This group has changed my life!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.