Transcript:

Emma: Welcome to Positive Disintegration, A Path to Authenticity. Today we are talking to Gordon Smith about all things authenticity and community. We'll be talking about the importance of unmasking and being able to be your true self within community, the gift that community gives to us, and the importance of setting up safe spaces.

We also talk about how some of the aspects of the theory of positive disintegration translate in a broader sense to our immediate small communities where we find support and to broader social communities. And we talk about the role that creativity can play in helping us share our authentic self, adding to our self-development and giving back to our community.

This is a great chat, so stick around. You're not gonna want to miss this one.

Hello, beautiful listeners, and welcome back to Positive Disintegration. I'm Emma Nicholson. I'm Chris Wells and Chris today, we're talking to someone who specializes in working with the gifted.

Chris: That's right. We are, and I am looking forward to this episode. This is somebody who I have had in my mental list for a long time for guests, and so it'll be so good to finally have this conversation.

Emma: Awesome. Well, let's dive right into it. So for our listeners, our guest today is Gordon Smith. Gordon is a licensed clinical mental health counselor, coach and creative at giftedandgrowing.org. Gordon has built his practice entirely on gifted adolescents and adults, and his mission is to help the gifted and otherwise neurodivergent people become fully themselves through self-knowing, self-acceptance, and community building, and the depathologization and decolonization of gifted consciousness.

In addition to his individual counseling and coaching services, Gordon leads groups centered in gifted self-development and creative consciousness. He's also a poet, organizer of the Asheville Science Salon and facilitator at Camp Yunasa. Welcome to the podcast, Gordon.

Gordon: Thank you so much. I'm really glad to be here.

Chris: So glad to have you. I have been thinking about how we only met in person for the first time last year before Yunasa, and yet I feel like I've known you for a long time because we've just been sharing the same spaces for so long online. It's just another example of how you can feel like you know somebody without actually knowing them in person for a long time. So yeah, it's great to finally have you on the show.

Gordon: Yeah, I know that feeling of establishing this relationship with people online long before you meet them in person. When you have that resonance with them, when you do meet them, you have to kind of remind yourself that you haven't done that before because it already feels like there's that depth of relationship going on.

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. And congratulations on your breadth and durability of what you're doing here and bringing so many different voices to this table. It's a rich learning space for so many people.

Chris: Oh, thank you.

Emma: Yeah. Thank you.

Chris: That's so nice to hear. Well, you know the drill, as a listener. We want to know, how did you first discover Dabrowski's theory?

Gordon: What theory?

Emma: That is the best answer we've had so far to that question, by the way.

Chris: True.

Gordon: So, in 2016, I was going through some big transitions in my life. I at the time was an elected official on my city council here in Asheville, North Carolina, and was kind of considering next steps. From that flowed the question: well, if I'm doing a review about that, I may as well kind of do a whole life review.

And part of that was my practice as a therapist. I went through the last seven years of clients that I had and asked myself, which were the ones that I did my best work with. I listed their names and then I asked myself what they had in common. And I thought to myself, oh, they're all very bright.

I wonder if there's any literature about that. And then I fell down this rabbit hole. I'd been identified as a gifted kid back in third grade, had attended a school for the gifted in fourth grade, but then my dad got a new job and we moved, and I was back with the general population in the pullout until the end of elementary school.

And that was kind of that. So fast forwarding back to 2016, as I start to dive into all this, the theory was one of the first things I discovered in doing my initial research, and immediately fell into the idea that there's a different language for what I've been experiencing than I've used before, and it was such a helpful tool.

Because I've been a therapist for 16 years already. I'm in my 25th year now, and a lot of that language I'd already applied to myself and looked at myself through that lens. And then to bring the language and paradigm of Dabrowski, it helped me walk through this rediscovery and the thing that happens when we rediscover our giftedness as adults.

And it created a container in a way that I could work within. I also remember going to a group that I was organizing – I'm a serial community organizer – and deciding to shift my practice and just make the whole thing about working with gifted people, and how excited I was to tell them about this theory.

And talking in these rooms full of therapists and saying, have you heard about the theory of positive disintegration? And the look back either being one of confusion or one of excitement or one of insecurity. Oh, there's a whole theory I don't know about. You know how it can be in some of these rooms.

But I remember my enthusiasm about it. And so ever since it's just been a part of the work that I do. Since the podcast and being able to be a part of the community that you all have been forming, I've been able to learn more and more. And being able to come to the Congress last year and really immerse myself in the theory and in the people who are applying it in all these different ways further opened things up.

Chris: I guess I'm wondering now more about your journey of positive disintegration, you know, and giftedness. Like, I know that for a lot of people because I too was like identified as a gifted kid, but then totally lost that language and thinking about myself after high school was over. And so what was it like for you personally to discover this and what have your disintegrations been like?

I wonder sometimes about asking therapists about that. Like, I don't know how you feel about talking about yourself and your own history, but I guess another thing I'm wondering is if you've been going through one now, because in your introduction, and what you just said, we hear that you're from Asheville and we know that your community went through just a brutal disaster in the fall.

And so, that's just another thing that's been on my mind. So now I guess I'm asking you two questions, but what does disintegration look like for you?

Gordon: So much of it tracks with the way that the theory itself outlines human development. And so the earlier disintegrations were certainly less conscious, less understood, more a matter of circumstance.

And yeah, I could belabor a lot of those circumstances. Then upon this time in 2016 when I was doing this review and came into everything again, I had done a lot of work already on this guy. And in that period I looked back over my life and was able to understand in a new way why I had felt so different and so separate and how much of that differentness I had internalized as there being something weird or wrong with me – that internalized gifted shame that so many of my clients show up with.

And then alongside the high autonomy of gifted people of like, oh, I need to be in charge. I need to do something about this. I need to take charge here and fix this thing. We end up using that internalized shame and building mask after mask after mask and going into various contortions. Looking back across my life, I saw the ways that I've been doing that and the ways I've been seeking community and seeing the ways that wasn't working for me.

Thinking about being in politics, for instance. Like such a wonderful experience to collaborate with all these volunteers and donors and to ask a whole city to openly judge me as a person and whether to choose me or not. And then having been chosen to go sit and do the work. Upon commencing doing that, I lost a lot of the joy that I had developed in simply being in a community that was really excited and then being nose down and being engulfed in the work.

I'd gone through four distinct burnout cycles over the course of eight years, and then looking back at that time from this new perch to see that, oh, I thought that I was meeting needs there. I thought that I was finding adequate stimulation and doing work that would help me feel settled in myself. Through that particular disintegration to understand that what I really needed was a sense of belonging and that what I was finding there wasn't enough. And that wasn't it. The intimacy I was seeking wasn't from behind layers of masks.

But that it was from this place of needing to be this pretty intense weirdo who's kind of coming at you with this grin that looks like it might eat your face off. And the eyes get wild. And the speech cadence is odd. All of these pieces, and so I commenced this journey that I'm still on.

I'm a student of myself and of Dabrowski and every other damn thing. Shedding all of those masks that I'd adopted to try to deal with the shame of there being something wrong with me, and to shed those very ideas and those self concepts and to step further into the intensities that I possess, knowing that there is – I fuck up from time to time, but as far as being a human who has every right to be here and experience love and mission and purpose and joy, I'm okay.

So yeah, lots of big choices were made as far as stepping forward. And I feel like with every passing year I've realized, oh, there's further to go. Oh, there's further to go. And even before this podcast tonight, I sat with myself and I asked myself what my intentions were in coming tonight, and it was to be open and to be seen and to invite you all to be open and be seen and just let us all be here together for who we are, knowing that it's more than enough.

Emma: Gordon, as you were talking, something that I had quite recently actually sort of surfaced up, and it's that sometimes when we go seeking community, we kind of get there and we find that that community's maybe not quite what we thought, or there's still social scripts sitting around it.

So you said like your experience with going into the political sphere, it sort of sucked the joy out of it because there's still, I guess, there's a commercial impetus on it and there's also obviously a culture around it. And I kind of thought of my experience, I started studying journalism at a school and thought, here's gonna be a space where I can express my voice. And then you realize that the commercial reality of it is that you are beholden to whoever is paying the advertising or whatever to that publication. And it, you then end up performing a role and putting on a mask.

And it made me think of all these little creative quirky people who might think, you know, I want to be in theater or do this thing or go to Hollywood. You know, where I can be expressive and do all these creative things. And then you realize it's actually a production machine where people are gonna be scrutinizing you and you're gonna have an external lens on you all the time. And then it becomes about appearance and conforming to an expectation.

So it's a tricky thing for people when seeking to get over their differences and they want that community to be themselves. You end up sometimes in these spaces and creating more masks because there's still this aspect of social script and maybe commercial stuff over the top of it. So I just wondered if you had any thoughts on community? Because I know as part of your work, you provide groups and are trying to build community as well.

Gordon: The most common refrain of gifted people is loneliness and seeking connection and not having enough of it, and being absolutely baffled about how to find it. You know, they've been to the affinity groups. They went to the college club and they didn't find anybody there, and they went and did the other thing and they didn't find anybody there. And yeah, there's some sort of script, there's some sort of performative piece that's required in a lot of spaces, whether the people there know it or not, or you're being commodified in some way that your behavior has to translate into something that can be spent or otherwise exploited.

And in so many rooms, the actual underlying rule is compliance to whatever culture is there. And so we are not the most compliant bunch in the world. And so the sandpaper of those experiences, we feel it.

How we exist in this ecosystem of relationships. And like any mature forest, there's different relationships that are gonna have different roles in our lives. And some of them will be the person we watch baseball with, and some of them will be the person we go to the science salon with, and others will be the people that we share our emotional lives with.

And for a lot of gifted people, this becomes the reality. I call it having Frankenfriends. It's like it's just all these bits and pieces cobbled together to try to make the one person that we're actually hoping to resonate with. And yeah, that's part of the reason that I do run these groups is so people can come into rooms where the culture is set for acceptance and unmasking, and where people can oftentimes for the first time in their lives, feel mirrored and met and experience a felt sense of safety that they haven't had before.

Through that unmasking, that's when we get to learn about the parts we didn't even know we'd masked. And those layers can go on for some time as people go through their disintegrations and recognize these parts of themselves that have gone unintended and unseen. And suddenly they're discovering them and they're witnessing them, and others are witnessing them and it's okay.

And this prompts, it requires us to grow into those spaces. So yeah, I do run groups of various kinds and various types and ways of inviting people. And in my own life, you know, I'm walking around getting to know Chris Wells and Emma Nicholson and I'm very privileged in that way. I count it among the laundry list of privilege I move through this world with. That I get to engage in these spaces and I really want to be able to invite other gifted people to have similar experiences.

Chris: When I first came to all of this, it was 10 years ago this month that I went to my first ever gifted conference and it was like one of the smaller conferences just in Colorado.

And I just remember crying at lunchtime, you know, it was like I had been to the morning sessions, then I was sitting there at this table at lunch and just tears were just coming out of my eyes. And it wasn't because I was upset, it was because I felt like so seen in the sessions I had been in, and my mind was so totally fucking blown and I just, I had discovered the theory and the gifted ed literature like a year before and, or it hadn't even been a year yet with the theory, but like a year before I had discovered the gifted literature and just had been reading and completely immersed in it.

But I'll never forget that conference, and it wasn't the last time. Twice more in 2015, I went to gifted conferences and had the same completely mind blown experience. There were more tears. It was like I finally had this missing piece that I hadn't had about myself. But that's kind of what I was asking about earlier, was that it allowed me to reconnect with something that I had been exposed to as a child. But this was so different because I had had these years of considering myself mentally ill.

And so at that point, after having discovered the theory and the gifted literature, it had led to some cracks in the foundation of considering myself mentally ill. But I was, there was still a struggle there of, how can I be gifted and disabled? Just wrapping my head around 2e, it all felt so new and fresh. And like you're saying, I felt this urgent need to connect with other gifted people who got it.

I remember. And so, yeah, again, it was 10 years ago, and I was connecting with people on Twitter, Jen Merrill, my friend Celi, and these are the first people I connected with in the gifted space, and they're still my friends.

And yeah, I love what you do because providing that safe space for gifted people to connect in your groups is so important. And that's why I wanted you to have lots of opportunity in this episode to talk about that. And I wanted to say that I loved that Magnum Opus session that I did with you so much in the fall.

I can't remember, maybe it was October. But it was so special and really reconnected me with an aspect of writing poetry that I don't engage in and haven't in years. And so it was just a beautiful experience, so thank you.

Gordon: Yeah. That crying, that release, when the tension releases, you didn't even know the tension was necessarily as great as it actually was. And then it breaks and, oh, all this stuff wants to come forward and it can happen all at once and there can be a flood or an overwhelm. It's a beautiful, painful process of realizing there's so much of me that I've kept from myself and that I've worn these cloaks of pathology when I don't need to wear that anymore.

This is not – the medical model doesn't get to tell me my consciousness. And while I may meet criteria for certain things within that big fat DSM, it doesn't define me. It's one lens through which I can view my experience. But we have the opportunity to turn the jewel and see ourselves through multiple perspectives and see multiple facets of ourselves and come out of that pathologizing of self into a more honest assessment of, here are the characteristics I move through the world with.

Here's what that's like for me. Here are the things I think are valuable and important. Now, what do I need? Outside of all of that sense of wearing the heaviness of these mental health diagnoses. Sometimes they're very helpful, these diagnostics. They help people get services, they help them self-advocate. They can even create clarity as far as self-concept. And so we can use that lens. I'm not saying we need to have to throw it away altogether, but to recognize that it is but one lens that we're gonna see ourselves through and that it is born of patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalistic cultures, out of a new discipline that they call psychology.

You know, it's comparatively new and that it's one way to see ourselves, but we don't have to labor under all of those systems and we can explore ourselves outside of those.

And you asked me about Helene. I want to circle back to that. Yeah. So Asheville was at the center of the biggest natural disaster ever to hit around here. It was a geologic event. There were over 2000 landslides. Rivers changed their courses. Tens of thousands of people were displaced. We were without drinking water for 53 days. There was no power. We've lost 40% of our forests, well over a hundred people died. There's entire towns that were flooded and destroyed, and the whole area is amidst a collective trauma that we're in the middle of what that means. And from inside the bubble, it's not knowable yet what it will mean.

There's been a whole lot of pain and a whole lot of loss. And those losses continue as jobs dry up and the winter just trudges on. And the strength of the community also has been coming forward and people helping people and choosing to find each other and give each other grace and kindness and patience. Even as we're all struggling with grief. Because everyone lost something. So that's a lot.

Chris: It is. I think it's too common for something of that magnitude to happen at this point in America and then be forgotten because it's like, there's so much happening here that's terrible lately that it's too easy to forget.

And I just wanted to name it and talk about it because it's a huge deal. And the images from it, I appreciated how you kept it in our consciousness on Facebook, at least in our awareness of like, Hey, this is still happening. Hey, we still don't have drinking water. Hey, like, I appreciated that because I was like, yes, I want to know that this is still happening.

I do feel sometimes, like part of the work that I've tried to prepare myself to do, just personally is to sit with pain, with what's happening. Especially now, it just occurred to me that you're our first guest in 2025 other than us recording together last month in person.

So it's like, okay, well, you know, here in America anyway, I mean, shit is falling a fucking part here. Like it is. We are so deeply in a disintegration of our society that it's hard to even wrap your head around at this point. And so for you being in Asheville, it just must be terrifying for some folks there to see. I mean, we have this federal leadership, I mean if you can call it that right now, that is not positioned to be helpful or compassionate or empathic. And so I just, I worry so much about what's to come with America and yet, I mean, we have to help each other. Like if there's one thing that's really clear to me right now, it's that we can't count on the government.

We have to somehow take care of ourselves, emotionally anyway, it just felt like something that had to be said. This is a tough time. It is. I envy you being in Australia, Emma. Because, and what's funny is that while Emma was here at some point I was like, oh, would you ever think about moving to America? Just like, no thanks.

Gordon: Yeah. Being here and weathering that disaster and then the election happening a month later and so many of my clients and so many neurodivergent people in general are gay, trans, people who aren't white. And there's an environment that is encouraging hostility to all of those people.

And encouraging not simply intolerance, but elimination and disidentification of so many people. There's a sense of fear and dread that is palpable and reasonable that we are learning to hold and to exist in. And the levels of instability from the local disaster to the national upheaval, to the global climate crisis.

We are in a place where there's no solid ground to stand on. And the idea of being able to find a new center when the old touchstones are unreliable is our work.

Chris: Yeah, that's not easy.

Gordon: And so much of it is happening in community. It's in just being connected with people and being seen and being loved for who you are. And so building and fortifying these communities of care right now is one of the most important things we can be doing. And as the dust settles across America, we may have some other clear ideas about how to respond to all that. But right now, it has felt like a time to become still and become tight with those that you can do so with.

Chris: I'm wondering where we should go to next with all of this. You know, I feel like we're, I love it because in some ways we're covering big things already, you know, you have brought us on such a path and so where to go next with positive disintegration and giftedness. Belonging. I mean, there's still so much there.

I keep thinking about the urgency that you feel when you first come to this, but go ahead. I see you had some inspiration.

Gordon: So much of what we do on the individual level, we can generalize and globalize as well. And so, you know, people recognize that they're gifted again or for the first time or in a different way. Then go about reconceiving their whole self-concept. Like, oh, wait a minute, who am I? Exactly. Who did I think I was? Who do I want to be? What's going on here?

And as we go through that and begin to inventory our own intensities and overexcitabilities and can see, okay, here are the spaces where I am tasked with learning how to accommodate my own intensity. I'm gonna have to train this nervous system to be in this body, in this bodymind that I'm occupying. This is all one system, this bodymind of mine. And these intensities are mine to integrate and accommodate and be with in all of their dynamics.

And so in our counseling work, what happens is after we get past a lot of the cognitive pieces, all the theoretical stuff, and do all the reading, we come into contact with the body and the nervous system that resides within it. And through that work, uncover so much of the held trauma that we've experienced and learn where we are not able to regulate in the way that we need to and learn what we need to be able to be okay. And then a step beyond that to flourish and to thrive. To align with a personal model of values and integrity.

These are all a few steps down the road, but that first step is just like, oh, how can I be okay? My whole world just exploded. And in this broader sense, the whole world is exploding. Like, how do I come into center? And so much of it is just tending this fragile, yet amazingly resilient nervous system that we're all walking around with.

Emma: On the topic of this being something that either individual or local or more global. When you talk about obviously aligning yourself with your own values and integrity and then trying to tend to that stuff, I just wondered what your experience was with seeing that play out in a group setting. Because obviously in groups, you know, we've already talked about, you might go in there thinking you're gonna find or hoping to find that everybody's like you, and then maybe they're not.

So how do you see that dynamic tension play out, between individuals where perhaps, you know, not everybody's aligned or on the same page.

Gordon: It can be prioritizing some of these values or intentions on the front end. If I am walking into a new room and I choose to prioritize honesty and kindness, then I can be open and as I see others either accept that or bristle at that, or shrink from that shift into that kinder heart and be in that space of compassion, recognizing everybody's walking around in their own journey with their own struggles.

And I don't know what you went through today or in the 40 years that proceeded today. And so I get to show up as myself and to be in that. To be able to hold that kindness and compassion simultaneously. So if I see that we're not gonna be best buds, I can back off a little and I can still be okay.

And you get to still be okay. We don't have to reject each other just because we're not gonna be best buds. We can still both be okay. And I tell people when they're walking into these spaces, you gotta turn on your gifted radar. And so what that looks like is have a look around the room who's emanating an obvious intensity.

Because you know, some of us just sit there and other people will be like, what's up with you? And for the people who are not that kind of conspicuously intense to be on the lookout for complexity, who's asking the question that you didn't see coming? Who is making an observation that surprises you?

And through that type of surprise, that type of complex thinking, have a look. See who's there. At the very least you'll have an interesting new experience with somebody who's got a different perspective.

Emma: Which I think is always helpful for your own development. And not just connection. Because obviously relationships and connection are hugely important and as our mirroring on our similarities. But there's also things that we can learn by, you know, having that empathetic kindness and viewing other people more subjectively and saying, I don't know what they've been through. Can I connect with them? And then also having an objective look at yourself and how you are, you know, how are you similar, how are you different?

Are there things that this person's doing that maybe I want to incorporate into my way of being? And I think that was, when I went over to the US and had a chance to be among some of my people in person, it was a good, I had to go away and do a lot of processing because that was also part of the journey.

It was not just getting to know people. It wasn't just about fostering the relationship. It was also saying, how do I learn from my experiences around other people who are also gifted, intense, and stuff? How am I similar to them? How am I different to them? What can I incorporate? You know, and it's a big learning journey.

So I would anticipate that for some of the people that you work with, mind fucking blown when they get into these groups, particularly if they've just been doing the nine to five life and not met anyone who's like them before.

Gordon: Yes. And so, yeah, we're shifting into talking about the groups that are part of my practice right now. And so I've got these various doors that people can walk through. I've got one for people who's kind of more on the front end of that gifted discovery, where we'll have maybe eight people in the room, eight, nine people, who don't know each other, coming in to learn more about their own giftedness and to be in community while they do it.

And so I send around a thing with a bunch of reading and they can learn a bunch of stuff and then we come in and I lead them through some engagement. After constructing a real nice, safe kind of container for everybody so everyone can know what the culture is. And then as the themes emerge from that first session, I track them and then do a whole other document for the second session that's based on the themes that came out.

And so it tracks the actual experience of the people in the group. And then we come to the third session. It's this iterative process where then we use those past themes as the jumping off point, and then the next layer of themes emerges. And so we do this for six consecutive weeks as these layers get peeled back and these common themes emerge, and this group is on a journey together.

And yeah, that mirroring is there. The differences show up, but they're not threatening. They're simply present. And as an outcome, it readies so many people to begin to unmask in front of their families, the families, the people that are closest to them who have known them as their masked selves.

This can be one of the hardest steps is just to start being yourself in front of the people who fell in love with the person you were pretending to be. And it's scary, so vulnerable, so risky feeling, but it's really helped people find the self-assurance and courage to just be able to follow their integrity and be able to show up more and more as who they are.

Chris: It sounds so cool. I wish that I had been able to be in that group when I first came to all of this. That's totally what I needed. Yeah, it sounds amazing and I am still thinking about what you said too about tending your nervous system and how important that is and just getting to know who you are. Once you have this information and language about yourself, I know personally that it took me a long time to do that, to do that tending of my nervous system to figure out how to do it well.

And then I had to go through, as a parent, I found myself going through quite a bit of grief for who I wish I had been when my son was younger, knowing that it wasn't my fault that I didn't know. And what's extra sad is that I was pregnant when I was in school for social work, doing a clinical program. But at the time when I did it, we weren't talking about this yet, you know? And so I have a feeling that things are probably different in school now than they were, and I just remember by the time I was figuring out that I needed to do this, I was like, wow, I wish I had known to do this when my kid was young, and I could have been there for him better than I was.

And yet, at least I figured it out eventually, you know, I mean, better late than never. And so it wasn't about beating myself up about the past, but just, you know, a bit of grief around it and how important it is and it is important. And I think that it's so worth the investment in yourself to learn what you need and figure it out.

I remember too, figuring out that I needed a weighted blanket and what a life-changing thing that's been for me. I mean, for the first couple or few months or longer that I had it, it was like my nervous system had been on fire and it was putting it out. Putting out the fire and being like, whoa, if only I had known this.

And then kind of related to that, it's reminding me that just last night I was laughing and being like, how did I not ever guess that I was autistic? Like just so many things about me. Now I'm like, oh. And that's kind of one of them, you know? But then there are others. Yeah. And the reason why it came up last night was more about, well, it was again like a parenting thing.

I was telling my son, oh yeah, in the first years of your life, I kept a spreadsheet of everything about you and it was almost like embarrassing to admit how detailed this. And then I went and looked at it and I was like, oh my God, I don't even know if I want him to see how I tracked every single thing about him for months of his life in the beginning, but that's who I am.

And that was my connection to him. I'm going to document you. Yes. Because that's what I do. That's my way of showing love.

Gordon: It's some intense love and I really appreciate you naming that grief of the unlived lives, right? Especially for people who are late identified, gifted or late identified autistic or ADHD or any of the neurodivergences is, if only I'd known sooner. And that's part of this process and journey and it's important, and you don't get to skip it. It's part of what has to happen.

It's really sweet about the keeping that spreadsheet and discovering the weighted blanket. I got this little, this has been rolling under my feet the whole time. It's my little nubby ball stim toy right here. I got my squishy brain right here. I got my cold smooth stone right here.

All my little secret stim toys that I have right here in front of the laptop that are part of my just ongoing adequate stimulation, nervous system regulation.

Emma: We're talking about the grief, about the life not lived. And I try not to think of things that way of like, I tanked my life. I wasted so many years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that negative shit that doesn't help. But one thing that's helped me personally is to go, okay, well, I know now. What do I do with this information moving forward? How can I use that lens to go back and better understand myself? How can I use it to forgive myself?

How do I use it to understand that there are people out there who are like me and how do I use it to go forward with things? And like I do understand the grieving process because I've been through it myself, but I think if anyone is going through that out there, it's important to know that, you know, yes, it is a bit of a kick in the fucking guts. Like absolutely, but at the same time, there's an opportunity in this because you're better late than never, I guess.

Gordon: Well, that's right. And it's also the holding, you're holding it all. Again, we're back to this accommodating this meta consciousness that we're bearing and to be able to really accurately and in that empowered way, say we only get to operate from right now. That's it. And I am grieving that and I am imagining a potential future in which I've integrated that old grief and it's now a part of something that motivates me to be doing that directed multi-level disintegrative process on my own to use it all. It's all our experience and it's all part of the soil that makes up our garden, you know?

And we get to keep amending that soil with new stuff every day, no matter what might have been there in the past. And that's where the power is, the agency that we have.

Chris: One of the things that I've been working on right now is I'm writing a paper about my methods of autoethnography, and one of the things that I was working on this week was kind of how dissatisfaction with myself has looked throughout my life.

And one of the things I recognize is kind of related to what you just said, Emma, in that I recognize now that dissatisfaction can have kind of a unilevel form before it's an actual multilevel dynamism. And what that looked like for me when I was younger was just trashing myself, you know, like excessive self-criticism, like being dissatisfied with myself, but not in any productive way.

Just beating myself up, you know? Like I suck, I hate myself. Just self-loathing and it transformed and became a multi-level dynamism of dissatisfaction where it was like, Ugh, I am fucking up, but this is pushing me to change and do better. And then it grew even more as a dynamism to a point where it was like, okay, yes, I am fucking up and it's okay.

And incorporating and integrating that self-compassion. And so just wanted to mention that I'm actually working on a paper that will be showing these kind of evolution of dynamisms over time, and I am excited to share that, but it's like these are dynamic processes that change and evolve and grow with us, and I just love that we can have these conversations and talk about all of this and.

Gordon, tell us more. I know you described a group that you do for kind of people coming in, and then you also do improv. Tell us about what that looks like for people.

Gordon: And it springs right out of this conversation about how we come at some of these embedded, internalized maladaptive strategies that we've got or self concepts that for the last few years I've been focused on.

In addition to my counseling and coaching work, some other avenues to come at some of the same stuff. The perfectionism and shame perhaps being chief among them, the fear of being seen and rejected there as well. And so I've been centering creative consciousness and flow state as another path to it kind of winds its way right between all of these walls and habits.

Yeah. With improv it's about getting together and playing, with the prerequisites for play being trust and safety. So you gotta trust each other. You're safe in the room, and then we're free to play. And in improv, it's about trusting that the next thing that falls out of your mouth is gonna be received and accepted and built upon.

It's not about trying to be funny, it's not about trying to do anything. It's about allowing yourself to come out and to do so in a room full of people who are gonna let you do that and play with you with that. And so to be in a state of play with things when you've been mired in perfectionism and shame is liberated.

So improv is one avenue to that. And then this poetic reasoning course that I've been doing is another. And there it is about flow state poetry. It's a critique free environment. We are not editing, we are finding that creative consciousness, elevating and centering it, and again, allowing voice to come out.

And then we get to discover what was in there because it's through this type of container and this type of structure that these elements of unconscious and subconscious and collective unconscious all kind of find their way to conscious mind. And then we got something to work with. Then we get to bring the analytical back in and have our emotional response to all that figure out what to do in our bodies.

But the creative has been such a footnote in Western society, especially because you can't commodify someone's poetry or someone's improv that they're doing in a room for an hour a week. That's not being recorded. It is not about that. It is about discovering who you are.

Learning that that's okay. And learning it in community where you can be held and cared for and seen as you move through that process has been absolutely amazingly powerful for so many folks. Yeah, I'm every week in this poetic reasoning group. I've been moved.

Emma: So many bells of truth going off in my head because a lot of times when I do things and, you know, this is shit that I've blogged about or made videos about with getting into that creative free flow state.

So whether or not it was me videoing myself finger painting, or the inner child dialogues that I have, or you know, any of that free flowing stuff, that's what's necessary to get to your authentic voice to get through that web of masks that we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation.

Because you know, we've built all these cognitive barriers to ourselves and we bury ourselves so deeply that the only way to get around it is to not fucking think. And just and out it comes. And then as you said, when you can. You know, you're either doing it in a room or you're writing it and you capture it somehow, or you video or whatever.

It's then you can come back later and apply all those lovely little logical, analytical things to it and go, here's what spewed out of me. What does that mean? How do I work with it? And that sort of stuff. But it's like it's this two part thing to self therapy has to be one that completely deranged, a managed degenerative free flowing, no holds barred blurting of the stuff.

Then you can come back and apply the logic to it. But in order to apply that beloved logical analysis, we first have to let all of that go.

Gordon: Absolutely. Yeah. Otherwise we're caught up in some trying to achieve some intellectual ideal or trying to anticipate how others are gonna receive what we've done.

So we, how do we write it in a way we'll be accepted and here we are just recreating the masking that got us into the situation we're in in the first place. Yeah. So to be able to just allow that free flow. But this is a challenge, right? When you haven't, when you haven't practiced that or even learned it, how to access that is terrifically challenging for a lot of especially gifted people where it's just been so devalued to allow that excuse Mr. Spock.

Emma: That's what I think this whole thing, that you are smart. You should be able to think your way out of this without any emotions. It's like, no, no, that's not how that works.

Gordon: Right? Or I understand it. Why isn't it fixed? Or I've thought about it, I've felt about it, and I still know there's something I haven't gotten at.

And that's where this creative flow allows us to peel back the next layer to see, oh, here's the next place, the next thing that needs to be felt, the next thing that needs to be understood. The other group that I'm running is like a one-off, it's like a single day. It's like an hour and a half to two hours.

You show up one time and it's this single exercise called magnum opus. And it prompts this flow state, this surrender state. And after 40 minutes or so, you've got seven poems in front of you that you wrote. You don't even know what you wrote till after it's over and you go back and you start looking at it and start identifying themes and then doing the meaning making because you haven't had time during the exercise to have any analytical mind show up, at least not for long enough to grab a hold.

So for folks who just want to dip their toe in or get a refresher and rediscover flow state for themselves, it's a really good door.

Chris: It was so good. It was so good. You're, it makes me want to get them right now and look at them after we're done I'm gonna go get my poems and look at them. What was it like for you?

Gordon: What was it like for you?

Chris: It was so good. I haven't done that kind of writing in a long time if, I mean, it's not like I ever did anything exactly like that, but I certainly have never sat in a group like that with people and done that kind of writing. And so it was really, it was great. And like you said, it goes so fast where you're doing one after the other that there's no time to get caught up in it at all.

You have to just let it go and get into that state. So it was so great. I really enjoyed it a lot and I would love to do it again, and I'm sure I will do it again at some point. But yeah, it was great. Really, I'd highly recommend that to anybody who is listening. Do it even if, and especially do it if you don't, if you think to yourself oh, that's not, I'm not a poet.

I'm not a poet either. It's not about that.

Gordon: It's not about that. That's right.

Chris: It's not. But yeah, of course we can all be poets if we just let the words go. But

Gordon: And part yeah, of what this poetry is, is accessing that associative reasoning that happens in that creative space where we're pulling together these disparate parts of ourselves we didn't even realize had relationship, and seeing the relationship between these parts.

And it changes the way we see ourselves. It changes the way we see the world. It changes the way we think

Chris: It does. Well, I want to give you an opportunity to say something about Yunasa if you want. I mean, I'm not gonna be back at Yunasa anymore, but you are. And please feel free to, you know, to say something. If you'd like.

Gordon: Yeah. Yunasa is happening again. It's happening twice. They're having their west and their east. It's 10 to 16 year olds, and then some senior leadership as well. All these highly exceptionally, profoundly gifted kids and loaded up with a wheelbarrow full of neurodivergences all coming together in an atmosphere of acceptance and support and challenge by choice.

It embraces and promotes a real deep self understanding and seeks that through psychosynthesis. This meditative guided imagery daily practice in addition to lots of cool social time and workshops, and then your standard ass camp stuff that a lot of kids don't do in neurotypical situations because they don't feel okay and accepted and safe. But they can come to Yunasa and hop in that canoe and get on that zip line and do that climbing wall. And for so many of the campers who come back year after year, it's been an essential part of their self understanding and self-acceptance. Not to mention the hub of their social year.

Chris: Definitely, yes. Yeah. Well, they're lucky to have you. And so, yeah, I mean, I'll miss it, but it's better for me in some ways. I think last summer I realized how much it took out of me and I had a whole different summer not doing it.

And so, but yeah, you're making me want to join a group, you know, just listening to you talk about your groups in this episode. I'm like, it. I love that. I think it's really important, so I'm glad that you're doing it.

Gordon: It is important and it's one of the ways we get to employ all this virtual meeting space for good. There's so many spaces that it's just kind of toxic to be in social media style.

So to be able to utilize these technologies for actual deep intimacy. Yeah. I'm just grateful.

Chris: Any final thoughts or questions, Emma?

Emma: No, I don't. Normally I do, everything's been said. Because otherwise I'm just gonna open up a whole other rabbit hole of things and we're gonna be talking for another half an hour.

Gordon: Let's do it.

Chris: It has been known to happen.

Gordon: Well, can I just say a little bit to kind of wrap up here because

Emma: Yeah, go for it.

Gordon: I sat with myself yesterday and asked myself, oh, what are some of the things I want to make sure I say? And I just looked down at my little sheet of that and I realize I already said however, it's been, we've been bouncing around the way that folks like us do when we get in a room together.

And so for the people who are listening who are on the front end of their giftedness journey, I just want to say that there is a community of people, all of whom are all trying to figure themselves out and figuring out how to be in this world in the most authentic ways that they can to continue reaching out and just kind of keep going.

And that if you keep going, you're gonna get there. And to seek those supports, whether it's in your immediate community or whether it's a therapist or a coach, or a group or in, or a podcast, wherever that you can find that community, continue to access it because it does things for the spirit that aren't available in any other way.

That through this process of discovery, you're gonna be able to access so much more of who you are in ways that aren't overwhelming, as they may feel today. And that you get to grow into yourself. You get to keep growing. There's no finish line. This is a process. There are any, any outcome you arrive at will be a happy accident and temporary in and of itself.

We get to just keep being a dynamic process. And so if you're on the front end of that, keep going, keep becoming, and for the rest of the community that's out here listening to this podcast, the work that we get to do right now as the world is so shaky, it's really important for our community.

To continue to remain cohesive and loving and accepting and understanding, and to create that type of space for every gifted and neurodivergent person who needs us.

Chris: It's quite the journey. I just have been so reflecting on my own because again, I'm working on this autoethnography paper and just revisiting where I was 10 or more years ago with all of this, and it's been amazing.

It's been amazing to get to know all of these people, to be in these spaces to, and now to get the opportunity to be sharing myself and helping other people and to bring people like you onto this podcast with us, to have gotten to know Emma. I feel so blessed. And so every day, even as I'm watching the world fall apart around me, I'm like.

I do have this really solid, grounded feeling in the midst of it, which, yeah, I don't know. It's been such a pleasant surprise. I guess

Emma: I have a final thought. I knew it would come eventually. I think one thing that I've gotten out of this conversation and has hit home for me is that we all have a part in community.

There is no community to exist without the people in it. And I'd encourage people who are maybe slightly nervous about reaching out. Maybe you've been knocking on doors before and or tried to join groups or, and you've maybe felt rejection or you didn't fit in. But it's important to keep looking for community because as much as you need the people within that community, you also form part of it. And don't discount the fact that they need you just as much, as much as other people are your mirror, you can be a mirror to someone else.

So Gordon, I just want to reiterate what you said, let's keep being kind and compassionate and open and creating those safe spaces because we all need each other. And if you are not in the community yet, maybe you need the people there, but maybe they need you too.

Chris: Nice.

Gordon: Beautiful.

Chris: Yes. Beautiful. So Gordon, tell our listeners where they can find you on the internet. The interwebz. on the worldwide web, the information superhighway

Gordon: I am at giftedandgrowing.org

You can also just Google Gordon Smith Gifted Counseling, and I'm likely to come up. I've got a professional Facebook page where I load up all kinds of different info and reflections and sometimes just do big ass meme dumps.

Chris: Well, thanks for joining us, Gordon. This was great. I mean, I knew it would be

Gordon: Well, I'm so glad that we're here. I wish we had another hour. Obviously, you know, I get all lit up talking about all this stuff and Yeah. And I just appreciate you all and this space.

Emma: And we appreciate you too.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast with us. It's been great, Chris. Thank you. You too. It's always a pleasure. Thank you. It is always a pleasure. And thank you listeners. We always appreciate you too. And thank you for being part of our community. Continue your path to authenticity through the links in the show notes.

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