The Push/Pull of Community and Connection for the Highly Gifted

All humans crave and are inherently designed for connection and community. We are social animals. 

This is regardless of where you sit on the introversion/extroversion continuum (it's entirely a spectrum, by the way, and changes daily and based on inner resources, so don't be boxed in!)

It's biologically wired into us. 

We flourish with each other. 

We perish in isolation. 

Massive research sets support this across many disciplines. 

Just as one fun example, are you familiar with Bruce Al;exander's Rat Park experiments? Stuart McMillan did a great comic book series to explain them, if you are not familiar.

I say all this as someone who generally prefers my own company and that of the non-human world most of the time. I know I STILL need human connection and community.

For us outlier brain peeps, this is super hard. Our brain type places us in a tiny percentage of the population. And then adding in our unique personalities, proclivities, and interests... well, places where we can find true connection are vanishingly rare.

"Normies" (meaning people with more mainstream middle-of-the-bell-curve brains) think we're weird, or we talk too much (or not enough), or we don't make sense, or we're obsessed with uninteresting topics, or... the list goes on of the many ways in which more typical people cannot accurately see us.

When any of us, all humans, feel unseen, bad things happen to us. 

We all crave to be accurately PERCEIVED AND RECEIVED.

Met where we are at.

Appreciated and even loved for who and what we truly are in all our totality.

For gifted people, that totality is less of a novel and more of a massive compendium. Think Wikipedia instead of a dictionary. War and Peace instead of Dick and Jane. The Stand instead of The Tell-Tale Heart. (I shared about how Stephen King became a favorite and formative writer for me at age 10  here... 🙀😬🤷🏻‍♀️)

In the near decade that I have been directly supporting and mentoring the highly gifted, I have heard about this issue of relationship and relating challenges across the board. 

Isolation even in close family, even in loving marriages, even in workplaces where one is highly valued for their results...

When we are not fully seen, we don't properly exist for those with whom we are interacting.

This is true even if they actually want to see us and are putting effort into that.

Not existing creates a deep-seated sense of unsafety.

This is one of the ways in which the highly gifted person's nervous system can build up issues that look like complex trauma despite the absence of typically defined traumatic events. 

I've known reasonably happy, well-adjusted highly gifted children grow into increasingly anxious and isolated adults who would test out as anxiously or fearfully avoidant when that was not their childhood story at all.

In the absence of being accurately perceived and received by at least one or two loving people, no amount of nervous system support techniques will alleviate this existential issue.

Over the years, I have had thousands tell me they really wished I would create a community for them. 

In my earlier years of this work, I did have small group containers, which resulted in amazing results for everyone. But these were very high-end priced and I sunset them several years ago when they no longer aligned with my own path and self-expression needs.

With the advent this year of The Outlier Brain and the new publishing of the operating manual for our gifted brains, Fundamentals of the Highly Gifted Brain, I have been crafting and preparing a rich ecosystem to support many more of us than ever before.

And today, I am proud and excited to announce the creation of a highly affordable private community exclusively for us outlier brain types:

The Joyful Outlier is a private community that gives us something we have long craved: the opportunity to connect with others LIKE US!

A community that is organized around accessing and stabilizing that special, gifted joy of the highly gifted brain!

You can join right away here if your immediate response is "Melanie, just TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE" 🤣 or read more about it, of course, as well.

There is a particular form of joy available to the person with a highly gifted brain IF THEY FIGURE OUT HOW TO HARNESS IT.

Here at The Outlier Brain is where I help you connect with your special and unique joy and learn how to corral it accurately and joyfully, like the firehose that it is when flowing fully through you and out into the world.

Humanity currently sits in a time of deep turmoil with radical and abrupt changes coming fast and furious.

Human society is largely shaped by those with a highly gifted brain. This may be hard for some to swallow, but it’s true.

For good or bad, key individuals leverage their gifted brain to not just get ahead of the curve but to actually create and shape the curve itself.

Sadly, we live in a time in which our brightest minds are removed of joy.

They therefore are creating from sources other than joy, resulting in contributions unable to enhance humanity’s positive trajectory.

We can easily name this handful of people, in fact. It is a small and obvious group.

The question that guides me in my work for the outliers is this:

Will we spiral into transhumanist technofeudalism? Or will we restore ourselves of joy and create the new society for all in correct alignment with Earth?

We live in a time when joy is needed for the human species to continue, when only joy will propel us through this narrow passage.

Whether YOU feel desirous of influencing this trajectory directly OR NOT, this community is about all of us gifted brain peeps finding and LIVING our special joy.

My very firm belief is that simply by doing this, we shift the trajectory, regardless of what your “output” looks like to others.

THE WORLD WILL FEEL YOUR JOY, no matter what.