So how can those assumptions about what a capable person should be able to do affect the way that they understand themselves and ultimately their overall mental health?

Right.

Well, and, and it's an important distinction to make because, you know, as human beings, we all have gaps in our profile, areas where we're a little ahead, others where we're not, and the farther out you get on the bell curve, the more extreme you are, the more gifted, neurodivergent, whatever word you wanna use, those gaps tend to increase.

But because there's so much positive strength or just you're, you're really excelling in an area, there's a opportunity really to overcompensate, to over-rely on the areas where we're really good, and so those other areas may get a little masked.

But c- context is everything, right? Like, you can have high ability in a specific form of math And yet struggle in another form of math, right? Algebra is, comes to you like it's nothing, you're top of your class, and then all of a sudden geometry hits, and because now you're in a visual-spatial plane, you are now struggling, and you're thinking to yourself, "Wait, wasn't I good at math? I thought I liked math.

Oh, maybe I don't." And if you're not, you know, savvy enough to say it's gonna be specific, context-specific, then you're gonna find this unevenness maybe confounds you or confounds yourself or, you know, threatens your own identity of who you thought you were, you know? And a lot of people struggle with this idea of, you know, really neurodivergent people struggle socially, kind of.

They struggle in maybe very normative contexts, but if you put a bunch of neurodivergent people in a room together who have shared like mind and likability and like interests, you will have one of the most social bunch of people you've ever seen, because all of a sudden the context is correct.

Different.

They're much more a well-rounded person.

Absolutely, right? We are-- So the way I explain it is that our identities are tools of expression, right? We have multiple identities in this world, and they are all used to express certain aspects of the unique individual self that we are, right? And so, you know, I have an identity as a podcast host, as a father, as a mental health counselor, as a sketch comedian.

Like, all these things that I've done in my life, they're, are different conduits to get to know me better.

But it doesn't just stop with, "Oh, you know, I'm this thing." You have to tailor it to the individual.

Me as a counselor is going to be vastly different than other mental health counselors lined up in a row, right? We can all have the same label as counselor, but that identity is going to vary differently.

So I'm more of a sarcastic, deeply empathetic, devil-may-care, nerdy, neurodivergent, yet, you know, tough-as-nails counselor for kids, right? Like, that's just me rattling off the top of my head.

And it, it, I have to make sure that that identity fits who I am and meets the needs of myself as an individual because I don't want to come across as inauthentic or be in a position where, oh, I'm not doing it the way other people are doing it, and so I must be less than or some imposter syndrome BS thing that can happen to people, right? And at the same time, I don't want to totally wrap myself up in a single specific identity as a counselor.

So what are some of the ways you work with people to avoid this over-reliance on one label over the others?

[laughs]

Um, [laughs] um, I don't know.

You know, it's hard to say.

I'd, I...

Because I'd never want parents to feel like what they're doing is incorrect or wrong.

It's more like what I want parents to pay attention to is when they feel stuck.

When you feel stuck, and like I can't seem to move the ball forward in a certain area of my life, and I just can't seem to figure out, you know, what to do, and I'm doing the same thing over and over, um, what are those small things that I might be missing for? How do I broaden out my understanding of the problem? How do I talk with others and say, "What am I missing?" And not in a, in a attempt to solve it, as much as an attempt to understand that all behavior has function to it.

Mm-hmm.

Did you?

Yeah.

I used to develop video games.

I worked for a couple of major publishers Um, and the reason I got into that because, oh, it was a great interest of mine.

I used to be quite the gamer and loved that world and was very good at it.

And I thought in my head that if I did something that was fun and I loved, I would be successful at it.

Sure enough, we fast-forward many years later and I'm getting fired from my final job at, you know, v- video games because I was supposed to be a producer, I was supposed to be on top of things, and my executive functioning was so terrible.

Yeah

Yeah, for sure.

Well, you know, the funny thing is our practice prides itself in being a part of a lot of the IEP 504 accommodation process.

And we have a way of dealing with that where we're really looking to create connection between the school and the parents because those meetings, man, they can get real intense.

adversarial and they don't need, there's so much stress involved.

There's so much tension and it's very difficult.

So, you know, the way we try to deal with that is to come in to places where, cause that happens all the time, right? Like, well, their grades are too good.

So why would we create an individualized educational plan for them? And the reality is what we have to prove on some level is that the amount of work or stress or processing or anxiety that is going into that needs to be looked at a little more carefully.

Right.

And so again, from your lens and the work that you do- How have you seen this idea of belonging shifted in recent years, especially when so much of our kids' social lives, or most kids' social lives, are happening online and in digital spaces?

Yeah.

And again, I don't dismiss online relationships.

They can be very real.

They can be a part of who you are.

But typically, we try to strip it down to where is the struggle with the idea of belonging? And it's really about how you create a relationship that has some depth to it, and that comes from a place of emotional vulnerability at times.

And a lot of gifted kids, they tend to be u- upstairs thinkers, right? They try to escape into the head.

[laughs] I guess I don't understand how kids are learning this stuff if they're not being really intentional and explicit about it.

Okay.

Giftedness for us is simply some level of your development as a human being in an extreme, and it could be anything.

Yes, it could be, you know, some level of academic or verbal precocity and, um, you know, at a high level or could be artistic in nature.

It could be gross and fine motor skills.

It could be even having a strong sense of moral justice.

If it's somewhere where it's outside of the norm in a developmental way, where it's on one side of the bell curve, then that is how I would view giftedness.

But the reality is, the farther out you are in your development on, in any spectrum, you'll have other areas that the development is more in the norm or even delayed on some level, and so you have scatter.

Mm.