Gifted Kids, Parents & Families Coaching

I was so grateful to find the InterGifted site, after many years of struggling in isolation as a parent of a gifted teen. I reached out and received the support I needed to help myself as well as my son. The orienting session was useful for me as a starting point. It provided me with the clarity and perspective I needed in my situation and, most importantly, a plan for how to move forward. A plan and support felt like a massive relief like a light was shone in a dark tunnel of uncertainty, confusion and fear.  It was something I was in desperate need of, and Fabienne provided the guidance to get started and continues to be a resource for me today. At a very vulnerable time, I put my trust in the process and appreciated the resources, suggestions and therapist options provided. The parent coaching I am receiving now has been long overdue and it has given me the channel through which I can vent, express my worries, feel understood, and discuss strategies to help me be the best mom I can to my amazing, intense child. Just knowing there are people who understand the gifted mind is a huge comfort and gives me the hope I need that we will all be OK.

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.

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.

If you’re considering coaching but haven’t decided, my recommendation is to just do it. Yes you’re smart, and over time you could figure it out all on your own, but that’s just the point: your time is worth something – a lot more than what you will pay your coach. One coaching session with Jen was the equivalent of at least 2 months of reading, searching, journaling, pondering, and experimenting on my own. The fact is, a lot of what we need to know and do as gifted people is counterintuitive and differs greatly from what ‘normal’ people do. The typical common sense wisdom doesn’t work for us, not because we’re necessarily better, but because we see, think, and feel about things with much greater complexity than others. Having a coach who understands this and has spent years of study and effort figuring out what works is invaluable on your quest (for whatever it is you’re seeking – for me it was happiness and fulfillment). The great thing is, InterGifted is run by people who actually know what it’s like to have a complex or intense mind, and many of the coaches were drawn to this work precisely because they were once ‘coachees’ and saw first hand what coaching could do for them. They won’t pressure you or try to sell you what you don’t need – they will do your best to help you, whether or not it’s profitable for them. The bottom line is, had InterGifted coaching been available when I was young, it could have saved me from decades of personal struggle. You owe it to yourself to see what it can do for you.

People believe living with high intelligence ‘is great’ and ‘makes life easy’. They have no idea what an exceptional mind can be like in everyday interaction. Words cannot express what meeting my coach Jen has meant to me. Finally, my thoughts, feelings and abilities were allowed to exist. A couple of sessions has helped me more than years of traditional coaching and support. This is the first time I have met a person who can understand my mind and my abilities; explain needs and ways to work. It has been a huge help in my professional life. Jen is the first person who acknowledged just how different my mind is. If you are on the higher range of giftedness, I can highly recommend this service. I feel like an extremely rare, colorful bird finally released into its natural habitat.

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.

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.”

Thank you InterGifted for providing such a unique and well suited coaching setup for your target audience. Being able to mix and match from the group of coaches has in itself been inspiring and has provided me with renewed hope and energy. I have been searching for an appropriate coach for quite some time and had never found someone that I felt would understand all of the aspects that I wanted to discuss. When Jennifer offered the opportunity to meet with more than one coach, the profound relief of finding a solution better suited to my needs washed over me and filled my soul. Such a fantastic program of ‘custom plans’ being created for the coaching process goes a long way towards instilling a sense of being understood and anchors in the feeling of finding a community wherein I can express myself freely. With appreciation and gratitude to Jennifer and all involved with InterGifted.

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.

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.