What Our Members Say

I’m so proud of this community I’ve formed. It is full of kind, caring, passionate, unique and fascinating people from all over the world. There is never a lack of inspiration, support, and creativity in this group. I had never been interested in belonging to groups before I formed InterGifted. Now even I love to check Facebook and participate in discussions – something I thought I’d never do! It’s because of the quality of the members and the depth of their minds and hearts. No less important is that InterGifted’s community for me has been a portal to deeply meaningful friendships and collaborations, something I too thought might have not been meant for me.

Over the last 2 years, I have been researching the giftedness literature and contacting gifted experts trying to make sense of what is going on and how we can best support our son. During all this research, I had an a-ha moment and thought, ‘Wait a second, I think I might be gifted, too. This sounds a lot like me’. It all explained so much…and then I discovered InterGifted … and Jennifer Harvey Sallin … and all of you. It feels like discovering a long, lost family you didn’t know you had. People who nod when you explain things rather than look at you like you have 2 heads. People who have been there, done that. People who cheer you on and support you, rather than shake their heads, thinking, ‘Yeah, okay…you think you’re special. Right.’ All that to say, I am so grateful for this community and to be here learning from all of you. I hope that I can offer support and encouragement in return, as well.

This group has changed my life!

Words cannot say how InterGifted has changed my life! Since discovering my giftedness six months ago, Jen and InterGifted have helped me to understand what’s been going on in my mind all these years. I finally feel a surge of hope when I think about my uniqueness, as opposed to the sadness and loneliness that it used to trigger in me. Interacting with the peer community here and receiving coaching has helped me to translate what is true about me into what is beautiful about me. Instead of spending the second half of my life feeling as lost as I have for the first half, I now see who I am and who I want to become, and for the first time, I have begun to enjoy the journey.

Thank you for starting the entire IG group. After reading members’ stories and comments, I’m feeling more hopeful and validated than I have in years, literally!

I come to IG’s peer group for recharging, insight, connection and inspiration. The sense of community is unlike any other…it feels like home. I particularly love the outpouring of genuine love and heartfelt, non-judgmental support and understanding extended to all who are struggling with some of the many difficult challenges associated with giftedness.

Thank you for creating and maintaining Intergifted. The ideas I’ve found here are of great help as I bumble my way toward better understanding of the issues – and of myself.

Intergifted is one of the best things that ever happened to me. And when I say that it can save people’s lives, I mean it in the very literal sense of the words. Through IG, I learned that I am not a weirdo who doesn’t fit in, but a person with different views on things and a good personality, which I first had to fully explore to finally find happiness with myself and live up to my full potential.

Thank you so much for your faithfulness in creating and running InterGifted. The many articles and teachings on the website have been a huge blessing and encouragement to me! Your organization and resources have already played a beautiful part in helping me better understand my unique design and helping me continue in my pursuit of authentic wholeness.

I’m 31 and have felt more real connection and community within InterGifted in the last six months than I have in all the years prior. I begin to “feel” human, rather than my previous sense of self – an object that existed for other people’s purposes. I find myself bursting with unreserved love and gratitude as a result of this connection. I am far more alive than I have ever been.

This InterGifted community has reduced my feelings of loneliness. I have not been literally lonely but there have been, and are, very few people who communicate on the same level. I have always thought it was my fault and I should somehow change myself. I have thought I should be less interested in everything and less enthusiastic. Thank you for creating this community.

InterGifted has been great for me because it has allowed me to cope with the fact that the vast majority of humans are not my community. A lot of us here have a different relationship to ‘people in general’ than normal folks, and the farther you are on the graph the more that is the case. I can understand them, and relate on a basic human level, but it’s not reciprocal and I enjoy deeper relation than that. I connect to humanity more than to people and a lot of us are that way. Attempting to focus on my similarities with others has often lead to confusion and anxiety, because the differences have had far more of an impact on my life than the similarities. Focusing on my differences has lead to self understanding and releasing the need for non gifted people to understand and accept me. I’m not searching for what I have in common with everyone anymore; I’m searching for the people I don’t have to try so hard with. I love humanity deeply but do not have a strong underlying sense of community as a whole, and moving away from desiring one is what has been (finally) saving me from the pain of giftedness.

IG has been a lifeline for me. I was going through severe existential depression when my friend suggested I contact InterGifted. Through coaching and the community, I have found hope again. I finally see that there is a positive side to my giftedness, and I’m excited to see how I can develop a better relationship with that previously hidden side of me.

The friendships I have made via in the InterGifted community have been some of the first true friendships of my entire life. I had gotten used to keeping myself small and tame, quiet and introverted, even with people I considered my close friends. I used to think of myself as a total introvert. Since joining InterGifted, I’ve discovered that it’s wonderful to connect when people get you, and when you can be your full self with them! It took me a while to feel comfortable, but once I saw how open everyone is in this community, I felt safe to explore and express all that I’ve been keeping inside for a lifetime. I’m still surprised to see what a different person I’ve become thanks to simple friendships with other gifted people like me!

I’m in the field of gifted education, and I’ve found the InterGifted community to be a wonderful resource for me in better understanding how giftedness affects adults, and in helping my students have better hopes for the future – not to mention the positive impact it’s had on my own life! Thank you InterGifted, for being there and for all you do to support the global gifted community.

InterGifted is an incredible resource that has helped me so much, personally, professionally, and creatively.

The InterGifted community has been a haven of support for me, and a continual source of inspiration. Never before in my life was I able to find peers who understood me or encouraged me to keep growing beyond traditional societal expectations. Thank you for this wonderful community!

Thank you for all the work you do to support gifted people in their personal development. Having access to one’s tribe, information about one’s condition, and support along the way means so much!

It’s nice to talk about giftedness without anyone acting surprised by it. Talking about it like hair color or eye color as part of a bigger, more important picture is so…stress-relieving.

Thank you, InterGifted, for existing, and for sharing all of this invaluable knowledge about giftedness and what I can do with it in my life!

If I could sum up my experience in Intergifted in one word, it would be: validation. Validation of all the struggles I’ve had over the years, of how my gifted mind works and why it didn’t work well in the world I grew up in. That’s allowed me to discover how to create a world in which it does work well! It’s changed everything for me.

I am greatly enjoying the correspondence and interaction with other members of this unique group, a sense of real belonging. I’m feeling like part of a vibrant family of like minds and hearts.

I’ve been researching everything I can about giftedness in the last four months, ever since I found out about being gifted, and InterGifted’s articles and information are among the best out there. I’ve read every article on the blog, and also recently joined the peer community. I don’t even want to image how lost I would feel if I hadn’t found InterGifted. I feel a sense of excitement now – rather than dread – when I think about my giftedness and the possibilities it gives me socially, personally, and professionally.

The InterGifted community has been instrumental in helping me, a late/adult-identified gifted person, in reclaiming a sense of wholeness and well-being, through community belonging and support.

The private IG Facebook groups offer a very safe and compassionate space for gifted adults, young and old, to slowly feel they can drop their social survival facades and just be their naturally kaleidoscopic intense selves.

To even have the option to be who we are, without censorship, filtering, toning down or any other restrictions and repressions, is crucial to healthy identity and self-worth understanding, development and recovery.

I have found the diverse community of members in IG to be so supportive in their myriad ways. Many times, I have found that a simple conversation on Facebook with them is more helpful than any other professional help, that I received in years prior from non-gifted sources, because we all “get” one another. It is something that us gifted folk so sorely lack and need in our lives. I never even used to use social media until IG!

In a world teeming with tribulation on multiple spheres and levels—personal and professional, with family, peers, colleagues, educators and superiors—InterGifted’s community and coaches offer both safety and practical support for gifted folk to not only recover from years of exclusionary trauma but also to rediscover who they really are, after years of survival-impelled pretense.

InterGifted has made a huge impact on my emotional life. I feel significantly less lonely, not to mention my self-understanding continues to grow as I learn about my gifted self.

I feel such profound gratitude for having become part of this group that is exactly like another member worded: like an overdue family reunion. I broke contact with the larger part of my family of origin, and have all life felt so in need of kindness and support and the gentle softness in which I could spread my wings, not just be a one-way adviser, one-way conveyer of love and knowledge and for some the sacrificial lamb. Having deeply meaningful conversations here or by other means with members of IG fills my heart with such joy. I can finally let go of all the shame over not finding what I needed, not even daring to admit how much I need and how little I found outside myself. It really hit me when reading Jennifer’s article on high+ giftedness: the always sooner or (very rarely) later being confronted with the limited mutual interest, understanding, intensity span or any other mutual field of anything meaningful I’d be looking for in others. Jennifer describes it so accurately as “just getting started” and the other just wanting to get out of the intense contact. There wasn’t very much reason for celebration of life before, even if I kept lighting my candle for me vigourously and in spite of what I saw in the world outside me. I’d like to give you all in IG a thank you hug for being who you are and sharing that with me, and making me be more and more OK with who I am.

What I really enjoy about Intergifted is the welcoming atmosphere and acceptance of all – internationally! I love being able to hear similar ideas as well as different perspectives from not only the variety of individuals that are part of this group, but perhaps from the various experiences which can be part of different locations in the world. It feels like home.

As well as boosting my self-esteem immeasurably, InterGifted has helped me to realise that there are others like me out there, and that I should perhaps now go out to meet them rather than wallowing independently in my (and our) unfortunate statistical rarity.

The work you’re doing through InterGifted is truly amazing, both the information you’re putting out there and the community forum. It has revived the issue of giftedness in my life, and its relevance for me. I’d been working through giftedness and what it means to me, but InterGifted has inspired a whole other process for me: one in which I have scoured my history and have recovered things and pieces of me that I didn’t even realize I had lost along the way. I feel ready to step into the full person I was meant to be. Thank you so much!

I found InterGifted on the day I discovered that I might be gifted in some way. I threw caution to the winds and signed up for the InterGifted Newsletter and  joined the InterGifted Facebook Group immediately, in spite of my fear of not being truly gifted and it being obvious to people who were that I wasn’t. The InterGifted community is incredibly welcoming, non-judgmental and supportive. I felt right at home as a “different” thinker – and felt validated at every turn. In spite of my fears, the subject of whether I’m really gifted – or gifted enough to belong to the community – has never even come up. It is a non-issue. Everyone is totally accepting of everyone else’s views, perspectives and experiences: if you identify with thinking differently or being different and feeling inadequate or being criticised because of it, you belong. It feels like coming home – to a home you never really believed existed. The InterGifted coaches lead the way – with Jen riding point, setting the tone and disarming fear by being truly open, vulnerable, authentic and empathic. I encourage you to take the plunge: it will change your life!

I’ve been involved in gifted education for over 20 years. As a personal passion and to facilitate my work with gifted students, I’ve done extensive personal reading and studying about the social-emotional aspect of gifted. Still, finding IG and interacting with the leaders and members has been an unexpected kind of homecoming. To be able to talk about my own giftedness openly and without apology has brought about a whole new level of awareness. Because I can mention something I’m observing or experiencing or puzzling over to the group and be pretty much guaranteed that someone will relate to or support me, I find myself actually feeling and experiencing things more deeply. I think this is the result of not having to distill things down to language or experience that everyone will understand with the typical alternative of simply keeping it to myself. On a daily basis I am probed by members to ponder a question or idea that is new or from a perspective not yet considered. I feel like, in this secret world, I am invited to grow more fully into all that I am meant to be.

Thank you for creating such a great website full of helpful resources for gifted adults, and especially for hosting communities for like-minded people to interact. A gifted mind can be both a great blessing and an isolating curse, and it’s a comfort to connect with others who understand.

I am so happy to have found IG.  It’s unlocked a lot of things for me; most of what I need to deal with, but also a renewed passion to explore topics I’ve touched on such as taking a different view on personality styles that is seen from a gifted perspective. You provide such a great platform which incorporates all of its members. I’ve been like the Lochness monster submerged for many years and suddenly resurfaced; realizing just what opportunities and info gathering I missed. Thanks for this great initiative, and being supportive and a mine of information. IG helps to remind those struggling with just how special they are to know they’re extra special. That’s what it did for me.

InterGifted is the best resource I’ve found for understanding adult giftedness. I have benefited so much from the blog, the group discussions, and the general atmosphere of down-to-earth smart people. It has helped me accept myself and better my relationships.

IG, for me, has been an incredible source of personal development and fulfillment. Until I started working with Jen and InterGifted, I struggled greatly trying to fit in with others and to ‘fix’ myself – IG has helped me to realize that I don’t need fixing! I just need to understand myself and how to use my abilities effectively. It has been a huge relief, and the benefits are only beginning.

Finding InterGifted, my InterGifted coach and the peers in IG’s community has changed my life immensely and started a process of transformation for me that I could have never imagined. I am becoming happier, healthier, more productive and creative, and more confident in using my giftedness as a strength rather than seeing it as a weakness. The future looks SO much brighter than my past, and now that I have true peers to share my growth with, everything is accelerating in hugely positive ways!