Last year I was ill for a couple of months, but from that period emerged ideas about giftedness. I found the InterGifted site and soon after my journey with Merlin began. I have to say that for me Merlin was really an excellent coach and fit. What I liked about working with him was that he managed to be very personable, and also shared some of his own experiences while having a professional overview of our process. He is very knowledgeable in the area of giftedness and related areas. He was also able to signpost me to reading and other media to discover more about giftedness and myself. Working with Merlin is a conversation and a collaboration. He opened my mind to thinking of myself in an expanded way. Overall he is very skillful and singular in his work.

When people ask me what it’s like working with Jen, I tell them it’s like having someone understand you without you having to explain anything to them. Jen seems to know and be able to articulate my complex thoughts, motivations and needs in a way no one ever has in my life; and because of this, I understand myself and can, in turn, communicate my inner world much more effectively than I could ever before. Working with Jen has helped me make it through an extreme positive disintegration, develop healthy relational boundaries, and hone in on a career path that, for the first time, makes sense for me and my unusual brain. In the midst of all of that, I was able to sort out and heal from patterns of intergenerational trauma that I hadn’t even known I was being affected by. All in all, Jen is an unusual human and I mean that in the best sense. Thank you Jen.

The work I do with Karin has helped me articulate who I am and has in a way, given me permission to step in to that identity. On top of being incredibly knowledgeable as a gifted coach, she is gracious and kind which creates a space where I feel safe, and seen. I’m incredibly grateful that I get the opportunity to work with Karin and would highly, highly recommend her.

I’m doing a formal coaching trajectory with Willem Kuipers around work-related issues. It’s fantastic! His (academic) knowledge of giftedness is enormous, which helps a lot in understanding myself in context, plus understanding the context itself better. Because of this specific knowledge Willem is able to exactly explain why things work the way they do, and that’s based on thorough research combined with the right kind of intuition. Besides this, he is a gentle and sensitive person who very carefully phrases his thoughts and suggestions. Willem has also developed practical tools about personal preferences and career parameters that are very helpful. His way of coaching has very little to do with the regular Human Resources approach, and is an adventurous journey into learning about all aspects of giftedness that are useful for you in your given situation. For me, it all really works very well.”

“Jen was the right light at the right time for me. I had spent a good portion of my early adult life trying to figure myself out and how I fit into the world, and while I had made significant progress, there were missing pieces – the gifted pieces – that were keeping me stuck. Jen helped me fill in those missing pieces and ‘unlock the whole’ so that I could move forward. Without her coaching and guidance, there were aspects of myself I don’t think I would have ever embraced, let alone even recognized. Jen is an exceptional coach and human being, and should you ever have the opportunity to work with her, grab it with arms wide open!”

Connecting with Karin was life-changing. It’s been great to hear that I’m not crazy and that most of the things that happen to me are shared by others. Finding my identity is sometimes confusing and pushes me to confront some things I’ve never confronted. It’s great to do this with someone supporting me, at my pace. I love the fact that Karin is just there when you need it, with a tailored coaching method, not pushing me with a pre-established way of working. Every time we finish a session I have a smile and I feel peaceful, back on track. It’s been a great process and I’m excited for what’s coming. If you are looking for a coach, I can’t recommend Karin enough.

I finally feel like I can go at my speed and I don’t have to slow down or explain everything – my coach just gets me. This is a game-changer for me!

It is always a joy speaking with Jen. It is a form of syncing, speaking and thinking in tandem, profound and meaningful, in a way that might send us both into a wild laughing fit. At last, here is a conversation where communication feels crisp and clear, unmuddled and deconfused. And at the same time there is a fluidity to the whole. For once, I let my administrator role go, I forget who said what and when, and stop trying to manipulate the conversation. Complex becomes simple, when you speak with Jen.

It has been very valuable to put some focus my intensities and how they can work for me and not against me. It is brilliant to have someone on the other side of the world cheering for me, believing in me and making sure that I progress and don’t get side-tracked. And the best part: I can be myself and not hold back.

Sandra was a wonderful guide throughout my introduction to learning about my giftedness. Sandra and I clicked because she is also gifted and because I am finally experienced what’s known as “mirroring”. Genuine mirroring is crucial to a gifted person’s development and is rare. The mirroring I experienced with Sandra cannot be manufactured despite what many experts teach. Genuine mirroring is natural, reliable and authentic. Sandra taught me everyday guiding principles that were customized to me. Most frequently, I apply that I can slow down and stop any time I choose. I remind myself of this principle not only when I go into perfectionist mode, but also when others expect me to be perfect; to do and be it all. I also use it when I’m going down a new path and something doesn’t feel quite right or isn’t flowing. People have told me to slow down my whole life, but Sandra’s words were the first to hit home for me. She showed me that it’s my choice. Sandra helped me to realize that I have a tendency to “fill in” where I’m needed and wanted, which is a passive way of living life for others and not myself. I promptly resigned as President for an organization that no longer resonated with me. People have asked me if I was living the life I wanted, but Sandra’s words of “filling in” were the first to hit home for me. I believe that I can learn anything and that, in areas where I struggle, it would only require someone explaining it to me in a way that no one else had before. Sandra’s quick and simple explanations just click and have improved my life in a very short, painless, period of time. It has been a wonderful experience working with Sandra.

With Merlin as my coach, I am able to create changes in my life for the better, and learn about aspects of myself that I have never fully understood or thought plausible. For anyone considering InterGifted, I had some initial hesitation to accept my giftedness and was definitely nervous before and during my first coaching session, but I can’t fathom any other opportunity or service that could’ve supported me better with my new found (to my adult self) emphatic sensitivities, non-existent boundaries, giftedness and autism. It is unbelievable that InterGifted has the expertise to finesse out the details of a tangled web of various conditions and comprehend a person as a whole. I can finally make sense of the past ten years of my deteriorating mental state and functioning, and more importantly, learn how to cease the negative patterns, stabilize my wacked out and hypersensitive nervous system, and ward off unhealthy relationships. I admit that I most likely be a little nervous during the rest of my coaching sessions, but that is heavily counter balanced by the warmth of being genuinely heard and understood through conversations with Merlin.

There have been quite a few therapists and coaches in my past, but most could at best offer only very fragmented help. Often the suggestions made by them were not appropriate for me and were less than helpful on my journey to discover who I am and why I struggle with being me so much. Of course all of this became lessons in life in itself, but not the kind of lessons I had anticipated or hoped for. They were rather the negative kind of lessons: what I really did not want to have to deal with anymore.

Just before joining IG I had the privilege of sharing some thoughts with Willem Kuipers, who is also a coach within the IG coaching network. He was the first person to respond to me in a way that was open, respectful and containing all the elements I needed to progress. His view of Xi connected deeply with me and his insights have been very meaningful and extremely helpful.

When I joined IG there was an instant chemistry with Jen that resulted in a couple of coaching sessions. Those were not the obligatory prefab meetings I had become accustomed to from the past. Jen engages in to the point and highly relevant discussions on high priority issues. Those issues were addressed in a way that completely suited me and helped me to continue my journey much richer in thought and armour. The way in which Jen communicates on an energetic level, being compassionate and driven and fully capable of viewing not just a fragment of me but holistically approaching triggering events, changed my disillusionment regarding helpful guidance into deep trust and utmost gratitude. The manner in which she provides suggestions and answers completely matches my lightening speed way of thinking and analyzing. She doesn’t beat around the bush but gives direct and straight in depth qualifications to issues I had previously not been able to wrap my head around. Jen offers knowledge from interesting literature and provides links that enable self-help, which is a way of learning I prefer. She is always available for opening up deeper cognitive and structurized solutions. Issues that seem to pose specific problems to highly gifted persons are no challenge for her and she will honestly and passionately provide insight in all these matters.

For quite a few years, I felt like a crazy, nervous wreck. There was an almost constant struggle with almost everything in my life. I saw therapists and counsellors and talked about my feelings and my childhood, and I learnt some useful tools. I knew, of course, that I was different. That I was extra everything. That I needed extra care, so to speak. I used to tell myself that I was too sensitive for my brain, or too intelligent for my sensitivity. I was definitely too much for most, including myself a lot of the time. Then I heard about HSP some five years ago and got a lot out of studying that. I started exercising and minding what I ate – that also really improved the general state of things. And then one day, in a conversation about bored children at school, a friend tipped me off about an organisation called “Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted.” That’s when I understood that giftedness is an actual thing; an actual research field. Going through the SENG website, I cried. Then I started reading everything I could get my hands on. And then, googling around about a year later, I found InterGifted and Jennifer Harvey Sallin.

Now, I think it’s wise to live as though you’re destined to do something very good. To strive to leave this world a little better than we found it – you know. I figured the time had come for me to step up and finally do something real. Took some shaky steps. Sure I can manage on my own, I thought. But the thing is, doing everything on your own isn’t the way to go. At some point in the coaching process, it felt a little remarkable to me that I hadn’t already done this work on my own. Studied Jung’s ‘cognitive functions,’ for instance. Or even just found out my personality type according to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. I guess that a part of this pretty wonderful and long overdue affair has, well, shown me how lonely I’ve been. I knew I could do a lot of things. And I have, and I do. The difference is, now I’m doing them with such grounded purpose. With more love, perhaps. It’s like I’m able to inhabit … my spot. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but the way I live my life has changed.

Jen has it down to a fine art form. The quality of her mind-to-mind interactions is so brilliantly resonant and fluid that she gets to the ‘magic point’ in a way that is fast, congruent, and rings true. I have found her work effective because she embodies it as a living process.

Thank you so much for what you do. I was so confused about my identity, and learning about giftedness has been incredibly healing. I no longer feel alone and I have hope now, because I’ve figured out what I need help for and I know where it get it. This is such an amazing journey of self-discovery and recovery!