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Depression is a serious problem with which some gifted children struggle, and is quite different
from the blues everyone feels from time to time. It is an overwhelming sense of sadness or emptiness combined with a
number of other symptoms. Individuals suffering from depression may have a preoccupation with suicide, and they may
be plagued by feelings of guilt and worthlessness. They quite often have difficulty concentrating, remembering things,
or taking pleasure in anything. They may feel both anxious and lethargic and either have difficulty eating and sleeping
or eat and sleep excessively (Nemeroff, 1998).
Two possible contributing factors to depression in gifted children are perfectionism and emotional sensitivity. While striving for perfection isn't necessarily a bad thing, unhealthy or neurotic perfectionism is and may be evidenced by an intense need to avoid failure.
This is in contrast to healthy perfectionism where the child derives a sense of pleasure from painstaking effort while accepting
his personal and situational limitations. Gifted children who deal with unhealthy perfectionism need help focusing on
planning realistic goals, making reasonable commitments and understanding the source of their perfectionism so that they can
learn to combat unhealthy tendencies. Gifted children may also be overly emotionally sensitive. This extreme sensitivity
may be manifested through strong concerns over death and dying, anxieties, fears, guilt, depression, suicidal moods, intensity
of feeling, loneliness and feelings of inferiority or inadequacy (Talent Development Resources, 2001).
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What's Wrong with Being Perfect?
Currently,
children receive mixed messages when it comes to perfectionism. On one hand, we as a society laud the perfectionism of great
individuals. The Olympic games are a good example of this. Only those athletes who perfect their skill after years of hard
work win the gold medal. We want our doctors to be perfectionists; especially if they are the ones who deliver our children
or perform surgery on us. We esteem excellence, and praise those who strive to be their absolute best. Perfectionism is at
the very heart of great accomplishments. On the other hand, perfectionism is seen as an undesirable character trait. Children
are told not to worry about doing things perfectly and bookstores are filled with books on how to overcome perfectionism.
The term perfectionist is not a positive one. So, which is it? Should we strive for excellence or not? Most would say the
obvious answer is that yes, we should all strive to be our absolute best. However, there is a fine line between striving for
excellence and an intense need to avoid failure. Many gifted children are perfectionistic to at least some degree. Some, however,
are perfectionistic to a fault.
According to Dr. Sidney J. Blatt, Ph.D. of Yale University, there are two types of
perfectionism. Normal perfectionism is evidenced when an individual derives a sense of pleasure from painstaking effort while
accepting their personal and situational limitations. Neurotic perfectionism is evidenced by an intense need to avoid failure.
Individuals struggling with neurotic perfectionism do not derive pleasure from a job well done. They are driven by deep-seated
feelings of inferiority. This type of perfectionism has been linked with a higher risk of depression.
Many gifted children
are driven and set high standards for themselves. There is nothing wrong with this. However, if a child sets impossible personal
goals, they are setting themselves up for failure.
Dr. Linda Silverman of the Gifted Development Center offers
some strategies that may help children cope with perfectionism—healthy or otherwise.
They are as follows:
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Appreciate the trait. Don’t
be ashamed of being perfectionistic. |
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Understand that it serves a useful purpose. |
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Set priorities for yourself.
Allow yourself to be perfectionistic in activities that really matter to you, rather than in everything all at once. |
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Maintain high standards for yourself, but don’t impose them
on others lest you become a tyrant. |
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Keep striving even when your first attempts are unsuccessful. |
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Don’t quit when the going gets rough. Only allow yourself to quit when you’re a winner.
If you would
like further information on perfectionism and the gifted child, I encourage you to visit http://www.gifteddevelopment.com. This is the website of the Gifted Development Center that is run by Linda Silverman, one of the
nation's top experts in giftedness. |
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General Strategies for Working with Supersensitive Children
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Accept the child as is
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Welcome alternative ways of viewing and owing things
which do not interfere with other people | |
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Use and teach clear verbal
and non-verbal communication skills
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Help
the child become aware of own behaviors |
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Teach
the child to be responsible for his/her behavior
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Use natural and
logical consequences |
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Teach about locus
of control and how to effect change |
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Develop signals
with selected students to advise them of successful/unsuccessful behaviors and for them to tell you of their needs | |
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Teach
about stress and stress management
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Teach children
to recognize tension in themselves and to anticipate problems or behaviors |
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Help child to
create a comforting environment |
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Remember that
stress will exacerbate these intensities | |
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Use
simple management strategies
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Talk about your
feelings to someone |
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Relaxation |
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Exercise and
proper diet |
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Ask for help |
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Organization
and time management skills | |
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Provide places
for children to work with fewer distractions |
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Remember most
classrooms are not reflective of the real world. Most people have choices about their environment and mode of working |
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Allow
time to pursue passions
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Never remove
passions as consequences |
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Cultivate gifts/talents | |
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Use the expression
of tension in positive ways (e.g., make the chatterbox a reporter, etc.) |
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Accept the child's
feelings and their intensity |
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Teach the child
to anticipate physical and emotional responses and prepare for them |
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Consider attachments
when requiring change |
Excerpt taken from Supersensitivity in Gifted Children, pp 3-4, by Sharon
Lind, 1998.
"What am I in the eyes of most people, a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody
who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then--even if that were
absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody has in his heart." --
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh suffered from depression for most of his life. It is unfortunate
that such a gifted artist took his own life at the age of 37.
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