If you wonder about your High Intellectual Potential and you are looking to understand how you work, stay well on this article. Together we will see the main principles mentioned in the book " Too smart to be happy who will answer your main questions.
It is by learning continuously about this particular functioning that many adults with high potential with whom I am in contact manage to live this gift well. Don't forget to take a look at the others books on the HIP !
My name is Paul, and my high potential was detected more than ten years ago now. Today I share what I have learned to help the new ones.
NB: This article is the transcript of the above video.
Presentation of the book and author
So before I start I wanted to give you some information about the book itself and about Jeanne Siaud-Facchin to get back into context. So it's a book that was published in 2008 and sold to more than 500,000 copies. It's something huge!
For her part, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin created (among others) the Cogito-Z centres from 2003. These were the first French centres for the diagnosis and management of school learning disorders. Today, she turned this into a genuine franchise. It's a business woman!
In 2011 she also created Zebra Alternative which is a Marseille association for gifted children who are not comfortable in the classical school curriculum. I already mentioned this in my article on Early childhood associations.
Otherwise, in general, it is psychologist specializing in HIP. So she sees only people with high potential (the Early childhood mainly but also some zebra adults) who have difficulties and that's why in her book she talks about the difficulties of HIP. It's just because she's not in contact with people for whom everything is fine because they're not going to consult.
The name of the gifted person
So she starts her book talking about all the words we find to talk about HP people. There is "high potential", "advanced", "early", etc. But overall she doesn't like these words too much. They imply a notion of superiority. We are either high potential (we have great potential, more than others), gifted (we are more gifted than others), or early (we are ahead of others). So this notion of superiority and advance does not please him because, in the end, being HP, gifted or early is just having a different functioning. It's neither above nor below. It's different.
That's why she decided to call them zebras. You have certainly come across this term of zebra everywhere because it is very widespread now. But she created it.
Why "zebra"? It explains by the fact that the zebra is the only equidae that man has failed to domesticate. And in the savannah, it is easily noticed with its stripes, but at the same time these same stripes allow it to go unnoticed. It melts in the mass with all the herbs in the savannah. So the zebra is an animal that is different while being the same. Being zebra, it's having a zebra personality, it's feeling different while melting into the mass.
Moreover, it is the "z" of "zebra" that gave the "z" of "Cogito"Z.
Early childhood development in the zebra adult
Much of this book is devoted to the development of personality and self-confidence from the baby to the adult phase. I had already dealt with this whole part on zebra childhood and adolescence.
Verdict: High potential. And then what?
On the other hand, in this video, I didn't talk about the adult part and especially what happens when you learn that you're gifted. That's what I'm gonna do.
We start with this explosion: it is the verdict in the shrink who confirms us with the WAIS 4 (IQ test)that we are a person with high potential. After that, there are several steps.
The first is relief because we put a word on what we felt and what's going on. It makes you feel a lot less lonely and understand that, despite this difference, you are quite normal. That's great!
Then we start going down and we get to a phase of doubt. The IQ test, the competence of the therapist, is being questioned.
Then we get to a stage of anger because we've come to the idea of this potential, and we feel like we've either wasted time before knowing it (depending on the age we're detected), or an anger / fear of not being up to it. It is once again this notion of "high potential": we say we have a gift, but in the end we just want to be normal and not feel superhero or anything. So we really have this fear of not being up to it.
In any case, in all these phases (after the verdict) it is very important to be accompanied. The person who gave you the test isn't here just to pass the test. It's better if she follows you after. You're going to have a phase of internal jolting, and it's very important to be accompanied.
The similarities between zebras
Overall zebras have common traits. They are people who can be pulled off and out of time, hypersensitiveAll this. I'm not going to detail this here because it's the subject of this whole chain. But what we should note is that, despite that, we all remain unique.
It's an idea I like very much. This gift is part of my personality, but it's only a facet, a small part. There are as many different high potentials as there are two people with different high potentials. Everyone will experience this "zebritude" in their own way. There is no good or bad way to do it. Everyone's got their own thing. We are not here to compare but rather to give broad guidelines that may apply to some, but will not apply to all. It's no big deal. We're all unique.
Zebra typologies
I also wanted to talk to you about a typology of the gifted that Jeanne Siaud-Facchin makes in her book. It differentiated three typologies.
So first there are those who accept the framework of society. They're going to choke in a little more "non-standard" life (I don't like to say that) and risk developing depressions, feeling really bad, and locking themselves up. In fact, they will use all their energy to succeed in staying in this framework that does not fit them. They will seek to show no weakness. It's really gonna be a big source of anxiety for them. And it joins what I talked about several times on the false self. There we are really about creating this false personality, this social mask.
The second category is those who will face this framework of society. They're going to be globally very creative people, but also very frustrated, angry and discouraged. They're gonna fight, but it's gonna bother them anyway.
And the third category is those who evolve without a framework, who don't care. They are disillusioned people who live their lives in complete blur. They sail a little as they can.
So these are great typologies. The same: one can go from one to another during one's life. We can be in between. The goal is really to give the big ideas.
Conclusion
In short, it's a book that I really recommend because Jeanne Siaud-Facchin goes much more in detail than I could do in this article (and that's normal!).
And then it's really super simple to read. There are no complicated words. It's really within everyone's reach. If this article has made you want to buy and read it, know that you can do it by clicking directly on the link (affiliated) which is right next door.
See you!
