55. Beyond Gifted: Helping Gifted and 2E Adults Design Meaningful Careers - Meet Emmaly Perks
In this episode, Nadja sits down with Emmaly Perks, founder of Beyond Gifted Services, for a conversation about what it actually takes to design a meaningful career as a gifted or twice-exceptional adult. Emmaly shares how she moved through gifted programming without ever being formally tested, how a psychology degree followed by a master's in gifted education finally gave her language for a lifetime of feeling "not the rule follower," and how a childhood spent choosing Gloria Steinem over George Washington for a fifth-grade history project was an early, comic signal of a mind that could never leave things at their simplest version. She talks candidly about being the verbal, argumentative, justice-sensitive girl who was seen as disrespectful rather than understood, and about the particular way gifted women learn to weaponize or mask their intellect depending on what the room will tolerate.
The conversation turns toward Emmaly's own career, which she describes as a portfolio career built from neuroscience research, K-12 gifted education, academic administration, and now a full-time practice that includes a weekly Substack newsletter, family and IEP advocacy, teacher training, and SENG-facilitated community groups for gifted adults that she co-runs with Erin Krellwitz. Nadja and Emmaly spend real time on the particular career trap of identity foreclosure, the pattern where a child prodigy or "the math kid" gets locked into an identity before they've had the chance to choose it, and how that shows up decades later in doctors, engineers, and other high achievers who feel stuck in a path they never fully consented to. Emmaly's antidote, drawn from her book The Curious Career Workbook, is iteration: small, low stakes tries before another degree or another decade gets spent on work that no longer fits.
A significant part of the episode addresses who gets to call themselves gifted, and why that question matters for career design specifically. Emmaly is direct that no one needs a 130 IQ score or a formal assessment to take these ideas seriously; self-identification is enough, and she notes that a test score reflects opportunity, schooling, and privilege as much as it reflects innate ability, which is part of why she works from what she calls a biopsychosocial model of giftedness rather than a single number. She and Nadja also spend time on the distinction between giftedness and high achievement, pushing back on the idea that eminence is required to be considered gifted, and naming the many gifted people who build quiet, modest careers without that changing what they are.
Nadja brings her own scientist's skepticism into the conversation, describing how the gifted space initially felt "a little woo-hoo" to her epidemiologist brain, and how she worked through the impostor feeling that she needed a psychology credential before she could host these conversations at all. Emmaly reframes this directly, pointing out that inviting experts onto the podcast is itself a form of borrowed credibility and effective knowledge translation, echoing her own frustration with paywalled academic journals that gifted educators and families never actually get to read.
The episode closes on two concrete resources Emmaly has built out of exactly this gap: a free, worldwide gifted provider directory at Beyond Gifted Services for anyone looking for a therapist, coach, or doctor who actually understands giftedness, and her ongoing work with the Mensa Foundation's steering committee, focused on connecting researchers, providers, and the lived experience community that so rarely get to speak to one another directly. Emmaly leaves listeners with a simple reassurance: designing a meaningful career as a gifted adult is possible at any age, and being rare doesn't mean being an outsider.
About Emmaly Perks
Emmaly Perks, M.Ed., is a master's-level gifted education and career consultant and leader in the fields of gifted education, gifted psychology, and gifted human development. She has worked with bright individuals for more than 15 years, from research labs to K-12 classrooms, to universities, non-profit, and corporate settings.
Emmaly founded Beyond Gifted Services to help gifted, twice-exceptional (2e), and neurodivergent people find their best fit—from school through career and beyond. She is a gifted community group facilitator with Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG), serves on the Mensa Foundation's Network Steering Committee, trains teachers in best practices for gifted and 2e learners, and is a thought leader and regular presenter at national conferences.
Would you like to work with me 1:1 as your gifted and 2e coach? Please send me an email at hello@giftedunleashed.com or find more information about my coaching offer on my website giftedunleashe.com/coaching
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Visit Emmaly’s website: beyondgiftedservices.com
Follow Emmaly on Substack: beyondgifted.substack.com
Connect with Emmaly on Instagram: @beyondgiftedservices
Connect with Emmaly on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emmalyperks
GiftedUnleashed: The space for gifted and twice-exceptional women: GiftedUnleashed.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome To Gifted Unleashed
Nadja 0:58
Hello and welcome to Gifted Unleashed, where we talk about the gifted and twice-exceptional brain and how it affects our thinking and experience of the world differently. There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma around the term giftedness, and I'm here to challenge those. I'm here to raise awareness and to have a conversation around the topic of what it means to be a gifted and twice-exceptional adult. A common experience among gifted folks is that they feel out of place. They don't quite fit in. They're too sensitive, too intense, too emotional, too overexcitable, and too deep thinkers of the world and about themselves. So if you have been called too much of about anything, this show is for you. I'm Nadja. I'm too loud, too colourful, too bobbly, too bossy, and I love to talk too much. So welcome to my world. I'm so happy you're here. Hi, welcome everybody. Today we have Emmaly Perks on the podcast. And Emmaly is a master level gifted education and career counsel and a leader in the field of gifted education, gifted psychology, and gifted human development. She has worked with bright individuals for more than 15 years from research labs to K-12 classrooms to university, nonprofit, and corporate settings. Emmaly has founded Beyond Gifted Services to help gifted and twice exceptional and neurodivergent people to find their best fit from school through career and beyond. And she is a gifted community group facilitator with SENG, which is the supporting emotional needs of the gifted. And she serves on the Mensa Foundation's network steering comedy. And she trains teachers and best practices for gifted and 2e learners. Is also a thought leader and regular presenter at national conferences. And today she's here. So welcome, Emmaly. Thank you for being here.
Emmaly 2:40
Thank you, Nadja. I'm so excited to be here. I'm such a fan of your podcast. This is really exciting.
Nadja 2:44
Thank you. And I'm a huge fan of your services. So I'm super excited having you here today and sharing all of what you do. So already with your bio, you're doing so
Emmaly’s Gifted Story Revealed
Nadja 2:56
many things in the gifted space. Like a lot of us, you probably have a gifted story. Do you want to share how did you get into this space and maybe also share a little bit about your personal journey?
Emmaly 3:09
Yeah, of course. So I don't, it's funny, I don't talk about myself much kind of when it comes to this work, but it's nice to have kind of the opportunity to do so. So I was in gifted programming without realizing I was in gifted programming, which happens to a lot of us. I was in the advanced class in elementary school and then moved on to, you know, AP in honors and those sorts of things. But because I was in the independent school system for a lot of my education, I didn't have formal testing or any of those sorts of things done that a lot of kids do kind of in the elementary school years. So it really took until I was getting my bachelor's degree in psychology to really start understanding sort of I was a gifted kid grown up. And then um I so I got my bachelor's degree in psychology, and then I went and got my master's degree in gifted education. And that was really the first time that I understood that so many of the things I'd kind of experienced and felt throughout my life were related to my giftedness and I'd had just no idea. Which is kind of funny because I'd worked in neuroscience research by that time, where we'd been studying intelligence and creativity. So I'd had lots of kind of background in this, but just didn't really put it together that giftedness is this neurobiological difference that affects us throughout the lifespan. And that really changed the trajectory of my career, is the reason that I do the work that I do is because I really want people to understand that that this isn't just an academic difference, it's a lifelong biological difference.
Nadja 4:23
Yes. And you said that in like, you know, a few minutes already, like how this is such an impactful realization once we understand that it's not just academic output or a gifted program. So I would like to ask a little bit deeper, right? Like what exactly were you able to tie together? What was it that you could understand that, oh, this is like our life experience is different from just, you know, academic output?
Emmaly 4:55
Yeah, yeah. Well, my school experience was was kind of funny. I've always loved learning. I was really good at school. It was not challenging. It was, you know, school itself and learning were always sort of a joy, but I certainly was not the rule follower. I was a pretty rebellious kid. I got in trouble a lot at school. I was that kid who argued with teachers. People who know me now are sort of like, really, that was that was you. But that's absolutely who I was. And I don't think I realized at the time, well, I know I didn't realize at the time that that was a pretty bored-gifted kid who did not like kind of the standard conventions and rules and policies. And I was at every turn kind of trying to figure out like, why are we being asked to do these sort of structured educational things that didn't feel like they were conducive to learning? And I think, you know, I had sort of internalized this idea that I was flawed in some way, or this was like an inherent problem about me and why couldn't I just go along with the rules and structures? Why did I feel so justice sensitive and kind of feel like I had to push back against these things all the time? And then learning about giftedness and coming to find that lots of gifted kids, grown up, gifted adults, have these experiences. It was like, oh, I'm not flawed. This is just the way that my brain works. But it would have been really nice to understand that earlier. And that is so much of the goal of my work is helping people to understand that so that they don't have sort of those pitfalls of sort of the self-blame or feeling like there's something wrong with them and more understanding like this is a neurotype. It's a way of seeing and being and perceiving in the world. And these things are very normal. We have to learn to harness them, but these are also really normal behaviors and feelings and experiences.
Nadja 6:27
Yeah, that is really, you know, mirroring a lot of the experience. And that's why I love, you know, portraying these gifted stories on the podcast, because most of us have have these stories where you're like, yeah, I was good in school, you know, school was easy, but then I had this rebellious side. And a lot of us were we're hiding those parts usually, or if we're twice exceptional, you know, if, for example, ADHD is in the mix. So that got
Boredom Rebellion And Justice Sensitivity
Nadja 6:56
a lot of shame if it was unidentified, like a lot of women. And so we're like, oh, that was a character flaw. I tried to hide that, but only later, like, oh yeah, neurotype and that's part of the experience. So kind of like pulling back the curtain a little bit of those experiences and sharing is like, yeah, you're not alone if you had similar experiences.
Emmaly 7:18
Yeah. Well, I appreciate how you brought up gifted women and girls too, in particular, because I think that was also part of the struggle, is that I did not fit the mold of what was expected. I was very verbal. I would talk back. I was tall. I am not super quiet, you know, all of these sorts of things that sort of go against what is expected of women and girls in a lot of ways. And I think that was really threatening to teachers a lot of times. I think they weren't really sure what to do with me some of the time too. I could sort of talk circles around people. And I honestly think it's it's something we have to be aware of as really verbal gifted adults, is it can be kind of weaponized. We have to be careful not to weaponize our intellect or our verbal ability or those sorts of things. But it often becomes sort of our coping mechanism too, particularly when you are a gifted girl or a gifted woman, is sometimes our verbal ability is really the way that we cope and we kind of push back against some of these things. And I can see that all now in retrospect. But at the time, I think other people just thought I was kind of lashing out and like disrespectful or not being polite or just not living up to kind of the expectations for what a girl should act like.
Nadja 8:20
Yeah. And also this notion of wanting to be disruptive. But if school is just really boring and you're and you're struggling with undiagnosed ADHD, for example, and you have or have, you know, high intensities and you need to get this energy out. So you are disruptive maybe in the classroom, but not because that was malicious intent, but it was just something that had to come out of us. And then it was placed to like you choose to behave like this.
Emmaly 8:55
Yeah. Well, you know, a funny story, a couple of examples is like I would always make things more complex than they needed to be. And I would always take sort of like the non-traditional choice. So in fifth grade, we had to all dress up as a famous American. It was part of our like history unit. And everybody else is choosing like Abraham Lincoln or like George Washington or these like very traditional figures. And I chose feminist icon Gloria Steinem as my uh as my famous American, right? I don't think even most of the other fifth graders like knew who Gloria Steinem was, right? Like, why is a fifth grader choosing this? Um, and that was kind of my school experience at every turn. I remember writing a whole paper in high school about social Darwinism when nobody else was writing that sort of thing, right? Like I was always trying to kind of increase the complexity of what was going on. And I think you're right, that disruptiveness sometimes was a way to get out of like the boredom or just to try to create something more interesting and stimulating. I've I've come to think of myself as high sensation seeking in a lot of ways, highly sensitive and high sensation seeking both. And part of that is I want lots of intellectual input and cognitive input. And if it's not there, like it often wasn't kind of in traditional school environments, boy, I can sure make my own problems. That's that's for sure.
Nadja 10:10
Yeah, I I hear that a lot. That either we try to make the complex things look easy, or if it's easy, we try to put some complexity in there, right? So that can be also a way of seeing or identifying, like kind of a first way or glimpse into who might be a give uh a gifted person. Yes.
Emmaly 10:33
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and you know, that's the kind of the funny thing is the things that probably should have been simple for other people were always the things that were probably overthought, too complex. For me, they were actually some of the harder things in some way. I mean, just showing up at school and complying, right, should be like a fairly easy thing to do. And that was just ne that was never my experience in school. It was never easy. I was really fortunate by the time I got to college, I'd kind of figured this out and could take my own course load. I tried to graduate from high school early and they actually wouldn't let me. Um, I had to stay an extra year and do the full four years of high school. I did end up graduating college early, which was great. I did my bachelor's degree in three years instead of the typical four, and I did my master's degree in a year instead of the traditional two. And that was excellent. That was one of the first times of my life I really had the opportunity to have sort of an accelerated curriculum and to go at my own pace and felt like I was, you know, I could take seven or eight classes at a time instead of the traditional four to five. And that was great for me. Finally, it felt like there was enough kind of complexity in there. But it's funny that, you know, the the traditional college expectations were not at all the thing that would have worked for me either.
Nadja 11:36
But that's great. You had all of this freedom to kind of really create and craft your own, you know, experience or curriculum with that much choice.
Emmaly 11:46
Yeah. I mean, it's one of the things I work on with families now. So I work with a lot of families directly, mostly in the K-12 environment, but I also then work with adults, gifted adults. And a lot of that is thinking about sort of what flexibility do we have within the structures of the traditional school system. Because so often schools will tell you, no, we can't do that, or no, your child can't take that extra course, or no, you can't do that sort of thing. And then you dig a little deeper and they've just never done it before. It's not that they can't, they they just haven't figured out a way to do it. So a lot of what I do is sort of that sneaky, like pushing around the systems in some ways to figure out like how can we do something that's mutually beneficial for the child in front of us that works for the school district, works for the school, all those sorts of things, so that we're not having these same kind of challenges, you know, for for kids that I experienced.
Nadja 12:29
So would you like to share a little bit more of what you're doing currently and how maybe also the transition,
Acceleration Flexibility And School Advocacy
Nadja 12:36
how did you get into it? And yeah, what what are you doing at this moment in time?
Emmaly 12:42
Yeah. So I I talked about it a little bit earlier, but so I worked in neuroscience research for almost a decade. Um, worked in academia, in higher education, did administration, program direction. I worked in K-12. I was a gifted ed teacher, a gifted and talented specialist for a period of time, um, have done a little bit of kind of all these things, worked in behavioral health. What I call this is a portfolio career. I think it's very common amongst gifted folks. We have sort of a variety of interests. Maybe we call it multi-potentiality or being a polymath, but the idea is that you've got lots of things that you could reasonably do fairly well. And that has been my career is kind of when I'm interested in something. I have pursued that thing. I've been fortunate enough to have kind of the doors open and to do a decent enough job and at these different things. And then really I've pulled it all together at this point in my career. So I left, um, I was leading a big multi-state national program a couple of years ago for mental health trainees, left that direction space and decided I really wanted to go in all in on gifted ed and gift working with gifted adults. I've kind of been in this space tangentially forever. I've had parents on the side who, even when I had my day job, would say, Can you help us figure out the school for our kid? Um, I've done career coaching on the side for a long time too, but I decided to make it my full-time practice. So kind of my job now is like a pie chart almost or sort of a jigsaw puzzle where I've got a variety of things that I do. One is I write on Substack each week. I've got a newsletter and a pretty good following on there, which is lovely. Of folks where I write about giftedness and twice exceptionality throughout the lifespan, which is really my big passion. I love writing. Um, if I had a space that I thought was my gift, I think writing is my gift. So that's that's one portion of it. Another portion is the education consulting and working with families, doing things like advocacy for IEP meetings, helping design custom curriculum for kids who are homeschooled. And then I do teacher training and organizational consulting. So I just did this big project, for example, where I trained over a hundred teachers in Mexico across 10 schools and helped them kind of with their gifted education program implementation. So I've got all sorts of things that I do. I run groups, I've got a career coaching cohort this fall. I kind of follow where the winds take me in terms of my interests, which is the best career possible for a gifted adult.
Nadja 14:52
So you basically created your own career by picking and choosing what feels right and also supporting children or parents and adults in this space of the gifted navigation of the system and careers. Yeah.
Emmaly 15:08
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I found was I was working with a lot of families in the K-12 environment. And what you find is that a lot of times for gifted adults, the first time they are identified is when their child is identified. They, for the first time in their lives, recognize as they start to learn more about giftedness, they realize, oh, that was me all along. And they had no idea. So what I ended up doing is I would often be working with a child, and then the parent would say, Can you help me with my job? I'm trying to figure this out, you know, and it was sort of the same challenges that plagued them in K-12, do not just disappear when they become adults and they needed that sort of support. So I ended up working with folks across the lifespan. And it just made more sense for my practice for it to be really a lifespan approach because giftedness doesn't end at 18. That's an arbitrary boundary. And gifted folks kind of have those same challenges with belonging and needing to find environments that fit all throughout the lifespan.
Nadja 15:56
Yeah. And we had Erin on the podcast. And Erin and you together, you run the same groups. Would you like to share a little bit? I don't think Erin and I, we talked about the groups in depth, but now that I have you here, would you like to share a little bit what's so special or what's the magic in these groups?
Emmaly 16:18
Yeah, I'm so lucky to have Erin as my co-facilitator for these groups. She and I just are like a perfect balance for one another. You know, it's they're really good groups. So we both are trained facilitators through supporting emotional needs of the gifted or SENG. And we lead these community groups for gifted adults. So we have a variety of them, like coming up, we have a gifted adults group. We've got one for caregivers this fall. Erin is co-facilitating with another one of our facilitators, a gifted and queer group. These are can be like special interest groups too. But essentially what they are is they are typically six weeks. We come together for 75 minutes a week and we really talk about our giftedness and kind of all the things you and I are talking about today, which are often taboo kind of in other circles, the things that we wouldn't talk about elsewhere. But really, gifted folks need support just like any other minoritized group. So that's really what these groups are for. And I'm so lucky to get to do them with Erin. We have great attendees. I've met the coolest people through these groups. And they really report that having that sort of peer support is so essential when it's traditionally very hard to find somebody else who thinks like you do. If we're thinking it's one to two people in a hundred, um, oftentimes, you're just not going to find each other in the wild kind of as randomly as maybe other people can. And so these groups really provide that space where we can come together and talk through some of these challenges.
Nadja 17:34
Yeah. So I've been in the privileged position to be able to shadow a group of yours, which was really awesome to see and participate in the groups. So I will also obviously provide all the links in the show notes for all that you do, also what you mentioned, your sub stack, but also the the groups. And you have another cohort coming up for career specific. Would you like to share a little bit about that? Because you have so many things that you're you're doing. And I feel like I need to use this opportunity to kind of like get you to talk about all of these things and get maybe some somebody listening
Portfolio Careers And Building A Practice
Nadja 18:16
interested and curious.
Emmaly 18:18
Yeah. So so my goal kind of, you know, it's it sounds like I'm all over the map. But my goal is I really listen to the folks that I work with. And when there is something that comes up that is a specific space of demand, I try to create some sort of solution for it because I just find there just aren't many. There aren't many out there. So what we are doing this fall is we have a 12-week program. It's actually organized around my workbook that I published last year, The Curious Career Workbook.
Nadja 18:41
I have a look at that here. And I see one in the back behind yourself. Yes. So this can be purchased also without participating in the group, in the cool that's right.
Emmaly 18:53
Yeah, you can buy it on Amazon. Um, you can also purchase it from my website at beyondgiftedservices.com if you're interested. But what I was finding was there are a lot of people who get into the workbook, and then we have lots of twice exceptional folks where executive function challenges get in the way and it's hard to get through something on your own. And and it's just really nice to have peer support. So what Aaron and I have done is we've devised a 12-week group that is focused on the book. We're breaking apart sections of the book each week. We're doing live coaching as a group. Um it's a small group, it's under 12 people, and we are coming together to kind of work through that career transformation, the framework that I have outlined in my book.
Nadja 19:30
So if anybody who's listening and they say, well, that sounds very interesting, but I don't have a IQ score of 130, or I don't have an assessment that says I'm gifted, what would you tell those people?
Emmaly 19:44
Yeah, I would tell them that I didn't have that either until I was in my 30s. And, you know, that's you don't need that to participate in our group. So our group is really, if you resonate with any of sort of the language around giftedness or sensitivity or neurodivergence, all of those things are welcome here. I have no firm boundaries and neither does Aaron really on with our Seng groups themselves. If you self-identify, that is, that is plenty. There's no proof needed. And I find that even people we've had in our groups who have then gone on to get cognitive testing and maybe didn't test at a 130, does not mean they weren't, you know, supposed to be in our group. These were absolutely gifted people. And there are many reasons why people don't score that way on a standard cognitive test, whether it's twice exceptionality or just not how your brain works. But there's still people who very much resonate with the idea of deep sensitivity and intensity or overexcitabilities, or many of sort of the common features we think of as associated with giftedness and neurodivergence broadly. All those things are welcome here. And I resist kind of that labeling in general just because I don't know, particularly in adulthood, I don't know how helpful it is for people. Sometimes it is. It's part of the reason my Substack is called Beyond Gifted, is it's not just giftedness, it's kind of giftedness and all the things that go around it too, because all of those are really valid.
Nadja 20:55
Yeah. Thank you for sharing and for uh expanding a little bit about the whole concept of, you know, the gifted testing or the IQ test. I mean, they do measure something, and of course, if you pass at 130, you're for sure gonna be gifted. But just because you didn't score 130 doesn't mean that you were not gifted. So there might be more false negatives, but there are rarely any false positives, right? In those testings.
Emmaly 21:29
Yeah, I'm I'm teaching yet another thing I'm doing. Um I'm teaching a graduate course this summer on giftedness, twice exceptionality, and neurodivergent identity. And in my graduate course, we've been talking about this biopsychosocial model of giftedness that I've been working on, which really takes into account the idea that there are a lot of factors that go into creating the gifted person, that sort of magical 130 and above. Um, and that it takes a lot of things to be able to achieve that score on a test isn't just about somebody's innate biology. It's also has to do with things like the nutrition that they received or their schooling or their opportunity, their level of privilege, all those sorts of things weave into that. So it's one marker of giftedness, but it's not the only marker of giftedness. There's lots of ways that I like to think about giftedness because people can have profound creativity and other really interesting gifts and might not test as intellectually gifted. So I also like to think about giftedness across different domains too. And the way that talent and aptitude kind of come together in adulthood, it varies a lot based on what your life experience has been and what your opportunities have been to develop those skills.
Nadja 22:34
Yeah. And now that you mentioned this, I have a lot of clients who are professional musicians, you know. Yeah. They went through these, you know, intense classical music trainings, but that's not a classical gifted test, right? But if you listen to their music or listen to them talk, they're gifted.
Emmaly 22:57
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because we distinguish between giftedness and high achievement, because a lot of times what we have done, particularly in adulthood, is we conflate high achievement with giftedness. Giftedness, as I think about it, is the innate neurobiological predispositions combined with sort of the environmental pieces that create this unique lived experience or sort of this phenomenology of giftedness, of being sensitive, intense, perceptive, curious, you know, all these sorts of attributes we think about. And high achievement may come from that. You may achieve at a very high level because you've got these attributes. You also may not. There are a fair number of gifted people I work with who really don't care about achievement at all. Sort of the external markers of success are just not interesting to them. They would rather live a pretty modest life in a quiet area of town, and that is good enough for them. And I don't want to deny that that's giftedness, right? I think that person is still gifted, irrespective of the achievement that they have sort of made. And it gets murky when we're talking about people who've had years and years and years of training and lots of investment in their skills and are very good at those things that they do. There's always the question, is that a person who's gifted? And are we talking about something that's an inherent biological difference? Are we talking about training? Is it both of those things? There are certainly scholars who would say that gifted adults really have to achieve eminence to be gifted. And I don't ascribe to that definition. I think there are too many people I have met who live pretty average lives but are nonetheless super gifted when you are interacting with them and you can recognize it.
Nadja 24:25
Yeah. And there's so many different gifted stories. Because I work in the field of coaching, it's usually the people who struggle that then end up, you know, seeking my services or end up in the spaces that I'm at. I am sure there are a lot of gifted people who are thriving, but there are also a lot of us who are struggling, especially as you said, maybe in school, or school was easy. School was also outlined, or there was kind of like a trajectory. You knew what was expected, and then you come into the workforce, and then it's a lot of politics and and uh a lot of networking, and not so much about your output, maybe, and in the job. So they're navigating these careers and the work environment can be very challenging for a lot of us. Not all. I think some are thriving, but I guess you also work with the people that are probably struggling on that end when they come and and seek your services.
Emmaly 25:30
Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. So I I do some work with the Mensa Foundation, volunteer work with them, and they did a big study two years ago, the Mensa Foundation study of unmet needs of gifted adults, where they were looking at Mensa members. So keep that in mind. We're talking about this as a selected sample, right? Specifically the people who are in Mensa, but they were looking at sort of what the unmet needs were of these folks. And a lot of them, a really significant portion, said it was a lack
Groups Peer Support And Career Cohort
Emmaly 25:56
of mentorship around their careers, that they had no one to guide them. They experienced what we think of in sort of the research field as identity foreclosure, or this idea that they chose a career very early on and then kind of stuck with that. They were the engineering kid and so they became the engineer, or they were the kid who was good at writing, and so they became the writer. And then it turns out in adulthood, they didn't really enjoy that anymore. That's not actually who they wanted to be, but are struggling to break out of that. So there are a fair number of people who I work with who have certainly had sort of many different careers and lots of missteps and leave jobs frequently and are having that struggle. But there's also this other side where I've worked with a fair number of people who are fairly eminent and have achieved a lot of success in their fields and are absolutely miserable doing the work that they're doing and really want to do, you know, the complete opposite. That it's it's the engineer who wants to go be an artist instead, right? That's a real struggle too for gifted adults, too. We we kind of get stuck in these spaces sometimes of who we think our identity is rather than who we really want to be. And so I work with a lot of people on kind of making that transition too, where they would really like to be.
Nadja 26:56
Because we have multiple interests and, you know, life is long. And you know, maybe for 20 years it was great, but then, you know, life or career work life is is longer than just 20 years, or after 10 years, you've you've seen it all and would like to have it change.
Emmaly 27:16
Yeah. Well, they, you know, they often say the tr typical trajectory for people is they top out in their roles after about five years. And I find it's about half that time for gifted folks. It's about three years that people will have mastered everything they wanted to master in that space and then are ready for a new role. So when you think about that, and we're talking about your work life being 35, 40 plus years a lot of times for people, that's a lot of different careers that are going to be in there. And so I try to normalize that for people that like gifted folks, the portfolio career that I was talking about works really well because you get to dabble in a little bit of everything. The thing that unites that is sort of a theme. So it's an overarching theme or focus for people, but it doesn't mean you're doing the same job for 25 years. Now, there are plenty of gifted folks who show up at work and can do that job for 25 years. And I find that's a different strategy where a lot of times they're reserving their mental energy for their hobbies and things outside of work, that work becomes about a means to an end to get the day done. And that's also a fine strategy. But I find there are a lot of people who are looking for something more than that too.
Nadja 28:14
Yeah. And you said something that I would like to ask you a little bit more about. What what exactly is identity foreclosure? Yeah.
Emmaly 28:23
So identity foreclosure is just the idea that we decide kind of who we are prematurely. And oftentimes this happens to child prodigies, children who, you know, are piano virtuosos or, you know, the child who excels at math, who is doing, you know, 12th grade math in sixth grade or fifth grade or that sort of thing. And a lot of times everybody around them reinforces this belief about themselves that you are the math kid or you are the kid who's going to be a doctor or whatever the thing is. They go do the thing, maybe because of the societal pressures, or because it was genuinely interesting to them at the time. And then they struggle to break out of that in adulthood. They realize they've put in so much time and effort. And it's sort of this diminishing returns, though, where they're not getting back what they were hoping for anymore, but they've put in so much time. We call it the sunk cost fallacy, but you've put in so much time, right, that people don't want to make that change. And then they end up very stuck and pretty resentful of their careers. I worked with doctors and I saw that a lot with doctors because they put so much time and effort in. It was a high-paying occupation. Re-specializing in the middle of their life felt like it was just a non-starter, but also they felt very stuck in those careers, even though they were, you know, reasonably on paper good jobs.
Nadja 29:32
That makes a lot of sense because yeah, I guess being a doctor, a specialized doctor, is one of the longest training that I can think of at the top of my head. And then, as you said, a sound cost, if you're then 35, 40, realizing, well, I don't want to be a doctor anymore, that's kind of expensive.
Emmaly 29:50
Yeah. Yeah. So part of the framework in my book is one of the steps is iterating. And so it's it's making small sort of incremental changes either to your current role to figure out what it is that you would like to do differently or to make your current role more interesting, to add in some sort of new elements to it, or it is iterating to try out new occupations before you really buy them. So it's try before you buy so that you're not doing another degree upon another degree, because I also see that with gifted adults. They'll often go and get the master's degree and then the second master's degree and then the PhD and the third PhD. And there's nothing inherently wrong about learning. I think that's wonderful if people have the time and money and want to do those things. I would love to be a career student. That would be a great thing. But I also see sometimes it's a technique for avoiding sort of adulthood or the hard decisions of having to make a decision about a career or apply to jobs or those sorts of things. Or it's this hope that the next degree is going to open the door in a way that it hasn't previously for them. So we talk about those sorts of things too, about like how do you make those little attempts at something first before we go commit to an entire another degree program.
Nadja 30:53
And I feel so spoken to. Yeah. Being a career student, uh, I love that term. And yeah, love learning. Yeah, I had to realize that for me, learning is also a way of procrastination. There's always something else to learn before you take action, before you do the next step. And now that I'm self-employed, you know, those are things that can really hold you back by saying, oh, I need another degree or I need to learn this first, or let me dive into this before I take action.
Emmaly 31:27
Yeah. Well, and we, I think because we are often autodidacts who teach ourselves things, and we are sort of natural lifelong learners and very curious. I find in the gifted community we hold in very high esteem those who've done that sort of education. I think we look to folks who have had advanced degrees. And in a lot of ways, it makes it very paralyzing for us to do anything because it's always like, well, there's always somebody who's more knowledgeable or somebody who knows better or has more information or whatever the thing is. So what I focus on with people a lot is learning by doing. So instead of saying we're gonna go do the training program and then you're gonna go try to find the job, it's like, what can you do in your current space right now to act as if, as if you were taking on that role? What is the trade that you could learn or the skill that you could learn so that you could incorporate it in that into what you're already doing without having to go all the way down that road? Because, like you said, there will always be sort of the next thing to learn. And I think it's again, it's a wonderful thing. It can also be your hobby. It doesn't have to be your full-time job always trying to learn those things, right?
Nadja 32:26
Yeah. And when you said, you know, can be paralyzing if we know somebody else, you know, knows more about the thing. For me, that was
Beyond IQ Scores And Biopsychosocial Giftedness
Nadja 32:36
very clearly the case going into this gifted space. I was like, what is this space? And I'm an epidemiologist, infection biologist by training, so a scientist. I was like, Yeah, where's the data? Show me the data. Like it felt a little bit woo-hoo in the beginning. It's like a little bit like a horoscope. And so, like, you know, when you go through the list of like the internal experiences of gifted adults. And so I was like, is this really something like, do I need to study psychology first before I can, you know, openly and publicly talk about this topic? So I I also went down this path of imposter syndrome and like I need to have everything together like a as if it's my PhD thesis before I can even talk about something publicly. And it took a quite big chunk of courage to just show up and say, I might not know everything, and that's why I'm inviting, you know, the experts as well alongside me on the podcast to share what they've know or what they've learned. But yeah.
Emmaly 33:45
Yeah, I mean, it's a great strategy to the way that you have done that, Nadja, because you're increasing your own knowledge as you do that and you're borrowing the credibility from us too, right? At the same time, I actually think it's a really effective strategy. We often talk about it in terms of like mentorship. If you think of, you know, the great artists in history and those sorts of things, they would have mentors, right? They would be assistance to a great painter, right? They would do that sort of thing. We need more of that kind of in the modern age. We don't have a great pathway of that. We sort of have decided it's like you get the degree and then you are suddenly prepared for the thing. And I think all of us know the reality is no, that's not true at all, right? That actually, if you can have some sort of tutelage under someone else, that can be very effective in sort of integrating yourself into the field. But I also really appreciate what you're saying and just wanted to hop back to that idea of like the data. So every week on Substack, what I'm trying to do is put the data out there and make it translatable. Because I worked in academia for a decade. Same thing. We write these papers in our offices by ourselves. It's this very esoteric thing. You push it off. Maybe a peer reviewer comes back, you're brokenhearted because your paper wasn't selected, right? Or you've been asked to revise and resubmit. It's this grueling process. And what happens is, okay, finally it gets put in the journal, and then maybe a hundred people read it, right? You're lucky to get the sort of citation numbers where you have several hundred people who are citing your work. What we've really done in the gifted field in particular is we have these journals, they're all paywalled. Nobody has any way of sort of understanding what's actually being said about it. And I find that the teacher training discourse in particular does not catch up to the literature at all. A good example is overexcitabilities. For a long time, overexcitabilities have been seen as synonymous with giftedness. We know from the data on that they're not actually synonymous with giftedness. It may be more a broadly neurodivergent profile. Certainly we see things like intellectual overexcitability is higher in gifted populations, but we've done such a bad job translating that to pre-service teachers. And a lot of my training is coming in to say, you know, giftedness is not just overexcitabilities. It's a lot of these other things too. And here's the actual data on this, but we don't do a great job communicating the science. And so we need more folks like you who have that training in science to be able to communicate sort of the actual reality of things to people.
Nadja 35:58
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And that is also why your Substack is such a great resource because you are the person who is translating those scientific publications into a way that non-trained scientists can understand.
Emmaly 36:13
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you were talking about the psychology training. That was the benefit of my psychology degree. It was not that we talked about giftedness. We never talked about giftedness as part of my psychology training, right? We talked about disorders, we talked about abnormal behavior. You know, I took many classes in child development. That was really useful for raising. I have two children of my own. So for raising my own children, that's been very helpful. For teaching in the classroom, that was helpful. But for understanding giftedness, like we just don't talk about it as a psychological phenomenon, which I find really strange when we talk about intellectual disability as a mediating factor. We know that's a really important thing for diagnosis, for thinking about how we support people. If they've got intellectual disability, we recognize that changes their life experience. But then on the other side, when we've got people who are gifted, highly gifted, profoundly gifted, we do a really bad job recognizing how that can also change sort of the way that they experience things. I've talked to people who've said, wouldn't it be great if we had a DSM that was like the high IQ DSM, right? That it was like the gifted version, because everything's changes just a little bit because of that gifted flavor. Like it it shifts the nuances of diagnosis a lot of times too.
Nadja 37:19
So playing along with that, would that mean the disorder the DSM with the disorder plus the giftedness, kind of like the twice exceptionality, how those would show up, or just the giftedness as well when you have no other disorder?
Emmaly 37:34
Yeah. I mean, it's a mediating factor, right? It intellectual ability is a mediating factor. Sometimes it can create more resources for a person if you have the ability to have sort of metacognition and to think about your thinking. Sometimes that can be helpful in a therapeutic sense. Other times that is not at all helpful. You can actually kind of get in your way because you are that deep, complex kind of what we'd call an overthinker, right? So just being aware of that and making sure clinicians are aware of that with the person who's in front of them is really important because so often things that are really just synonymous with giftedness are treated as pathologies, and vice versa. Sometimes somebody is really having a hard time, but their intellectual ability is hiding that and a therapist isn't seeing that too. So we also need more providers who are trained in that. One of the other resources I have on my website for folks who need it is a gifted provider directory where I've started putting together all the folks that I can who are well trained in giftedness, who understand it. So if you're looking for a provider, you can go to beyondgiftedservices.com to access the gifted provider directory and find somebody who's well trained.
Nadja 38:36
Thank you so much for that. This is one of the well needed resources. And if somebody's listening who is a gifted provider, reach out to Emmaly to be on that directory. Or I think there's even a link directly on the website to be listed, right?
Emmaly 38:52
Yeah, you can directly sign up there, submit, you know, if you're licensed, you can submit your NPI number. You can do all those things directly through there. The goal is to really try to put together a comprehensive open access directory because a lot of what exists out there right now is behind a paywall or is it isn't updated frequently. And I want there to be an easier exchange between the providers who need to see clients and the clients who are looking for those providers too. So it's filterable by things like Medicaid status and health insurance and all those sorts of things to try to make it as optimally useful for people as possible.
Nadja 39:22
And you have a lot of American providers, but it's a worldwide directory, right? So it is.
Emmaly 39:28
I've got people in Australia, I've got people all, you know, all over the place who are actually in there in Europe. And actually it becomes a better resource
Career Stuckness Identity Foreclosure And Iteration
Emmaly 39:36
the more people who add their information in there. So I want to try to invite anybody who can who sees people, understands giftedness, works with them as a coach, a therapist. Uh, I even have some doctors on there, speech language providers. Anybody who understands giftedness and really understands how to tailor their services towards that is welcome to sign up on there. And it's it's at no cost to providers or families.
Nadja 39:57
Thank you so much. This is really such a beautiful resource that you have created. And I just want to say thank you to you, like personally. So thank you.
Emmaly 40:08
That was so needed. Yes. It was my gifted kids solution. I I joke that it was like one of those things where I saw the injustice, right? And like could not help myself. And so spent nights and weekends like programming this and trying to get it together so that I could get it up because I just I think this is very common for gifted folks. We see a problem in the world and we desperately want to try to solve it. And I don't purport to think this solves it in any way, but you know, if you can make a little bit of a dent, I think that is super important for gifted folks.
Nadja 40:36
Yeah. And now to get the word out so that people know that this beautiful resource exists and that we have this directory thanks to you, so that we can look up and find people worldwide. Yeah, exactly. Um, there's so many topics to talk to you. I love it. There's one and I just use this as my personal uh resource. You work for the Mensa Foundation as in the steering committee. Would you like to share a little bit more? What are you doing there? And I don't know if people have heard of Mensah Foundation yet. I know some people probably have heard of Mensa, but what is the difference to Mensa Foundation?
Emmaly 41:16
Yeah, yeah. So I'm I'm just a volunteer with them, but the Mensa Foundation is separate from Mensa or Mensa International. Um, Mensa is the high IQ society. So if you test at 130 or above on a standard cognitive test, um, Mensa's got also its own admissions exam. There's several other things that they accept you can apply. And really, that's the only thing that members have in common, I would say. Like members are very diverse as a group. It's not, it's not anyone's sort of like political leaning or anything like that. It's just a bunch of gifted folks. So the Mensa Foundation is really the nonprofit arm of things that helps folks. They they do a couple of things. So they administer scholarships every year, which is really cool. Um, a lot of people don't recognize you can apply for scholarships. There's a big competition that they have. They also host a colloquium annually where they bring together some speakers. Like this year, I think it was, I they just had it last week, actually. It was on brain health throughout the lifespan. So they do a lot of sort of research sessions. They publish a journal, the Vincent Research Journal, which is again an academic journal. There's a lot of things that they do, but part of what they're working towards is kind of their strategic plan for the future. And again, I'm just a volunteer, so I don't want to speak from it from sort of that organizational perspective. But I will say a lot of what we're focused on and what the committee that I was sitting on is focused on is thinking about how we bring together providers with researchers and how we bring that together with kind of the lived experience, the gifted community, because there's just that that gap in information exchange where we've got a lot of researchers doing great work. We have a lot of providers who want to help, and we have a lot of people who need help, and it's just not being brought together effectively. So that's what we've been working on is putting together a network through the Minsa Foundation that would allow us to kind of bring all those folks together.
Nadja 42:55
Wonderful. So thank you for sharing a little bit behind the scenes there. And you mentioned so many things that you're doing, and I really love this portfolio career term. I will incorporate that into my language. And if somebody has listened to this podcast and resonates with what you're saying and is curious, where can they best find you? Where can they connect with you? Where's the best place to reach out?
Emmaly 43:24
Yeah, I mean, my website is the first place. So beyond gifted services.com is the easiest place. It's kind of my central repository for everything. You can find my Substack there, the groups I talked about, I post if I'm teaching a graduate class, if I've got workshops, all that stuff kind of lives there. So if any of those things you're interested in, you can find there. My book is available there. I have several validated quizzes that are on there too. Like there's a high sensitivity profile, several things that you can can go to there that I mean for it to be kind of a universal hub. But I would say I'm most active on Substack. So it's beyondgifted.substack.com is probably the easiest way to find me there. I publish a weekly newsletter. So if folks subscribe to that, I'll show up weekly in your inbox with kind of like we were talking about earlier, evidence-based resources. I try to make it very useful. People request things a lot. And so I'll write an article about something people people are asking about. That's probably the best way to find me. I'm on Instagram
Provider Directory And Closing
Emmaly 44:16
and LinkedIn. I'm not a big fan of social media, but I do it anyway because I have to. So all of those places you'll you'll find me one way or the other.
Nadja 44:24
And all the links will be in the show notes so people can just click and connect with you. Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? Something that you wish people knew or something you would like to share, something you wish you knew earlier?
Emmaly 44:40
Yeah, I mean, it's really the idea that drives my career, which is that giftedness is a neurobiological difference. It starts as a neurobiological difference. There are many ways that giftedness unfolds throughout the lifespan, but it doesn't stop in childhood. Just because we often identify gifted kids in school does not mean that's the only place that gifted kids exist. It also doesn't mean that gifted adults aren't real too. I think that's the other thing is just understanding that this is, again, a neurotype, a way of being in the world, a way of perceiving. There's a phenomenology and a lived experience that's very common amongst gifted folks. Knowing all of those things can help create some belonging in a world where you might feel very different and like you're very strange. And so I just want people to know that even if you are rare, rare doesn't mean that you are an outsider. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you, knowing that this is part and parcel being a gifted person and there are plenty of us out there who want to connect with you. You just have to come find us.
Nadja 45:34
Yay! And you're creating those spaces. So thank you so much, Emmaly. It was a pleasure having you here and for you to share. Is there anything else you would like to say?
Emmaly 45:46
I mean, thank you for this podcast, Nadja. I think we need resources like this in the world. So I'm just so grateful. You've had so many great speakers on here. Really appreciate the opportunity to be here and can't wait to see who else gets to come on in the future, too.
Nadja 45:59
Thank you so much, and thank you for sharing, and thank you also for the listeners to be here. And I wish you a wonderful week, and I see you next time. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode and you learned something new. And if you did, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. And if you feel like somebody else that you know could profit from this, please send them a link to this show. And if you want to learn more, you find everything at giftedunleash.com. And you can also subscribe to the newsletter there, so you will always be up to date for new things that are coming. And all the information that we mentioned today will be on the show notes for the episode. So everything is right there for you. And with that said, I wish you a wonderful day, and I see you next time. Bye.