The current state of our world has forced many of us to be stuck inside physically. Mentally, the social distancing measures along with the uncertainty of what’s to come can cause a lot of unrest and unhappiness. I know I personally have been feeling anxious and nervous when I think about everything going on right now. Even when we weren’t in such unprecedented times and things were more “normal”, spring has always been a wonderful time to reset mentally. It’s a season of life and growth; flowers bloom, days are longer and the weather is warmer.

If you are looking for things to keep your mind and body occupied while adhering to physical distancing, explore some of the options below.

● Clean and reorganize spaces in your house.

If the prospect of deep cleaning your entire house seems daunting, simply focus on clearing out an overflowing closet or throwing away old papers on your desk. Decluttering and organizing might help you feel productive and more in control of your situation. One study for the Mindfulness journal even found a correlation between people doing dishes and an increase in positive emotions like inspiration and mindfulness and a decrease in negative emotions like nervousness.

● Try an online workout.

In this digital age and with social distancing in full-swing, there is no shortage of online workout classes to choose from. Check out YouTube for some free yoga flows, or find a gym that might be live-streaming a Zumba class. Exercise is linked to many psychological benefits, such as improved mood, decreased anxiety and boosted creativity.

● Plant something.

Getting down in the dirt and growing plants can stimulate positive feelings, reduce stress and increase mindfulness. If you have access to a yard, try planting flowers or vegetables. If you don’t have a yard, you can always pick up seeds from your local nursery or order them online and start an herb garden on your window sill.

● Create art. Draw, paint, sculpt or write.

Whatever gets your creative juices flowing, try it out! Harvard Health Publishing shared that expression through art can improve cognition, reduce stress and promote relaxation. Creating art can also give your eyes a much-needed break from staring at your computer and phone screens.

● Journal.

Writing your thoughts and emotions down on paper can give you a sense of release and an opportunity to reflect. Sometimes, simply writing down your fears and concerns can instantly help you feel more at ease. It can also allow you to examine negative thoughts and potentially identify situations or moments that contribute most to those feelings.

● Talk to someone.

Whether you choose to talk to someone you live with or call a friend or family member, interacting with other people, focusing on topics that aren’t centered around the news and enjoying the company of others can allow you to feel more social and improve your mood. There are also apps and online tools like TalkSpace where you can speak with licensed therapists if you are seeking professional mental health help.

● Meditate.

There is research to suggest that mindfulness meditation may ease symptoms of anxiety and depression. In a rapidly moving and chaotic world, many people find comfort in and benefits associated with sitting and focusing on breathing through a guided meditation for a few minutes. If interested, try IEA’s mindfulness exploration or an app like Calm or Headspace.

I also feel compelled to end this list with a disclaimer. The activities mentioned above are simply suggestions that might provide some relief to any mental distress you may be experiencing right now. They are not meant to stand in for professional guidance nor do I hope they make you feel anything other than intrigued or inspired to try a new, soothing activity.

Right now many of us are inundated with a seemingly constant, discouraging news cycle. Many have also been under a barrage of encouragement from brands and peers to use this time of self-isolation to be extremely productive. Viral challenges and lists like the one above may make you feel like you should be as busy as– or even busier than– you were in your pre-quarantine life; baking cupcakes in the morning, running three miles in the afternoon, knitting in the evening and finishing that best-selling book you’ve been meaning to read all before you go to bed.

American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, described that humans are motivated by five basic needs. These needs are physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization. Before we can even begin to work towards feeling confident in who we are (our esteem) and feel we are achieving our greatest potential (self-actualization), we must first ensure our physiological needs and safety. This means we must have food, water and a place to sleep. After that, we need to feel safe and secure, we need a predictable environment that is free from threats and harm.

In the current situation, many people’s physiological and safety needs feel threatened. If you are worried about getting food, staying healthy or ensuring you have a home to sleep in, it might be very difficult to focus on painting a portrait or feel motivated to clean your closet. Our regular lives and most basic needs are suddenly no longer guaranteed in the way we might have always known them to be.

So before you feel like you need to learn a new skill, pick up a hobby or FaceTime all your friends and family members, focus on meeting your basic needs. Setting even just three simple goals for yourself to achieve in a day, like making your bed, brushing your teeth and eating breakfast, can help you feel more productive and in control of your situation. We cannot move onto meeting our higher needs or even helping others if we have not first prioritized ourselves. Be gentle with yourself and focus on getting through your day, little by little. We can all use a bit more self-love during this strange spring season.

IEA is here for you. Click here to learn more about IEA’s online resources for your family. 

In today’s media and news, I feel like I hear more stories about the benefits of sharing emotions and discussing mental health than I ever did growing up. This is a wonderful thing and through popular media including television and movie portrayals and celebrity confessions, we are growing more accustomed to talking about historically taboo or just unknown topics surrounding emotions and mental health.

With great strides being made in these conversations, it seems important to discuss emotional intensity among our country’s brightest, and sometimes most vulnerable, youth.

The Davidson Institute has a great explanation for why gifted youth tend to experience more intense emotions, saying, “Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children’s thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children’s, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense.”

Gifted youth are often more aware of and affected by their surroundings. Children who feel things with great intensity experience the world in a different way than their non-gifted peers. Emotional or physical reactions to events can last longer for gifted children. These experiences of heightened stimulation observed in many gifted individuals are referred to as intensities or Overexcitabilities. Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified five overexcitabilities and their associated behaviors:

1. Psychomotor: Characterized primarily by high levels of energy
2. Sensual: Characterized by a heightened awareness of all five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing
3. Emotional: Characterized by extreme emotional sensitivity
4. Intellectual: Characterized by deep curiosity and thought
5. Imaginational: Characterized by vivid imagination and visualization

The first step in managing intense emotions is identifying and understanding them. If you think your child exhibits overexcitabilities, talk to your child about how they feel and react to certain situations. Healthy discussions around expressing emotions make everyone feel safer and more understood. Starting these discussions at a young age enforces good habits for the future.

How exactly do these overexcitabilities manifest themselves? It varies from child to child, but there are common behaviors associated with all five overexcitabilities.

• Psychomotor responses can include pacing, rapid talk or use of hand gestures
• Sensual responses can include sensitivities to clothing textures, food tastes or a need for physical displays of affection like cuddles or hugs
• Emotional responses can include intense feelings of empathy or compassion, depression, anxiety or loneliness
• Imaginational responses can include visualizations, use of metaphorical speech, dreaming or magical thinking
• Intellectual responses can include constant curiosity, deep thinking or a propensity towards solving puzzles and problems

Understanding what emotional intensities are and the behaviors associated with them can help with misdiagnosis or just plain misunderstanding. While some of the more extreme behaviors associated with overexcitabilities can be worrisome for a parent or educator, such as a child’s depression or anxiety, there can also be a wonderful bright side to overexcitabilities.

Some of the benefits of overexcitabilities can include:

• Empathy and compassion towards others
• A desire to solve major world problems
• Creativity
• A high sense of self-awareness
• Enthusiasm
• High energy

Intense emotions don’t always need to be feared or regulated. They are what make so many gifted children wonderfully unique. However, for the times that overintesities do need to be managed, here are some strategies:

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Outdoor physical activities such as going on walks, hikes or playing at a park
• Quiet reflection time
• Journaling or drawing
• Encourage discussions about how your child feels and why they feel the way they do

I hope this blog post helps with identifying and managing intense emotions in a gifted child. IEA’s Gifted Resource Center also hosts a list of books, articles, programs and professionals that can be used as additional sources of information about overexcitabilities.

Your child is emotional. Anxious. Melting down. Telling you that you’re the worst parent. Ever. Not in so many words, necessarily. But still. You know that you’re the worst parent. Ever.

“How can such a smart kid behave this way?” you wonder. “How did I screw up so badly?” 

I hear this often from parents of gifted children. Here’s what I tell them:

1. Gifted kids are EMOTIONAL. Their passionate natures can be as large as their intellects. You can respect their emotions while setting boundaries around inappropriate behavior. They’ll be calmer if they know that you’re compassionate and in charge.

2. Helping your children contain emotion is different from repressing or denying those feelings. Containment is useful, especially when you’re out in public places where screeching will be frowned upon. They can visualize a beautiful object or a cabinet or a tree or whatever their creative minds can dream up that will lovingly hold their emotions when it’s inappropriate to let them flail about. A great resource for visualizations is here.

3. Because smart kids are very perceptive, little things that others don’t notice will affect them. That includes the sounds of people chewing or the scent of your detergent. They’re not neurotic. They’re sensitive. They’ll also be finely tuned in to you. They’ll know when you’re worrying about their grades and pretending that you’re not worrying about their grades. It’s often best to confess the truth.

4. If we’re talking about 15 year old girls (more or less) and their moms, don’t ignore the awesome power of hormones. Let us all give hormones our utmost respect. They will win every time. Sometimes all you can do is ride the wave or go read a good book. (or visit your naturopath, acupuncturist or doctor)

5. Recognize when you start channeling your parents. This is not usually helpful. If you find that your mother’s criticism is coming out of your mouth or your father’s anger is simmering below the surface, consider psychotherapy. A good therapist can help you dig your own voice out from under the rubble.

6. Avoiding power struggles will be hard if your children think faster than you do. Use the “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you” method. Give yourself time to make decisions so you don’t feel pressured. It’ll be easier for everyone to stay calm. Including you. Remember that your child will feel safer if you’re in charge.

7. You may be a problem solver and action oriented. When your children are in pain, it’s hard to not want to stop the pain immediately. Instead, start listening. Reflect back what you hear. Validate feelings. Ask them if they want your help problem solving. If you’re listening well, they can often come up with their own solutions. At first, this may feel awkward and contrived. Explain to your kids what you’re trying to do and they’ll be patient with you. You may think that you’re already listening and that it’s not working. Ask your children if they think you’re listening and then believe them when they tell you that you aren’t. (That said, set limits on how long you listen if your child tends to go on and on and on.)

8. If your own childhood was less than ideal, you might lose patience when your child is freaking out, especially if you were never allowed to complain, cry or fall apart. Give yourself some grace around your reactivity. Find a way to allow the child in you to express her or himself. A journal can be a great way to safely complain, cry or fall apart. Then again, if you need more help, look for some good resources online or seek out your friendly local psychotherapist.

9. There are no perfect parents. Your mistakes are an opportunity to show your child how to learn from mistakes, how to understand that a mistake is not the same as a failure, and that even failure is an opportunity for growth.

Your child is emotional. Anxious. Melting down. Gifted. And so are you.

This post originally appeared on Your Rainforest Mind and has been reprinted with permission.

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The gifted brain is a unique place. In fact, it is so unique that many of the complexities of giftedness are still not fully understood. Still, there are some common quirks that have been identified as being associated with the gifted brain.

Overexcitabilities

Dambrowski identified five overexcitabilities that he believes are strongly connected to giftedness: intellectual, psychomotor, imaginative, sensual, and emotional. These overexcitabilities give gifted individuals some of their unique traits, but can also make it hard to function within a traditional classroom environment.

Psychologist Carrie Lynn Bailey noted in Overexcitabilities and Sensitivities: Implications of Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration for Counseling the Gifted:

“A challenge for gifted individuals is that they can often be viewed negatively, or pathologically, particularly in educational settings.”

So how do you deal with a gifted child with overexcitabilities? An article from the California Association of the Gifted suggests a combination of teaching stress management techniques, ensuring clear verbal and nonverbal communication skills and creating a comforting environment can help gifted children manage their overxcitabilites.

Social and Emotional Vulnerabilities

Many gifted children are very emotionally sensitive. A passing comment that may seem harmless to you can be crushing to a gifted child, who could internalize and overanalyze it. Because of their high-sensitivity, gifted children often perceive others to have a lower view of them than they actually do, leading to social issues, such as interacting and bonding with their peers and teachers.

The article “The dark side of being the ‘gifted’ kid”  highlights the extremes of gifted social and emotional issues. It notes that many gifted kids live in a world that doesn’t fully understand them, leading them to feel isolated and lonely. The author suggests gifted students should learn in environments that focus not just on their brains, but also the “fragility of their hearts”.

(Hoagie’s Gifted Education Page has a plethora of resources on the social and emotional lives of the gifted for further reading.)

Twice-Exceptional

Twice-exceptional children demonstrate both giftedness and a learning or emotional disability, making them the most under-identified group in today’s schools, according to the National Education Association. These students are often forced between choosing programs that serve their giftedness or their disability. Consequently, they are often underserved.

This “quirk” of the gifted is often difficult to diagnose even by professionals. SENG notes that even those in the gifted community have trouble imagining a gifted child with a learning disability. Luckily there is a growing awareness of 2e and, as a result, more resources available on serving these children.

If your child has been diagnosed as twice-exceptional or you expect they may be, the 2e Newsletter has some helpful tips for serving 2e students.

Although we still don’t understand everything about the gifted brain, identifying the quirks and giving students, parents and teachers the tools to deal with them is a win-win for everyone.

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Nicole LaChance graduated from Michigan State University with a B.A. in Journalism before moving West in pursuit of milder winters. Prior to joining the IEA team, she spent time working in marketing for an architecture firm and completed two years of national service in the AmeriCorps program. Over the past few years she has worked with nonprofits to communicate their message and impact to the world around them, work she is excited to continue at IEA. When not at the office, she enjoys reading, cooking, traveling wherever she can and making bad puns.

This post is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Blog Hop Mysteries of the Brain. Please click the image below to keep on hopping!

Children who feel things with great intensity experience the world in a different way. Gifted young people are often more aware, stimulated, and affected by their surroundings. Emotional or physical reactions to events can last longer than expected and are often replayed in the child’s mind.

Intensities can be characterized by:

• Extreme feelings: positive or negative feelings; complex emotions; connection with the feelings of others; grand laughter and tears
• Physical reaction to emotion: stomachaches and headaches; blushing; rise in body temperature
• Strong affective memory: re-living or re-feeling things long after the triggering event; nightmares; elaborate daydreams connected to actual events

Psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski studied the mental health of gifted youth and adults. He described the areas of heightened stimulation observed in gifted individuals as “overexcitabilites.” The five areas of overexcitabilites are:

1. Psychomotor: extreme physical activity and movement; rapid talk; pacing; use of hand gestures
2. Sensual: perceptiveness of sensory experiences; unusual awareness and enjoyment of sensation
3. Imaginational: clear visualizations; metaphorical speech; dreaming; magical thinking
4. Intellectual: need to question or analyze; delight in the abstract and theoretical; puzzle and problem solving
5. Emotional: intensity of feeling and relationships; natural empathy and compassion; susceptibility to depression, anxiety, or loneliness

Dr. Michael Piechowski, who studied alongside Dabroswski, has dedicated much of his life to researching the emotional and spiritual aspects of gifted children. In his book ‘Mellow Out,’ They Say. If Only I Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright, he stresses the need to “give voice to the emotional life of bright young people, to show how their intensities and sensitivities make them more alive, more creative, and more in love with the world and its wonders.”

Piechowski, along with other gifted experts, teaches gifted children a variety of techniques for coping with their overexcitabilities. For Caroline, this required her teachers, parents, and siblings to understand and embrace her overexcitabilities. At the same time, Caroline learned exercises to calm her senses and help her focus.

Guided imagery and meditation are excellent tools for those like Caroline learning to master their sensitivities. A good place to start is with a simple exercise. Have your child close his or her eyes, breathe deeply, and say with the breath,

“Breathing in I calm my body,
Breathing out, I smile.”

Learning to use the mind to control the body through exercises like this — along with overall awareness and understanding — is an important step in mastering intensities.

For more strategies, see our post 15 Strategies for Managing Your Gifted Child’s Intensities.

Does your child experience any of these overexcitabilities? What coping techniques have worked for you? Please share with us in the comment section below!

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We are excited to share this post as part of the New Zealand Gifted Awareness Week Blog Tour. Gifted children worldwide share many unique characteristics, including intensities. It is important for those who are in the lives of these gifted individuals to better understand these characteristics in order to help nurture and support their intellectual, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical growth.