Gifted. With any other talent, we cheer from the sidelines, but the person who thinks exceptionally fast? They are quickly experienced as difficult. That is somehow strange.
The word 'gifted' carries an uncomfortable weight of its own. As Kathleen Venderickx recently said in a talk: 'As soon as you use this term, you are quickly seen as pretentious. Elitist. As if you consider yourself above others.'
For me too, the term was loaded for a long time, until the moment I could no longer avoid it. And as working with systemic dynamics taught me: where you do not want to be is often precisely where you need to go. And so I opened myself to this theme.
I am happy to take you with me. If you recognise yourself in a strong analytical ability, in quickly seeing connections, in the frustration of a world that moves at a different pace, then this blog is for you.
This blog is fed by personal observation, years of working with gifted adults in (technical) organisations and the patterns I encounter time and again, in myself, in my family and in my work as a systemic coach. It is an invitation to look differently, with a gentle and curious eye, and to set judgement aside.
I am curious to know how much you recognise yourself in this. Enjoy reading!
What is giftedness in adults?
Giftedness is generally described as a combination of high intellectual ability, an IQ of 130 or above and characteristics such as a strong need for information. It is measured through intelligence tests such as the WAIS for adults or the WISC for children.
But a number alone tells only part of the story. Renzulli has emphasised since the 1970s that giftedness is more than IQ alone, task commitment, creativity and environment play an equally significant role. And Tessa Kieboom, an authority on giftedness in the Dutch-speaking world, places strong emphasis on the emotional and social experience: gifted adults do not only think fast, they also feel deeply, and are therefore often more vulnerable than they appear.
That last point is precisely what this blog is about.
What giftedness is not
Giftedness is not the same as achieving high grades or having a stack of diplomas. It is not necessarily about having a good memory, reading fluently or excelling at school. On the contrary, many gifted people had a difficult time at school, precisely because they never felt understood. This can manifest early in underperformance, burnout, depression and disordered eating.
It is equally not a matter of working hard or knowing a lot. It is not a disorder or an anomaly, and it does not make someone special or better than others. And perhaps most importantly: giftedness is no guarantee of success.
Gifted people are not looking to be proved right, but they do have a strong drive for inquiry and genuine conversation. They often go unnoticed and are certainly not always at the top of the ladder. As a coach, I encounter them regularly in technical organisations, including on the production floor, people who work with their hands and who see with above-average sharpness.
Giftedness as talent
Giftedness, as I see it, is a talent. Someone who thinks exceptionally fast and connects dots effortlessly. What stands out is that it often goes hand in hand with other talents, a strong creative ability, musicality or exceptional spatial insight. These are different expressions of the same underlying intensity.
Like any other talent, giftedness can be enormously valuable, for the person themselves and for those around them. Someone who quickly gets to the core often sees directly what something is really about.
Those who grow up in an environment where talent is recognised and encouraged are often not even aware of their giftedness. You do what you enjoy, what comes naturally, and you are encouraged in that, just as others are encouraged in their own qualities.
But a talent that is not recognised and equally important: not acknowledged, or even dismissed, works differently. Then you encounter resistance. Within yourself and with those around you. You are experienced as irritating or as a threat, because your way of being holds up a mirror to others that is not always welcome. And that is precisely what often happens with giftedness.
The gifted adult, what I encounter in practice
What is often overlooked is that giftedness has a vulnerable side. That is not surprising, at heart, everyone wants to belong and add value to a system. That is both your right and your responsibility. But when you do not keep pace with the average, you may find yourself getting stuck.
People who come to me often do not know that giftedness has anything to do with them. They come with a different question. They experience extreme fatigue or get stuck in relationships or collaboration.
A recurring theme is excessive frustration and a deep-rooted sense of not being understood. Irritation at how slowly things move. At how people discuss something that could have been resolved long ago.
That frustration has nothing to do with arrogance. It is literally pain. The pain of someone who keeps colliding with a world that moves at a different pace. But more than anything, the pain of not feeling seen. And that pain is rarely understood, especially when you yourself do not know where it comes from.
The paradox: feeling smart but feeling stupid
Many gifted people do not feel smart at all. They feel rather stupid. Those who see differently, ask differently and draw connections differently encounter incomprehension and slowly learn that their perception is apparently wrong. That leaves its mark. The result is often self-diminishment, shame and adapting in order to belong.
Combined with the ability to see a great deal, fear of failure also emerges: those who see twenty possible consequences may sometimes not dare to begin, from an excess of insight.
A systemic perspective on giftedness
A systemic perspective starts from the assumption that we are not isolated individuals shaped by coincidence. We are part of living systems: families, households, organisations.
These living systems function like an ecosystem, they strive for balance, the principle of homeostasis. This means that every theme that shows up in a system serves a function, often unconsciously.
A metaphor I like to use for this is weeds. Weeds never grow without reason, they tell a story about the soil in which they appear. Think of deep roots that aerate compacted ground, or that replenish exhausted soil. As long as we recognise the value of weeds and respond to them, not much will happen. But the moment we ignore the signals, the garden will overgrow of its own accord.
From that perspective, it is interesting to look at talent. If giftedness is a talent you carry, the question is: what was this needed for in your system?
Note: Family constellations are an excellent way to make that soil visible. Read more about family constellations here.
What function does giftedness serve in your system?
The human body is also an ecosystem, with a natural balance between head, heart and gut, between reason, feeling and intuition. When these three are in balance, a person flourishes. But when one structurally dominates, the whole falls out of balance.
In gifted people, the head is often the strongest player. That almost always has a story behind it. In families where thinking was safer than feeling, your talent is encouraged. The intellect may protect a family system from painful themes such as grief or loss. Sharp analysis can also serve as an anchor in an unsafe situation, a way of maintaining grip on what felt unpredictable.
Talent is a prerequisite, not everyone has a predisposition for giftedness, just as not everyone has a talent for sprinting. But the talent and the coping reinforce each other. Giftedness can thus become an unconscious survival strategy.
Reflection question
What made you start 'doing giftedness'? What did it help you with?
Systemic principle 1: Giving and receiving in balance
In a healthy system, giving and receiving are in balance. Every member contributes from their own talent and receives what they need to flourish. Your analytical ability, that is your contribution to the whole. Just as others contribute from their talent. And from that, you are allowed to receive. It is precisely the differences in talent that create resilience in a system.
To be able to give your talent, you need a safe foundation. In a family system, that is your parents, the secure ground in which you can develop. In an organisation, it is those above you: leaders who offer space and trust. Without that foundation, a talent cannot take root.
Read more about this in my blog: Safety and trust in organisations.
Reflection question
Where do you give freely from your talent and where do you receive the talent of another?
Systemic principle 2: Everything belongs, including your talent
In a system, everything belongs. Nothing can, or indeed may be excluded. What is excluded determines the dynamic. It is like the balloon you try to hold underwater.
This principle applies to talent too. A talent that is not acknowledged creates tension through suppressed feelings, in yourself and in the system. It seeks a way out. Sometimes that tension manifests in the body. Sometimes in relationships. Sometimes in depression or burnout.
But giftedness does not only affect you. A system that does not acknowledge the talent of one of its members is missing something. Every system needs all its parts to flourish. Think of biodiversity versus monoculture. In a family where the sharpest observer silences themselves, the family loses that sharpness. In a team where the fastest thinker adapts to the slowest pace, the team loses its potential.
This is nothing more than an invitation.
Reflection question
How would it feel if your way of thinking were fully welcome?
Systemic principle 3: Order and occupying the right place
Every person has their own place within a system, with the responsibilities that come with it. As a manager, you stand on a different level than your team members. The same applies to a parent in relation to their children. Those who came before you on your level stand ahead of you in order and vice versa.
When someone occupies a place that is not theirs, or does not dare to occupy their own place, tension arises.
In gifted people I see this return in a specific way. Perhaps you feel responsible for keeping the system running and have taken on the place of a parent or leader. Your talent makes it easy to pick up that role. Or the opposite, adapting taught you to stay small. To stay under the radar.
Both variants disrupt the order. The way back is seemingly simple: occupying your own place with all the responsibilities that come with it. Acknowledging yourself in your entirety, your talent, including the discomfort that comes with it.
Reflection question
What place do you occupy, at home or at work? Is that your own place or actually someone else's?
Giftedness and emotions, unfamiliar territory
What many gifted people recognise, though they rarely name it as such, are overwhelming feelings. Emotions that seem larger than the situation calls for. Intense joy, deep sorrow, anger that goes from zero to a hundred.
The question is: what have you learned to do with that? Perhaps you have learned to feel and are very aware that emotions sometimes flood you. Or you have learned to shut yourself off from them and notice that you barely know what you feel anymore.
In gifted people, the head often wants to move faster than the body. But when you move too fast, you stop hearing what the body has to say. Emotions are not there to be understood, they are there to be moved through. If you do not do that, suppressed feelings will be stored in the autonomic nervous system. The body only releases that information when there is space for it. And when that space is never offered, it will at some point make itself heard loudly, in strained relationships, burnout or illness such as migraine.
But how do you allow a feeling in effectively if you have never learned to? For many gifted people, inhabiting the body is unfamiliar territory. The first step is often simply this: slow down and observe. The body is genuinely part of the story. Not analysing what you feel, but feeling what you feel. That difference is greater than it sounds.
Read more about emotions in my blog: Emotional wisdom for the analytical mind.
For me, this observation is a daily necessity. When I neglect it, I notice it immediately, in my body, in my contact with others and in the quality of my work. In the past, I would literally become ill.
Reflection question
What do you usually do with what you feel, do you suppress it or tackle it with analysis?
Intuitive intelligence: the other knowing
Alongside analysis, there is another kind of knowing, the gut feeling. A sense of 'this is right' or 'something here is not right', without being able to say exactly why. That is intuition. In gifted people it is often strongly present, but rarely recognised as such. Because intuition does not fit within the cognitive framework. And so it is ignored or reasoned away.
Yet it is one of the most valuable capacities you have. Intuition is not magic. It is a communication channel from the unconscious. Those who observe a great deal and feel deeply have rich material for that unconscious. The intuition of the gifted person is therefore sometimes remarkably sharp.
The challenge is learning to trust it. Because a lifetime of being told your perception is wrong also makes your intuition suspect.
Read more in my blog: The power of intuitive intelligence.
Reflection question
How does your thinking relate to your gut feeling? Do they work together — or does one crowd out the other?
How is this for me, am I gifted?
'What you think you are, you are not and what you think you are not, you are doubly.'
Am I gifted? I have never been tested and feel little need to be. At the TU Delft I learned: measurement is knowledge. But later I came to see that the more we measure, the more we seem to forget. Giftedness is not static, it moves with your life. And labels can hold you back.
And perhaps the quote above says it better than any test result: all polarities reside in every person, including the polarity between fast and slow, between sharpness and vulnerability. When a polarity tips too far, with imbalance as a result, that is often an invitation toward the other side.
Yet I have found a great deal of recognition in the spectrum of giftedness. That surprised me and gave me much insight. Gifted or not, I am doing well, and that is what matters. My own process has given me the desire to make a difference for people who get stuck, to bring my own talent into the world. And yes, the 'exceptionally fast-thinking person' I encounter them remarkably often in my practice.
In closing, gifted, adult and stuck: what now?
At heart, everyone wants to belong and add value to a system. That is both your right and your responsibility. But it is not easy when you do not keep pace with the average on a particular theme.
Giftedness is a wonderful talent and at the same time a vulnerability. It shows up in sharp insights, but also often in fear of failure. In a fast mind, but also in a body that asks for its own pace. With often overwhelming feelings and a fear of rejection.
From a systemic perspective, the invitation is this: understand where you come from, what you bring with you and what your system once asked of you. And from there, occupy your own place. Exactly as you are — including all the emotions that come with it. That is the work. And it begins with observing, learning to feel, inhabiting the body, with a gentle, curious eye and setting judgement aside.
Willpower can only take root in carrying capacity. Not in the strength of a head that pushes through, but in the strength of a person who can carry themselves, including their vulnerability. That place, where talent and feeling meet, that is where real growth begins. And from there, you can live your value.
Are you a gifted adult who finds yourself getting stuck? In an individual family constellation or coaching trajectory, I would be happy to look with you at what is at play.
Frequently asked questions about giftedness in adults
Smart often refers to academic performance or knowledge. Giftedness goes deeper — it is a way of perceiving, feeling and thinking that touches the whole person. Gifted adults do not only think fast, they also feel intensely and process stimuli differently than average. That makes them both valuable and vulnerable.
Gifted adults often recognise themselves in: quickly seeing connections, frustration with the pace of those around them, a strong sense of injustice, perfectionism, fear of failure and the feeling of never quite belonging anywhere. They often do not feel smart — precisely because they see so much that they do not yet know.
Yes. Gifted adults who do not recognise or acknowledge their talent often adapt to their environment. That costs an enormous amount of energy. Combined with high sensitivity, perfectionism and an overactive mind, burnout is a common result.
From a systemic perspective, giftedness can never be seen apart from the context in which someone grew up. In families where thinking was safer than feeling, the analytical talent may have developed strongly as a survival strategy. Insight into that origin helps to use the talent consciously — rather than being driven by it.
From a systemic perspective, giftedness can never be seen apart from the context in which someone grew up. In families where thinking was safer than feeling, the analytical talent may have developed strongly as a survival strategy. Insight into that origin helps to use the talent consciously, rather than being driven by it.
The first step is often: stop trying harder and learn to look differently. Because the solution is rarely found in more knowledge. It lies in seeing what has been at play all along. Systemic coaching or a family constellation can help make visible what is happening beneath the surface. This is not so much about analysis, but about experience. In doing so, a field of new perspectives can open up that were previously out of sight.
Note: This blog is written from personal observation and practical experience. It is a perspective, offered as a mirror.
* Talk organised by Stichting IQ
Marieke de Zwaan (ir. TU Delft, 2001) is a keynote speaker on food & vitality and a coach in the field of vitality & leadership, with a specialisation in giftedness, engineers and analytically minded professionals. After a decade of travelling through America, Australia and Brazil, she transformed from more than twenty years of chronic illness, migraine and burnout, into optimal vitality. Not by following the right rules, but by learning to see differently. Since 2012 she has been inspiring people and organisations at home and abroad as a speaker and coach. Her strength lies in a systemic perspective: she sees what is playing out beneath the surface, in people and in organisations alike. This is why she is called upon in a wide range of contexts, from keynotes for international businesses and technical organisations to individual coaching trajectories at the intersection of vitality, leadership and lifestyle.