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The Burden of Potential: Therapy for Gifted Adults Navigating Burnout, Identity, and 2e Considerations

Katie Vernoy and Curt Widhalm explore how gifted adults show up in therapy, why their distress is often misunderstood, and what clinicians need to know when working with burnout, identity struggles, perfectionism, existential distress, and twice-exceptional presentations. They discuss the gap between potential and achievement, the hidden cost of success, the impact of masking and code-switching, and how therapists can offer more attuned, effective care for gifted adult clients.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

In This Podcast Episode: How Gifted Adults Show Up in Therapy, from Assessment to Treatment

Gifted adults do not usually come to therapy saying giftedness is the problem. More often, they present with symptoms and struggles that look familiar to any therapist: anxiety, depression, burnout, relationship issues, identity disruption, or feeling like they are not living up to their potential. In this episode, Katie leads a conversation on how giftedness may shape those experiences and how clinicians can better recognize the difference between visible success and hidden distress.

The conversation moves from assessment to internal experience to treatment implications. Katie highlights markers therapists may notice in session, including rapid processing, abstract thinking, metacognition, pattern recognition, and mismatch between capacity and functioning. She also explores how 2e presentations, executive functioning workarounds, and marginalization can obscure both giftedness and neurodivergence. From there, the episode turns toward what actually helps in treatment: understanding the hidden cost of functioning, distinguishing adaptive from maladaptive perfectionism, helping clients reduce overfunctioning, and supporting a life defined by meaning rather than just achievement.

In this episode, Curt and Katie discuss:

  • why gifted adults often present with common clinical symptoms instead of naming giftedness directly
  • the difference between intellectual giftedness, high achievement, and eminence
  • how rapid processing, abstract thinking, metacognition, and pattern recognition can show up in assessment
  • how 2e presentations can hide both giftedness and neurodivergence
  • the impact of code-switching, tokenization, invisibility, and marginalization on gifted adults
  • how burnout, chronic overfunctioning, and career mismatch often emerge in gifted clients
  • the difference between adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism
  • what happens when identity is built around cognitive ability and that ability feels less reliable
  • how gifted adults may experience existential loneliness even in relationships
  • why gifted clients often need therapists who can offer depth, authenticity, attunement, and intellectual respect

Key Takeaways for Therapists Working with Gifted Adults, Burnout, and 2e Concerns

“Gifted adults don’t present saying they’re gifted.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

  • Gifted adults may come to therapy with burnout, anxiety, depression, relationship strain, identity confusion, underperformance, or existential distress rather than naming giftedness as a concern.
  • Intellectual giftedness is not the same thing as achievement, motivation, or visible success. Potential and performance can overlap, but they do not always match.
  • Therapists may notice giftedness through the client’s processing style, depth of language, pattern recognition, metacognition, and the feeling that the client gets complex ideas very quickly.
  • 2e presentations can be especially easy to miss. Giftedness may mask ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, or executive functioning struggles, and neurodivergence may also hide giftedness.
  • Some gifted adults appear highly successful from the outside while internally relying on exhausting systems, overpreparation, perfectionism, and relentless self-criticism just to maintain performance.
  • Marginalized gifted adults may face additional layers of invisibility, tokenization, code-switching, or pressure to hide their abilities for safety and belonging.
  • Many gifted adults describe constant thinking, layered analysis, difficulty turning off the mind, and a chronic sense of not being enough or not meeting their potential.
  • When life or health disrupts cognitive functioning, the experience can become deeply existential, especially if intelligence has been central to identity.
  • Gifted clients may need support around accommodations, pacing, career alignment, self-compassion, recalibrating expectations, and building sustainability rather than simply being told to slow down.
  • Therapy is often more effective when it includes depth, nuance, collaboration, and intellectual respect rather than only basic coping skills or surface-level symptom reduction.
  • Therapists can help gifted adults shift from externally defined success toward a more meaningful, values-aligned life.

“If I have to mask so that folks will accept me, if I have to simplify my experience to translate it for others, if no one really knows me, even if I’m surrounded by people, I’m existentially alone.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

Why This Conversation Matters

Gifted adults are often misunderstood in therapy because their strengths can obscure their distress. A client may look high functioning, accomplished, or articulate while privately feeling exhausted, unseen, chronically overextended, or terrified that they are falling short of who they were supposed to become. This episode invites therapists to look beyond visible achievement and ask better questions about cost, fit, identity, meaning, and how a client is actually sustaining the life they are living.

It also offers an important reminder that treatment is not just about reducing symptoms. For many gifted adults, the deeper work includes belonging, authenticity, self-acceptance, purpose, and building a life that fits who they are rather than one driven only by performance or expectation.

Continuing Education Information

We’re excited to offer the opportunity for 1 unit of continuing education for this podcast episode.

Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit you just need to:

Once that’s all completed, you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile, or you can download it for your records.

You can find this full course (including handouts and resources) here: https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/courses/the-burden-of-potential-therapy-for-gifted-adults-navigating-burnout-identity-and-2e-considerations

Continuing Education Approvals:

When we are airing this podcast episode, we have the following CE approval:

Therapy Reimagined is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LPCCs, LCSWs, and LEPs (CAMFT CEPA provider #132270). Therapy Reimagined maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Courses meet the qualifications for the listed hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Please check with your licensing board to confirm eligibility.

Please check back as we add other approval bodies: Continuing Education Information including grievance and refund policies.

 

Resources on Gifted Adults, Burnout, and 2e Considerations

We’ve pulled together resources and concepts mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links.

Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance.

Brown, M., & Peterson, E. (2022). Current approaches to research with gifted adults: Differences known and unknown. Roeper Review, 44(1), 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2021.2005207

Frumau-van Pinxten, W. L., Derksen, J. J. L., & Peters, W. A. M. (2023).
The psychological world of highly gifted young adults: A follow-up study. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00313-8

Perrone, K. M., Jackson, Z. V., Wright, S. L., Ksiazak, T. M., & Perrone, P. A. (2007).
Career-related issues and concerns of highly intelligent individuals. Advanced Development, 9, 153–166.

Poirier, J., Brault-Labbé, A., & Brassard, A. (2025). Living with the gift of giftedness: An exploratory study on the well-being of intellectually gifted adults. Gifted Child Quarterly, 69(4), 367–385. https://doi.org/10.1177/00169862251347293

Pollet, E., & Schnell, T. (2017). Brilliant: But what for? Meaning and subjective well-being in the lives of intellectually gifted and academically high-achieving adults. Journal of Happiness Studies, 18, 1459–1484. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9783-4

Renzulli, J. S. (2016). The three-ring conception of giftedness: A developmental model for promoting creative productivity. In S. M. Reis (Ed.), Reflections on gifted education (pp. 55–86). Prufrock Press.

Rinn, A. N. (2024). A critique on the current state of research on the social and emotional experiences of gifted individuals and a framework for moving the field forward. Gifted Child Quarterly, 68(1), 34–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/00169862231197780

Rinn, A. N., & Bishop, J. (2015). Gifted adults: A systematic review and analysis of the literature. Gifted Child Quarterly, 59(4), 213–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986215600795

Schlegler, L. (2022). Professional situation of gifted adults: A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 736487. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.736487

Sewell, C. J. P., & Goings, R. B. (2019). Navigating the gifted bubble: Black adults reflecting on their transition experiences in NYC gifted programs. Roeper Review, 41(1), 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2018.1553218

Sternberg, R. J. (2023). Unwrapping gifts: Understanding the inner workings of giftedness through a panoply of paradigms in the field of psychology. Roeper Review, 45(2), 84–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2023.2172754

Szymanski, A. (T.), & Wrenn, M. (2019). Growing up with intensity: Reflections on the lived experiences of intense, gifted adults. Roeper Review, 41(4), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2019.1661054

Tasca, I., Guidi, M., Turriziani, P., Mento, G., & Tarantino, V. (2024). Behavioral and socio-emotional disorders in intellectual giftedness: A systematic review. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 55, 768–789.

Full references will be available with the episode materials at moderntherapistcommunity.com.

Relevant Episodes

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

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Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements)

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:15
Hey, modern therapists, we’re so excited to offer the opportunity for one unit of continuing education for this podcast episode. Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit, you just need to go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post test and complete the evaluation. Once that’s all completed, you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile, or you can download it for your records. For a current list of our CE approvals, check out moderntherapistcommunity.com.

Katie Vernoy 0:48
Once again, hop over to moderntherapistcommunity.com for one CE, once you’ve listened.

Curt Widhalm 0:54
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is a podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our practices, the things that go on with our clients, the way that we work. And this is one of our continuing education eligible episodes. So listen to the beginning or the end of the episode, or check out our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com to find out how you can get your CEs through us. And today, we’re tackling a topic that is profoundly misunderstood. We had done a podcast several months ago, a CE, podcast on working with gifted children. Katie, at the time, had said that she wanted to do an episode on working with gifted adults, because there’s quite a few differences, and I know that Katie did all of the research on this episode, and I’m gonna play surrogate audience member and just kind of ask questions like we normally do, but we had talked before we pushed record about some of the things that I know Katie is gonna talk about. Katie and I both have lived experiences of being identified as gifted, and one of the concerns that we had was, how do we talk about this without just seeming like we’re full of ourselves? And then Katie said, here’s the outline to the episode, and here’s some of the ways that this specifically shows up in the kinds of clients who are coming in, who are gifted. So we’re probably going to talk a little bit about our lived experiences during this episode, but hopefully in a way that highlights how this clinically shows up. We’re not just here to ramble on about ourselves. So it’s something that even I feel a little bit of spidey senses in coming into this as far as like, I don’t know how this is gonna get taken, but apparently, Katie, you have all kinds of wonderful things to say about how this is exactly how it shows up in clinical sessions, too.

Katie Vernoy 3:03
Yeah, I think even this initial conversation will show up later in the discussion around not being fully authentic or being able to talk about experiences as a gifted person because it’s misunderstood. So I think that we’ll, we’ll put that in our pocket and bring it back out later. But I felt like it was important to do this episode, because a lot of this stuff in the gifted kids episode, which we’ll link to over at mtsgpodcast.com really was talking about potential and kids at that stage, and once they become adults, there’s more of a potential gap between potential and achievement. And so I wanted to make sure that we addressed it. And so how I’m going to walk through this episode is talking through, you know, the different stages of treatment, looking at assessment, internal experience, common presenting problems and and then treatment implications and some challenges. But I want to make it clear when we start out that gifted adults don’t present saying they’re gifted. It’s they don’t come in and say, Hey, I’m a smarty pants. And that’s my whole problem. They present like all clients do.

Curt Widhalm 4:12
Well, that was going to be my first question. Is people aren’t making that initial phone call saying, Hey, I’m gifted. Or my Mensa group says that I need to seek out therapy. You’re saying that people present just like anybody else does. So what do some of these presenting issues look like that might make a clinician say, Maybe I need to assess if there’s some giftedness going on here.

Katie Vernoy 4:41
So I’m going to talk about that briefly, and then we’ll go into it in a lot more depth later. But especially in my practice, they present with burnout. They’re super exhausted. They’ve been working at a very high level, and it’s not sustainable. That can also, you know, there can also be any other the life transitions, anxiety and depression can be there. Relationship strain, identity confusion is one that I especially like to look at. I enjoy identity work a lot but, but sometimes, because giftedness is a part of identity can be very important. Under performance is an interesting one, because oftentimes we think about gifted folks and we think they’re going to be high achieving, but even if someone’s doing really well, if it’s if they don’t feel like they’re meeting their potential, they might report it as under performance. And existential distress is a really interesting one. We’ll go into that later, but I think that there’s, there’s a lot there that I think is important to look at, and not just because I kind of participate in the existential framing of things. So to frame it even more, let’s frame this topic a little bit more. Let’s talk about what the definition is. Intellectually gifted is high intellectual potential. It is not the same thing as high achievers, or adults who achieve eminence, which is the visible achievement status and output. There’s an overlap, but they’re not the same. And research is very limited and inconsistent in adults, and they have different definitions, they have different paradigms, and it leads to a lot of different conclusions. And so being able to recognize, okay, we’re talking about giftedness as something she’s processing intensity, meaning making and person environment fit. It reflects potential, but not guaranteed success or well being. I think that helps us frame our conversation. But because the research is so limited, oftentimes we’re looking at kids, they’re looking at these different definitions. Some of this stuff is a little bit more extrapolations from what I read, versus, and from my clinical work, versus, this is the stated fact of all of the research. Now, there is a lot of really good research happening, so I want to put that in there that there is, you know, we do have references. Those will be at mtsgpodcast.com and they’re, they’re really good articles, but all of the articles, all of the literature reviews and the larger papers are saying, yeah, there’s a lot of a lot of stuff that doesn’t quite line up.

Curt Widhalm 7:09
For a lot of adults who are coming in, how do you identify potential? Because I imagine a lot of your practice is very similar to mine, where the adults who are coming in are probably professionals, probably already working in, probably already have a lot of good output. So in kind of teasing out the difference between what that potential is versus what the actual output is, I put out lots of things. I’m very busy, as you know, in a lot of things that I do, how would you look at somebody like me and say, you know, here’s where your potential actually really is.

Katie Vernoy 7:52
It’s a hard one, because it can be very complex because of all of the things that we’re going to talk about in a minute. But I’ll talk at a high level. You want to look for rapid processing, clients that are getting things very quickly, that extrapolate things very easily. Abstract thinking, they don’t stay in the rigid, concrete thinking. Pattern recognition is a big one for me. They start putting together like amazing metaphors, and they start looking at things with a lot of insight. Metacognition, being able to think about thinking very in depth, high insight. But then potentially, there’s not consistent functioning with that. But many times you’ll start hearing people talk about being different or hard to place, being ahead. And for me, it becomes this feeling that I get when I don’t find myself explaining things more than once, I don’t find myself feeling the need to simplify my language. And so I think it’s, it’s a little bit you I can feel it because of my own experience. But I think the other piece is clients maybe start cutting me off before I say something a second time. They talk about what they do in a way that has a lot of nuance and depth.

Curt Widhalm 9:09
So they’re clients who get it, and they’re ones where the the feeling in the room, or the feeling in the session isn’t kind of like they’re trying to bypass and just jump to right answers, but there’s kind of a qualitative feeling to it that they understand and they’re ready to move on. That’s what I’m picking up from you.

Katie Vernoy 9:33
Yeah. And then there’s also some of the achievement markers that you might see, or a mismatch between what they achieved and what they accomplished. So they are, they’re coming in talking about low functioning, they’re talking about some of these different things, and then all of a sudden you hear that they went to a very prestigious college, or that they have studied subjects that are typically very challenging. And so it’s, it’s important at that point to really clarify what the profile is of the potential giftedness. Is it intellectual giftedness? Like, do they have a potential to be smart? Like, do you, do you see their intelligence on display? Or is it more talent and achievement, because someone can be high achieving and not intellectually gifted. That’s more of motivation and perseverance and those types of things. And so I think there’s, there’s a need to figure out, where do they sit on that? They can have both intellectual giftedness and talent and achievement, or they can have one or the other. Multi-potentiality is another interesting one, because some folks are gifted, and they’re solely intellectually gifted. They’re super smart, but they, you know, they can’t carry a tune, they can’t they can’t run to save their life. There’s, there’s a lot of things where they don’t have other skills. And so some folks are very specialized. But then there’s the folks that seem to be good at everything. And so those are a lot easier to see, because they oftentimes have a lot of achievement in a lot of different areas, and they’ll have special considerations for themselves. And then, you know, we talked about potential versus performance. But the other thing that can be very interesting is whether or not they’ve been identified as gifted, and that oftentimes can be based on whether or not they were in a school that had those types of identifications, whether or not they are from a typically marginalized population where giftedness is either undervalued or under identified. Knowing whether someone has been identified or under identified have been they’ve been told their whole lives they were smart, or they’ve been told their whole life that they’re not meeting their potential, is going to impact the clinical picture.

Curt Widhalm 11:47
In our children’s episode I had talked about twice exceptional as being a factor that’s there, and largely in a lot of the twice exceptional communities, it’s referring to things such as ADHD or autism. There are other things that fit in, but…

Katie Vernoy 12:06
Like learning disability, for example.

Curt Widhalm 12:08
Exactly. How does that show up in adults? Because I imagine that as society gets better at identifying, diagnosing, being able to create opportunities, create individualized accommodations and learning spaces for kids. I would imagine that that would extend to adults. But I also imagine that for adults who grew up without being identified as either gifted or some of the you know, they fell through the cracks on ADHD or autism diagnoses too, that there’s going to be certain kinds of presentations that these clients have.

Katie Vernoy 12:46
Exactly. And the challenge now, and it’ll be interesting to see how generationally it shifts, is that there are a lot of AFAB folks, folks from marginalized identities, who have a 2e diagnosis, or would would qualify for a 2e diagnosis if they were so assessed. And it’s because they aren’t typically seen as gifted and or they’re not typically seen as having ADHD or being autistic, that it’s just this confusing picture. It could be they’re highly intelligent, but ADHD, autism, learning disabilities puts them in an average space, and so it’s they’re masking each other. It can also be that they’re highly gifted and and they’re putting systems, perfectionism over preparation, tons of effort into being successful because of executive functioning problems, and that’s not seen as anything at all. It’s hidden. It’s very well masked, and so the neurodivergence is completely ignored. It could also be that the ADHD, autism, learning disabilities completely hide the giftedness, and they’re put into special education classes and those types of things when they’re growing up, and they’re also not seen as having much potential as adults. And so the intelligence is completely hidden. This leads to delayed diagnosis and intervention sometimes when things are so hidden and not identified in any specific way, and it it really, for me, has been one where a lot of the presenting problems I see are folks coming in, likely 2e, and they’re successful, but at a huge cost, because they’re over functioning so highly that they and they don’t realize that not everybody else is functioning at that in that way. And so this one is an especially important one to distinguish Szymanski and Wrenn in 2019 talked about intensity or over excitabilities as well in gifted folks. Like cognitive, you know, very high thinking, very emotional stuff, sensory stuff, a lot of energy, very highly imaginative, that that can be in gifted folks. But it was, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things where it was like, not exactly found anywhere. And I think the reason why it was so inconsistent was because I think it potentially is a part of giftedness, but I think it really is maybe more part of the neurodivergent experience, showing up in intelligent and gifted folks so often. And so trying to see the whole picture, where the intelligence masks the executive functioning, the intelligence leads to, I think, more masking, because I know I’m not fitting in, and so I’m, I’m I’m masking a lot. I think it really leads to severe burnout and exhaustion. And so I think this is a really important part of about assessment.

Curt Widhalm 15:47
So a question that I have is for some of the people that I’ve seen with either these 2e diagnoses, or even just in general, some of some of the general, more marginalized communities, so also talking about racial and ethnic sorts of things, that there’s reasons to downplay standing out, there’s there’s reasons to kind of hide, to mask, to not really put themselves out there. What is that process like? I think the answer to the why on this is usually pretty straightforward, but more curious what you hear about as far as the cost of code switching for people coming from particularly marginalized communities.

Katie Vernoy 16:37
I think the why can be pretty obvious for many of us, but I want to just touch on it briefly, as not all our colleagues maybe are up to date on these conversations. Academic pursuit, there’s kind of anti intellectualism in the culture, in the zeitgeist right now, and there’s also cultural reasons why families may either through generational trauma, Joy DeGruy talks about this in post traumatic slave syndrome, where folks were enslaved were penalized if they showed any kind of exceptional ability, and so those abilities were hidden for self protection. I think there’s also many times when things get missed because people are not seen as inherently exceptional or intelligent. So given that when someone with a marginalized identity is seen as exceptional because of their giftedness, their ability to do the work, they may end up needing to code switch to be perfect because of the tokenization that can happen. There can also be the opposite thing, where that, where it’s missed, where there’s minimizing invisibility, and that can be very, very harmful, because it’s I’m underutilized, I’m not seen, I’m I’m categorically misunderstood. But Sewell and Goings in 2019 did a really interesting study. It was more kind of looking back at development for black adults, black gifted adults. And gifted spaces could be welcoming, like it’s an opportunity to actually have intellectual peers, to do work that was more fulfilling, but it could have could also be isolating in another space where microaggressions or macroaggressions were occurring. And so even being identified sometimes can feel isolating, both from other folks like me, in some ways, you know, whether it’s culturally similar or intellectually similar. And so in part of this assessment, I think it’s, it’s important for all clients, you know, regardless of other identities, to look at fit. Do they have a family that’s supportive? Does school and work fit? Do their relationships fit for them? And were they affirmed, alienated or misunderstood? And so when we’re really looking at the full gifted experience, I think that is those are the main ideas that we want to make sure that we’re paying attention to.

… 19:05
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Curt Widhalm 19:07
What you’re talking about so far is kind of the overall umbrella picture of what clients like this are fitting into? What is more of their day to day life like?

Katie Vernoy 19:22
I like that question because it brings us back to the question that you asked earlier, which is, how do you know that someone in front of you is gifted? And I think this gives us another way to assess for that, and gives us more context for how we want to look at what their experience is. So the one that came up most frequently, and this is Frumau-van Pinxten et al, in 2023 and this was like a lived experience qualitative study. So this is obviously from small groups of people, but I think it really resonated for me. I don’t know if it’ll resonate for you, but the strong internal drive, like, there’s an internal motor to learn, to grow, to understand, very curiosity driven. And it it’s something where it can be hard for you to turn your brain off. Like, do you relate to that at all, Curt?

Curt Widhalm 20:15
Now I’m wondering how much of this is ADHD, and how much of this is giftedness, and how much of this is even a third category of…

Katie Vernoy 20:24
anxiety, or,

Curt Widhalm 20:26
I was gonna say imposter syndrome, or parents that are constant, you know, being raised in a family that is just constantly, what are you doing? You’re not doing anything that just is kind of, I need to latch on to something. So, yes, I’m curious if you can help figure out how much of each percentages those are.

Katie Vernoy 20:47
And is it important to figure out the percentages? That’s another question. But let’s, let’s continue with the internal experiences. So constant thinking, like we said, but there’s also layered analysis. I find that there are times when I’m thinking about something, and then I think about this level of it, and then this level of it, and then all of a sudden, and this is the also, is like, is this ADHD? Is this, you know, autistic pattern recognition? What is this, but the layered analysis, and all of a sudden, I’m talking about something, and this is why I like talking with you. Curt, because you’ll be like, you’re with me. Other people will be, where did that come from? That’s that seems very strange. And so the layered analysis, the difficulty turning the mind off, hyper awareness. And this goes back to the quote, unquote, over excite abilities or intensities where I’m really aware of details or sensory stuff or those kinds of things. And so life can feel very loud at times, because I’m constantly assessing the whole environment, and that can be also confused with PTSD and hyperarousal there. But being able to see all the details and see all the things can be very helpful. It can be overwhelming. There’s also this, I’m not enough. I’m never done. And I don’t know if this goes to the potential piece, or if this is more along the lines of that internal drive, because I’ve got clients who talk about their identity growing up was they were the smart kid, and then whether it was ADHD or something else kind of got in the way of them acting on those things, or even just life got in the way, but acting on those things. And so then it’s I’m not just I’m not enough. I’m never enough, like though I’m not meeting my potential, I’m never…

Curt Widhalm 22:31
I’m constantly comparing myself to what I should have been able to do.

Katie Vernoy 22:36
Exactly, exactly. And so, so that’s one of the pieces. I think some of the other things are the emotional identity experience and so feeling fundamentally different from other folks, feeling unseen or misunderstood, masking to belong and self editing your authenticity. The self editing authenticity, I think, is, is a way of code switching. It can be code switching for a number of reasons, cultural and intellect based, or autistic based, but not being able to use the word that you mean because people don’t understand that word, not being able to describe complex really having to simplify complex concepts so that folks are going to follow you, and so I don’t necessarily share with you my whole experience, because you’re not going to understand it. And so I’m sure therapists are listening to this and going, Oh, this would be a big problem in therapy if someone felt like they could not describe their full experience to their therapist, because their therapist is not going to understand it. This leads to tensions, right? There’s the depth that many gifted folks experience, the nuance, the huge depth of information and experience and synthesis. But if I go into all of that, I’m not necessarily going to belong. And that directly ties into, can I be authentic, or do I need to adapt to be accepted? The other sides of this, you know, are whether I’m too intense or I can be you know, can I quiet myself down, make myself smaller to be able to be accepted? And the final one is really the potential versus lived reality. I, I was really good at math. I am doing nothing with math. And there, there are probably folks, you know, if I were to see them again in my life, they’d say, What the heck are you doing? And so being able to come to terms with that can be a very important thing. But one of the ones I, one of the other things that I saw in there that just was so true to me, and I asked my husband if I could use him as an example. School and pretty much everything having to do with intellect is way too easy early on, and so there’s very little training and failure frustration or challenge. And one of the things, and this is the thing I talked about with my husband. He hated being told he was a hard worker. He’s gotten better at it, but being a hard worker was meaning he was failing. He was it was too much effort to do what he was supposed to do. And it really speaks to this idea of if I’m learning, if I’m struggling, if I’m having a hard time with anything, not just, Hey, this is normal part of life. This I am failing. I am hugely inferior. And that that is very interesting to play around with clinically, too, but it it was something that I just hadn’t even thought about, like, if you don’t have that friction of struggling with concepts or any of that kind of stuff. You really don’t You don’t gain frustration tolerance until much later, when things actually start getting hard.

Curt Widhalm 25:51
I do want to go back to what you were talking about, masking to belong and some of these identity experience things, because part of what I’ve seen is, and I think that this couples up with what you were also talking about, adaptation is when you’re supposed to be really good at things and you don’t have answers, or you don’t have a pivot point to come to next, that also speaks into some of that failure. When your identity is, I’m the I’m the person who can adapt. I’m the person who has a backup plan to a backup plan to a backup plan that shows us, you know, anxiety, but it’s almost kind of this algorithmic way of thinking. But on one hand, if you are afraid of showing here’s my algorithmic thinking where I have 17 backup plans that’s not OCPD, or it’s not something that falls into one of the more anxiety diagnostic categories. This is also where some of that self editing and not being fully transparent ends up coming out or not coming out, I guess.

Katie Vernoy 27:07
Yeah, it’s really interesting, because the way that I try to sort through that clinically is asking enough questions and recognizing that some clients, and especially gifted clients, are very adept at saying an answer that is complete enough, but not their complete picture. And so digging further into I’m failing, you know, I thought I’d plan this all out, and I’m not able to adapt. Goes into Okay, well, what does that plan actually look like? What do you mean you’re feeling…? What you know it’s, it’s really digging into, what is the self evaluation there? What is the perspective there to get to that true internal experience of what do you mean you’ve prepared? What is, what does that look like? Or even, what does it mean that you were under prepared. And so there’s, there’s, there are times when underprepared is absolutely as much as anyone could prepare given the time commitments and the time allotted and the commitments and all of those things. And yet it didn’t, it didn’t work. So I’ve now under prepared, and somehow have to find extra time that I don’t have or I should have prepared better. And so some of it is a miscalculation or a misjudgment of what’s really available to do or what is actually possible. And some of it is this, I like your way of phrasing it, logarithmic way of thinking that either there’s a self awareness that people don’t think like that besides me, or there’s not, and that we assume we’re talking the same language when we are not. So of course, everybody has 27 backup plans, like that, that makes tons of sense. And then you talk to someone that has no backup plans, and you’re very surprised. And so really getting into what is your definition, what is your evaluation? What do you actually mean by that? I think can help get into that internal experience of what’s how someone’s brain actually works.

Curt Widhalm 29:17
So we’re talking about anxiety here. You’re also talking about loneliness, and there is at least a common world connection that people with high intelligence can be more depressed. So looking at what kinds of mood disorders, what kinds of ways does this end up presenting more on kind of the diagnostic end.

Katie Vernoy 29:44
So I want to touch on one thing that you just said, this existential loneliness, that I said I would go into more. And so I think it’s important to address it a little bit. And that can look like anxiety, it can look like depression, it can look like adjustment struggles. But if I have to mask so that folks will accept me, if I have to simplify my experience to translate it for others, if no one really knows me, even if I’m surrounded by people, I’m existentially alone. And that can lead to a lot of depression, that can lead to a lot of grief, or just a lack of feeling like you fit in anywhere. And so then there’s there’s anxiety. There can be existential aloneness. I don’t know a better way to say that. But if we’re looking at presenting problems to your question, anxiety can be related to over functioning. It can be related to having something that has shifted. So what worked for me before isn’t working for me now. Depression can be based on this hyper understanding of what is going on in the world, and not being as likely to put stock in kind of positive illusions that sometimes folks will go to. Adjustment struggles can be very challenging if there’s any cognitive components to it, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. And identity disruption is really a good one, because there are times when the folks who come to me, they’ll come it’s usually related to career stuff, which we’ll get into a second, but there’s an up leveling. Someone’s been promoted, someone’s had something come up in their personal life, where they’re taking on something additional, and so then it and they’re struggling with it, and that becomes that tension point of, who am I if I’m not the smart one, who am I if things don’t come easy to me? Who am I if I no longer can count on these things? Because that’s been so tied into my identity. And so a lot of the symptoms are tied to mismatch or a lack of meaning, and it’s not just a symptom load, for example, and that’s some of that’s coming from Poirier et al in 2025. But the big one that I think is my bread and butter, and this is what I do for my work all the time, is burnout and career concerns.

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Katie Vernoy 32:11
And so I’m going to put this back on you Curt, because there’s times when I’ve I’ve specifically worked with you, even on the podcast about ways that you might address some burnout or over functioning. And so when you think about gifted folks coming in with burnout and career concerns, what are the things that come to mind for you?

Curt Widhalm 32:32
Always need to have a project. That even when there is scheduled time off, there’s projects within projects that happen as a way to get away from all of the projects that are projects that… There’s plans. You know, even when I schedule vacations with my wife, and it’s kind of like, okay, and I look forward to doing this and this and this on our vacation, she’s like, another version of you where she’s like, No, we are going to go and do nothing. And I say, Okay, look how much time I’m gonna have to be able to do stuff in that nothingness.

Katie Vernoy 33:12
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 33:12
So that that’s what comes to mind, is it’s it feels different than ADHD in that there is a existential need to do something, as opposed to kind of a energy based need to be able to kind of shake it out of a body. I’m over simplifying in both people. This is Katie’s episode, but this to me, it’s a dissatisfaction with doing nothing because of some of that potential to be able to do something.

Katie Vernoy 33:49
So you’re talking about two things, and so the first one that I think would be interesting to talk about related to that is perfectionism. And this was a really interesting finding, and it was something that I’ve been coming around to, but when I read it in the simple phrase of adaptive perfectionism, I was like, Ahhh! You know, because it was so amazing to think about, wait a second, I’ve always joked, and maybe this isn’t totally a joke. I’m striving for excellence, and so adaptive perfectionism, is that hyper productivity, really striving for excellence, that some gifted folks actually show higher levels of achievement and higher levels of well being, if it is appropriately directed towards goals, towards those, those things that feel really good, you know, I can. I can dig in deep. I can. I can learn about all of the things. I can go down those rabbit holes. And the study for that, which was Perrone et al, 2007 I think it might have been a literature review, but it was talking about; it leads to less or lower well being or maladaptation when you can’t rest in your leisure time, which I am also guilty of too. I’ve worked very, very hard to get to the place where I can actually slow down, rest, even enjoy imperfection. Let’s just be messy for a minute. And so that was, that was what came to mind when you were talking about that piece. Because perfectionism is not uniformly maladaptive. It can create rigidity, harsh self evaluation and exhaustion, but it can also be something where, if you are a striver and you are able to really achieve a lot, that perfectionism can can actually lead you to some satisfaction. But it’s it can be very dangerous, because if we over focus on perfect outputs or perfectionism, it can be a lot of over function, over functioning, chronic over functioning, huge cognitive load, and that pressure to do something meaningful or impactful can be just exhausting. And so a lot of the work that I end up doing is trying to realign that. So we’ll get to that when we talk about kind of treatment implications. But many gifted adults are objectively successful at work, especially if they have cognitive, cognitively demanding roles, but they may be working so hard, especially if there’s that 2e presentation, that it’s not sustainable. And so when we’re looking at like burnout and career concerns, in addition to what you described, there’s also communication strain with non gifted colleagues, needing to adapt pace, language and complexity. So, you know, kind of repeating that, but in a different setting. There’s also a complex relationship with leadership. Gifted folks oftentimes end up in leadership, and I absolutely love leadership, so this isn’t my complex relationship, but I’ve seen this with my clients, which is, they don’t necessarily want leadership, but they find themselves in it because they are the ones that understand it the most, or they have, I, you know, the most ideas or those types of things. And so then they get put into this, this leadership role, and then they have to delegate, which is horrible, because now I’m my my accomplishment is based on someone else’s behavior, someone else’s output, and so oftentimes, folks are much happier if they have some autonomy. They have folks that they’re taking responsibility for. There’s challenge those types of things, and certainly a strong, collegial environment is going to be helpful for anyone you know, especially for gifted folks, because oftentimes they feel alone. But when we start looking at those, those edges, where it’s like I have leadership, but it means that I’m gonna have to delegate stuff, and then I’m gonna have to have sub standard potentially output, or I’m not going to be able to communicate with the people reporting to me. I don’t you know, it’s like we’re speaking different languages, or on the opposite end, I feel dissatisfied because I’m underemployed. People are under utilizing me. I feel like a misfit. There’s a lot to look at within the burnout and career concern, so I think it’s it’s really important, and I’ve done episodes on this, so we’ll link to those in the show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. But, but the last point I want to make about burnout and career concerns is for folks in marginalized identities, where there’s tokenization and visibility, potentially having to manage stereotypes. This can happen for a lot of folks code switching, and this is from Sewell and Goings in 2019 that there’s just a lot more workplace strain for marginalized, gifted adults. And so that’s, I think that’s who I typically end up working with, are folks who have one or more marginalized identities and are coming up against that. And so I think that’s really important. But you also started talking about the 2e stuff, and so I want to talk about that in relationship to this. When success comes at a much higher cost, you know, all the overwork, the systems, the perfectionism; gifted folks are going to get praised for what looks like excellence, but they experience that excellence as frantic, effortful and precarious. And this is, I think, where some imposter syndrome can come in, and we have that, you know, a great episode with Stevon Lewis about it. But it can also feel really hard to identify for therapists, if that masking is pretty complete, or you’re not digging deeply enough into the internal experience, like what you talked about before, Curt, because I’ve had clients who are very successful, and they talk about how hard it is for them. And sometimes it’s, you know, the harsh self criticism, and they’re actually fine. But other times it’s been when we actually look into the layers and layers of systems and the layers and layers of over preparation, and harsh self criticism, all of those things it is. It’s pretty overwhelming. It’s very it’s heartbreaking in truth that someone is working so hard to tread water, basically, and treading water at a very high level, don’t get me wrong. So there’s a lot of success, but it is so painful for these folks. And if, if it is minimized, and I potentially have done this myself, at times, it you don’t get to the root of it. You don’t get to understand what is that challenge that someone’s experiencing. And I’ve had clients who clearly have some sort of neurodivergence. They go to try to get diagnosed, and they’re told, Well, you’re too successful. You can’t be neurodivergent. And so then there’s an invalidation of the executive functioning challenges, the sensitivities, the all of the things that we can talk about in other nerodivergent episodes. And so to me, when I start looking at it, another way that I start seeing this is I, and this is my own experience too. Is there’s this kind of hacking of executive functioning. You’re constantly engineering your life or your career, doing all the things. Like I before we even started, I had questions for you. I knew I wasn’t going to remember those questions, and it was knew I wasn’t going to remember where I would write down those questions, so I put those questions on the calendar so that I would have those questions, and then I kept it open so that I could make sure to ask you those questions. Now, what that looks like if I don’t explain all that is, I always remember stuff, I always have the information I need exactly when I need it. And in truth, especially since you know some different life experiences that I’ve had, those things are gone if I if I haven’t used my systems. And so being able to really dig into what is the cost for the performance that someone’s having is really important to be able to do some of this work.

Curt Widhalm 42:05
What happens to the identity of a gifted adult when that identity is based entirely on their cognitive abilities? So these super gifted people, people who are living up to their intellectual potential or not, but the ones who have been able to constantly engineer their lives and adapt and change things. But when there are things such as burnout, when there are things such as grief, when there are things such as cognitive declines due to age or to things such as dementia. How terrifying is that?

Katie Vernoy 42:49
Well, I want to add to that too, becoming a new parent, having chronic stress, medical issues, all of these things can impact cognitive abilities. Long covid, and there’s so many of these things that can can impact cognitive abilities and it’s hugely distressing, memory processing, verbal access, stamina, all of those things feel less reliable, and so the conversation can go extremely existential, especially if it’s something that’s permanent, like cognitive decline, due to medical issues, aging, dementia, whatever. I am going to be completely gone. And to a certain extent, there is some truth to some of the medical issues, and that’s potentially very far off. And so then it’s looking at, well, how do you make meaning? How do you sort through who you are, in addition to the intelligence, in addition to your ability to think things through and give good advice or understand things, or those types of things? And so I think it is terrifying, and it’s really rich clinical work.

Curt Widhalm 44:04
So these are all things that challenge people. They’re stressful. How do people without some of the therapeutic skills? How do you see them ending up coping? Like what are some of the value adaptive coping mechanisms that people might have, I tend to see myself doubling down on what normally works for me. So if I feel Hey, my world is feeling shaken up a little bit, or I feel something that’s out of control. I’m going to start a new project, because as long as I’ve got something to work on, I’ve got something to work on, and that feels safe.

Katie Vernoy 44:50
That is definitely one mechanism. It’s becoming more productive. It’s over functioning. It’s getting to the place where. Or rest or downtime is seen as failure or weakness or just not accessible. You know, folks get themselves into jobs that that have 100 hour weeks, constantly traveling, changing time zones. There’s a lot of stuff where just completely getting into full exhaustion as a way to slow down your brain, or to slow down the to give give an excuse while your brain is slowing down to get away from all of the different things. I also see folks collapse and kind of sit in the under functioning exhaustion, I have nothing to give, so I’m just going to to melt into a couch, for example. And so it’s interesting to see both sides of that coin, because the presentations are going to be very different, and the underlying reason for those presentations may be actually fairly similar. And so when we’re moving into kind of the treatment implications of this, if you can spend the time that we do as therapists really understanding the client and their context, and start naming some patterns. I think that could be very helpful. Is this a 2e presentation that hasn’t been identified before, whether one or both sides of those coins has been unrecognized? And when you when you get to that, you can see the hidden cost. You can start looking at the ways that they’re looking at themselves, what harsh criticism is happening, because they’re not responding the way a neurotypical person might to situations. They might be over functioning and explaining that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you can sustain that activity, and potentially, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do something. I think there’s a lot of maladaptive perfectionism. I can’t stop. If I stop, then I’m failing in some way. I’m wasting time. I’m wasting my life. And so being able to differentiate between maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism so that that you’re not saying, Hey, slow down and do nothing. It’s saying, hey, let’s focus your energy and resources towards the goals that you have, and not towards being perfect every second of every day or productive every second of every day. And really look to find the mismatches. And there’s a lot of mismatches, and we’ll go into that in a minute. But when you have great potential, people oftentimes put that potential and what success looks like on to you. And so being able to pull back and define your success your own way is really, really important. And so it’s it’s really sorting through what is happening here? What are the coping strategies that you’re using? Are they working? And what might work better? And how can we look at this differently? And that’s therapy, 101, but I think I’d like to continue through and kind of adapt and and frame this for gifted adults.

Curt Widhalm 48:19
What’s the impact on relationships? The ways that people relate as you’ve been talking in this episode of not being able to fully communicate themselves, not being able to, I’m guessing, have shared enjoyment with partners, with might have it with work colleagues. They might have it in circles outside of of you know, their their marriage or their dating or intimate relationships. What kind of impacts does that really end up bringing up when there’s maybe a intelligence gap.

Katie Vernoy 49:00
When we look at intelligence gaps, words or skills, differences, it can be a hindrance, and it can also be something that is adapted to where there are folks who feel more supported, they feel understood. And in my relationship, he and I are both gifted, but we are gifted in different ways. And so I’m not going to understand what he’s talking about. He’s not going to understand what I’m talking about every single time. But we can hold space for that, and I don’t think that’s solely a gifted person’s capacity to hold space to talk about things that I marginally understand. And so I think we can feel very out of sync. We can feel chronically misunderstood, and that we have to translate and simplify. And sometimes that may be the case. I mean, parents and aunties and uncles simplify all the time to their kids, and that can still feel very loving and connected. But I think. Having partnerships, where you can join together on the things with authenticity. I think that can be very helpful. Talking about an experience and an emotion, an emotional experience, versus the depth of the philosophical conversation, for example. But I know for myself when I’m sitting with someone who gets what I’m talking about. And I think this is true for everyone, not just for gifted folks, but especially, I think, for for gifted folks in this context, when I’m sitting with someone who gets something, I feel this relaxation. I feel this like it feels invigorating to have a conversation with someone where I can truly, kind of unfold, unmask and dig deeper into nuance, and being able to find those relationships wherever they are, I think, can be really important. And so recognizing for our gifted clients that they need to get a lot of their needs met, because some folks have gifted partners that don’t have emotional complexity and can’t hold the emotional space, and so they have friends or therapists that can help them with some of the emotional stuff, like we can’t be everything to every person, so I don’t think it’s contraindicated to have friends and family members and partners who were not equally gifted. I think it’s understanding how we’re getting our needs met and what that looks like, and how we can still be authentic and connected, even if there are parts of our of our experience we have to translate at times.

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Curt Widhalm 51:30
So I want to help us shift into what we actually do in treatment.

Katie Vernoy 51:36
Yes.

Curt Widhalm 51:37
So once we identify these patterns, how do we help? You know, what do we ask our clients to do? Maybe we don’t want to be sitting in front of our clients. Be like, you’re super smart. What would you tell me to tell you to do in this situation?

Katie Vernoy 51:55
But you don’t want to not do that. I think sometimes being able to get really collaborative and understand that the person in front of you, if they’re gifted, has probably done a lot of research. They may have talked, talked to AI, they may have been in therapy before, and have every single coping strategy known to man in their memory. And so I think it gets into for me, anyway, it’s very relational. It can be pushing back on some of the expectations. And typically I start with coping strategies when I when I get someone in, just to help them get resourced. And so it can be adapting some of these coping strategies to make sense to someone that has usually not needed extra coping strategies. And so letting a gifted person know you’re going to have to provide yourself with accommodations is a really very valuable and sometimes very difficult conversation. You know, how do you support executive functioning? If there’s some 2e stuff on on board, or if they’re just very challenged by the amount of time in a day. You can’t do all of the things. And so being able to simplify, identifying where there’s overcompensation or over functioning, and being able to reduce the cost of functioning so that there’s some sustainability and some some relief from some of the burnout and exhaustion. And so some of that looks like making sure you understand their goals, so there’s a career alignment. You don’t want to tell someone to take a nap if they really want to make the next step in, you know, partnership at a law firm, right? So, so you want to make sure there’s an alignment with their career, that they fit within their environment as much as possible. Looking at pacing. You can’t do all the things right now. I think that’s a big one for me. Personally. I want to know, once I decide that I want to learn something, I want it, to know all of it right in this moment, and I can’t, so I just keep going and going and going and trying to get myself there. And a huge one for me is helping to support sustainability. What are the things that can happen? And we’ve talked about optimal performance for therapists, but I use that a lot for my my gifted and high achieving folks too, because there’s, there’s only so much that rest, rest, just vegging out, can do, and there’s a lot of stuff that, if we can support optimal functioning and give them a little bit more space, a little bit more room for introspection versus productivity. I think that can help just calm things down as kind of an initial piece to the work.

Curt Widhalm 54:29
So what I hear sometimes from clients is, especially when it comes to work, there’s maybe a unfulfilled-ness, as you’re talking about, and I want to maybe ask a little bit more about how you get that into a deeper conversation, to be able to say, look, I work with idiots. There’s several levels above me of people who are better connected career people. You know, I I have a good job, I I’m not necessarily happy in what I’m doing. Where do you go with clients like that?

Katie Vernoy 55:11
I usually zoom out to understand how work fits into their life, because for a lot of gifted folks, work is their identity, and so it’s important to see it as a clinical, very clinically relevant piece of the work. But it’s not the only thing in their lives, typically. So for some folks, it is. For some people, they work and they sleep and that’s about it, and they exercise and they try to take care of themselves like it’s I am optimally performing, and my whole life is work. But when we zoom out to what is valuable, what is important. What are your high level goals? Not what is your goal for this week or this year, but what are what are your goals long term? And so it could be financial stability, it could be certain level of accomplishment. It could be opportunities that come with higher levels at work, and so being able to assess what those things are separate from what the current work situation is, is really important. And then looking at, are these things aligned, the values, purpose, autonomy, growth, like, are those things aligned? And then, to me, like in your situation, it’s looking at, is there a way to make that work setting tolerable? You’ve got folks that above you seem to be better politically than you are. They’re more connected. The people below you, it seems like it’s hard to supervise them or do what you need to do with them. And you know, use the word idiots. But is there a way to make that environment weatherable, to get to where you want to go, or is it completely misaligned, and it might make sense to look at something else. Some gifted folks stay in very high status, high achievement careers, but start carving out a different path. Some folks, I think, especially the 2e folks, end up in entrepreneurship, you know, kind of self employment, because they’re the challenges of working for someone else gets too hard. I joke that I was ejected and basically and I’m unemployable except by myself at this point. So I think really understanding the person’s individual goals is critical to trying to sort this through, because gifted folks, oftentimes are seen to have potential for traditional success, but it may not actually align with what they want in their life, but they feel too tied back to that traditional success. And so sorting through, you know, the potential versus achievement stuff, I think, is important too, but sorting through what your lived experience is, what you’re doing and why are you doing it can be hugely important. And when the goal is, for example, when the goal is financial stability and not particular esteem or a specific position at work, someone over producing and over functioning doesn’t get them a higher paycheck, necessarily, especially if they’ve been promoted to the level that they want to be promoted to. And so telling someone to underperform at work and by underperform, for gifted people, that actually just means performing at an average level can be very challenging because it’s but wait a second, I’m supposed to be doing my best, and it’s like, Well, you got to choose where you do your best, because your best is really good all the way around, and your so-so is really good.

Curt Widhalm 58:32
I often see that show up as: well, I’m giving up.

Katie Vernoy 58:39
Yes, yes, exactly. I’ve heard that many times. And so it’s being able to reframe that. To prioritize one’s own capacity and their own goals. And so for some clients, the argument that you’re playing into capitalism works really well, you’re sacrificing your own well being for the capitalist machine. That can help. For some folks, it’s looking at other values and alignment. So I’m over functioning at work, and it means that I’m not there to put my kids to bed. I’m not there to go to games on the weekends. That can be very powerful for some folks where it’s saying, Well, maybe you aren’t giving up at work right now, but are you giving up what you wanted to be as a parent or as a family member? And you know, these are hard choices. And looking at the weight that each of those things carry is really important, because gifted folks oftentimes are very clear. It’s very concrete what success is when you’re using your intellect or you’re using those skills. Success in family relationships can be more nebulous, and success in one’s health or their ability to take care themselves and the things that keep them functioning well can feel like a reasonable sacrifice for this goal. And so rebalancing can be very important, and it’s shifting from I’m giving up at work to I’m strategically deciding how I want to perform at work so that I can be more successful in the life I want to build.

Curt Widhalm 1:00:23
So you’re reorienting people to where their goals are and where they feel that they’re going to get the most out of their efforts. And if work happens to not be at the top of that list, it’s the permission to be able to use that energy economically.

Katie Vernoy 1:00:41
Yes, exactly, exactly. And one of the articles, or I guess a couple of the articles that were there, Pollet and Schnell 2017 and Poirier et al in 2025 talked about eudaemonic focus to happiness or success in life. And I’m not even sure I’m saying that, right? So I’m going to shift it to the meaning of it, which is a life well lived, not just pleasure being happy, but meaningfulness over productivity or pleasure. And so when the goals of treatment become self knowledge, and this is all this eudaimonic focus, self knowledge, volition and intentionality. I’m doing things on purpose, not because society tells me this is what success is. For example, values-coherent goals. The goal of making a lot of money is a societal goal. It can be a specific financial reasonable goal. It can also be something that gets away from you, and your values may not completely align with making that much money, and you don’t need to make that much money to have the life that you want. And so that’s one, and money is a hard one, so maybe it wasn’t the best one to put in there, but the values-coherent goals, are really important. And kind of what we were talking about before, personal growth is a part of this focus of a meaningful life, well lived. Self acceptance, which can be very hard if you’re constantly singled out and treated as different. Purpose, autonomy, mastery over your environment, having positive relationships. And so being able to shift that focus and understand where where clients, what the relationships are with each of those things, how important each of those things are to them. And putting that work together can be very helpful, both in the career elements, but also in in the personal elements as well. So I know we’re getting a little bit long on time, so I’m going to talk about a few of the other themes at a very high level so that we can get through them. Self Compassion and addressing the inner critic is very important. Looking at recalibrating expectations. What if you honored your need for rest? What if you didn’t push yourself so hard? How to to understand what the inner critic is trying to protect you from? those types of things. And finally, looking at protective factors, supportive intimate relationships, family support, financial stability and a perceived achievement of one’s intellectual potential. And those protective factors, I think, are very similar to everyone. But I think that that last one the perceived achievement of one’s intellectual potential, and that Poirier et all in 2025 went into that in good detail, I think is one that is an addition that is important for clinicians to recognize.

Curt Widhalm 1:03:36
So in true Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide fashion, we typically ask somewhere in an episode, what do therapists usually get wrong in working with these populations? So what have you come across as some of the missteps?

Katie Vernoy 1:03:52
Oftentimes with clients that have come to me after seeing other therapists, it’s someone who has not understood the nuance of what they’re saying. Have give them, given them pretty basic coping strategies. And that’s where it sat, like they didn’t go further than that. And basically, and this is part of our Modern Therapist’s thing, not doing more than chatGPT could with this. And so whether it’s stereotypes or or difficulty in understanding the gifted experience. A clinician who doesn’t have that attunement with what is needed can be very, very challenging for a gifted folk. And we talked about this in the child episode, too. So I won’t over, over go into that, but I think there’s, there’s this element of clinicians wanting to do: this is my process. This is how I do it. And I feel like with gifted folks, there’s a lot of sitting in philosophical conversation, in digging deeply into intellectual pursuits and then helping them drop into their bodies in a different way that that not all clinicians are doing. They might go immediately to the body and not respect the brain, or they might not be able to get the intellectual stuff processed through and actually get to any emotional experience. And so I think it’s it’s a challenge. You know, gifted folks need depth. They need authenticity, authenticity. They need intellectual respect. If you’re moving too slow or too simplistically, if you’re focusing only on symptom reduction, if you’re not supporting them in unmasking, I think there’s that authentic experience is not going to be sufficient for them.

Curt Widhalm 1:05:31
And so what you’re talking about is attunement and really being able to match what a client needs, and particularly for people who’ve been misattuned their entire lives.

Katie Vernoy 1:05:45
Exactly.

Curt Widhalm 1:05:47
How do you suggest that therapists create that actual relationship? I know part of it is as we talked about it. The episode on working with the children is getting really comfortable with your own relationship and ideas about giftedness, that there is very much a honest personal responsibility that you have that is a key part of overcoming where this misattunement can end up happening. And I think that that’s something where as you were just describing about moving too slow, staying surface level, but really examining that there are those biases and expectations that you’ve been laying out over this last hour, to really understand how subtle that can come across, from your end as a therapist to a client who may be even subconsciously scanning for those kinds of things as Okay, here’s somebody else who just doesn’t get it.

Katie Vernoy 1:06:52
I agree with everything that you’ve said, and I think to add on to that and close this out, if you have a gifted client, and you are also gifted, and most likely, if things stick, that’s probably you’re somewhere on that gifted scale, or neurodivergent in some way, working to either explicitly or implicitly unmask together so that the conversation deepens, the translation stops, is, I think, one of the most important things. It can be hard if you’re not totally sure if they’re gifted or not, but once it becomes clear, there have been times when I said, Okay, were you identified gifted as a kid? Yeah, me too. Okay, let’s just stop. Let’s just acknowledge we’re both smart. Let’s, let’s, let’s just keep moving on, right? Like, let’s, let’s be able to get into this. And I think with some folks, it’s been very direct. With other folks, it’s been making the metaphors or the conversation more complex or deeper, and seeking more complexity and depth from them, and making sure that they don’t bail on it because they are worried I might not get it. And so I think in some ways, being a therapist, a gifted therapist, with gifted clients, is a huge relief for me, because it is having the conversations that I think we all want, that all of us in this, this category of client want in more of our lives, I’m unmasked. I’m talking about things at a depth that makes sense, and I have someone that can help me put these patterns together to understand what’s going on, because, for whatever reason, I’m having trouble seeing it for myself. And so I think it’s it’s some of it is making sure that you’re a match for the client, and some of it is allowing yourself to play around with depth, with clients that maybe you weren’t quite sure that can go there yet, which can be a little bit scary.

Curt Widhalm 1:08:46
You can find our show notes and references over at mtsgpodcast.com. Listen to the beginning and the outro of the episode for how you can get your CEs. Follow us on our social media. Join us in our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with this and other conversations. We’re also on LinkedIn and Substack.

Katie Vernoy 1:09:08
And if you have questions for me, you can find me over at katievernoy.com

Curt Widhalm 1:09:12
And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.

… 1:09:15
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Katie Vernoy 1:09:16
Just a quick reminder, if you’d like one unit of continuing education for listening to this episode, go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, purchase this course and pass the post test. A CE certificate will appear in your profile once you’ve successfully completed the steps.

Curt Widhalm 1:09:31
Once again, that’s moderntherapistcommunity.com.

Announcer 1:09:34
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