HealthyGamerGG - Why Being Gifted Actually Makes Life Harder

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about how being a gifted kid actually makes life harder! Hitting the wall, trying to change, intellect and ego, abandoning your identity, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, people grow and change, but even for gifted kids, it's a different kind of challenge. What they need to grow and change is actually different. Because what they have to do is abandon everything that they've invested in. So let's talk a little bit about gifted kids. So I want to start this off by sharing a little bit about how we learned what we're going to share. Actually, let me just take a step back. Let's start over. So let's talk about gifted kids.

So what I want to share with you all today is why. especially as adults, it's hard to get help as a gifted kid. So the thing about gifted kids is that, you know, we kind of grow up. And then especially once we reach adulthood, there's a certain stickiness to being gifted. There's a certain stickiness or inertia to changing, right? So even if I know I'm gifted, even if I know that like I hyperintellectualized and things like that, it's hard to actually change. and it turns out that the reason it's hard to change,

the reason, a reason actually has to do with sort of the gifted kid complex. And what we tend to find is that for some reason, kids who grow up gifted really struggle as adults. And it's my belief that the reason that they continue to struggle as adults is because they're actually resistant. There's a resistance to change. I don't mean like internally like you don't want to change. I mean that something about the way that your psychology is formed makes it hard for you to change.

And that's why they actually struggle as adults. Because we can have all kinds of problems as kids. But generally speaking, as we grow into adults, like a lot of them get better, right? Because we're able to change them. We can put in effort. We can put in time. We can put in energy and they can change. But when it comes to being a gifted kid, even if you put in the time, the energy, and the effort, and even if other people try to help you,

it seems like something about that complex is resistant to change. So that's what I'd like to talk about. The cool thing about this is that this is something that we sort of discovered here at HG by virtue of kind of how we do things. So we made a couple videos about gifted kids, and so this is what's really neat about the AEOE healing kind of perspective. We made a couple of videos about the gifted kids. We streamed about it.

So people joined our community. They shared their problems with us. And so what we're really noticing, is as groups of people share their problems with us, we can synthesize all of those disparate experiences and distill them down to certain principles. This is basically how research is done, right? So like we take a bunch of different cases and we kind of like figure out, okay, what's the common thread? The neat thing is that what I'm noticing is that mental health problems seem to be evolving rapidly. So the old paradigms don't seem to be working. And what we

actually do is we'll assemble data from, for example, all the gifted kids who joined our coaching platform, and then we'll kind of like talk to the coaches, okay, what worked, what didn't work, what seems to be the problem, we can kind of distill things down, and we can figure particular things out. So what I'm sharing with you all today is actually a distillation of what all of the gifted kids who have been a part of, not all, but, you know, what the gifted kids who participate in our community, what we've sort of learned from them. And what we noticed is that even though they want to change and even though they try to change and even though they know they should change, it's hard for them to change. So we're going to share that with you all today. The first thing to

understand is that the brain is an efficient organ. So if you think about your dominant hand versus non-dominate hand, which one do you use more? Use your dominant hand more. Right? So any time that you have a task, you can make it easy by using your dominant hand or you can make it hard, by using your non-dominant hand. And so over time, actually, what happens is as you lean into the things that are easier for you, as you use your dominant hand, your dominant hand actually becomes stronger. It becomes reinforced. And so what happens with gifted kids is they've got one excellent advantage, which is their IQ.

So what happens is they use their IQ as a substitute for all kinds of other things. Right? So a simple example of this is like, let's talk about study habits. So when I'm like seven and I'm gifted, or let's say nine, and some kids are learning how to study because they don't pick it up right away. My mind is like, why am I going to waste time developing study habits when I can just understand everything with my intellect? Right. It's kind of like the same reason why every day when you brush your teeth, you use your dominant hand, you don't use your non-dominant hand because your brain is like, why bother doing things the hard way? when we can do things the easy way. So what happens is we lean into our intellect. And generally speaking, school is sort of designed for the average kid.

And we sort of like pace things, you know, and so we sort of teach, we don't teach study habits to like five-year-olds. We start teaching them to eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds, ten-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and the amount of studying you need to do like ramps up over time. So what happens with a gifted kid is they don't need to study at seven, they don't need to study at nine, they don't need to study at 11, they don't need to study at 13. they're not going to learn it, right, because you don't need it. And then 14 happens, 15 happens, 18 happens, you go to college, and then you hit a brick wall.

Because at this point, your intellect is insufficient. And you don't know how to study. Because you never built up, you know, it's like going straight, you know these open world games where you go to a zone where you're not supposed to be. That's what it's like to be a gifted kid in college. You're like, level one and you can go through all this stuff. Then you find yourself in this level 100 zone. And suddenly, like, you didn't love it. level up. You didn't go the way you were supposed to. And then suddenly you're like getting

one shotted by everything. So one of the key things here is one of the faculties that gifted kids almost have underdeveloped is emotions, the awareness of emotions, being able to understand your emotions, being able to operate from your emotions. We tend to see is that these kids are hyper intellectualized, right? So I use my intellect for everything. So I know this sounds kind of weird, but there's even a term for this in research, which is called cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy. So when we think about empathy,

we think it's emotional. Right? So like I see someone else crying and then I feel like crying. And then once I feel like crying, I know how they feel and I operate from there. But there's a second kind of empathy, which is something called cognitive empathy.

And cognitive empathy is not when you feel what they feel, you still know how to respond in the right way, but that's because you logic it out. You use reasoning to figure out, okay, what am I supposed to do in this situation? Wow, that person is really crying. You don't feel sad, but you're like, okay, let me like figure this out. Okay, I should like pat them on the back and tell them, oh my God, it's so, it sounds terrible what you've been through. So even emotional, like interpersonal relationship kind of things become like,

cognitive things. And why is that? It's because your brain has one thing that it's really good at. So it uses that tool because the emotions are underdeveloped. And the more that you get by with cognitive empathy, you level up your cognitive empathy skill. But then once again, that's going to hit a wall as well when it comes to like a deep relationship, for example, or making friends later in life. So you've leaned so much into your intellect that other parts can be underdeveloped. And so the reason this is important, is because of issues like motivation and change. So what happens when a gifted kid tries to change?

What do they do? Right? They figure out what they should do. Does that make sense? So let's kind of like recap a little bit. So gifted kids, high IQ. Right? So then they level up intellect.

We become a one-trick pony. Right? If you're a D&D character, strength is three. Dex is three. Khan is three. Int is 25. Wisdom's three. Charisma's three.

Right. Yeah, three is a... Well, let's give you eights. Okay? Fair enough. Fair enough, chat. So you level up your intellect. And so what that sort of means is that even when it comes to emotions,

we end up using cognitive empathy. to navigate personal situations, interpersonal situations. Now what happens, though, is that when you try to change, right, so when you have particular behaviors, like if I'm like, okay, I need to change, I need to start studying, the problem is that the difficulty with studying is not intellectual. So you can read a book about how to study, but it doesn't make you study. And this is the crux of the first problem that gifted kids sort of struggle with, is that that no amount of logic actually creates behavioral change. And the reason that what really creates

behavioral change are the fastest, the most potent changer of behavior is actually emotions. Right. So if I like feel really embarrassed by giving, you know, a presentation, I will do my best to never give a presentation again. When I feel really, really fantastic after making a comeback in a Dota game or League of Legends game or Valorant game or whatever, CSGO, that emotional reinforcement makes me want to play again. So behavioral change comes from emotions. Now, there's an intellectual component as well, but what we tend to find is that the change that requires just intellect is the change that gifted kids can do. And the change that requires emotion is what they get stuck in.

The second thing to consider, so we're going to sort of of touch on the Vedic model of the mind for a moment. So if we think about the three parts of our mind, there's the emotional mind, the ego, and the intellect. So intellect is like our logical capability, our analytical reasoning. Emotions are things like, you know, fear, joy, excitement, right? You all get that these are like fundamentally different. So there can be reasons. They can interact with each other. They can be reasons that your joy. but the experience of joy and the reason that you're joyous are two different things. And then what I think is actually underappreciated in some parts of psychology,

but definitely appropriately appreciated another is the ego, is the identity. So the sense of self, who I am is not necessarily analytical reasoning. There may be analytical reasoning involved, and it's not emotion. It's an identity. So what happens with the gifted kids identity? Let's understand this, like, do a quick recap, okay? So when I'm a gifted kid, I'm young and I'm smart, and everyone tells me I'm smart. And so I develop an identity.

I'm a smart kid. Why am I smart? What makes a smart kid? Things are easy for smart kids. When I don't have to study it all and I get an A on a test, that makes me smart. And this other kid over here who has to study for six, hours to get an A on a math test, that kid is an idiot. So a key part of being gifted is effortless success. That's what it means, right? Oh, he's so talented. It's so easy for him. So now we get into a

big problem because then I've got choices as a kid. Oh, I'm so gifted. Do you want to do gymnastics? Yeah, that sounds fun. And when I go to gymnastics, do I experience effortless success? No. What does that mean about me? Oh, crap. If my, I probably experienced failure or at best effortful success and are either of these things gifted. Do gifted kids fail? No, they don't.

Do gifted kids work really hard? No, they're gifted. It's a gift. There's no effort. So we don't want that because we don't. We want to be a gifted kid because everyone is so positive emotionally towards us for being gifted. So what this means is that we move away from gymnastics. We're not going to do gymnastics.

Because if we do gymnastics, then we're no longer gifted. So over time, let's say there are five tasks that I, five things I could do. I'm not going to do this one because it's hard. I'm not going to do this one. I'm not going to do this one. I'm not going to do this one. This is the only thing that's left. I'm going to do this one because this one I can do effortlessly.

And then as life goes on, our range of what we can participate in to maintain our identity as a gifted kid shrinks. And the problem is that the less we do these things, these don't become a part of our identity. So all we have left is the gifted kid. So I'm not a gymnast at this point. I'm not a hard worker. So the more that my experiences narrow and the more I avoid, the more my identity doubles down, triples down, quadruples down, into being a gifted kid. This is ego and identity. Now, the real problem of being a gifted kid, what makes it hard to change, is that our intellect

is super, super strong, but this is going to sound kind of weird. Our ego is actually weak, or our control over our ego is weak. Our control over our emotions is weak. So these two faculties are underdeveloped. And what do I mean by weak? I mean is that gifted kids have not done a lot of that trial and tribulation work to discover who they are, right? Because actually what happens is they get given a label, and instead of actually discovering who they are, they're told who they are. And then they avoid all the experiences that help you develop a healthy identity. So they have an unhealthy identity. It's an oversimplification, to be sure. Now, here's the real tricky thing. These parts of the mind interact with each other.

and depending on the quote-unquote strength of a particular part of mind, one will win and one will lose. So I'll give you all a simple example. So this is something we understand very well in psychology. So sometimes I can intellectually have a good reason to do something, but emotionally I don't want to. So what happens? There's a war between these two parts of my mind. So our amygdala, which is where, which is our fear and survival center, is telling us don't do this thing. and our frontal lobes are telling us, but by the way, we need to do this thing. And so then they fight.

And one of them comes out on top. Now, this is where gifted kids may think, oh, but my intellect is so strong, doesn't it mean that it comes out on top? And actually, the answer is kind of no, that the less in touch with our emotions we are, the less we're able to regulate those. So actually, emotions outweigh the strength of the intellect

in this kind of situation. Because you've learned, even though your intellect is robust, your analytical capability is robust, your control over your emotions is so atrophied that you don't even realize it, that you're kind of feeling negative emotions, but you just kind of feel stuck. The more insidious thing, and this is kind of what we're going to focus on, is the relationship between the intellect and the ego. So the less in control of our ego we are, the more it actually hijacks intellect. So I'll give you all an example. If someone says, Dr. Kay, you taught something that was wrong on stream, and they present me with some evidence.

There are two ways that I can approach that. So if my ego wins out, I'm like, who is this random person on the internet telling me that I did something wrong? Did they train at Harvard Medical School? Are they medical doctors? Are they Dr. Kay? Did they study in India for seven years? That's ego. overcoming intellect.

And even if you think about it, what am I actually doing in that moment? I'm providing a lot of justification, right? So my mind, since it's so strong, says, oh, look, HMS, monk training, Dr. K. These are all evidence, right? So what my ego does is it goes to my intellect, and it says, come up with a bunch of reasons

why we can ignore this person, right? And then the intellect is like, yes, sir, happy to. Since I'm so smart, I'm going to give you a thousand reasons. And they can try to argue and convince you as much as they want to that you made a mistake. But since we are so intelligent, we have such a powerful research computer that we will be able to refute every single point that they can ever come up with. The problem here is that this is the ego.

in control of the intellect. So the problem that gifted kids face is that they have a very, very powerful intelligence, which is out of their control, gets hijacked by their ego and their emotions. So it's almost like, you know, I'm kind of envisioning like a super powerful robot with a tiny little person inside pulling the levers. And so the gifted kid has an ego that's like this gigantic robot, which is so strong, can move mountains, walk through the ocean, smash cities, lift thousands and thousands and thousands of KGs.

And inside is this tiny little ego controlling everything. So if you think about it, if my intellect is really, really strong, what does that mean about the strength of my cognitive bias? Second reason that gifted kids struggle. Their cognitive biases are much harder to dislodge. It's interesting. It's the case of a very powerful tool that you have lost control of. And so when gifted kids try to get help, they actually will shoot it down.

So let me tell you all what this looks like in the mind of a gifted kid. So if I read a book that tells me how to overcome your procrastination, as I'm reading the book as a gifted kid, what am I going to be doing? Am I going to be learning everything in the book? Actually, no. What's going to be happening is I'm going to be poking holes in it as I read. That won't work for me. This person is saying this, but they didn't consider this, right? And it's going to be critical.

Like, you're not going to be shooting everything down. I'm a special case. Beautifully said rebooted Life. And this isn't wrong, right? Because how does the person start to believe that I'm a special case? By the way, which of these three parts of mine do you think that this is coming from? This statement is coming from ego. But how do they become a special case?

Let's look at that for a second. It's because when they were 14 and they'd never learned how to study. and they need to start studying, their parents would say, just study. And if the parent says, just study, and just studying works for everyone else,

and it doesn't work for you, what do you logically conclude? I'm a special case. This thought is not wrong. This is the key thing to understand. None of the thoughts in the gifted kids' mind are actually wrong. The problem is the direct.

So what do all of these thoughts move you towards in terms of behavior? What is the consequence of these thoughts being true? It ain't going to work. You're going to shoot things down. And you all may have talked to someone who's also a gifted kid or maybe people have talked to you where people have tried to help you. And so now we move on to number three. gifted kids are help seeking and help rejecting.

There's this really tricky thing. Well, they'll ask for help and then they'll push it away. What's going on here? By the way, I need help. Oh, read this book. Right? So we sort of set that up. These are the kinds of thoughts that we have.

How does this help seeking, help rejecting thing work? I need help, but it won't work. And this is where things get a little bit more insidious. So the higher your IQ is, the more you can read into possibilities in the future. Right? So like if I'm like playing a chess game and I have a high IQ and chess is a skill, right? So it's not just all about IQ. But let's say I can look at move number one, move number two, move number three. And then if I have a higher IQ, I can go move number two, move number three, move number four, move number five, move number six, move number seven. And so sometimes what happens with gifted kids is they're able to do.

to see into the future. And they'll try the first step. The problem is, based on the first step, they will actually have a deterministic view about where they're going to end up. Because the truth of the matter is that we could go to A over here, we could go to B over here, we could go to C over here, and then from C we could go to Delta. You can't actually predict the future. So the way this looks in gifted kids is that, okay, like people are telling me if I want to make friends, I need to just go to parties. So what will happen is a kid will go to a party and they'll be afraid that no one is going to talk to me. And if no one is going to talk to me, I'm going to be like a loser at the end of the night. I'm going to go home and I'm not going to have any fun. They go for 15 minutes and no

one talks to them. And then their mind actually tells them, hey, by the way, we've calculated this out. We know this is how going to, we know how this is going to end. Just go home now. They go to the party, they spend 15 minutes in a corner on their phone, their mind is like, this is going to suck. Let's go home. And they know that if they stay, I don't want to sit at a party in a corner for three hours just being on my phone. And then they go home because they've calculated everything out. And so if you try to help a gifted kid, and sometimes gifted kids will ask, right? If you try to help a gifted kid, this is what you'll see.

they'll take the first step and then they'll reject and what statements do they use all these ego statements I'm a special case it ain't going to work for me so it can be incredibly frustrating to be a gifted kid in this situation

because you're asking for help you know you need help and when you ask people the help that they give you is never going to be enough it's never sufficient because they didn't consider this and they didn't think about that

And they didn't realize why that won't work for you. But let's think, let's understand this. Okay, tunnel down. What's the goal of going straight to seven in your mind? What does your mind get when it tells you, oh, by the way, this is exactly what we thought. Don't bother with all this crap. Just go home. What does it gain?

Very good. Magic Man. Ah, oh, so many good answers. Right? It's protecting itself. Because if we were to sit and efficiency, we'll get to that in a second. If we were to sit in a room on our phone for three hours, each hour that goes by, how are we going to feel about ourselves? We're going to feel pathetic.

So this is the key thing to understand about the mind. The purpose of the ego is to protect us. erase it. Erase. The purpose of the ego is to protect us. So what our mind is doing is it's anticipating this negative emotion. We already feel pretty useless anyway before we went to this party. And all it's going to do is confirm our suspicions.

And if it confirms our suspicions, we're going to be more hopeless. So best leave now. So what it's trying to do is it's trying to protect. you from feeling pathetic. So it tells you go home. It tells you avoid. Because remember, your ability to manage emotions is also underdeveloped because you could get by with intellect for so many different things. So it's kind of interesting because we end up avoiding even though we know we need help and we ask for help. And so we become help seeking and help rejecting at the same time. And that's why it's hard for us to change. Because when help,

comes down the pipeline, we're afraid. And we end up rejecting it. We know we need help, but we reject it. Now, there's another very, very insidious part to the help rejection. So, sometimes the help rejection is because gifted kids look for the perfect formula. There's definitely a way to solve my problem. I'm sure it can be solved. I just have to find the perfect formula.

If someone says something, we're going to kind of, that doesn't account for this variable. So if you talk to them, they'll sort of, you know, it doesn't account for X, so that's not enough. And then we have to account for Y, so that's not enough. Then we have to count for Z. And we're looking for the perfect formula. Why are we looking for the perfect formula?

Because we're actually terrified of trying and it not. working. So here's the other reason why gifted kids really reject help. Because if I try and it doesn't work, the possibility of help goes away. Right? As long as I don't try, as long as I'm looking for more variables, there's a chance I can figure it out. And if I find that perfect formula, it'll be perfectly successful.

But if I try a half-baked thing and it doesn't work, then like, why? What if nothing works? So this is something that's very important to understand, is that part of this avoidance is because you can actually preserve hope if you haven't figured out the perfect formula yet, and it's out there. But what if someone says, oh, my God? So they say, like, look, dude, you've asked me for help 15 times. I'm telling you, there is no perfect formula.

You just got to do it. That's the only thing that'll work. You just got to do it. And the gifted kid is like, okay, fine. But in their mind, what are they terrified of? If everyone is telling you, you just got to do it, you just got to do it, you just got to do it. And you do it, and it doesn't work, what then? You're screwed.

Then there's no hope. So this is why, as long as the advice they're giving you can be dismantled in your mind, there's hope for you. But the moment that you accept what they say, and if you actually roll the dice and it doesn't work, then you're it's finished. So if I try something and it doesn't work, how can I preserve hope? Oh, I didn't, I didn't find the perfect formula. Oh, I didn't account for this. I didn't account for this. I didn't account for this. But it's very paralyzing for gifted kids. And this is why they'll reject a lot of the help that people offer them. There's other things involved here as well, which is like if someone tells you just do it and then you do it and then it work. And then it

works, why didn't you do it 10 years ago? If you're so gifted, why didn't you just do it 10 years ago? And so oddly enough, the most bizarre thing is that if you put your life together, trick question, what does it say about you? Hmm? Let's say I screw around Facebook. out of college and things like that, and I don't know how to study, and I'm 28. And then if I start college at 28 and I graduate at the age of 32, what does it say about you? So now you've got a choice. Do gifted kids write on chat, graduate from college at the age of 32. No, that's what stupid kids do. So now you've got a choice. Do you want to be a stupid kid with a life or a gifted kid without one?

And this is the problem. So this may sound like if I'm laying it out like this, you may say like, well, obviously, I'd rather be a stupid kid with a life because I want a life, I want a life, I want a life. But this is what you've got to understand that if you've grown up as a gifted kid, this is all you've got left. This is all you've got left. this is all you are, is a gifted kid. And to give up the one thing that you have left is terrifying. Because here's this other scary thing.

You failed out of college once. So here comes the intellect again. You ready for it? Here comes the intellect. You failed out of college once. What happens if you go to college for two years and you fail out again? Because we did it once. Then you're going to be a stupid kid.

without a life, and two years of debt. So it's like, uh-uh, we don't want that. No way, buddy, no chance. So it's kind of interesting, because the more gifted we are, the more we think that things should be easy for us, right? That's what it means to be gifted. Effortless success. But what we tend to find, especially as gifted kids grow up,

is they tend to get stuck. They're not able to change. They're not able to break out of it. And then that like triggers this whole cycle of if I'm not able to fix this. Oh my God. What does it say about me? It's hard. Because the very thing that sort of like, you know, people grow and change.

But even for gifted kids, it's a different kind of challenge. What they need to grow and change is actually different. Because what they have to do is abandon everything that they've, invested in. And that's scary. Like, think about that. Like, who would do that? Who would do that? If you've invested your entire life in a particular direction, you're 30 years old. And someone was like, abandon it, buddy. Abandon it, girl, go for it. Get rid of it. And you're like, that's insane. There's no way that people would do that. And yet, we expect to give to kids to do it. We expect them to give up everything, because that's what they have to do to change. And it's hard. How does that

happen? It starts because our brain is an efficient organ. It starts because once my brain knows how to use my right hand, since this is my dominant hand, it's not going to waste time leveling up my left-handed skill. And it's no different when it comes to intellect versus other faculties of the mind. So what we see in gifted kids is that their emotional awareness tends to be underdeveloped. They can sometimes be a little bit on the alexathymic side, which means inability to determine what your internal emotional state is. So if you talk to gifted kids about their emotions, they're not going to know how to answer some of those

questions. They'll give you a lot of reasoning and logic, and they'll tell you what's wrong. My problem is that I have, my problem is that I have alexothymia, which is not actually noticing your emotions, it's an intellectual conclusion. They'll do a bunch of research, right? And they'll say, oh, I have this kind of Irovedic thing or I have this kind. My five-factor personality assessment shows me is low conscientiousness and high neuroticism and high openness and low agreeableness. And this is why I'm doomed in life because my conscientiousness is low. I've done research, all hyper-intellectualization.

Now, the problem with that, and it's not their fault, right? Because like the reason that they get to that point is because, you know, when you're seven and your brain is like, okay, do we want to use our intellect or emotions to navigate the situation? And your intellect can map it out for you. So you're like, okay, let's use the intellect. Great. Plus 10 XP. And the more you level up your intellect, the more useful of a tool it becomes. And so the more you use it, the more you level up.

This is an interesting observation that was made by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers where he's like looking at, you know, kids who are born at a particular time. And so kids who are older when they start sports, right? Because six-year-old, some people will be like six years and 11 months and some people will be six years and one day. So one of those kids is basically seven and one of them is six. And so what happens is the kid who's almost seven gets viewed as more talented. And as they get viewed as more talented, the coach, they get picked first on the team.

and they play more and they get more practice. And the coach spends more time with them because they're more talented. And this kid, it's not worth investing in this kid. And so what happens over time is you see a exponential effect of investing in an early thing. So over time, the more your intellect grows, the more your mind relies on it. The more it relies on it, the more swole you become. The more swole you become, the more you move into the identity of the gifted kid. The problem is that as these other parts of your mind, like your identity, as the identity of the gifted kid becomes stronger, as you become more disconnected from your emotions, you struggle because logic does not actually change things.

Or it's not sufficient to change everything. Let's put it that way. The other more insidious thing, this is what we sort of learn from Vedic psychology, is that sometimes your intellect can be hijacked by your emotions, by your ego. And so what we see in gifted kids is they have the toughest cognitive biases. Because those biases were built from a high intellect. And so these cognitive biases combined with these ego sort of statements result in all of these kinds of things like, this won't work for me. You recognize you need help. You reach out for help. You seek help and then you reject help. This won't work for me. I'm different. I'm a special case.

This solution does not consider these variables. And so they'll seek help, but what they'll do is shoot it down. And that's because their cognitive bias is so strong that they're looking for, you know, the perfect answer. Or they have a lot of good reason because they've learned early on that I am different. So a best-selling book that works for normal people won't work for me because I'm not normal. So they end up rejecting help. This can be further reinforced by your... ability to predict in situations.

And so what happens is that as gifted kids make predictions about situations and as they get the first step down that road and that step is what they expected, they assume that the rest of it is going to be exactly the same. So if I go to a party and no one talks to me in the first 15 minutes, the whole night is going to be miserable, so I might as well leave. And that in and of itself is very insidious. because the only way to change your cognitive bias, the only way to change your expectation is to stay at the party.

And so the very thing that is capable of changing your mind is the thing that you retreat from if you're a gifted kid. Because maybe an hour in, we start playing board games. And maybe you crush it at a particular board game and you feel fantastic. And so the very thing that you need to change your mind is exactly the thing that you avoid because of that anticipation of pain. And the last thing to consider, and this is actually quite devastating, is that if you're a gifted kid and you have so much potential and you're 25 now,

and you've wasted so much of it, if you put together your life today, what does it say about you? And so sometimes what gifted kids will do is they'll find solace in being both blessed and cursed. I'm brilliant. And I was born with low conscientiousness. I have the gene in my life. I have the laziness gene. The brilliant but lazy person. And alas, it is a tragedy. And that's comforting, right? Because if you were born with the laziness gene, it ain't your fault. You're not stupid. And if all you've been for 25 years is a gifted kid, then like, that's all you've got left and you can't risk being stupid.

And so it becomes incredibly paralyzing. Because the very things that you need to do to actually get out of the situation are the things that almost being a gifted kid like prevents you from doing. It's a very, very tricky situation, which is precisely why I think we see so many gifted kids who struggle as adults. it's almost like a psychological trap where the tools that you're supposed to use to overcome these things are being leveraged against you right when your intellect gets hijacked into a cognitive bias that only leads to one thing all roads lead to one place and when your intellect the Godzilla of

your intellect has one goal then it's tough so what do you do about it? everyone asks, right? So here's what we've seen through working with people and in our coaching program and stuff, right? There's a terrifying process of abandoning your identity. Terrifying. Hard to do on your own, right? There's a terrifying process to substitute theory with experience. Because the whole point of a gifted kid is they map everything out in their head.

It won't work because of this. If I stay at the party, it'll be three hours of misery. So what happens that's really tricky is that theory becomes a substitute for experience. And the less experience that you have, the more you have to lean on theory, right? And so it becomes a vicious cycle. Where now that I have less experience, less experience, less experience, the more theoretical models I make. And the more that I'm making theoretical models that are advanced and did, divorced from experience, the more I become separate from reality.

And like, that's where the bias comes in, right? Why do we call it a cognitive bias? Because it's actually incorrect. So what we've sort of seen when working with these kids, right? And now we feel pretty confident about this because we've had a lot of gifted kids come through, is that it's about, first of all, strengthening your understanding of your emotions. You have to increase the emotional awareness. So we even now have, we're trying to develop or we got, I think, a study running about whether EQ, emotional quotient or your emotional awareness is a mechanism for progress within coaching.

So it starts by recognizing your emotions and like getting in touch with your emotions and recognizing when your emotions are controlling you instead of your intellect. Because the issue is not the gigantic monster. It's the tiny little person inside who's controlling. the monster. So when your intellect is hijacked by other parts of your mind. So the other thing that's kind of important there is that as we sort of understand your emotions, we can also like validate a lot of those emotions. Because here's the thing. For a gifted kid, life is supposed to be easy. So does that mean you get to say that your life is hard? No. No, no, no, no, no. Life is hard for the stupid kids.

Not for us. Life is easy, effortless success. And so when gifted kids deny themselves the right to struggle, devastating. So we've got to get in touch with our emotions and also acknowledge, validate that just because you're gifted, it's not sufficient to living an easy life. Are there advantages? 100%. Do we want to be honest about those advantages?

100%. but we also want to be honest about the shortcomings of those advantages. So you've got to understand your emotions. Second thing, got to understand your ego. What does that mean? Got to understand your ego. I'll break it down for you a little bit. I mean, this is a complicated process that takes weeks.

But as you engage in certain behaviors or you think about engaging in certain behaviors, it's really important to ask yourself one question, which is, if I do this thing, how will I feel about myself? how will it change the way that I see myself? What will it do to my sense of identity? What will other people think of me? That's more than one question. This is why it's a process.

You have to ask all those questions. And for any individual person, one of those questions will sink in and will lead to understanding or catharsis or one of many others. But you've got to think about how will this affect my identity. And so even when you,

go away, like, you know, when you're thinking about going to the party, how would I think about myself if I did not have fun at the party? And that's when you start to realize I will think that I am pathetic because no one wanted to talk to me. And that's when you have to really leverage your intellect in kind of the right way, which is, well, like, what are the different reasons why people may not have fun at parties? And this is why it's hard to do this on your own because it's hard to kind of think up and think of these questions. This is why it's useful to work with someone. right, because they're going to be able to see, well, actually, like, if you really think about it, there are a lot of reasons why people don't have fun at parties. It's not because they're pathetic.

The problem is that your intellect is not being used. It's being used to protect you in a particular way, because that's the only way it knows how to function. It's not being used to challenge you. Right? And we can kind of see that because when other people try to help you, and now we kind of move on to the help seeking, help rejecting part, what do you do about that? When other people give you a different perspective, what is the function of your intellect? It's to dismantle it. So what you're actually doing is doubling down on your particular view. You're not actually challenging your assumptions.

You're reinforcing them. And the more that you reinforce your own assumptions, the more that you enter the echo chamber of your mind, the more that you drink the Kool-Aid, the more that you feed yourself propaganda, the more stuck you're going to be. See, there's a shout out for Raff. Raff is a fantastic coach. I'm glad that people have been helped by Raff. Glad it's resonating. So you've got to challenge your assumptions.

When people ask you for help, notice in your mind that you're shooting it down. And you've got to step away from, and this is where like, notice that the more you shoot it down, your mind is going towards avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. You have to notice what it's doing. It's not that it's logically,

incorrect, it's that it's logically selective. And we're going to select whatever logic we can to encourage you to not do it. So don't fall into that. And the last thing to understand is that as long as you're operating from theory, the data set that you're using is not ideal. So what you've got to do is start getting experience. In the smallest way possible, you don't have to go to a party, or you can even go for a little while. Right? You can even go, like, there are little ways you can do this.

You can go to a party to drop something off. You can say, hey, I'm busy tonight. I just came by, wanted to say, sorry, I can't make it. I brought some cookies.

Hopefully y'all can enjoy them. And then people like, oh, oh, like, you should stay. Right? And then you're like, okay, I'll hang out for a little bit. And then you hang out for a little while. Now you've got an excuse.

It's ego saving. Let's see if you can have fun. If you have fun for a little while, you can hang out longer. But put yourself out there a little bit. Try to take a chance. Even when it comes to something like graduating from college at the age of 32 if you're 28, graduating is four years away. You can enroll for a semester.

Acknowledge for yourself that this is going to be hard. But this is a step in the direction that I want to go. Let's see what happens with one semester. I'm going to give it my all. The problem is that they use theory. is a substitute for experience. The more you use theory is a substitute for experience, the more divorced from reality you become.

So your theoretical models become more and more incorrect. And now you're navigating life with an incorrect theoretical model. And how's that going to work for you? Not well. And that's what you see with adults who are gifted kids. Is they're operating from a well-constructed, beautifully theoretical model that's a little bit divorced from reality

and that's why it's hard for them to change. Questions? So Mr. Coffey is an enlightening teaching. I wish I had known this for 30 years. I'm glad I tuned and thank you. You're very welcome. So someone else is saying, the oncoming is saying,

I was meant to graduate 21 in good college, but I'm going to graduate at 31 at best. This crushed my expectations. of myself and my soul, my heart goes out to you. It crushed your ego, which can be expectations of yourself. It didn't crush your soul. What's going to rise, what you'll rebuild from the rubble? I honestly believe this.

What you're going to rebuild from the rubble is actually much more strong, much more reliable, and is going to help you so much more than the expectation that you had. So it's okay to have your expectations crush from yourself. That's when you can rebuild. Because you can't develop a new identity of yourself while this gigantic identity that fills the room of your mind of being gifted kid exists. There's no room for anything else.

It's got to be dismantled. This person sounds a little bit unlucky, in a sense kind of like me, where mine was crushed at failure after failure after failure after failure. And I'm sure that even today, there are going to be setbacks in my life. I'm sure some of them will be devastating. And that's life.

You got to pick up what you can and you've got to move on. So it's hard. I get it. This is one of the few things that I honestly can say I have had personal experience with. So it's like, I know it's tough and also keep going. That's the most important thing. Who is this person, Andrew Tate? All I see is comments about Andrew Tate.

I'm agreeing with Andrew Tate. Is that they make it sound like an accusation. You're clipped? I don't even know. Why is that clippable? Look, let me explain something to y'all. This is a Twitch stream. In a Twitch stream, there's communication.

I teach something and y'all teach something. So, like, I don't know. this is, if it weren't for y'all, I wouldn't know half the things that I know. Right? Like there's something going on somewhere on the internet. Is it on, you know, he's a new controversial dude on Twitch. Okay, thanks for letting me know. Now I won't get, I don't know.

Now I know. If he's controversial, like that's, I don't know what to think about that. I've never met the guy. Like, I don't know what to think about him. You know? So here's, like, just in general. Like, it's really easy to judge people on the internet, right? It's easy to judge people.

But one of the things that we really try to do, and I hope we've demonstrated this. So, like, sometimes people will think they know someone, right? And the whole point is, like, when we talk to people on stream, what we try to do is, like, treat them with compassion. We don't want to come in with judgment. Like, we want to recognize that human beings are human beings. No one's perfect. No one's a complete waste of space. Like, everyone's just on their own journey.

You know, interview him and you'll get 100K viewers. Look, how can I say this? Viewership matters. And at the same time, chasing viewership is not what we do. Right? Like, we're here to try to help. There's no shortage of people to help. And that's what our focus is going to be.

I'm not saying no. I'm not saying yes. It's just like I, people ask us to interview people all the time. Like, that's not, how can I say this? We're happy to interview people who are aligned with the mission of what we're trying to do here, which doesn't necessarily mean they need to agree with us. Does that make sense? Like, we interview people for the purpose of AEOE healing.

And sometimes we'll interview people that are, um, seem on paper like they can't a part of that. But what I've loved about this experience of streaming on Twitch and interviewing people is that we get to see the humanity within everyone. Is there a meditation to help with being avoided? 100%. Let's do it. Okay. So hopefully for people who have been spamming chat about this Andrew Tate dude, hopefully y'all are satisfied, let's move on to meditation. So let's do a meditation about dealing with avoidance. So what I want you all to do is sit up straight, take deep breath in and out, close your eyes, take a few moments to just breathe.

And now I want you to think about something in your life that you are avoiding. Now, even that can be a little bit difficult. Because oftentimes what we avoid, we actually don't even realize that we avoid it. We'll even avoid it in our own mind. We'll come up with excuses. Like, I'll get around to it. There are more important things to do. It won't really matter.

So if you know you're avoiding something, focus on that for a moment. The other thing that you can do if nothing comes to mind is look for those statements. I'll get around to it later. There are more important things to do. It doesn't matter. And so if any of those statements leads you to a particular thing, sit with that thing. Take a moment to breathe. Just acknowledge and set firmly in your mind this particular thing.

The first thing is that as you concentrate on it, notice what changes in your body. There may be a tightness in the chest, the beginnings of perspiration forming. Now what I want you to do is think a little bit about, if you were to do that thing, what are your concerns? What are you concerned about happening? And notice how those outcomes would affect you. They may cause you pain in your mind, disharmony in a relationship, people shaping their opinions of you differently. Notice that the avoidance is actually a attempted protection, protecting you from those things. And now breathe into those fears, those consequences, and slowly breathe out.

I want you to take notice of yourself in this moment. Feel the stability of your body, even though we're thinking about things that are hurtful or fearful, that in this moment we ourselves are not hurt. it may be in there, but it doesn't dominate us. And now start to appreciate that, that who you are is stable and strong at its core. And that there may be hurt, that just in this moment,

as you have withstood it, so too will you withstand whatever happens. There will be pain, but you are strong enough. this person that you are in this moment is strong enough. And know that as you engage in this task, you are signing yourself up for hurt. But that's okay. It'll be painful for a time. But just as you found this state, you can find this state again. And appreciate for a moment that all of life's pain is transient, and that all of life's joy is transient. What exists always is the person that you

are in this moment, calm, peaceful, that the fluctuations of the mind disturb this thing that you are, but that you can return here. And now ask yourself, are you ready to do this thing? can we resolve to do this thing? And if the answer is yes, solidify that answer. Recognize there will be pain. Recognize it will be difficult. But that you can do it,

you are strong enough and that you will survive. And if the answer is no, notice that. Have compassion towards it. From this peaceful, calm place, notice that there's a part of your mind. is too terrified is standing at the edge of a diving board ready to dive into a pool of water but is afraid of the jump, is afraid of the cold water.

And need some time, some patience, some encouragement before it's ready to dive in. And have compassion for yourself, for not being ready yet. and assure yourself that even if we're not ready today, the day will come when we will be ready. Put your palms together in front of you in namaste position. Give gratitude to yourself, to existence, for being able to experience this for the last few moments, a place of stability in a chaotic world. Now bow your head to the universe and give gratitude. when you're done, go ahead and come on back, open your eyes.

So that's pretty true as saying, oh, I'm back to me. That's a sad, Pepe, right? Sadge. Here's the thing. That's pretty true. Which one is the real you? What you were a few moments ago, you carry with you. If you practice, you'll be able to tap into it like that.

And as Chunglee is saying, it's hard to feel compassion for myself. It's one of the hardest things. The hardest person to be compassionate towards, well, not the hardest. For some people, the hardest. Some victims, it's easier to feel compassion for yourself than it is to the person who hurt you. But forgive yourself for being hard, being hard, except that it's okay to be hard. It's okay for it to be hard to feel compassion towards yourself. That too is something that you're going to have to develop over time. Be patient with yourself, even if you can't feel self-compassion.