I cannot give you anything good and I am questioning whether such a thing is possible in psychology right now. ):
I have a lot of experience interacting with gifted adults and have read a lot about them, so I think I have some useful insight when it comes to making the correct distinctions that help with untangling this controversy. First, there’s a difference between feeling lonely and being unable to fit in socially. There’s another gigantic difference between being unable to fit in and being able to fit in but only with a huge effort.
What I’m seeing is that most of the very gifted adults are able to fit in by putting in a lot of effort and hiding most of their thoughts and feelings (which would not make sense to others since their thoughts are often complex and difficult to explain and their feelings are often in reaction to complex thoughts), but they do not enjoy those social experiences which are so demanding of their energy, and so they end up lonely. The profoundly gifted people I’ve met are so frustrated by things like explaining across inferential distances that it’s practically characteristic of them. Their way of dealing with the differences seems to be to reduce social contact and learn specialized social skills for interacting in environments that are unavoidable like workplaces. They often succeed with these specialized social skills in limited environments and usually prevent social disasters simply by staying quiet, not leaving the house, or avoiding social environments with people who aren’t like minded. So, they have usually had coping mechanisms that work for them to prevent social ineptness. However, when it comes down to it, there’s nothing that improving one’s social skills can do to solve the problem of loneliness. The issue is not that people don’t respect or like them, the problem is that people do not relate to them when they try to share their inner worlds. You can build one-way rapport by learning what your audience cares about and keeping your conversations within the boundaries of their comfort zone. If the audience cannot build rapport the other way you end up feeling lonely and misunderstood. This is what I’m seeing.
Sorry for the delay. I haven’t memorized all my citations and it can be a bit of a pain to dig them up (I’m thinking about the best way to organize them right now) so I’m kind of burnt out on digging up citations right now which is resulting in some procrastination when answering comments like this.
I’m in “Halt, melt, and catch fire” mode right now regarding psychology knowledge and research in general.
I cannot give you anything good and I am questioning whether such a thing is possible in psychology right now. ):
I have a lot of experience interacting with gifted adults and have read a lot about them, so I think I have some useful insight when it comes to making the correct distinctions that help with untangling this controversy. First, there’s a difference between feeling lonely and being unable to fit in socially. There’s another gigantic difference between being unable to fit in and being able to fit in but only with a huge effort.
What I’m seeing is that most of the very gifted adults are able to fit in by putting in a lot of effort and hiding most of their thoughts and feelings (which would not make sense to others since their thoughts are often complex and difficult to explain and their feelings are often in reaction to complex thoughts), but they do not enjoy those social experiences which are so demanding of their energy, and so they end up lonely. The profoundly gifted people I’ve met are so frustrated by things like explaining across inferential distances that it’s practically characteristic of them. Their way of dealing with the differences seems to be to reduce social contact and learn specialized social skills for interacting in environments that are unavoidable like workplaces. They often succeed with these specialized social skills in limited environments and usually prevent social disasters simply by staying quiet, not leaving the house, or avoiding social environments with people who aren’t like minded. So, they have usually had coping mechanisms that work for them to prevent social ineptness. However, when it comes down to it, there’s nothing that improving one’s social skills can do to solve the problem of loneliness. The issue is not that people don’t respect or like them, the problem is that people do not relate to them when they try to share their inner worlds. You can build one-way rapport by learning what your audience cares about and keeping your conversations within the boundaries of their comfort zone. If the audience cannot build rapport the other way you end up feeling lonely and misunderstood. This is what I’m seeing.
Sorry for the delay. I haven’t memorized all my citations and it can be a bit of a pain to dig them up (I’m thinking about the best way to organize them right now) so I’m kind of burnt out on digging up citations right now which is resulting in some procrastination when answering comments like this.