches of thought that people will poke holes in what I’ve said and tell me I am wrong and bad and then I will be cancelled. And then, the worst part is that I will feel SHAME. These parts have to do with gifted trauma—something I wasn’t born with but acquired.
In the context of neurodiversity-affirming therapy or coaching, it’s important to be able to tease apart what is neural hardwiring and what is a trauma-based, conditioned response.
Why? Because trying to change something that is inherent to who someone is (mistaking a feature for a bug) is both futile and harmful/retraumatizing. And conversely, assuming that a struggle can’t be mitigated, that nothing can be done because this is “just the way I am,” results in a missed opportunity for healing and trauma resolution and perpetuates unnecessary suffering.
This is what I attempted to do for myself. First I acknowledged my hardwiring—the aspects that are just part of how my brain experiences the world and processes information.
The following is true for many people with the gifted neurotype:
Seeing complex connections among different types of information and creating larger mental matrices of information.
Viewing issues from multiple perspectives and recognizing that no one perspective is the “right” one.
Relentlessly searching for truth, knowledge, and understanding while experiencing the paradoxical truth that “the more I know the more I know I don’t know.”
Consuming vast amounts of information and engaging in sustained intellectual effort (sometimes to the extent that basic needs for sleep, food, water, and physical movement are neglected).
Easily grasping complex, abstract ideas but also struggling to understand simple ideas because they seem too simple and therefore assuming that they are more complex than they are. In other words, making the complex simple and the simple complex.
Having extremely high self-expectations that are self-imposed and not tied to external expectations.
Being able to envision (and feel, smell, taste, hear) the ideal (e.g. ideal creation, ideal self, ideal world, etc.) and being painfully aware of the gap between how things are currently and how much better they could be.
Once I separated out the gifted traits from the gifted trauma I could recognize the burdens of emotion and belief that my parts had acquired that made my writing process more complicated and distressing than it needed to be.
I listened inside and identified the following fears and beliefs:
If I don’t include ALL the information or address ALL the angles of the topic people will poke holes in what I say and tell me I am wrong and bad.
I have to “get it right” and be perfect in order to be acceptable to others.
If I write in a way that reveals the complexity of my thoughts that people will judge me as “weird” or “too much” and I will be rejected and alone.
My thoughts aren’t interesting or valuable enough to be expressed.
Gifted trauma is the result of painful life experiences that are directly related to inherent traits of giftedness. When we get the message as children that our intense curiosity, complexity and intensity is wrong, bad, unacceptable, or unloveable we feel shame. When our giftedness is either ignored/denied or excessively praised and over-valued we feel unseen in our wholeness. We learn early on which parts of ourselves are valued by others and which parts are best kept hidden. We learn to mask. The shame we carry leads to patterns of thought and behavior intended to protect us from experiencing further pain (e.g. “If I never express my authentic self I can’t be rejected,” or “If I do it perfectly I won’t be criticized.”)
This is the conversation I was able to have with my part:
Part: We have to include everything we know about this topic!
Self: I’m curious why you feel this way. Tell me more.
Part: If we miss something it will feel incomplete. There will be holes.
Self: It’s true that we may miss something because we can’t possibly know everything there is to know about something. No one can. What are you afraid will happen if we miss something?
Part: Someone else will point out something we missed or express a perspective we hadn’t considered and it will mean that we are wrong and stupid.
Self: And if that happens, what would be the worst part about it?
Part: We would feel shame.
Self: If I could help the part that carries the shame and beliefs about being wrong and stupid not have to feel that way anymore would you be interested in that?
Part: Yes.
Self: Great, can you take me to that part?
I am taken to a memory from when I was about 4 or 5:
My older sister has a friend over and while my sister isn’t including me in their play she isn’t actively excluding me either. I look up to my sister and desperately want to be included and valued by her and her friend. In an attempt to impress them and show them how grown-up and smart I am, I declare that I know how to spell the word “school.” I had seen it written on my Playskool toys and feel 100% confident. When my sister asks me how I think it’s spelled I proudly said, “S-K-O-O-L.” Immediately my sister starts laughing at me and telling me how wrong and stupid I am. I am devastated. I want to curl up and die.
I witness my little part in this scene with compassion and love and validate her feelings. I tell her I can see how painful that experience was and what a smart little kid she was! I tell her that it wasn’t her fault that the Playskool brand chose to spell “school” wrong. I ask her if she feels like I really get how bad it felt or if there is more she needs me to understand. She explains how it was especially painful to be wrong because she had felt so confident and she learned from that experience that it is dangerous to be confident, that it is best to always doubt yourself because then it won’t hurt so bad when you are wrong. I tell her that makes a lot of sense. I help her securely attach to me as a safe loving adult who can take care of her now and I invite her to leave the scene from the past and be with me in the present. I tell her she never has to be alone with her big feelings, that she can always come to me. I invite her to release the burdens she has been carrying—the shame and the belief that self-confidence is dangerous—and to bring in any new qualities or beliefs that she would like moving forward. She chooses to fill up with a feeling of confidence that what she knows is worth sharing with others and a belief that it’s okay to make mistakes because that’s how we learn and that if she gets something wrong it doesn’t mean that she is wrong.
The effects of this inner work weren’t immediate but over the next few weeks, as I continued to check in with this little part and love on her, I started to feel less fear and anxiety about writing and more confidence that my perspective has value and is worth sharing. I started to feel more at peace around the fact that anything I share with the world will be incomplete and imperfect because I am in an ongoing state of evolution and involution. Writing still feels challenging and putting my thoughts out there for there for the world to see still feels vulnerable but it doesn’t feel scary in the way it did before.
I am aware that I have made doing your own parts work look easy and straightforward. In reality, unless you have a lot of experience doing this work, it can be really hard to recognize parts, help them unblend, and unburden them on your own. If you are curious to learn more about IFS and get to know your own system better using art and written dialogue (like the one above) I recommend checking out my free Art of Parts workbook . The book “No Bad Parts” by Richard Schwartz is also a good place to start. If you are curious about 1:1 IFS coaching and how I can support you in doing your own deeper parts work and healing you can learn more about that here.
Additional resources:
“The Crucible of Words: Writing Toward Inner Authority” by Chris Wells (a profoundly gifted Dąbrowskian scholar) is a beautiful piece about writing as a transformative process.
“High, Exceptional & Profound Giftedness” by InterGifted founder Jennifer Harvey Sallin, is an informative article that does a great job of describing the challenge many gifted people face of communicating their inner matrix.
