The other day, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bertrand. During our exchange, he told me his incredible story: his hypersensitivity (and more generally its High potential) was diagnosed by his doctors as bipolarity. So, for almost 15 years, he was on medication... for nothing.
Below is the video of our exchange. If necessary, I transcribed our remarks right after.
If you are interested in the subject, know thatCharlotte also talks about her relationship to her bipolarity, hypersensitivity and high potential.
Good morning, everyone, welcome to our place. I've decided to make small exchanges like this, the goal is really to offer to those who want to give a witness and a feedback on how they live or have experienced the high potential, their high potential, or at least some of this high potential.
Here I am really looking forward to the first time so I'm happy all excited, it's a new project.
And today I have the chance to welcome Bertrand, who is the first to pass, and that's it.
Bertrand if you want to introduce yourself.
- Yes, hello, Paul. First of all, and as a very high potential, I have total hypersensitivity, so it's possible that it can be seen, heard and seen during this interview.
– It's stress!
– So my story in fact, first of all I would like to address the parents and then also the young high potentials but who are facing difficulties because it is not recognized or because, that's what happened to me that's what I'm going to tell, is that they are categorized as mentally ill because they work differently. There.
So what happened to me was that I was diagnosed very late, at 47 I was diagnosed bipolar. Because being subject to what is qualified as bipolar disorder to manic seizures. And depressions very close to melancholy. We wonder if we will continue and there is *inaudible* especially in relation to my hypersensitivity that I lived like.
– Excuse me, I lost you a little bit on the last sentence, a little bit bugged at home. I'm sorry.
- Yes, it happens. I was saying that I actually felt different especially because of my hypersensitivity. I could see it wasn't the same as the others. And then, but, on the other hand, a poor girl, I never realized, at last for a very long time I didn't realize my very high potential just because, and that's an important point, I, I had, at last I always did my father, but I have gifted parents.
It's important and that's why I want to say it's because having gifted parents they didn't realize at all that I was a gifted child but rather than actually like in class I wasn't following.
So right away I've been categorised "canker" and into a family of gifted parents who think only about one thing is having children like them. It's very difficult.
– I don't know!
– That is to say, in fact, a posteriori, and then after an analysis, I still specify, a psychotherapy of 15 years, it turns out that indeed the trend is great without it necessarily seeing that parents compete with their children.
Here I give you an example: among other things I am very good at chess. But from the moment I started to see results in competitions, in championships, at the regional level, my father (very good at chess) stopped being good master chess somehow, that's it. And it happened in other areas because he couldn't stand me being better than he just did. So you have to be careful about that.
– Yeah...
– So that's actually being it when you are, when you live being considered canker and it happens unfortunately I know it to a lot of high potential zebras.
– Yes, unfortunately a lot.
– It's very difficult after gaining self-confidence.
– Well, we get ridiculed the whole school all the time, it must not be easy at all.
– All the time while we live elsewhere.
- Yes! We take refuge in what I have called for a very long time when the term blooms is right, when we talk about taking refuge in what I myself called my bubble, without actually knowing that it was really a bubble. That was it.
And so until then, so I had a chaotic journey like any canker that respects itself. I do an agricultural profession, I went on to study but very soon stopped interested, and then I went on to do my military service there with a relationship to the absolutely disastrous authority.
– It must have been hard!
– I can't stand it. We can come back to it, but this notion of authority when we are a zebra must be aware that we often do not support it.
– I know what you're talking about is very difficult. I didn't make the army, but...
– I do not speak authority in the sense of "making authority". Who for those who write or who like zebras are interested in a lot of things is a very common notion. Not that hierarchical authority that...
– The source of authority!
– That's exactly it. So to continue then well I took two sabbatical years in Belle-Ile-En-Mer from where I came from, yes. And then I settled in and that was in, I specify the years it's important because I'm 58 years old. So that was in '87. Then I spent two years doing what I like to do among so many things.
That is, DIY, gardening because I love it, but when I talk about gardening it's not planting pâquerettes. It's actually about cultivating the land to feed itself that was also a goal.
That's it and then after two years, two years on an island, little one, we go around it quickly and then I don't hold up so what did I do? I said to myself, easy solution, if I would pass an administrative contest! I had an administrative contest, why not, and then good. No matter what level it brought me little.
I've been through a lot, well, I've had them all but I don't know why. You understand.
– Yes, it happened, it happened on its own.
– That's what I'm saying, too, because there are parents who could, if they ask themselves questions about their children, hear this testimony and say to themselves, ah, yeah, but my son actually at school is a canker but on the other hand he doesn't fit in, he's interested in a lot of things that aren't the same as ours. Let it be because...
– That's right, you gotta give him a chance.
– That's it then and that's where my gift, among other things, served me a lot yes quite my profitable summer, that's because I came back to the bottom of the scale and it turns out that now I'm head of a ministerial cabinet. There. But in the meantime I've been doing computer science, I'm a lawyer...
- I love it!
– To relax I do for service Excel applications, in VBA language, things like that. Because it's exciting. But it's exciting to do all this! To come back, I wouldn't have done this interview a little more than a year ago.
Why? That's because always considered "inaudible" since in 2005 when I was still making crises that they called manic crisis, i.e. hyper-excitability: everything is great, we are the master of the world, we master everything. And then it could last a year, a year and a half.
– Oh yes, it was a long crisis!
– It didn't stop. Yes but precisely then it was long as a crisis and then actually my brain was so solicited because at some point, and that's where you have to be careful and sometimes protect yourself when you're zebra.
– We gotta get some rest.
– We're asking too much. Even if it is super performing: a Ferrari if you ask too much at a given moment there is no more gas. So here we stop clean, and that's what was going on. As with every time, in addition there is a combination of circumstances, as each time I was doing great depressions I was prescribed antidepressants but well the antidepressants after three weeks, but only three weeks, as soon as they started to effect, were back on my feet and it was back for a cycle.
And then in 2005 I ended up after one of those depressions in a psychiatric hospital for three weeks where, I will very frankly cut you if you wish but I will be very frank, for attempted suicide.
- Okay.
– She's a friend who saved me and then a college of eminent psychiatrists certainly considered me bipolar, diagnosed me bipolar without me knowing what it really was.
With his college of pills, chemical camisoles.
– Oh, there.
– So far, so I went back to bets to find my son since I had a 26-year-old son and I needed him for my balance I thought good, Bertrand and that otherwise it saved Bertrand you're sick I became aware very quickly.
– Yeah, that's good.
– But I knew why it was because I knew I was different. For a reason I didn't know. So putting a disease on that is pretty comfortable.
– That justifies it.
– I think I'm sick. I'm gonna take pills.
- Yes.
– And for 15 years I took Depakote. There must be care because he is a psychiatrist who prescribed me Depakote, but at a dose that is higher than the maximum dose I learned after fifteen years by the news of shrink.
– Was it too loud?
– It was a kind of chemical camisole.
– Is that what you're talking about?
– Yes, I had no more manic seizures. And that's right, I didn't have them anymore. On the other hand, I always had depressions but less, but good there. And then my brain continued to function quite the same way it had...
So it had quite curious effects since (it's retrospectively when working with my new shrink that we put a finger on it) it's that actually my brain continuing to turn and normally but having to make a little more effort because it's down by the Depakote
– A little shot.
– A little shot, it made me do and I was in perpetual hypomaniac state. All the time. It's tiring. That's it, and then I had to change my shrink, but under circumstances. I consider it good that my psychiatrist (or psychiatrist when I say "my" is generic) is close to home or to my work but to a place where I can go in case of emergency quickly.
I changed a year and a half ago and then immediately the shrink said, "No, but here your treatment is not going at all so you have to take it down. We're going down to the therapeutic dose."
Well, that's what she does.
And then there was a stall it's very hard to stall.
– Is that addictive?
- Get 15 years of drugs... And then it's a state of lack.
– Yeah, we're so used to being a little shot that...
- Drugged! Since it's a drug drugs, it's hard to be aware of it anyway. It's been a week is very difficult but with his support and then the help of a friend I have the chance to have and who is very expensive but it happened.
And then she realized that I was still working the same way even with a dose of Depakote supposed to be therapeutic. So she's telling me something else.
– The problem is elsewhere!
"Mr. **, you are high potential! Did I say I'm sorry? What the hell is this? I didn't know the term, I wasn't interested so I didn't know the term.
"Yes and then it doesn't guess anyway."
– Yes, I say high potential, what is it? We'll do some tests to start if you want. And she starts with a hypersensitivity test. Curiously it's not... hypersensitivity I don't know the name anymore but on 136 I was 122.
– Not bad!
– So she says yes, so she goes on and then it turns out that she's interested in the subject because she's young. This is where I also draw the attention of the parents of zebra children, or of the very zebras but who think they are but are misdiagnosed bipolar limit schizophrenic see autistic...Finally no matter what the label is, it is not necessary to stop at that. That is to say, many psychiatrists must be seen.
– You have to have several opinions yes before taking too much treatment.
– Several opinions, many, and work in my sense as any zebra that respects itself, instinctively. You probably know as I do that every day we have a particular zebra instinct.
– We feel it.
– That is to say, I am talking about it all the more easily after fifteen years of therapy. It serves me in a lot. That is to say, I was looking at my past actions at my high potential.
- That's good.
– How is it done, for example, yes quite that is to say that I came out quickly, and that is a chance, quickly of the impostor syndrome that is terrible. That's to say, for years and years and everything I did because I sometimes asked myself questions, but how can I do it? Or more precisely, and here in particular, but why is it that others do not?
– Why do I make sense and why not for others? Why...
– That's exactly what we think we're like everyone else.
– Yes, we realize that, in fact, there is a difference.
– Exactly but this difference as long as no one has put their finger on it is very much one cannot do it oneself it is very difficult, one can not. And then, in my opinion, even for yourself, it's not a matter of illusions, I don't know what you think, but a job with a specialist with a psychiatrist, a psychologist.
– Yeah, already to explain what it's for you to see.
- Yes, then to detect it. Because there is a difference: bipolarity but I say here I have retained it but very synthetically the bipolarity it diagnoses. High potential is detected.
– Yeah, it's not a disease.
– It's not a disease at all.
– That's right.
– And once I've been rid of this, and well since then it's going much better.
– I believe you!
– When you spend 15 years in the same bipolar skin... it's... in one of your articles on your site you say it very well, it's that we're another. To the professional, for example, to hide his supposed bipolarity.
And we do everything to hide his supposed bipolarity, we do everything.
– We're putting on a mask.
– That's to say we're someone else. That is, when you go to work you put on your mask and then you go. Except when you don't stand so much authority, when the notion of hierarchy doesn't exist (for me it doesn't exist).
– Oh yes, we're all humans!
- That's not true. As other feelings do not exist or are exceeded my understanding. I can't understand them. I don't know, the notion of ego is very special. I live for sharing. There. And that's why I found your project very interesting.
- Thank you very much!
– Because it's something I want to do. I don't know how yet but for me it will be writing because I write but it's important to share.
– You have to tell stories as strong as that, that it certainly happens to other people, I'm convinced, and you have to realize it before: when you see that the situation is going in that direction, you have to be aware of it first.
– Yeah, well surrounded, we can do it. For example, there is... I realize now and fortunately the fact that I was diagnosed bipolarly in my love relationships for example. Because being diagnosed, detected as high potential now is how to act so as best possible. That is, I know how to act when I feel that my brain is boiling. When you are diagnosed bipolar: what are you doing? You take pills and that's because you consider yourself sick. That's not the right method at all. That's to say that TCC for you does not even exist (Behavioral and Cognitive Techniques) it doesn't even exist since you have the pills anyway. So crutches.
– It's the miracle solution
– Then you take them. Here you take them off because it is still the easy solution of many psychiatrists and psychologists. That's to say, "Well, your child ah yes then your child is hyperactive. Then go give him..." In the United States it is very common. We're gonna give you some hyperactivity medications. But it's not a disease
- No!
– It's a state. Oh, but your child, and it's important too, your child, ah, but it's curious at five he's not talking yet. It's curious anyway. Ah, that means he's got a attention disorder etc. That was my case. I walked very late I spoke very late and I was a premature child 1,326kg which is important what I will tell you.
Why? Because from the beginning, actually, right from the start, uh, somewhere my parents had made a diagnosis. That is to say, I was baptized in the hospital because they were so afraid that I
Don't live. So it's from the beginning when you leave like this and the parents consider it to be a child who was born canker or that he will be fragile *inaudible*
– I lost that last sentence.
– Yes I mean that when a child was born prematurely, and because he behaves differently, because he's late for a supposed age to walk.
– Yes, it is a false norm.
– Then it's either to brood it, or to throw it out quickly, but you don't have to brood it you have to let it. Most of all, let him do it. We must realize that if he is not comfortable in the existing school system, we must try to move him towards another path. Because I don't know about you but I consider that (and what is normal!) the school system cannot be done for people like us.
– Oh no, he's not made for us at all!
– It is adapted to the majority.
– Yeah, that's clear.
– So the high potential, in my view, is not just the measured IQ or the classical IQ.
– It's not Einstein.
– Because as we blow the ceilings anyway it's not a marker to have a very high IQ. My father has a very high IQ but he's not at all zebra. Question sensibility there is none. It's only intellectual point. But it's not just that.
– There's a lot of things.
– And then here's my journey so now it happens that I am working for a cabinet (which I will not mention) ministerial and why? That's because for a person who's not a good person it's considered a prestigious position. For a person like me it's only been six months, but you know it when you're high potential.
– It's already six months!
– Yes especially with experience! And then after six months, I get bored.
- No joke.
– And when you get bored professionally for high potential it's terrible.
– This is the beginning of the end.
– So that's what I'm doing right now, but now it's seeing somewhere else. That's to say I won't stay. It is also necessary to discuss with people at this level, who are mostly writers and others, who are technical consultants in the firm. I'm saying that because they're a little out of reality by the way the firms operate but in fact they're completely out of our reality.
– More!
– That is to say, when one is zebra our reality is, as far as I am concerned, based essentially on sharing, trust, justice, fairness,
– Honesty
– Complete tolerance... complete tolerance, sharing, and horizontal work – what I call horizontal work.
– Especially no pyramid hierarchy.
– Not at all! Yeah, that's exactly it. I see you smiling because it's actually pretty terrible.
– I hate it.
"That's why you don't have to keep it, but I'm actually writing." I write a lot. I am the work of a collective with which we made some incursions on the internet to attack stupid sites. We're continuing... quite. In a book I am finishing there I write that actually the hierarchy [hierar shit] where it is told to do and that is it. That's to say when you're zebra, that's it.
- Not bad.
– When one is zebra, at least if I'm told "you have to do this," first I tell you "why? "
– Yes, it must be justified.
– And if I consider it not what to do, I'm not going to do it.
– It's over, we need a valid justification on absolutely everything.
– Yes, I'm not going to obey. Because but I'm not going to obey, game is going to kill me because I know very well that what I'm being asked to do is not the thing to do.
Have you noticed the speed at which we find solutions to problems that for us are not?
– Exactly, and how our managers can't find the solutions.
– Or, when we deliver the solution to them on a set without more explanation than we consider necessary, we have to expect 6 months of decision because they do not understand.
– They don't see the logical link, though it's simple yet, but they don't.
– And it's simple because for us as it's the right brain that works directly it goes very fast. It's true. It's true what we call tree thinking is an essential asset!
– It's very convenient on some things.
– It's an essential asset. But then on many things I am passionate about, like any zebra, a lot of things. Like you certainly do. So I'm interested in art, I'm interested in painting, my garden that I have there is a small garden but it's a creative space. That's it, because I love gardening. I never use a plumber or anything. Why? That's because I'm going to watch online not a tutorial to know how we do it, but rather scientific articles to know how it works.
– The logic behind all this.
– That's the logic. Once I understand the logic I don't need a tuto it's okay I know, I do. So, yeah, that's all the advantages of high potential. It's like, "I can do it," so people with high potential need to be aware of this, of this major asset. That is to say to be able to say to each other no matter what difficulty we encounter, I can overcome it, I can do it.
– I'll make it. We have to give ourselves a little time just we actually understand three researches and then it's good.
– Not 3 research but that's why I have this problem why I'm bored because I don't have big plans.
So when I was talking about big projects I was computer scientists it was to deploy, to participate in the deployment, of the internet network of my administration in '89. The blessed era of computer scientists is the arrival of computer science in the general public and businesses. It's the end of the 1980s. And I went back there.
– That must have been great!
– But I quickly explain the journey because it will also allow young zebras to understand how one can take a path and then find exciting things and progress very quickly. It was because I had passed this competition in , I was returning to this state administration that does not cost the taxpayer, but it is a state administration, and then I was responsible for managing the staff. But there were great binders, all had to be done by hand. So there were about ten thousand people. And a computer.
- Olala, today is unimaginable!
– It was a double disk computer.
– I have no idea what it is.
– So the disc is underneath. Yes, the double disc is underneath. It's an IBM that means you have a flexible diskette for the operating system (multiplanes etc.) it's DOS but it's DOS in code. So and a flexible floppy, sorry the operating system is DOS, and the application software is on another floppy. First you put *inaudible* and then the second. You close with a small valve. It's old-fashioned.
I thought, "Here's a computer!" I'd seen it in eco science college but with just... bah the basis of decimal mode. I saw it, and I understood it. So once I realized it was good.
So I thought to myself, "Here, if I put all this into computer science." And then for three weeks I did this day and night. There. And that's how I set foot in computer science. And then in five years, I was after five years, I was a network administrator. Then I took part in the deployment of the Internet for the entire administration. This led to a pilot site in Martinique. That's all it was possible that...
- Bravo!
– Thanks, but that's to say it's actually without knowing, because I didn't know, without knowing it it's that high potential that allowed me to do all this. It's to get me to do all this, that is to say that after I was chased but not to tell. That is to say, for the accounting system it took a reference purchases for the development so specialized in public purchasing.
It happens that I am now a lawyer expert in public orders and I also master computer science. So I was a rare bird. So they say, "You're going to participate in development." I said "Super". I love computer analysis etc. so we went on this project. And then I worked on another interdepartmental project here. It's multiplied.
All this to say that I think, excuse me, that a zebra to be comfortable must be intellectually stimulated all the time. So not all the time.
– Yes, not 24 hours a day, but very regularly.
– Especially in the field of work. That's work or home, too. That is, it is often said that we must teach children to get bored.
- No!
– You ever hear that? We hear it regularly. "Oh no, but you have to teach the children to get bored," but I say that for the parents, the gifted children, the little zebras: especially not! Especially not. Don't listen to that nonsense you hear. But it's true! Above all, let them never get bored.
– They must always be busy, they must create, they must exploit their high potential.
- Yes! And then stop watching them all the time. We also watch the children all the time for fear that they will do something stupid. But yes, but fatally
– He'll do it and he'll learn earlier like that.
– Go do something stupid! But for him it's not stupid, it's learning. Above all, never let zebra children get bored. Or even when you're a manager never leave an employee, colleagues
– Yes, everyone is on the same level.
– Everyone at the same level but it's really to be clear: a zebra employee never let him get bored. Never. Or as it is a person who, like you are people who function on trust when there is no trust on one side it does not work.
– It's screwed.
– So when we start projects, what I tried to do where I am right now, but we see that they will not succeed. Now, when I used to think, when I had impostor syndrome, I thought, "Well, if I'm going to insist, I'm going to get there, I'm going to get there." I needed to value myself because I didn't trust myself and everything, not at all. I think, "No, but it's okay, I'm going to offer this to other people and I'm going to do something else."
And now what interests me is your project. I think he's very good.
- Thank you very much!
– And to make others enjoy what I have experienced
– Yeah, I'm sure it'll help a lot of people!
– Trying to make it happen to nobody. Because that being that I do not wish it to anyone i.e. that I wish no one to be diagnosed bipolar, at last some psychic disease, whereas it is simply a different brain function, but that's all. So then when you consider the person this way and well it's much easier. Don't try to chat with a zebra, get into a rhetorical debate. You don't have to. Usually it's worth losing. And it's true that people across the street find it hard to understand because they say, "But who knows this guy? When I look at his resume good he a baccalaureate plus a deug thing plus a deug thing but who is it? But who is it in relation to me who did great schools etc?"
But these people don't realize that actually it's the person that this writer has in front of him is just a colleague. There. He is a person who sees him as a colleague and who can bring a great deal. Since I know that I am high potential and that I have been able to integrate very quickly given my past since I have had fifteen years of psychotherapy it is much better.
– I believe you.
– I finally realized that what I was doing was not to try to do as well as the others, because that's what I've been looking for often, you say, "I'm a anchor but I'm going to try to do as well" but that's not it at all. That is, when you are yourself you can do a lot of things.
– We have to find his way.
– We have to find his way, and it's not easy for me to be aware of it in the world where we are. But it also makes it possible to meet people, or to realize that friends we have, or brothers and sisters... I am my brother, I have a twin brother who is dissimilar but who also inherited the same thing. But who had the same route, too. Because we were two twins but for parents but he's going to say that he too then the vacuum is considered to be there too I wanted to be quickly if I'll say it...
– I'm afraid zoom will actually cut us one second.
– If you want, we can do this again.
– We'll do it twice, I think.
– This is an interesting example I have a twin brother, a dissimilar one, but I was considered a canker and he was a genius and yet our journeys were the same, as chaotic.
– We'll remember Bertrand very quickly. I want to know everything.
– I think it's important because I thought before that interview and so I write when I think it's the best way for me to do it. And it came back. And not only that, it goes far enough, that's what allowed my brother to say to his daughter, who at the age of 27, to say to her there actually (she is called Cherry) "Cherry you are different we know now why". So she went to see a psychologist, and it turns out that Bah L-heredity went to my brother's and his daughter's.
– The whole family
- There. But I am glad to have participated in the development of Cherry which I love very much and which is therefore the daughter of my twin brother.
– Well, I'm really happy for her! Thank you very much Bertrand anyway.
– You have to do a lot, you have to share.
– Well, thanks for sharing, I can't say anything more, you were great thanks.
– Paul thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my experience.
– And it's not over. I'll come back to you for your brother!
– And that she can benefit as many as possible.
– But I hope, I really hope. If you listen to us, what Bertrand said is very important.
- Thank you very much!
- Good evening to you.
