Resources for working on the other side of the bell curve

[iheartbacon]

I have always had an interest in working with gifted/talented individuals and have begun to develop an interest for working with high performers/achievers as well. Unfortunately, I have little experience with these groups to date (with the exception of gifted/talented evaluations for schools and therapy with a few kids from this subset who were considered twice exceptional). Not surprising as they are small subsets of the population, and the majority of referrals I have worked with other the years are for low functioning. Can anyone recommend resources or training that would be helpful for working with these groups? Thanks in advance!

Edited to add that I have a background in both clinical and school psychology.

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[smalltownpsych]

I have always had an interest in working with gifted/talented individuals and have begun to develop an interest for working with high performers/achievers as well. Unfortunately, I have little experience with these groups to date (with the exception of gifted/talented evaluations for schools and therapy with a few kids from this subset who were considered twice exceptional). Not surprising as they are small subsets of the population, and the majority of referrals I have worked with other the years are for low functioning. Can anyone recommend resources or training that would be helpful for working with these groups? Thanks in advance!

Edited to add that I have a background in both clinical and school psychology.

I don‘t know of any resources although I did delve into the literature on gifted kids and adults way way back in undergrad. As a psychologist, I have worked with quite a few gifted and talented individuals. My general take is that good cognitive testing is helpful to better understand their strengths and weaknesses as people are usually not equally developed across domains of functioning and so if you are really good at some things there might be some specific things you aren’t so good at and often this diverse profile is helpful to guide conceptualizing and subsequent intervention strategies. I also think it’s important to know that symptoms of psychological distress are universal and that treating those symptoms is a similar process regardless of cognitive profile.

Also, some of the people that I have worked with who were quite gifted were also very sensitive either emotionally, socially, or sensory or combos of that and often what was going on is a state of chronic overwhelm. Decreasing stimuli and helping the individual to learn the importance of not trying “to be like other people“ can be half the battle.

 

[BuckeyeLove]

Are we talking solely high cognitive power individuals? Or high achievers? Most of the most successful people I have known/met have likely been still within 1ish SD's of average. But have been SUPER driven/motivated. Like obsessive business owner level type motivation and drive.

 

[iheartbacon]

Are we talking solely high cognitive power individuals? Or high achievers? Most of the most successful people I have known/met have likely been still within 1ish SD's of average. But have been SUPER driven/motivated. Like obsessive business owner level type motivation and drive.

I have an interest in both actually, which I know do not always overlap. Gifted and talented on one end (which I have found few good resources for - mostly are for educators), but also high performers (like athletes, performing artists, etc.). The second group can definitely have a lot of obsessiveness and perfectionism - I am going to do some searches for those things. Thanks!

 

[borne_before]

Terman kinda showed that high IQ isn't exactly the way to being a high achiever. One of my cited papers looks at the social emotional adjustment of kids identified as gifted. The big take away was that the gifted kids tend to show lower rates of both internalizing/externalizing concerns. This makes sense if we view IQ as being adaptive (which is why it evolved) and protective (e.g., higher IQ individuals have better outcomes than lower IQ individuals).

I wish the disharmony hypothesis would die and I really do think telling smart kids how smart they are or coddling them by "challenging" them is pretty bad for the overall.

 

[PsychPhDone]

I have always had an interest in working with gifted/talented individuals and have begun to develop an interest for working with high performers/achievers as well. Unfortunately, I have little experience with these groups to date (with the exception of gifted/talented evaluations for schools and therapy with a few kids from this subset who were considered twice exceptional). Not surprising as they are small subsets of the population, and the majority of referrals I have worked with other the years are for low functioning. Can anyone recommend resources or training that would be helpful for working with these groups? Thanks in advance!

Edited to add that I have a background in both clinical and school psychology.

I could have sworn there was someone at Duke who researched gifted kids but I am old and don't recognize her name on their website.