Embracing Intensity

Today’s guest has wonderful Instagram posts, many of them covering her work with twice-exceptional adults. I’m a fan of hers, and she’s a fan of the podcast, so it’s exciting to introduce her to the Embracing Intensity audience!

Aileen Kelleher is a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, and coach. Her therapy practice in Chicago specializes in helping gifted and twice-exceptional children build social-emotional skills, self-compassion, and confidence to recover from anxiety, depression, and other mental health difficulties. Her international coaching practice focuses on helping gifted and 2E women harness their talents to help them find fulfillment and fun in their personal, professional, and social lives.

Show Highlights:

• Why Aileen is intensely passionate about working with 2E people and sharing tools and resources
• How Aileen’s personal brand of intensity manifests in her passion and her ability to embrace conflict and argumentative engagement; she appears intimidating to others and feels emotions deeply
• Growing up, Aileen experienced bullying from her peers that put her “on guard” with anxiety and fear where there was the capacity for negative emotions; she also had an early sense of social justice
• How Aileen identifies now as a 2E person who has anxiety, depression, and some ADHD characteristics
• In school, Aileen was a student who was eager to please her teachers and experienced solid support from her mother; she struggled to fit in and be accepted with peers
• How, as she grew older, she began challenging authority, rebelling, and calling out injustice
• How being from a large, Irish Catholic family trained her to use direct bluntness that not everyone accepts
• How Aileen learned to tone herself down and tune herself out by escaping in reading books and watching TV; in later life, she numbed herself through substance abuse to “check out” from reality
• How Aileen experienced her out-of-control intensity through raging at people as a young person and now uses writing, exercise, and art as ways to maintain control
• How Aileen has learned not to be “the biggest voice” in the room but to lift up and make room for the voices of others in community and collaboration
• How Aileen uses her fire for good by being helpful and learning all that she can about what she feels passionate about; she has also learned to admit her mistakes and keep going
• How Aileen helps other 2E adults find meaning, joy, and purpose in their lives
• How relationships with family and friends have helped Aileen learn to reach out for help and trust herself
• Why Aileen likes helping others define and find their personal values
• How ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) helps gifted kids figure out what they care about beyond simply proving how smart they are

Parting words from Aileen: “You are OK just the way you are, even if you feel like you don’t belong in a certain situation. That doesn’t mean that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, and it’s OK to ask for help if you need it. Gifted and 2E can have full and satisfied lives, and the fact that we are different shouldn’t stop us from pursuing what we want--and what everyone else gets to have.”

Resources:

Find Aileen on Instagram or at www.coaching4gifted.com. Her work with kids is at www.aileenkelleher.com.

If you or someone you love is a gifted person, you understand that it can complicate many situations in life. It’s wonderful to know that empathetic and supportive professionals are dedicating their lives to advocacy for these individuals. Join me to learn more about one such psychotherapist in today’s episode!

Gail Post is a clinical psychologist, parenting coach, workshop leader, and writer. In clinical practice for over 35 years, she provides psychotherapy in the Philadelphia area with a focus on the needs of the intellectually and musically gifted. Gail does consultations with educators and psychotherapists and parent coaching throughout the US and Canada. Dr. Post served as a co-chair of a gifted parents’ advocacy group when her children were in school, and she continues to advocate through workshops in schools and parenting groups. Her writing related to giftedness includes online articles, several books, chapters, plans for an upcoming book, and a long-standing blog, Gifted Challenges. Gail is just one of the popular gifted writers whose work is included in the book, Perspectives on Giftedness: Sound Advice from Parents and Professionals by GHF Press.

Show Highlights:

• Why Gail is intensely passionate about working with gifted and twice-exceptional teens and adults, advocacy, parenting issues, nature, art, music, and trying to make a difference
• How psychotherapists help clients with mirroring and attunement to create encouragement for the changes people need to make
• Why it’s difficult to find psychotherapists who specialize in giftedness
• Why Gail’s personal brand of intensity looks like overthinking and being passionate about her work and values
• How Gail grew up feeling things intensely and feeling out of sync with others as she tried to fit in
• How Gail was affected by white privilege and by other issues of the 70s like the Vietnam anti-war movement, women’s right, and civil rights
• How Gail had to tone herself down as a shy child when she learned to hide her abilities and talents
• Why Gail got out of control when she felt things and reacted strongly, especially in work settings
• How Gail uses her fire for good in helping people, writing, and utilizing her strengths, and engaging with her interest in the human psyche and behavior
• How Gail harnesses her power by knowing her strengths, pacing herself, and managing stress
• How she helps others by encouraging them to feel safe and accept themselves with empowerment in challenging situations
• Gail’s upcoming book, Perspectives in Giftedness, written with several other authors: her articles include “How to Explain Giftedness to Your Child,” one about what happens when kids know they are smart by society or school tells them they are not, and one about college planning to teach students and parents what they don’t know about the process
• Why we shouldn’t tell kids their IQ number because it can harm them or hold them back
• Final words from Gail: “I encourage everyone to work on self-acceptance with who you are because that’s the foundation for moving forward in life. It’s also important to accept your child’s imperfections and all of who they are.”

Resources:

Gail Post

Gifted Challenges

Connect with Gail on Facebook.

Perspectives on Giftedness: Sound Advice from Parents and Professionals, (A Collection of Essays by GHF Writers)

In today’s show, I introduce you to a good friend who has been an anchor for me in creating a community over the last ten years, both in-person and online. Join us!

Lana Quackenbush has been part of my Ignite Your Power program for several years, and she frequently joined the monthly Embracing Intensity guest calls last year. I’ve seen from the beginning of our relationship what an amazing person she is and how she’s learning to own the uniqueness of who she is. Lana and I both love helping people find connections in the common experiences of intensity, giftedness, twice-exceptionality, and creativity.

Show Highlights:

• Why Lana identifies as a mixed-race, newlywed, preschool teacher who loves peacemaking and doing the right thing
• How Lana’s personal brand of intensity revolves around her qualities of being intensely intellectual, perfectionistic, and judgmental
• Why as a Virgo, Lana has to work on finding balance in many ways
• Growing up, Lana’s mom told her she was “exhausting,” and she had a hard time sleeping as a sickly child who learned to tune out her body’s signals
• The cultural factors that added to the “tornado of chaos” in Lana’s biracial, highly social family; it was always stressed to her the importance of “presenting” herself well
• How Lana learned to tune herself out or tone herself down in light of her mother’s postpartum depression and the realization that her needs weren’t always going to be met
• How Lana’s intensity gets out of control at times when she is wronged, and her self-righteous indignation kicks in
• The shift for Lana in finding a relationship that uplifts her intensity in a positive way
• How Lana uses her fire for good as she spends her days teaching two-year-olds and shows interest in families, children, and their parents
• Why Lana loves to see the emotional model of raising children reign over the intellectual model
• How Lana harnesses the power of her intensity by doing yoga and studying Buddhism
• How Lana follows her varied interests in phases, organizes spaces in her home to meet her needs, and imposes rules for herself about cleaning up one area before moving on
• Lana’s inspirational to-do list hack: she writes her list on business cards so the list is manageable, and she can feel the satisfaction of checking off each item
• Why Lana is ever-so-grateful that she followed the best advice she ever received: “Don’t make any permanent life choices before age 25.”
• Books that Lana recommends: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
• How Lana helps others use their fire by kid-wrangling, making spaces for them, and meeting their needs
• Why Lana is learning to identify proudly as a person of color

Resources:

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

Find Lana on Instagram: ThatLanaLady

Today’s guest is someone I met through The Gifted Homeschooler Forum for which we both write. Through her experiences and those of her children, she’s become a champion for parents of “quirky children who don’t fit the mold.”

Kathleen Humble is an ADHD mom in Melbourne, Australia. She writes at Yellow Readis about gifted and twice-exceptional homeschooling. Her book, Gifted Myths, is available at The Gifted Homeschooler Forum Press. She’s been published in Victorian Writer, The Mighty, and Otherways magazine, and she was the recipient of the 2018 Writers Victoria Write-Ability Fellowship. In between writing and homeschooling her kids, Kathleen loves reading, sewing, and big cups of tea.

Show Highlights:

• As a long-time homeschooling mom of two twice-exceptional children, Kathleen is intensely passionate about helping parents with quirky children who don’t fit into the mold
• As a twice-exceptional person with ADHD, Kathleen can focus intensely on something to the point of not remembering to do anything else
• Growing up, she had trouble controlling her passions, but her intensity turned inward as she resorted to reading
• Being small and good at things made Kathleen an easy target for bullies in school
• One of the cultural factors that affected her intensity was learning that in Australia, standing out from others is not a great thing that’s not appreciated
• How intensity became an asset for Kathleen through performance and writing
• How Kathleen toned down and tuned out her intensity in high school when she deliberately stopped learning
• How Kathleen observed in school the behaviors that invited bullying
• Why Kathleen has to work against her intensity all the time
• How Kathleen learned to do “the pause,” a technique to physically break the intensity
• How Kathleen loves helping others, answering questions, exploring things, and empowering others
• How Kathleen harnesses the power of her intensity through “the pause,” medication, and therapy
• Kathleen’s system of “touch once” to keep track of tasks and remember names
• The best advice Kathleen ever received: “I’m OK. It’s going to be OK. Being you is OK. Being intense is OK.”
• Books that Kathleen recommends: Foundation by Isaac Asimov and NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
• How Kathleen helps others use their fire for good by writing on her blog and people find the information they need

Resources:

Find Kathleen: Yellow Readis

Facebook: Yellow Readis

Twitter: @Yellow Readis

Pinterest: Yellow Readis

Gifted Myths by Kathleen Humble

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

NeuroTribes by Stever Silberman