We all boil at different degrees. Clint Eastwood
Give Lynne a call today to have a conversation with her about her Gifted Adult Services
“The path to creative genius is paved with insecurities, misunderstanding, rejection, ridicule, and in some cases, outright hostility. ”
“The lack of understanding or support for gifted children and the actual ambivalence, hostility, or bullying they experience particularly create significant problems for gifted children.”
Dealing with Difficult People, Bullying & Sabotage
Gifted Adults, because of their giftedness and multiple abilities, have to deal with difficult people and situations all day,
every day.
Most often gifted adults receive inappropriate and inadequate advice about dealing with difficult people and situations--from coaches, counselors, teachers, mentors, peers, and other trusted advisors who don’t factor in or aren’t familiar with the genuine difficulties and situations where envy, misunderstanding or prejudices about giftedness are a significant factor in the interaction including bullying, workplace mobbing, interpersonal rejection, and sabotage.
Today, our society professes to place great value on intelligence, but many people, including educators and mental health professionals, discriminate consciously and unconsciously against those who are gifted.
C. Suzanne Schneider
Gifted adults need coaches, counselors, and advisors who understand what giftedness is, what gifted people need, and the challenges they face.
Where giftedness and employment intersect, here are some of the challenges that gifted adults face on a regular basis at work—and in the community:
Gifted adults exhibit an intensity, an insistence on the integrity to do the work at its best—which is most often beyond what is required and what they are compensated.
Gifted adults have chronic impatience with shoddy work and slow thinkers.
Gifted adults work too quickly, get bored, and show it.
Gifted adults raise the standards for everyone else, and that is always resented.
Gifted adults have odd approaches to things, which irritates their coworkers.
Gifted adults ask for more work and make enemies because of that.
Gifted adults still have the idealism of a young person which can cause problems with peers, authority figures or with fellow executives.
Gifted adults, with their bright mind, have difficulty in accepting the illogical and may be very stubborn in expressing doubts about a project or in criticizing others.
Gifted adults, whether they have a college degree or not, carry around in their feisty minds questions the boss or superiors cannot answer.
Gifted adults sometimes, unwittingly, threaten the boss, because that odd approach turns out to be better than the boss’s idea.
Gifted adults are often the first to go when downsizing begins because of peer group rejection—even when they are the best and highest performer in productivity or profits
Lynne Azpeitia, MFT
310-828-7121
3025 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Coaching, Psychotherapy & Consultation
Encouraging, supporting and guiding gifted adults to achieve their goals and realize their dreams.
For more than a decade I've been working with gifted and creative adults, teens and children as a psychotherapist, counselor, coach, speaker, trainer, educator, consultant, and mentor specializing in the challenges, psychology and development of gifted, talented and creative adults.
Coaching, Counseling, Psychotherapy & Consultation Specially Designed for Gifted People
Gifted adults need specialized help, guidance, and support in order to identify and leverage their talents and to become more self-generative and productive in the areas that are most important to them—and to utilize their talents and to develop their potential.
Contact Lynne About Services for Gifted Adults
Coaching, Counseling & Consulting Services Also Available by Phone & Skype
Interested in reading more? Click here for books for Gifted Adults
Lynne Azpeitia
The Gifted Adult Coach
310-828-7121
“We are not paying enough attention to trying to teach gifted people how to cope with their lives in the adult world. Far too many of them find their drive and creativity thwarted by persons or establishments who regard them as either silly or threatening. ”
“Job performance is not a significant factor in promotability.
Social acceptability, the ability to fit in, to think as the rest of management thinks; these are the factors which make a person promotable.
The gifted employee is not readily promotable. This idea that the gifted will get ahead anyway, and if they do not, they were not really gifted, has no basis in fact. ”
Big. Bad. Bully
Hara Estroff Marano
No, it's not just boy being boys. It takes special breed of person to cause pain to others. But the one most hurt by bullying is the bully himself -- though that's not at first obvious an the effects worsen over the life cycle. Yes, females can be bullies too. They just favor a different means of mean ..More
When the Boss Is A Bully
Hara Estroff Marano
They verbally abuse you, humiliate you in front of others. Maybe it's because power hovers in the air, but offices tend to bring out the bully in people. We offer strategies for handling such bad bosses. More
Dealing with Difficult People
Laura Benjamin
You don't need to go through life "holding your breath" around people who are considered "difficult!" ….More
The Talent of Being Inconvenient: On the Societal Functions of Giftedness
Roland S. Persson, PhD
Certain highly gifted individuals are not allowed to flourish and develop although they exist in environments which have the means to assist and stimulate their development. There appear to exist gifted individuals in our midst whom we tend ignore systematically; gifted men and women who simply are “inconvenient.” You need permission, courage and resiliance to be gifted (Freeman, 2005; Landau,1990; Shekerjian, 1990), because “along with the promise of potential,” as Fiedler (1999) concludes in an extensive review of the socio-emotional difficulties of gifted individuals, “come the problems of potential—problems that are often a direct effect of differing from the norm in ways that others are not necessarily prepared to deal with” More
Why Gifted Students Are Targeted by Bullies
Sherrie Gordon
Every day, numerous gifted children and adolescents are targets of teasing and bullying. In a foundational study on bullying and gifted students, researchers at Purdue University found that by eighth grade, more than two-thirds of gifted students have been victims of bullying, with 19% of teasing specifically related to intelligence and grades.
A review of studies on bullying and gifted students from 1970 to 2014 revealed that gifted students are victimized at similar rates as other targeted groups (sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less); however, they may be targeted for unique reasons, and may also respond to bullying differently...often more intensely and more prolonged.
Why Gifted Kids Become Targets of Bullying
One reason gifted students are bullied is because of their exceptional school performance, as well as the attention, resources, and opportunities that center around these high academic achievers. Bullies are either envious of their success and grades, or they see them as a threat to their own personal status and academic success. What's more, they also may be considered the “teacher’s pet” or a “know-it-all.” More…
Handling Difficult Workplace Behaviors
Daniel Robin
Each of us has a "difficult" person hiding inside. Some have it well hidden and only let it out on rare occasions – unleashing it at the driver of another car, or during competitive sports, or as a familiar loop with a family member. Still others, despite best efforts at self-control, are just.....More
Verbal Abuse: How to Save Yourself
Patricia Evans
How can his voice drown out your inner knowing? The abuse only happens when you're alone with him or her. Friends and coworkers might think he's a prince, so you doubt your own perceptions or believe his anger must be your fault. Verbal abuse escalates gradually; you adapt.....More
16 Witty Sherlock Comebacks to Knock Out Your Enemies
Benedict Cumberbatch
How many times have you left an argument, only to think of the perfect comeback hours later, when no one is there to admire your wit? Crafting the perfect comeback is tough, but if you have Netflix you already have the best training tool: Sherlock.
7 Ways to Stand Up to Bullying
Sherri Gordon
Being bullied is not easy to cope with and there are no simple solutions. Bullying can leave kids feeling helpless, vulnerable, and confused. They are often so shocked, embarrassed, or upset that they are not sure what to do. Unfortunately, this indecision or lack of response can open the door to more bullying. "The goal is to de-escalate the situation," says Karen Gail Lewis, EdD, MFT, MSW, a marriage and family therapist in Washington, DC. There are many approaches kids can take to respond to bullying, but every intervention may not work in every situation. "Unfortunately, there are no easy answers for preventing or stopping bullying," says Dr. Lewis. Kids need to know ahead of time what to do if confronted by a bully. More
Teasing and Gifted Children Patricia A. Schuler Many gifted children and adolescents are targets of teasing and bullying. Some of their peers and teachers may perceive them as “too verbal”, “too bossy”, “too smart,” “too nerdy.” Because gifted children and adolescents tend to be highly sensitive to others, their reactions to being teased are extremely intense. One only has to look to recent shootings around the country, committed by kids who have been described as very bright, for examples of this kind of intensity. Often the teasing and bullying is subtle- name-calling, shoving, social ostracism, or intimidation. While girls use more psychological manipulation like spreading malicious rumors, boys account for the majority of physical bullying. Too often their victims suffer in silence. More...
The Bully Rulebook: How To Deal With Jerks
Leigh Buchanan
Call them jerks, bullies, louts, boors, or--as Robert Sutton prefers--assholes. Whatever you call them, such characters are a part of every organization.....My late father was an entrepreneur who started a half dozen companies. And his standard for a work relationship was if people were assholes, it wasn't worth it no matter how much money you could make. Because in the end it would drive you crazy.....More
Power
Harriet Rubin
You want a story of CEO power? The kind of CEO who ends up with his picture on the cover of every business magazine and who gets celebrated for his strategic brilliance and financial performance? The kind of CEO who's never held accountable for how he runs his company? More