198: Highlighting Unique Qualities in Gifted Adults with Nadja Cereghetti

* Rough Transcript *

Ep. 198

Nadja: I genuinely love meeting new people and also at work I like to bridge between the scientific lingo and the academic admin lingo. So I think now I’m trying to bridge the vocabulary of the giftedness to the non aware. For example, this intensity, it wasn’t something I was aware of, so I think I wanna. My intensity, my passion, my positivity to bring that message across.

Aurora: Welcome to the Embracing Intensity Podcast. I’ll be sharing interviews and tips for gifted creative, twice exceptional and outside the box thinkers who use their fire in a positive way. My name is Aurora. Remember Holtzman, After years of feeling too much, I finally realized that intensity is the source of my greatest power.

Now, instead of beating myself up about not measuring up to my own self-imposed standards, I’m on a mission to help people embrace their own intensity and befriend their brains so they can share their gifts with the world through the Embracing intensity, community coaching, educational assessment, and other tools to help use your fire without.

Earned. You can join us@embracingintensity.com.

Hello, Today’s episode is with Nadia from the Unleashed Monday Podcast, which is a new podcast for gifted adults. I first discovered her podcast on Instagram when Paula Prober shared her interview with her, and I was actually thinking that I should reach out to her when she beat me to the punch and reached out to me.

So we actually got to interview each other on the same day, and I believe that my episode with her is releasing the same day as well. I also invited her to join us in the embracing Intensity community, and she joined us on our very next group call on Building Resiliency. We have two more Ignite Your Power calls.

In November 21st on a assertively speaking up and Saturday, December 19th on getting support both at 10:00 AM Pacific. Moving into 2021, I’ll be continuing monthly group calls in the embracing Intensity community, but I’ll also be bringing back guest speakers like I did last year, and they’ll be talking about.

Topics related to embracing intensity. So if there are any past guests that you’d love to hear, speak on a specific topic, or if there’s any specific topics that you’d like to hear, feel free to let me know. As I’m planning out the 2021 season, I’m really thrilled with how the embracing Intensity community is developing, and I would love to see more of you participate.

Come join us@embracingintensity.com. Enjoy. Welcome to Embracing Intensity. Today I am super thrilled to have Nadia, who is the host of the Unleashed Monday podcast for gifted adults, and I just discovered her a couple weeks ago when Paula Prober, author of Your Rainforest Mind, shared it on. Her Instagram and she had her, she shared her interview and I listened to it on my way to work that day, and I’d actually been thinking about reaching out to her in the new year, and she reached out to me first.

So it’s an awesome opportunity and I love to share her podcast because there’s just not enough podcasts out there for gifted adults. So welcome

Nadja: Nadia. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m so honored.

Aurora: So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you are intensely passionate about.

Nadja: So, Well, currently I’m intensely passionate about gifted adults, but that has only been very, very recent.

I’m actually passionate about empowering women and. I had this idea of creating a podcast to just share all this knowledge and information that I came across in the last couple of years about, you know, these tools of, for example, strengths finder or. How, just to find your path in your career, because I come from an academic background and I spend most of my life in academia.

Even though I’m not a scientist. I’m more on the admin side, but I’m surrounded by all these beautiful women in academia and I see how they struggle with imposter syndrome. And also having this glass ceiling and academia is still very male dominated. And I joined this women mentoring program, for example, and another university stream targeted for women in business.

And so I had this idea of just curating all this information and make it into a podcast. And then Corona hit and I thought, Well, what better timing now or never. I have all this time in the evening and on the weekends that I’m stuck at home. And so I have a good friend and she had this very incredible story and I ask her if she’s gonna be the Guinea pig to be my first ever guest and.

Sharing her story just to empower women basically. And she came onto this show, or it wasn’t even a show yet, right? It was our interview and she, she’s a pain patient and she’s in therapy because of that. And she had these issues at work. Suddenly the psychologist, he was. Saying something like, Oh, but that’s not because of your medication or your pain, This is because you are gifted.

And she was like, Huh? Like . She, she didn’t know. And so she went home and she read this book and she could relate and it was like this emotional tormo and she was 37 years old at a time. So she shares this story with me, and I heard this before, but. Starting to poke a little bit more during this interview.

Like, okay, so what was the areas in the book that you could relate? And she started sharing, and the more she shared, the more I could relate. I was like, But doesn’t everybody, you know, doesn’t everybody think like this? She’s like, you know, Normal people apparently think linear, but I think like a tree branch.

And I’m like, Oh yeah, I have a thousand ideas and 500 projects. So yeah, I can relate. And that’s probably why we are friends. And she’s like, But I’ve never, I was never a good student. I cannot do math in my head. Like if somebody says, What’s three times six? I like freeze up. And I’m like, Yeah, me too. And I have this self diagnos.

Dyslexia. So all of my life I found like these workarounds, so I use a lot of synonyms, , and so that’s also a reason why I didn’t wanna do a a blog. I chose to do a podcast. So after this initial interview with her, I was like, Oh my God. I didn’t know. I, I was, yeah, there was an emotional turmoil and I was like, Oh God, I need to know more about this topic.

So I googled and I found somebody. Here in Switzerland that did basically just a one-on-one online evaluation for an hour. We sat together and she said like, Yeah, you’re probably in this category. And I was like, Wow. I’m also 37 years old. I never knew and I thought, I need to create a podcast. I need to share this.

Because I have a lot of friends, like once you know the pain points and the checklists, you, you can see it and hear it in other people. And I was like, Okay, Empowering women, Well, empowering, gifted adult women.

Aurora: Yeah, totally. Yeah. It’s funny what you’re saying about seeing it in your, in your friends, because then I think about it, the friends that I have, Probably are, you know, whether or not they were identified is not necessarily something they all talk about, but it’s definitely something that you tend towards connecting

Nadja: with.

I just recently pointed out to another friend and she had her evaluation yesterday, and yeah, she’s going to a very emotional time right now because she’s like, all these emotions come out and it’s like, first I thought it was like a puzzle. That was missing in my life. But looking back, it’s like a red threat like throughout my life from kindergarten, you know, school interactions, relationships, it’s all

Aurora: there, but Totally.

Yeah, and I think a lot of times in that gifted discovery phase, I’ve noticed one of the guests that I wanna actually have back on as a guest speaker is Bonita Jay, who a couple years back when she discovered the giftedness aspect that. Her whole experience, you know, it was all about the the gifted part and then not.

And then she came out as lesbian and it was all about that. And now as she’s learning to connect in real life, she actually dropped off social media for a while. Because until Covid hit , because she was out there living her life and meeting people and connecting with people after years of feeling like she couldn’t, and now she pretty much doesn’t even talk about the gifted aspect because she’s found other points of connection, but, I feel like a lot of times we have to go through that phase because especially if you were never identified, but even if you are, a lot of people don’t, They talk about being gifted as a child, but they don’t necessarily relate it to their adult life, and so I do feel like there’s a lot of people who.

Maybe don’t connect or don’t realize it at the moment, and that becomes this big revelation, especially if you’ve had a lot of other issues like academic or dyslexia or things that you’re not a high achiever. Tell me a little bit about your own personal brand of intensity. What does intensity look like for you?

Oh, wow. ,

Nadja: I’ve always been called too much, you know, like too loud, too much talking. Too much of anything and but mostly the talking, so in school I guess I was just bored, but as a child you cannot really articulate this. I did express my wish to learn and study, like I wanted to learn how to read and write.

before I actually went to school. So here in kindergarten you don’t learn to read and write. That’s what you do in first grade. And so I asked my mom to like, you know, show me, and she was like, No, you’re gonna be bored in school, so just wait. And then, yeah, I was in school and the school. Stuff came easy to me, so I was just talking to everybody around me and so I was always, you know, my school report cards.

I was always afraid of the school report cards, not because of my grades, but because of like the comments underneath that says like, Nadia talks too much. Nadia talks. You know, again, too much. And she hinders other kids of learning and she’s a distraction. So yeah, that, that was that. And then later on I always have an opinion and I just learned to take myself back all the time in anything.

And I just thought that was part of growing up, was to learn, you know, the rules and to just stick to. Cultural norms, and I thought any, everybody, anybody has to kind of take back that that’s what you do.

Aurora: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Sounds very familiar. , are there any other ways that you feel like it affected you growing up?

So, yeah,

Nadja: I, I think it, it really is this red threat and I was good in the beginning of school, so, Primary school until, I guess you would call it middle school. I never really had to do homework. I always envied the kids that went home and then had, you know, sit on the table, do their homework, and for me it was always like, Oh, finish up what you didn’t manage to finish during the class.

And I always finished. So I never had homework that I could do. And when I was a little bit older, a teenager and I actually should have, you know, sat down and learned because I, French didn’t come easy to me. I wasn’t like gifted in a way that I had like a photographic memory or something like that. And so I had bad grades and then I went to high school and here in.

The school system is a little bit differently, and I actually dropped out of the stream where you would go to university because of bad grades. And then I went to a different school and suddenly I was again, you know, best, almost best in my class. And then I went, I did a loop. I went back and went and studied biology, so I, I did go on to the academic track, but yeah, I, I wasn’t like a great student, but also I think this being very black and white, all or nothing kind of thing.

That’s kind of an intense thing. Also in relationships. You know, you have a fight and you’re like, I’m done. I’m leaving . We’re breaking up until my partner said like, Okay, we’re having a fight, but I’m, you know, I still love you. It’s okay. We can have a fight. Like, Oh, okay. .

Aurora: Totally. That black and white thinking definitely is relatable.

Were there any cultural factors that affected how you expressed yourself?

Nadja: I don’t know, , it’s really funny or it’s actually not funny. Growing up in Switzerland, there, there is a large proportion of non Swiss people, but growing up white, uh, in Switzerland, we didn’t have this whole. It’s only starting slowly, the conversation about race, but it’s also not at the point where it should be.

So the term like white privilege is only something I learned very recently, which kind of ashamed but actually wanted. Say it out loud so other people also learned the term. But the great thing about my upbringing was gender was never a limiting factor. And this is where I’m very grateful for my surrounding my family and.

Caretakers. So I was always around boys and I was also an only child. I do have a little half sister, but we never lived in the same household on a daily basis. But so at home I was an only child. But I wasn’t treated as like a girly girl. I could always do and embrace whatever I wanted. So I played with cars and I played with dolls, and it was never thick glass ceiling or this like, girls cannot do this.

This is only something I learned as a like late teenager, early twenties. And this is when I was like, Oh, wow. And now looking back, I’m very grateful. That was never a limiting factor. I always knew I wanted to go to university.

Aurora: Yeah. I always thought that track thing was interesting. My spouse is from Germany and they had a similar school track thing, and it is, I always thought that was interesting because it definitely us schools have some, some tracking and in fact they’re actually working on reducing that or eliminating that because it, it, it.

Contributes to the inequities. So those folks who don’t get on a certain track, like because you were struggling with certain academic aspects, you didn’t get on that track. Folks who are twice exceptional, folks who are an underrepresented communities, they often don’t get on the track. That achievement track, and so I always thought that was interesting.

Nadja: Well, I must say that I guess there is a difference in terms of the school system and the teaching system in Europe and the us for example. You don’t need an academic educa, you don’t need to go to college to have a very good job. So you, you can do apprenticeship for four year training on the job, and you go to school once a day, uh, once a week, and you can really academically succeed, but you can also succeed just in a regular job.

And then you can go to further education after an apprenticeship. So that’s really cool. So you don’t need an, uh, a college or university. In Europe to actually have a very decent

Aurora: life. Well, and that’s a good part too, because a lot of folks, the apprenticeships and those opportunities can bring out their gifts more than say a traditional university system.

Nadja: Yeah. And this is exactly great for people that don’t, as you say, in a school system thrive, where you really go in. In In a corporate or, Yeah. Small company setting. And you learn on the job like a carpenter. Mm,

Aurora: totally. So did you ever try to tone yourself down or tune yourself out?

Nadja: Oh yes. , tone down for sure.

I have to tone down and it’s funny, I heard gifted adults some of. Like to drink alcohol because it makes them, you know, there’s their brain slow down. I don’t like to drink alcohol because it, this inhibition that goes away and then all of me comes out. I think people can all handle me if I’m drunk, so I don’t, I don’t like to get, for example, yeah, I don’t like alcohol because the way it makes me feel and losing control.

So yeah, I haven’t embraced that full yet. , I don’t want to .

Aurora: That’s funny you say that cuz I’m actually the opposite. I don’t drink much, but when I did, I remember when I was in college, I actually became more controlled because I was so afraid of being out of control. So if I had a, if I had more than a drink, I would, I would actually like be hyper aware of like, I don’t wanna look drunk.

I don’t wanna, And so I didn’t really, I mean I, I was never a huge drinker to begin with, but when I did the rare occasion, I would actually be more hyper aware of not. Appearing out of control .

Nadja: But the thing is, you know, this all or nothing things comes in. So my first time experiencing alcohol was like the opposite.

It was like, okay, let’s do this. And we just did shots. Mm-hmm. and like, yeah, I had no . Yeah. That didn’t end well. Yeah, let’s say that. And I was like, Okay. And then I was hungover for like three days and I was like, I, I don’t, I don’t need this . It’s not for me. Totally.

Aurora: So tell me about a time when you feel, feel like your intensity got out of control.

Actually,

Nadja: I think maybe that’s also why I wasn’t identified maybe earlier because I was able to control it quite a bit and I don’t know if, when I. Eight years old. My parents said, Okay, you need to enroll in a sports club. So here you don’t do sports at school, you do have pe but all the clubs are like independent.

So you join basically a sports group outside of school. And I chose karate because my stepdad did that when he was a teenager. And I was like, That’s cool. So from the age of eight until eight, the age of 16, I practiced karate, I think three times a week for one, one and a half hours. And it’s really, you have to be quiet for one and a half hours, three times a week.

And yeah, I managed, I liked it. I loved. And so I don’t know if that training helped me with this philosophy, the Japanese kind of philosophy behind it to control this whole intensity.

Aurora: Yeah. I’ve definitely heard karate recommended for, for kids, for, for that. I think it can go, it can depend on the kid for sure, because they might not have the skills to.

To control it that much. But I think having those, those tools can sometimes be helpful. So tell me a little bit about how you use your fire for good.

Nadja: So, uh, I created the podcast. I think that’s how I’m gonna hopefully touch some people. And my podcast is named in a very generic, Name as you can see, like Unleash Monday has nothing to do with giftedness because my friend and I, we were talking about a name for the podcast and she was identified at 37.

She’s like a year ago. I would never click into a podcast that sits giftedness on it. So yeah, I, I’m hoping to reach maybe by accident a few people that the message resonates and that they. Go and get evaluated. And maybe that’s something that helps them or just embrace it by reading the checklist. Just being aware, and I was always outgoing.

I’m not shy. I love to talk. I love to network. I genuinely love meeting new people and I like to bridge also at work. I like to bridge between, you know, the scientific lingo and the academic, uh, admin lingo of. Know, accounting, hr, and, and so I think now I’m trying to bridge, you know, the vocabulary of the giftedness to, to the non aware.

For example, this intensity, It wasn’t something I was aware of. Right. And so, Yeah, I think I wanna use my, my intensity, my passion, my positivity to, to bring that message across.

Aurora: Yeah, I totally get that. About the, the language I didn’t even use gifted in my, uh, in my work in the beginning, but I, I started more just because that’s the word that people recognize if they have.

Found it. But a lot of times, even kids, people who were identified as a kid, they, they put it in quotes and refer to it as past and as being a gifted kid, but they don’t, they don’t relate it to their adult life. And those who weren’t identified often question it. So it is the eternal challenge. Right. I think that’s why Paula Prober uses the rainforest mind metaphor and whether it’s.

Words that may connect to the, to the intensity aspect. Things like spirited or, you know, there’s the highly sensitive component, which is part but not the entire thing. So there’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, that’s always the internal challenge of finding the right wording to connect with people when you don’t have a person who says, Yes, this is, this is me, this is who I am.

Nadja: So, yeah, exactly. And I. If we start creating new vocabulary, it also gets very confusing. Like this is really what it’s called, but yeah. Mm-hmm. , I, let’s see how it goes. If, if people, I identify and come and listen to our podcast, right? Because I must say, like when I heard this term giftedness, and also in German, it’s obviously a different term.

And my friend, she speaks French, so it’s a different term again. And so I Googled and on the. The first time I looked on podcast, I actually didn’t see yours, or it didn’t register that the one that popped up first. That intensity and the giftedness goes hand in hand. And I must say I’m a little bit, you know, shy to say that, but also maybe good that I didn’t click on yours because then I would have said, Oh, somebody already doing this, it doesn’t need me.

And so I’m glad I only found your podcast. After I started. I was like, Oh my God, somebody’s doing it for four years. And I haven’t even heard of it. Like, oh my God. And

Aurora: yeah. Well, as I mentioned before, I was really glad to see more in this space because for years it was the only one really for, and it’s not, I think we talked about this on your years as well, that the intensity and giftedness is not necessarily the same thing.

They, you know, the. There’s, it’s hotly debated in the research whether it’s actually part of that, but I think those people who are gifted and looking for help often find that intensity is a part of their experience. But that’s just observationally, not, no. As I mentioned, I’m not a researcher, so that’s something I just, I’m aware of.

To be gifted does not automatically make you intense, and to be intense does not automatically make you gifted. But I think the reason that they see the connection, especially in the intellectual intensity, there is a correlation. And if intellectual intensity, Brings intellectual giftedness. It follows that a lot of the other elements can bring strengths, whether it’s an intellectual giftedness or not, but being intense in other areas can give you a rich experience that’s unique in that area.

So what do you think has helped you the most with harnessing the power of your intensity? I

Nadja: think I created a lot of workarounds that I wasn’t even aware, and I think I really had all these coping mechanisms that I didn’t know other people don’t need. And just also hiding. Yeah, this hiding the dyslexia, for example, which was never diagnosed, but I think it’s pretty obvious, so I don’t even need to go get diagnosed

So it’s, it’s really more the coping mechanism. So I don’t know if that. Brought out the fire. So I only learned about my giftedness in May this year. So it’s really been a short time, but it kind of give me more confidence and I think a better perspective of. Who I am and who I’m not, and really being able to like reject people’s opinions to say like, Oh, why don’t you do this?

Why don’t you do that? And, Oh, why don’t you stick to one thing? Why do you have to do like 500 projects? Like do one thing, do it linear. I’m like, No , and now I know, No, I don’t have to. I’m not like anybody else, so I don’t need to. And just embracing this, it gives me more confidence and just seeing myself in a more compassionate way.

I try to fight myself, I guess, for the longest time, to kind of like, why can’t I not be normal? Why can’t I not, you know, be satisfied what other people have? Why can I not like this corporate job that other people strive for? And I just. Really didn’t wanna go there and why? I really love being surrounded.

In this academic field where I have so many people that are like-minded and it only, you know, I realized in May, like that’s the reason why I’ve stuck around there so long because I just love the people. Yeah,

Aurora: totally. Surrounding yourself by people who get you. Can you think of any really good advice

Nadja: someone gave you?

Um, yeah, so my stepdad had a really big influence when I growing up, and even now, and when I was a teenager. Obviously, you wanna do what teenagers do and you, you wanna be with the popular kids. You don’t wanna be with the nerdy kids. You wanna fit in, you don’t wanna stand out. And so when I, I asked like, Oh, can I hang out with those kids, you know, like in the evening, like after dinner, and he’s like, No,

And he kind of told me it’s okay. Not to be cool. It can be cool to be of a different opinion and to say no, and to have your own kind of, Yeah, your own way of doing things. And so in a way, even though it has nothing to do at the moment with giftedness, it really helped me being comfortable and very confident in who I am and who I was.

And so, yeah, saying no to drugs and saying no to alcohol. Not because you know that’s the right thing to do, but not to just have to say, Yes, I, I do these things just to be cool and fit in, but just say like, No, I don’t need that. So that, that was really cool. And so, yeah, that helped me a lot. Sometimes I purposely chose to be on a different opinion,

Mm-hmm.

Aurora: I know that experience , I was just remembering and when I was in high school and I dressed deliberately, flamboyantly kind of just bright colors, thrift store fines. And I remember my senior year when the grunge movement started kind of. Becoming popular. All of a sudden people were complimenting me and I was annoyed, ,

Nadja: you just wanted to be different and doing it.

I’ve been doing

Aurora: this for four years where, you know, suddenly it’s cool. Like .

Nadja: Yeah. And when you talk about clothes, it’s so funny, like growing up I never, like, as a kid, I hated dresses and skirt like I was a boy. I was dressing like, you know, like a boy, and I was climbing trees and I even had short hair.

Like I looked, I was mistaken for a boys. And then I think when I was like 16, I was like, Oh, okay, I’m gonna wear short shorts because you get reactions. But I, I really, I, I always deliberately chose clothes because, you know, You know, it’s funny how people react the way you dress and the way you portray yourself.

And I played with that. And then, yeah, to uni and school, I was jeans and turtlenecks, but then I actually worked for a bank, one for a year and I had to dress really professionally, like, you know, pants suits. And I also got like blouses and. When I then went back into the academic field, I had all these, you know, beautiful dresses that I just spent a lot of money on for that one year.

So I wore those dress, I was totally overdressed for the other show, but, hey, so I love to wear dresses and it, it’s funny Yeah. How, how people’s perspec perception of you change. The way to

Aurora: dress. Totally. Yeah. I was such a contrarian in, in high school that I went to, I’d spent a lot of time going to the, the Rocky Horror Picture Show as like a Saturday night thing, and they would wear, you know, dark and sexy and all this stuff.

And so I still went with something that was like, like this short kind of outfit, but it was like this old, like sixties gingham, like. Green and white checks with daisies all over it and like bloomers, . So it was super short and a little bit sexy, but it was like bright and daisies and gingham and like totally contrary to what.

Anyone else is wearing a regular picture show? .

Nadja: Oh, I, Oh, that reminds me, Oh, that’s such a good story. Once I’m a huge Metallica fan. Mm-hmm. , and I know, I guess, well, I know most of the songs. And I went to a Metallica concert wearing a pink t-shirt. Mm. I I stood out at the time. .

Aurora: Totally. That’s awesome. So are there any particular books that you think have had a major influence on you?

Nadja: Well, That’s a good question. Like there’s certainly a lot of, like you say, bibliographies, um, like people talking about themselves, but it, it sounds a little bit silly, but the most impactful book I ever wrote, um, I ever read was The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Condo. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I so fir first when I saw the title I was, Okay.

That’s a little bit corny, but okay. And growing up I was, well, I wasn’t a clinical messy, right? That’s, that’s a clinical term. But I was very untidy. Like I had a mess in my room. And it’s not that my parents. Were this type of people, they, the apartment I grew up in was tidy. It was just me whenever I went, even on holiday, like poof, my stuff was everywhere and I just, I had this limiting belief that you either are born, tidy, or untidy and there’s nothing you can do until I found this book and.

I realized, wow, it’s a skill. Like any other, you can actually learn . I just never learned the skillset. Like I think anything you, you do like, I don’t know, cooking, There’s cooking classes or in school, I don’t know if you guys cooked in school or you know, you, you learned your parents show you how to cook, but tidying is something like, you know, your parents say, Go to your room and tidy up, and I did on the surface.

There was just, yeah, I couldn’t cope and then I lived by myself and it was at sometimes at the point where somebody rang my doorbell, like unannounced, I would pretend I wasn’t home because I was too ashamed of how my apartment looked. So her book really. Changed a lot for me and it’s when you tidy your physical space, you also tidy your mental space.

And I was like, wow, this method is actually life changing. So the title is actually very accurate and it was a total like gut decision to fly to her seminar in London in 2018, and I became a certified consultant. Oh, nice. And so like I’m a tidy and coach as well, and I actually wanna combine this also with my podcast a little bit for the gifted of, of course, it sounds like okay.

Tidying here and gifted adults there, but mm-hmm. , obviously there are gifted adults that are tidy. Mm-hmm. , but sometimes I feel like if I’m so smart, Why can I not keep my room tidy? And yeah, it does help, It gives you structure and it’s the inner transformation that happens. Obviously you see it on the surface.

Mm-hmm. , but yeah, it, it is life changing.

Aurora: I think you’d really enjoy. Katherine Norris has a blog called Declared Dominion, but for a while, every year she would do this free thing called the the Queen Queen. And so it was this free, like tidying course. Then she would lead into a coaching group and she still does something with it, but I think it’s more around the coaching group.

But, um, but her, her blog and everything, her, she’s all about that experience of being kind of a dreamy, messy kid and always wishing that she had this beauty and, and order around her, but couldn’t. And then she figured out her own system. So it’s definitely.

Nadja: Relatable. And that book really was sent a starting point of just also honing into my own, like joy factor.

Because what Marie Kdo says is like, you know, only keep the things that spark joy. Mm-hmm. , okay, what, what does that mean? And so then I kind of as, as a researcher and me, I Googled all this, you know, joy related. Books So Joyful by, oh, see, oh see Total Blank. . . Wait, I wrote it down. So there’s a book called Joyful by Ingrid Fatali, and also there’s a book, The Book of Joy with the Dai Lama and the conversation with, um, the arch of Tutu two and all of this, like, what, what?

Joy and what does really fulfill us and what makes us happy. And again, as a gifted adult, where things that make me happy or are joyful to me is not what’s joyful to you or anybody else. Right. And just making. Decisions, life decision based on, okay, what do I want? What, what’s not expected? But what do I really want?

What is something that I’m passionate about?

Aurora: Well, in the connection with giftedness, I did, um, I went to a sang conference years ago and there was a, a session on hoarding , and they were talking about gifted folks being more prone to hoarding, and they kind of explain that sometimes we tend to. Prophies things where we’re like giving human attributes to objects and I definitely see that in my kid.

Like he has a really hard time letting stuff go, even if it’s been something that’s been destroyed. He wants to keep it and fix it and even, you know, it’s just, Yeah. So how do you help others use their own fire?

Nadja: So, yeah, I try to create a community and just by leading, hopefully by example and showing that, you know, you can be intense.

And a bubbly person and still achieve things in life. outside of the normal track.

Aurora: Totally. That’s awesome. Is there anything else you’d like to share with the embracing intensity audience?

Nadja: It’s a toughie. I said a lot already, but yeah, I think. I just wanted to say I’m suffering from imposter syndrome like anybody else, I guess , and I was like, Who am I to do this podcast?

And so when I identify as gifted, I’m like saying, Yeah, I’m the barely gifted as Paula Prova was saying, right? So I’m like, Okay, I’m the bridge. And just trying to create a curated platform for resources. For all of us. And so, yeah, I’m just looking for likeminded people and I think I, I finally know more of who I am and I wanna, I wanna help other people embrace that

Aurora: too.

Awesome. And talking about Paula Pover and the Imposter syndrome on your interview with her, we had talked about this before I started recording. I think that. When you asked if, if people come in, how many people come in thinking they’re gifted, who really aren’t? And she basically said none. And that’s kind of my, been my experience as well.

And it comes with that imposter syndrome. You certainly could have someone who’s maybe narcissistic and thinks they’re more intelligent than they actually are, but those people. Aren’t going to coaches and therapists and getting evaluated to see if they really are. They just have a false sense of superiority.

But if somebody is actually thinking that they might be gifted and trying to pursue and figure that out, there’s probably something to that because, as you said, imposter syndrome, it often comes with the territory. . And so if you think based on everything that you’re reading about giftedness and, and following various people in that field that this resonates, then there’s something to that.

And so figuring out how to kind of get past that, that, but I’m not really, or I don’t really, you know, that’s, that’s always the challenge,

Nadja: right? That that’s a super big challenge. And this is where I’m like, Seeing my friends because I feel like I don’t have like a group of friends. I always wondered why I don’t have like a group of friends, but I switched and changed schools so, so many times because as I told you, I had to repeat and I dropped out and went back the other way.

So along the way in, not even in every class, In certain classes, I picked like one person along the way, and now I do have a network of people that are different ages, different backgrounds, different, you know, country backgrounds even. And so I see the signs and I tell them what they, what I do. And they said like, Oh, that’s great.

Good for you. I’m like, But you know mm-hmm , you are the person I’m doing this for. . Go listen, go listen. And so I have like two or three people already that like one is now embracing it because you got evaluated and then two are like on the verge, but they still cannot accept or think, but me, no . Mm-hmm.

Aurora: Yeah. Totally. So how can they find out more about you?

Nadja: So I guess the best way is to go through my website. It’s www.unleashmonday.com, and from there you have all the resources for my, um, episodes. Like all the episodes are there. The links to Apple Podcast, or if you wanna connect with me on social media, you know you have those icons.

You can find me on Instagram. Facebook.

Aurora: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming. I’m glad this worked out, and we did this back to back, so you’ll find my podcast coming out and somewhere at some point you’ll see her interview with me on her podcast coming up. So that’s great and definitely check it out.

I listened to the polypro one and it was fantastic, and I’m still listening to a couple more and. So great guests and I’m really glad to have someone else in

Nadja: this space. Thank you so much a for having me. And thank you also for your podcast. I’m now listening, you know, very intensely. Thank you so much.

Aurora: Looking for ways to embrace your own intensity. Join our embracing Intensity community@embracingintensity.com where you’ll meet a growing group of like-minded people who get what it’s like to be gifted and intense and are committed to creating a supportive community as well as access to our courses and tools to help you use your fire without getting burned.

There’s also a pay what you can option through our Patreon. Where you can increase your pledge to help sustain the podcast or join us at a rate that better fits your needs. You can also sign up for my Free, Harnessing The Power of Your Intensity, a Self-Regulation workbook for gifted, creative, and twice exceptional adults and teens.

All links can be found in the show notes or on embracing intensity. Dot com.