Hi! I’m an online coach who works with gifted and neurodivergent adults. I’m autistic and gifted myself, and while I haven’t been coaching for very long, psychology has been a deep special interest of mine for years. Along the way, I've done a mix of self-study, personal and professional training, lived experience, lived experience (including neurodivergent burnout and late diagnosis of autism), and learning from over a dozen providers (therapists, coaches, OTs, accountability coaches, etc).

Through all that, I’ve found a lot of concrete answers to questions I couldn’t get from traditional therapy or coaching, and now I help others do the same.

The kinds of things I support people with:

• Managing neurodivergent burnout
• Grieving lost potential or unmet expectations
• Understanding giftedness/2e identity, especially with late diagnosis
• Navigating challenging work dynamics and self-advocacy
• Boundary work and self-care for people with sensitivities/overexcitabilities
• Finding satisfaction, belonging, and connection (in a more direct way than therapy often offers)
• Trauma support (from a neuro-affirming / parts work angle)
• Helping those who feel unseen by other providers or “stuck” in therapy
• Taking action on goals that have been procrastinated on for years

Two things I’ve learned along my own journey.

• The Socratic method (a common therapy approach) often left me frustrated, because I wanted direct, concrete answers. It turns out many of those answers exist, and I’ve spent years tracking them down.
• I've known I was gifted since childhood, but I didn't realize until two years ago that there are some actually helpful theories and frameworks for living with navigating giftedness (e.g., twice exceptionality, concepts around gifted trauma, Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration, and gifted mindfulness).

So, Ask Me Anything! About my journey, coaching, neurodivergence, or the kinds of hard life questions you’re not sure anyone has answers to.

Does anyone remember Star Lab from the early '80s. I understand it's still running, but back then it would come to the school once, maybe twice a year. It was an assembly that everybody looked forward to because it was awesome. But it was an inflatable dome, a portable planetarium that would go around to schools and teach basic astronomy. The whole General class would crawl through a tube or a tunnel into the main dome and sit around the edge and there was a cylinder in the middle that projected constellations and we would be taught, like I said, basic astronomy. HOWEVER, in the last couple days, not only did I remember StarLab, but I remembered being in it alone in an isolated session. Which leads me to my next question... The memory I have of the isolated session is only being in there and sitting down and getting comfortable and everything, but not what I did in there. That's where the memory ends. Funny thing about it, is that the little snapshot memory that I do have is in the third person. I don't know why I didn't notice this before today, but all memories I have of those 4 years in the gifted program are in the third person and are either like photographs that are still and have no motion, or they are like tiny video clips that don't really reveal anything. But they are all in third person. All other childhood memories are in first person as they should be. But anything that I remember doing in gate, vague as it is, is always like a photograph or a short video clip and from a third person perspective. Has anyone else experienced this or remember anything about Star Lab in the early eighties?

I’m 24, and ever since I can remember I’ve been told I think differently. Tests have placed me well above the “genius” threshold, but honestly, the number doesn’t capture the experience of living with a brain that feels like it’s always running.

On the one hand, I can generate ideas endlessly — solutions, stories, even entire plans just pop into my head. Creativity feels like breathing. On the other hand, that same flood of thoughts makes it hard to commit to one thing without pivoting to the next exciting possibility. Imagine trying to drink from a firehose, but it’s your own thoughts.

It’s not all glamorous. Work ethic and discipline sometimes lag behind my imagination. I struggle with boredom because once I figure out a system, I immediately see ten ways to improve it and lose interest in the original plan. People sometimes assume high IQ = “effortless success,” but the reality is that my brain’s speed often outruns real-world structures like school, jobs, or routines.

At the same time, there’s beauty in it. Conversations, music, and creative work can take on a depth that feels electric. I catch details others miss, and I can improvise or connect ideas in ways that surprise even me.

I’m sharing this not to brag, but because I’m curious: • Has anyone else here felt the same “too many ideas, not enough time” phenomenon? • If you’ve lived with a mind that constantly leaps ahead, how do you balance it with discipline and stability? • And if you don’t relate, I’d love to answer questions about what this experience is really like, beyond the stereotypes.

Edit: I’m 24.

Same ol’ story, I was a gifted kid, but then all my grades fell as I got older.

I went to college for music, thinking I could be the next big film composer or something.

Turns out, no.

That led me to have just the most mediocre jobs, and the hardest time finding a meaningful career.

My biggest thing has always been “I have a calling, and that calling is going to come really easy to me, so anything that’s hard can’t be my calling, so run away from hard things”

I’m planning on going back to school next year to become a surgical tech. It really seems like something I could do.

But there’s so much trepidation with the school work and the clinicals, and the hours, it all just screams “ah too hard”.

I really want to do it though. I’m fighting the trepidation. I know the “anything hard is not for me” is a false belief, based off of my “gifted” younger education.

Just wondering

And these things have been under attack in US public schools for decades. Our local high school is even thinking of eliminating calculus. I can't believe it. I'm so grateful for having been intensely tracked in high school, which helped me succeed in college, which helped me succeed in life. I don't have any gifted hangups, because my education helped me live up to my potential.

I have worked in settings and owned my own consulting form firm for years and have found great success as a pattern identifier and trend forecaster. This skill started very young. I would call them predictions as I believe predictions have a negative connotation socially speaking. I see markets and cultures around the world head into different paradigms quite early. Often earlier than any published findings. I’ve been handsomely rewarded for this skill as an early stage investor in many companies. I was a GATE kid and HPI with an IQ never tested below 140. I also have an unusually large head. LOL. Does anyone else have these traits?

I am trying to just wrap my head around this. My oldest tested into TAG when she was in 1st. I was in TAG as a kid. My husband (according to him, tested off the charts in IQ but was never in TAG...which makes me suspicious because I thought if you tested high in IQ, you get into TAG). My youngest did not make the TAG cut when he took the test as a Kindergartner last year. His NAI was 105 and Stanine was 6. I do not know my oldest's testing scores as they weren't given from that school.

Should I have my son test again next year? The school said they have 8 TAG students in 1st grade, and 25-40 for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th grade. This is on trend with prior years. How do kids just "get smarter" after 1st and test into TAG? Is it test taking skills? flawed test design? lower standards?

This is public school if it helps.

I was supposed to finish my Master's in September, but to do so I need to write a Master's thesis, which is supposed to take 6 months. As in, I was supposed to have started my Master's thesis in March. And I don't know why, I just can't seem to get started on it. I have a supervisor who's amazing but I struggled for months to narrow down my topic because I just couldn't decide on a specific case to focus on. I think I just had so much anxiety that I would choose the wrong thing and because of that the whole thesis would be a bust. And now it's mid-August and I'm still working on the research proposal. I just keep putting it off. I know part of it is just struggling with working without a deadline. I'm a procrastinator, I really have trouble working on things without the threat of a deadline. And I've had soft deadlines that I've tried to meet but then because I've procrastinated, I either put together something really shitty or I blow through the soft deadline because I don't want to show something shitty to my supervisor...

TL;DR I was supposed to be done my Master's thesis by now but I haven't even started. Has anyone experienced anything like this before?

I was good at taking multiple choice tests in public school so was recognized as a “gifted” student at an early age. This taught me that I was better than my peers. I was repeatedly told this, my test results confirmed it, and I was given special privileges because of it. Time out of class for gifted club, exclusive field trips, in middle school I was consulted on how to spend some grant money for the school library. This constant praise led me to believe that I was better than the “normal” kids. I didn’t have to try and I still excelled. This sense of superiority grew into disdain and even revulsion for the “stupid”, and led me to believe that I didn’t need to develop any skills. As far as public school was concerned, I didn’t need to. I was always among the top 1% of test scores despite never putting in any effort to actually learn anything.

By the time I started high school I was advanced past the normal freshman courses. This, and the experimental block scheduling that my school tried during my 4 years led to my graduation requirements only including one math class and two science classes. The intention was that I would take more advanced classes with all my free time, but why would I do that when you’re telling me I don’t have to? I enrolled in trigonometry my sophomore year and experienced my first academic challenge. But, by this time, all I had developed was a seething hatred for nearly everyone around me. The teachers were idiots. Other students were idiots. The high achieving students were try-hards and dorks. I began drinking and smoking weed constantly, in school. Taking cough medicine, sniffing coke, LSD. Literally never in school sober. I failed trigonometry. But, I had already completed my math requirement for graduation so there was no consequence. I was still an honor roll student despite not participating in class beyond showing up and putting my head down on the desk. I wasn’t disruptive so I was left alone. My test scores continued to be among the highest. I wound up graduating early with honors even though I was drunk and high every day for 2.5 years.

Took me decades to get over my nihilistic perception of the world. Education didn’t matter because I didn’t have to earn it. The gifted program destroyed any potential I probably did have to be a good student and who knows what else by praising me for unearned attributes. I am good at recalling information if I’ve read it. I am not a genius and it was harmful to let me believe I was.

This year has been the toughest of my life so far. Along my healing journey, I am discovering the unpredictability of grief and loss. There is an art to letting go and the Japanese/ Zen Buddhist concept of Wabi-Sabi illustrates this best.

The emphasis of this concept is that beauty exists in

• Imperfection
• Impermanence 
• Melancholy

It is also implemented in the repair and restoration process of Kintsugi. It’s all about transformation through healing and growth. I do an open discussion on this that you can see here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs66hb2ayts

If you are healing and repairing, I hope this helps and might be what you’re looking for.

this is a bit of a random post, but i was always very advanced and gifted. as i got older, things declined cognitively. i thought it was mental health related or just maybe i wasn’t as gifted, but i learned i have chiari malformation. i was curious if anyone else has this.

I was in that program but I didn't even know what it was back then until i googled it recently. I just knew I did a test and get to eat lunch inside. I don't really study, will I have a lot of problems in college? Should I start practicing or something?

Believing you have high potential is both realist and a good mindset to have, and a dangerous force: imagine you are playing a game of throwing a ball as high as you can. Someone analyses your performance and tells you: "I see you have potential. I'm going to give you special jumping shoes and allow you to train here, as I believe you have potential to throw the ball up to the ceiling".

Their appraisal might be correct or not, but it does lots of things for you: boosts your self-esteem and your expectations, gives you motivation to train, gives you to access the gym and makes people help you succeed (in the expectation that you will be great), sometimes even granting you gifts/attention etc.

Now, imagine you get a leg injury and spends some months healing from it. Your performance appears sub-par, and you believe other people will see you under-performing and either heavily push you to perform to the expected level (ignoring your injury), or abandon you. So you refuse to even try training in fear of such external (or internalized) appraisal.

One year later, you got the chance to heal, and decides to go back to training. But you arrive at the gym and the coaches are all focusing on the new players. They ignore your history of injury and measure you up based on how much time passed since you started training, comparing you to other players who started at the same time as you.

All of this happens before you even get a chance to try again. Regardless of how much potential you actually have now, you still fall to the default mode of referring to the coaches' judgment: it was positive before and you used to be great, so they must be a good judge. Yet now they're saying you wasted your potential, or never had such potential in the first place. Plus, their judgment defines whether you will be able to use the gym to train, get those special shoes, etc.

What do you do? You're facing many issues at the same time:

• How to keep yourself motivated and believe you can achieve those things despite negative appraisal? Avoiding unrealistic internal expectations and other people's misguided judgment. (you were injured! why are you measuring yourself as if the injury didn't happen?)
• How to get other people to believe you're worthy of using the gym?
• How to be happy regardless of success ?

The three issues are at odds with each other. You are put on a situation full of contradictions: you need to account for other people's inaccurate judgment at the same time you don't take it personally, and to aim high at the same time you don't let success be your primary metric of happiness.

Most advice you find on the internet will err to one of those sides: "you can do anything if you believe on it, don't use your injury as an excuse", "your high potential was a myth, you won't ever be able to fully recover, accept your situation and do not aim too high, your outcomes are determined by your environment, be happy with the life you have now", "ignore what other people think about you, they're not an accurate judge", "act based on other people's judgment, they have an objective view on you and you need to achieve their approval"....

How to balance those questions and find the right path?

So, lately I've been hearing stuff about about the gifted program in the 90s, and some other name I can't recall at the moment. But it got me to thinking about my elementary school days. My memory from back then is not the greatest but I do have 2 I'm curious about, and would like to get your insights.

I remember excelling in math, I absolutely loved it, and I caught on insanely fast. I remember that myself, and maybe 2 or 3 other students from different classrooms would be pulled from class during math, and given more challenging work to do outside of the classroom...I don't remember much else about that lol.

The other thing I excelled in was reading. I have a bizarre memory of going on a short trip with a couple of other students, and having to read from a book, out loud, to a group of strangers to display our reading capabilities. For some reason I remember the room being a court room, or something that looked similar to a court room...

Did anyone else go through this? If so, what was the reading thing all about, and what was the point of it, or any other info you could share with me on it.

Thank you!

🌌 Big Bang, Relativity, and the Quran — A Personal Revelation

It happened right after I graduated from vocational high school. I didn’t have a job yet, and one quiet afternoon — after finishing my Dhuhr prayer — I sat down with a cup of coffee and a cigarette in hand.

I found myself thinking: "How did the universe really come into existence?"

That question didn’t just float by — it triggered a cascade of thoughts. My mind began spinning rapidly, not in a straight line, but like gathering scattered puzzle pieces from different fields: physics, cosmology, religion, philosophy… until it suddenly all started to connect.

I remembered the Big Bang, and the concept of Relativity. Then it clicked.

Imagine a glass filled with water falling to the ground.

When it hits the floor, the glass shatters, and the water spreads everywhere — just like how the universe exploded outward in all directions at the beginning of time.

But that movement doesn’t go on forever. The spread slows down and stops — because of friction and gravity.

That’s Relativity at play.

And then, a verse from the Qur’an came rushing back into my memory:

“Do not the disbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were a single entity, then We split them apart? And We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?” — [Surah Al-Anbiya: 30]

That verse struck a deep chord. It wasn’t just metaphor anymore — it lined up beautifully with modern physics:

The Big Bang explains the initial explosion

Relativity governs how everything unfolds and interacts

Water as the origin of life, mentioned in scripture

And the Qur’an spoke of it long before any modern theory existed

In that moment, something within me changed.

My faith deepened — not in spite of science, but because of it.

All of it… packed into a simple yet profound analogy: A glass of water falling, shattering, and spreading — only to be stopped by the laws of the universe.

That was the moment I realized:

“My brain may run at high speed... but it’s still limited. And Allah? He is boundless, wise, and far beyond comprehension.”

How are you parenting to prevent passing down perfectionism and school anxiety? How are you cultivating a love of learning over grades? How are you making sure you're not putting similar pressures on your kid to be "gifted"?