My “Gifted Adult” Awakening

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📘 The Gifted Adult by Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

📕 Chad’s ChatGPT Report on Gifted Adults

Last week was a big one for me. And I don’t say that lightly. I had what I can only describe as the biggest breakthrough of my life—and today, I want to tell you about it.

But first, I want to say this: If you’ve been on a path of personal growth while the world feels like it’s unraveling, you’re not alone. Sometimes doing the inner work can feel like whistling through a graveyard. The chaos outside doesn’t make the need for healing inside any less urgent. In fact, it makes it even more essential.

So if you’re here—if you’re reading this—I want to honor that. It matters.

The Question That Haunted Me

This all started with a question I’ve been asking my entire life:

“What is wrong with me?”

That question has been a quiet, relentless companion—showing up in therapy sessions, retreats, books, spiritual practices, coaching tools. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake it.

And then, out of nowhere, came the moment it started to unravel.

A Disruptive Comment

I was in a therapy session, laying it all out, talking fast. My new therapist interrupted me:

“Have you ever had your IQ tested?”

I told him no, and I wasn’t interested. But he pressed gently, saying, “It’s clear to me you’re highly intelligent. And that brings its own set of challenges.”

I didn’t know it then, but that comment would crack open everything.

A few sessions later, he looked me straight in the eye and said:

“You were either a fraud when you wrote your book, or you’re a fraud now.”

That hit like a truck. I shut down. It tapped into my deepest fear—that I’m faking it, that I don’t deserve to be here. That maybe everything I’ve built is hollow.

And yet… he wasn’t trying to insult me. He was trying to point out the disconnect between what I know and what I feel. He said, “Chad, you could teach this stuff better than I can. But it’s not sinking in deeper than your head.”

He was right.

The Search for Something More

In desperation, I agreed to try MDMA-assisted therapy. Not because I wanted to experiment with drugs, but because I had to know what it felt like to be okay—truly, deeply okay.

And for five hours, I felt it.

That session wasn’t the miracle I hoped for. But it planted something. It gave me a reference point. A crack of light.

The Clues Start to Add Up

A few days later, I was using ChatGPT (yes, seriously) to help me process my experience. It suggested I look into something called “twice-exceptional”—a term used for people who are both gifted and challenged.

I had never heard of that. But it hit me like lightning.

Then came a conversation with my dear friend Amanda—one of those soul-level check-ins we have every week. We talked about meaning, and how I’d been caught in a loop of existential depression for the last four years. That conversation sent me deeper down the rabbit hole.

I found the book Why Smart People Hurt by Eric Maisel. Then The Gifted Adult by Mary-Elaine Jacobsen. I started researching giftedness in adults. And for the first time, I felt like I was reading my own story.

Everything clicked.

A New Name for an Old Experience

I am a gifted adult.

Now, before you cringe at the label, let me clarify: being a gifted adult isn’t about being better than anyone. It’s not about superiority. It’s about having a specific kind of inner experience.

Gifted adults often:

Think deeply and feel intensely
Struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome
Feel like outsiders
Have a relentless drive for meaning and mastery
Get overwhelmed by the world’s pain

We are often misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and misled. And most of us never get the language to name what we’re actually experiencing.

Until now.

Life as a Connect-the-Dots Puzzle

All my life has felt like jumping from one dot to the next on a connect-the-dots worksheet—without being able to see the picture forming. Just endless motion. A career here, a revelation there, a breakdown, a success, a pivot.

No line connecting them.

Until now. Now, I see the shape. The outline. The story.

And language—that’s what makes the picture visible.

From “That’s Just Chad” to Something Bigger

People have always said, “That’s just Chad.”

But that label never helped me. It left me alone in my own experience, trying to fix what I didn’t understand. What I needed was a name for what I was feeling—not to box me in, but to help me feel less alone.

Naming this—giftedness—wasn’t about ego. It was about relief. It was about finally realizing: I’m not broken. I’m not too much. I’m not a fraud.

I’m just wired differently. And there are others like me.