Thoughts shared by highly intelligent Baby Boomers when they were in their 40s and 50s during the 1990s
My website and blog posts cover age ranges from birth to death. I tell you what I know (and what I think you would like to know, too) about the people I have worked with and interviewed for my academic work, my books, and my presentations. You’ll be able to pick and choose which posts you actually want to read.
There were nine subjects from my 1998 case studies for my doctoral dissertation, Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors that Affect the Self-actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies, who clearly were among those of the 41 study subjects who were open—Searchers—to inner growth and the advanced levels of emotional development described by Dąbrowski (1964). All the gifted adults who sought counseling took an active role in their own growth independent of therapy; and for the three who did not utilize counseling support, their paths were otherwise quite similar. They, like the counseling recipients, read widely, attended conferences, even sought degrees in counseling, psychology, theology, and philosophy.
The viewpoints of those who raised you, as well as the zeitgeist of the time you were born and raised, all impact how much you will wonder who you are and continue to struggle with those big life questions most of us have at one point or another in our lives. Being highly intelligent (sometimes known as gifted) doesn’t necessarily help you to figure “it” out any more quickly than others … and knowing you’re smart can often contribute to your shame over “what’s wrong” with you. Like, “Why am I depressed?” “Why aren’t I more successful?” “And do people not like me because I’m too smart or because I’m not likeable in general?”
A 40 year woman … admits she came from a supportive, nurturing family that probably gave her the freedom to explore existential questions earlier in life than most people. She sought counseling as an adult to help her with her emotional journey.
I had my first developmental crisis at age 10 when I felt that my life had no meaning. I considered committing suicide with the shotgun Dad kept in the basement but decided not to because I thought that would make my parents sad. I resolved the crisis by deciding I had two self-chosen purposes in my life:
1) To help others.
2) To have pleasure myself.
Shallow and simplistic as these goals seem now, when I’ve had mid-life crises since then, I’ve continued to come up with these same very basic life goals.
I guess I should comment on how becoming an atheist was a turning point. Once I decided there was no god, I had no foundation for my values, which was largely Judeo-Christian-based. So I had to rethink all my moral decisions from a basis I decided for myself. I’m still doing this, and it’s hard.
Another 40-year old from a background where he felt loved … knew his IQ from an early age but did not know the larger impact of what it meant.
When my daughter received a WISC-R score of 150 I began to explore this issue of giftedness. I had essentially discounted my own IQ [a CTMM of 172] as something in the past. As I studied I was confronted with my own life story, my own issues, my own giftedness. For a long time I was unable to discuss my own giftedness without crying.
He described how his new insights led him on a new journey of emotional exploration and growth, one that has been supported by therapy. In response to a question about where he grew up he wrote, he didn’t quite answer the question right away but said,
My answer is that I am still growing. The idea that a human creature grows up between time A and time B and then stops growing is a fascinating concept. Who started speaking of life in that fashion? It only really makes sense if time A is birth and time B is death. I know that it seems painfully obvious when stated so bluntly but listen to how we speak, look at how we really behave. Now, stepping down from my soapbox, I was raised by my parents and lived in [small midwestern town] until I went away to college.
Another counseling recipient, the woman quoted here was 52 … when she participated in the study. She wrote about how she would change the way her parents treated her:
I’d have them express love and support rather than criticism and demands for achievement. I was motivated internally to do well and didn’t need the constant demands for perfection. An A- was a problem, a B a disaster. If I wasn’t first at something there was hardly any point in doing it. I wish I’d had more hugs and more play and fewer rules for good character. Good character meant being orderly, neat, respectful, quiet and unfailingly rational. I was messy, disorganized, challenging to authority, loud and emotional. I was also imaginative, funny, bright and loving, and if those traits had been recognized as much as the others were criticized, I would have had a very different view of myself.
A 46-year old subject who dropped out of the study returned to complete the questionnaires when he was about 50 … His experience is, I think, a wonderful first-hand account of what Dąbrowski described as a “positive disintegration” and a resulting “personality transformation.”
I would like to share with you some of things that have happened since I dropped out of your study some years ago. I spent a year or so crying almost every day, then met with a psychologist for another year, but got frustrated with the psychologist because I felt he wasn’t doing anything, just listening. I started reading psychology books. I have now read about 30 books on psychology, ethics, and relationships. I do not feel depressed now. I am slowly changing my beliefs about personal responsibility, authenticity and tolerance, and integrating these changes into my life. I feel that forms of authoritarianism and intolerance have been a major problem for me. I would like to accelerate the change process, but I resist and take time to integrate one change before I take another step.
He wrote more about his own process:
I think that my irrational feelings, prejudices and sexual stereotypes distorted my view of the world. The taboo about discussing sex and my aversion to people meant that there were very few avenues open to changing my viewpoints and beliefs … I feel there has always been a great variety of choices available to me, but that I have rarely had the courage to make the choices. I have let events or other people decide for me. I chose not to choose. I am changing that now and I am going to keep changing it.
Two women, both in their mid-40s during the 1990s … and veterans of much counseling and the personality transformation of inner growth described by Dąbrowski (1964), complete the picture of the usually painful but rewarding journey toward emotional maturity.
The first woman answered an item on the study questionnaire about how she would encourage a troubled gifted young adult who was contemplating suicide:
I would try to start with how changes are so subtle that even while they are happening, it is hard to see them, but more and more happen, and when there are enough, there is a change that appears to be sudden and major. While life is often painful, especially for those who see more and don’t shut it out, all those pains add to the depth of our understanding and enrich our lives when the little changes add up to one big leap…I would add that every person fills a hole in history, that everyone affects the life of every person around him or her.
Although I [Dr. Ruf] started the data collection in 1993, my own emotional growth process made the completion of the data analysis and write-up of the study results fill about five years, e.g., the effects of going through positive disintegrations myself. And I still wasn’t done with finding my sought-after authenticity and personally kept going.
The second woman subject quoted here took advantage of my extended time frame and completed her questionnaires over a 5-year period. She admitted that she used both the experience of writing about her life and the five years it required to help her in her own growth process. Although she was not familiar with Dąbrowski’s theories when she wrote these passages, the similarity of her words to Hazell’s description of advanced emotional reasoning described in the previous paper is clear.
I have learned that I never really need to be lonely if I call upon my connections to participate. Most are glad to support me. My mistake early on was to believe that there were these special friends who were “kindred spirits,” and I used to “throw people away” when I discovered that they did not complete me in that fashion. I have learned that no one — no matter how close (even my dearest daughter and husband) can ever be the person who is you. So you invite people to participate at the level that they can. And if you feel continually depleted by an individual, you ask that person less often than someone who fulfills you.
She continued,
What is most important to me is to grow, change, and be part of something beyond my own little life. To contribute to the world, even if in some small, unseeable way. It does not bother me, for instance, to have people not recognize me or know I was the founder of this association or on the founding board of that program. I am happy to see the thing take a shape of its own, independent of its beginnings.
In conclusion, the same woman described her clear understanding of herself and her goals for her life in the world as she now understands it. The five subjects in the study who had reached this level wrote virtually the same philosophies. In the following excerpt she wrote what she would tell a young person about life:
Learn to trust yourself — no matter who disagrees with you. What looks to your parents like craziness might be creativity, what looks like nonconformance might be individuality, what looks anti-social isolation might be a need to reflect and contemplate.
Always rely and depend on yourself, never on things outside yourself — like food, drugs, alcohol, movies, or friends. Friends are there to share a journey, share joy or sorrow, but they are not there to lead or follow. And always know that the answer to your problems, the answer to your questions is inside yourself, because as you develop knowledge to ask the question, you are developing the power to answer it.
You can do anything you want to do, and an academic grade no more reflects your interest or ability to succeed in a subject than your age reflects your maturity. A subject you understand poorly today may catch your imagination and prove your genius tomorrow.
Never, never, never let anyone tell you who you are or what you can be, no matter what the evidence is to you. You can change yourself to be anything you focus on. What you think you are is what you are. What you dream is what you become. Never turn your thoughts or dreams over to anyone else.
And finally, forgive yourself, love yourself. Hatred and resentment will tear away at your creativity and imagination until nothing is left. Forgive others for what they do to you. Remember that everyone is doing the best job they can with what they have to work with. Expect a miracle every day, and the world will unfold miraculously before you.
Summary and Conclusions
The Baby Boomer subjects discussed in my posts are unlike their parents in that a higher proportion of them have chosen to question much about life. Such a stance often put them at odds with their parents. People of high intelligence often derive most of their sadness through existential discrepancies, such as “Where and how do I fit into the world?” Their G.I. generation parents did not understand this type of questioning and thought it foolish for their children to be depressed for these reasons. In fact, a high number of subjects’ parents contributed to their children’s confusion over the existential question of “Who am I?” by working hard to make their children “fit in.”
Story References
Hazell, C. G. The experience of emptiness and the use of Dabrowski’s Theory in counseling gifted clients: Clinical case examples.” Advanced Development 8 (1999): 31–46.
Ruf, D. L. (1998). Environmental, familial, and personal factors that affect the self-actualization of highly gifted adults: Case studies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Originally written and published as part of “If You’re So Smart, Why Do You Need Counseling?” by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D., Advanced Development: A Journal on Adult Giftedness, 1999. Denver, CO.
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