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In this episode of the Yogi and The Hypnotist we discuss our upcoming course on the platform MultiVersity. Links mentioned during the show: Lindsey From Method Creative Substack- https://lindseymackereth.substack.com/ The Highly Sensitive Person- https://hsperson.com/ Join the MultiVersity- https://www.ferrantefamilywellness.com/plans-pricing/payment/eyJpbnRlZ3JhdGlvbkRhdGEiOnt9LCJwbGFuSWQiOiIyYmFjOWZhZC1hZTNhLTQ4NDYtODFiMy0zMTJjMTIxNDIyOTYifQ
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In this episode of the Yogi and The Hypnotist we discuss our upcoming course on the platform MultiVersity. Links mentioned during the show: Lindsey From Method Creative Substack- https://lindseymackereth.substack.com/ The Highly Sensitive Person- https://hsperson.com/ Join the MultiVersity- https://www.ferrantefamilywellness.com/plans-pricing/payment/eyJpbnRlZ3JhdGlvbkRhdGEiOnt9LCJwbGFuSWQiOiIyYmFjOWZhZC1hZTNhLTQ4NDYtODFiMy0zMTJjMTIxNDIyOTYifQ
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The Yogi and the Hypnotist Podcast is launching a new course called The Multiversity. It is an online platform for gifted adults to enhance their unique gifts and traits. The course consists of three stages: discovery, training, and advanced development. In the discovery phase, an assessment called the Evolutionary Intelligence Scale is used to identify strengths and weaknesses in multiple areas of intelligence. The program also focuses on sensitivities and how to navigate relationships and the world with these traits. The course aims to provide support and understanding for both individuals and parents of gifted and neurodivergent children. Welcome to the Yogi and the Hypnotist Podcast, where neuroscience meets mindfulness. I'm John Ferrante, meditation teacher and yogi. I'm Jennifer Ferrante, clinical hypnotherapist and neuro-linguistic programing practitioner. Together, we will blend modern cognitive science, Jungian psychology, and timeless spiritual wisdom. If you enjoy the show, please hit that follow button to be notified of upcoming episodes. Hello and welcome to the Yogi and the Hypnotist. I'm John, with me my wife Jennifer, and today we will be talking about the new course we're launching starting this Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. We are launching The Multiversity. So Jennifer, tell us a little bit about The Multiversity. So The Multiversity, in its name, is called The Multiversity because what I wanted to do was create an online platform for gifted adults, and mostly because I grew up and I would always say, like, I want to be a perpetual student. If I could be a perpetual student, I would just want to be at university my whole life. But university, you know, if we're looking at the etymology of the word, so uni meaning one, and then the difference of the multiversity meaning many, so we're looking at many studies, and it's kind of a play on the fact that the people who this platform is created for are multi-level thinkers. And what is this format that you're devising for learning? So it's going to come in stages, and the first stage is this program that is going to be live January 6th through the 15th, which is like a training platform for examining what is it to be gifted? What does that mean? And then, like, discovery, discovering what your unique blueprint is for intelligence and for gifted traits, really looking at those traits and how to strengthen and enhance them. So the first stage is discovery. The second stage is training. And so just like you would, oh, I mean, it brings to mind for me, like, if you were to be training in, like, martial arts, say, you're learning to work with power, right? And what comes with that is expansion into it, but also restraint. So the big aspect of martial arts is, like, you're not just going full power. You're learning how to control energy, to restrain energy, and really tailor it to be best used. That's kind of the idea behind the training portion, which is let's look at your unique gifts and let's train them. Let's enhance them and make them really pronounced, but let's also learn restraint and learn how to maybe temper some of the areas of uncomfortability that come with some of these traits. And then the last aspect of the specific training being advanced development. So how do we actually use these things to make a difference in the world? Because if it's only there for our own interest, it's going to have much smaller reach than if we can learn how to relate better with our partners, with our family, and with the world. And so this first section of multiversity, which is only intended to be, like, level one, basically. I want to have lots of different training opportunities on the multiversity at some point, but this is stage one. So it's just a, like, entry-level foundation training, and that starts in January. And what will you be discovering about yourself when beginning this program? So in the discovery phase, we're using an assessment that comes out of a book called The Gifted Adult. It's an assessment called the Evolutionary Intelligence Scale. And so it's looking at those same three aspects that we just talked about. The first section is Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Assessment, so it's looking at your sphere of intelligence or spheres. It's looking at, you know, across multiple different areas of intelligence where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. And how many spheres are there, and what are they called? There's eight. Eight spheres, okay. Eight spheres of multiple intelligences. And then you get to, well, so there's eight spheres of multiple intelligences, but then that plays into and filters down to these three gifted traits, which are intensity, complexity, and drive. So then it's looking at the spheres of intelligence through the lens of what that means in intensity, complexity, and drive. So for example, let's say you have a very high kinesthetic intelligence. That's one of the eight multiple intelligences. Let's say you score very high in kinesthetic physical aptitude. Okay. So what that might look like, if you also have intense, complex drive aspects that are gifted traits, is that you experience those very intensely. So you're going to have extra sensitivity in the area of kinesthetic input and output. And often that really corresponds with the gifted attribute of drive. So if you're someone who has intense drive and are also very kinesthetic and physical, that's going to look like psychomotor, which is going to overlap with another element that we're looking at. So all of these things kind of tie together. It's a web, and they all kind of, it's like if you trigger one strand on a web, it's going to affect something else in that web. It's going to pull on another string. So to go into every level of it would be really hard right now on an hour podcast, but it's going to be exploring where all of these overlap and how that makes up your unique blueprint. Okay. And how do you determine your specific sensitivities? Is that part of the program? Are there some assessments that you would take that would illuminate some of these for you? Yes. So that's in the second aspect of the assessment. So day one and two are taking assessments. It's also a lot of really fun online live group coaching work, so it's not just boring tests. The test actually total takes about an hour, and it's split over two days, so it's like 30 minutes a day. You can do it on your own time. It's flexible, so you could do, you know, five minutes down and take a couple and then get up, and later in the day take more. But if you have intensity, complexity, and drive, there's a good chance you'll just want to get it all done and know all the answers right up front. That's what I did. I did it in one sitting. It took me a little less than an hour, so it's not anything really overwhelming. It's a lot of fun. But the second section of the assessment specifically deals with sensitivities. It's kind of a subcategory of intensity and complexity. Okay. And do you want to share a little bit about what you learned after taking these assessments about yourself? What, you know, new insights did you have? Well, one thing that I remember thinking was it was like it got inside of my head. You know, I just often I find these types of assessments helpful because it's just very validating. It's like, oh, these things that I've always felt and done and thought, I'm not alone. And there are other people who do and think these things as well, and it's actually associated with the brain type and its natural expression of how my brain is and how it works and thinks. And so some of these things are very positive, and it's validating in that way of like, yes, I have those positive traits that are really something that I'm proud of or glad that I have. But it also goes into areas that maybe your whole life you've been kind of criticized for, and you felt like maybe you just weren't doing things good enough or there was something wrong with you. And I think that's an element of being a very sensitive, gifted child. And it's hard to even talk about these things without feeling like it's ego. If somebody really understands the full spectrum of traits that come with being gifted, it's very much not all positive. So I'm not in any way being like, oh, I'm so intelligent and gifted. But I was a very difficult, I think, little child. I was very hard for my mom to raise because I was very intense. And that came with some really great things. Like I would say profound things, and she knew I was very imaginative and intelligent. And it came with some interesting, like I was very good at storytelling and creating and all of that. But I think it's exhausting for a parent who's raising a child like this. And so the other reason for me wanting to create this course is for parents of gifted and neurodivergent children to be able to take this course and better understand them. They can take these assessments for their children in this course and understand. And one thing that I think is fairly common, too, that they may find is that people who don't consider themselves gifted at all see it in their children, identify it in their children. And then as they're going through these assessments, they realize, oh, wait, I also am like this. And maybe my kids in here did a lot of this for me. Because just because you yourself express something or understand it doesn't make it any easier to deal with in the form of your child. And you may understand it more and be able to have a little bit more compassion in certain areas. But it's still very difficult to meet all the needs of a very intense, complex, and driven individual. And so that's why this course also will go into relationships. And this is where your input is so valid and important in this course and in this class, I mean, in this podcast, because it's not easy to live with an intense, complex, driven person. And so you are actually really amazing at that. And I think it's also very hard to have a parenting relationship with your child when there are some of these traits and characteristics. So we look at relationships, and we look at communication, and we look at sensory integration. How can we make the environment more supportive to people who have these traits so that they can be better regulated in them? And then how do they interact with the world? How do they interact with their bosses someday or currently? How do they interact with coworkers? How do they have to navigate social things that are often very hard for someone like this? And then how do we bring these skills to the world in ways that are ultimately beneficial and innovative? Yeah, absolutely. Well, how do you find out if you do have these traits? Do you offer a certain assessment to see if this course might be right for you? There will be. There are assessments. Like I said, on day one and two. But there's no qualifications that you need for the course because my aim is that it's going to be a way for people who either self-identify as this or parents or loved ones to be able to take this course to understand that individual better. So you don't have to be qualified and proven as a gifted adult to take this course. You may be taking it for someone else to understand them better. Or you may be taking it for yourself. Or you may just want to explore. You know, even if you don't rate, like, super high in these assessments in any of these spheres, you're still also going to, you know, anyone on the planet is going to score higher in some areas than others, which will give you a good understanding of where your strengths and weaknesses are. So I think it could be helpful for anyone, not just gifted adults. But my aim is to create a community that is supportive for people who identify as such because I think the tendency is to feel alien in this world. That's the tendency of these specific highly sensitive people? Right, because I think a message that you get pretty frequently is that you're too much of something, you know? Yeah, like you don't seem to fit with others or that you're too much, too intense, too much energy. Well, I know we have seven kids and they all present very differently. Some are very high energy. Some are very low. Some are more introverted, just want to be left by themselves. Others, you know, just need your attention as much as possible. Or if it's not you, then it's their friends' attention. So even though, you know, they share the same maybe environment or genetics, they really present so differently. So it's great to have this course to be able to see the different types of overexcitability that might present itself just in a myriad of ways, even though they all present as gifted in one way or another. They are all quite unique. And it takes a different communication style and approach in order to connect with them. Right. And if you're only looking for it to show up in one form, you may miss it as an attribute. So, for example, when I was younger, I was diagnosed with ADD because they didn't – now it's all under the DSM called ADHD. And it was just like inattentive presentation versus hyperactive presentation and or both. But back when we were younger, in the 80s, it was just ADD or ADHD. And if you didn't have the hyperactive component, it was considered ADD. And if you did have the hyperactive component, it was considered ADHD. And so the way that these, like, diagnostic labels would apply to what you were just talking about is that within the category of intensity or overexcitability, someone with a physical psychomotor excitability could have that present physically where they're just very constantly active. And that's where you might see hyperactivity. Or verbally. So often the people who are labeled with ADD but not ADHD, like myself, are verbally very verbose and expressive, but not energetically as far as, like, activity levels. Right. And that is one difference between you and I. And I seem to be much more active. And I'm bouncing around doing many different things and ADD in that way. And that I am bouncing from one task to another. But I'm not necessarily doing that verbally. I'm very much active in my mind, but not expressing every thought that I have verbally. I'm often, like, maybe too concise and short. And I don't explain all of my thinking. And I know that causes a lot more miscommunication, particularly with the kids. I feel understood by you, but maybe less so by the kids who are maybe used to your explaining. Yeah, right. Correct. If you're used to a different level of explanation. When there is none, sometimes you can almost mistrust that because it feels, like, maybe secretive or short and curt like you're upset. Right. Or cold and uncaring. Something like that. Yeah. When I just want to be concise, I use an economy of words rather than trying to explain my whole thought process. Because in some way, I feel like that would be more patronizing. And whenever I try to explain it, they're like, yeah, I know. Usually what I'm faced with is, I know. And whenever I'm trying to explain exactly how to do something. Well, and I notice this is because, I think, my guess is because when you try to go into a deeper explanation of something, you're still focusing on, it's very task-based still. It's like, when you use this tool for this job, you're expressing a lot of facts, not feelings. So that's where the more logical, analytical side of your brain is verbally expressing versus, like, emotional feeling. So it still feels cold. It doesn't feel warm because you're not warming that with any emotion. You might be feeling like this, but this is why I prefer you to do it. This helps me to feel like you care about the space we all live in. Or you don't necessarily appeal with emotion. You appeal with what feels like facts, which makes it feel more distant and cold, even if that's not at all your intention. Because I know you. I know that that's not your intention. That's just what your communication is making it appear to me. Right. I'm not using emotional words because I'm not necessarily feeling emotional words. It's just, like, I feel like there's one way and there's a right way and a wrong way to do something. I guess by saying that, I'm maybe saying that their way of doing it is wrong. And then, yeah, they feel bad about that. So that's what they're pushing back against. Right. So that's one of the things that we're going to go into on the second to last day of the course. We're going to be looking at communication and relationship. And this is really important for being able not only to express yourself in a way that makes the people around you understand where you're coming from, but it also is going to give insight onto how to tune into how to talk to anyone, how to tune into what is running for them. Because our kids express very emotionally outside of James, so that's why you and James can probably communicate on a little bit less of a misunderstanding level, whereas the other kids who present primarily emotional, to meet them where they're at, you're going to have to use emotional words. Otherwise, they just don't hear you. It's like you're speaking another language. And very much, we think if we're just speaking English to English speakers that we're being understood, and it's not the case. It's like having many sub-dialects, right? Right. And so that's where when we look at these ranges of traits, we start to identify them in others, and that can be so helpful for communication because we can be like, oh, that person is auditory. That means when I'm talking to them, this is the way that I need to tamper our conversation so that they hear me. This person is kinesthetic. That means that for us to have a conversation, we're going to need to be doing something together while I'm talking to them or their hands are going to have to be moving. These little nuances of communication, once learned, are like a superpower. I notice you do move your hands a lot when speaking. That's maybe a nonverbal type of communication that I don't necessarily do. So that could be another level of communicating that I'm not doing in some ways. I guess mirroring someone. Mirroring, yeah, the body language that they're using. We're just being aware because I think that often that scene is masking, like being a chameleon, you know, if you change yourself too much for someone else. So if you're just aware of a few basic things that you can mirror in while still staying true to who you are, what that might look like is one thing that my clients bring up a lot is when they're interacting with someone who has anger and that that can feel really scary when someone is coming at you kind of angrily. How do you respond? Because often if you downplay it, they feel even more unheard, which ramps up. They get even louder. They get even bigger. And so how do you mirror back to them their level of intensity without matching it, without becoming angry yourself? And so we go a little bit into that in the course as well. How do you mirror someone without changing who you are but you're able to meet someone where they're at? Yeah, being able to recognize their emotion but not also take it on. Or if somebody is very angry and you get angry back, it usually would escalate that anger rather than acknowledging it but not necessarily meeting it with the same level of force. Well, one thing that as you're saying that, one thing that I do think is important is while you're not taking on that emotion, you actually are taking on the intensity of feeling. Otherwise, they see it. Like if somebody is really upset and expressing it, like if I was telling you, this hurt my feelings so bad and I'm so upset and you can tell like I'm crying and I'm really worked up about something, just very stoically being like, I understand how you feel. You should probably have a drink of water. That's going to feel really patronizing to someone who's really worked up. But if you can meet the level of intensity without meeting the exact emotion, then they're still going to feel like you're engaging with them. But you might say to me if I come to you in that intensity, you might stop and like kind of forcefully maybe put a real heavy hand on my shoulder or you might meet that intensity in a different way like kind of give me some firm hug or something that is kind of creating that intensity that I'm feeling. You kind of meet me at it and then help me deescalate. So you might say instead of just kind of more monotonely trying to pull my energy down with your calmness, which will feel patronizing, you can say, oh, that would be so frustrating. You know, try to kind of emote with me a little bit, not necessarily taking on my emotion but understanding it and adding a level of intensity either through your – it's going to feel more comfortable for you to do that kinesthetically. So you would maybe give me a really firm hug and maybe even move me back and forth a little bit while you're talking to me and say like, yes, I understand. You're meeting that intensity level in a different way. You're meeting it through motion instead of distress. And then help bring my intensity level down. And we do that if we're doing like a negotiation with somebody who's very heated. We have to meet them at that intensity level and then help them deescalate. But we also don't want to push anger back at them or it ramps up instead of down. So there's some little tricks and tools for that that can be really helpful. What other tools do you have? I could definitely use some of those as far as like meeting somebody when they're feeling a lot of emotion and say, I don't feel it in my body but I don't want to be cold and uncaring. Like how do I express sympathy because I do care but I don't necessarily emote that. So why don't you give me like an example situation of something that that could apply to and we can kind of walk through it. So say we were having an argument because we couldn't agree on what the color red means. Yeah. Yeah. Totally hypothetical. Hypothetical. How could we find some common ground and recognize that the different tints and shades are still considered red? So what you're asking is how can you see this the way I see it? Because you said how can we agree that these are all red? Even if they are different tints or shades, say like burgundy or cabernet would still be red. I don't know if these emotional tools apply here, but the way we can talk about that issue if you want, which is like how Crayola does it on the crayon. It's like red-violet or the ones that are more purple with a little bit of red are violet-red or blue-green. So in color theory, this is totally off topic to get into this, but I have a reason for feeling the way I do about that, and that is that there are the three primary colors. And if you add white to any of the three primary colors, you get a tint of it, a lighter shade of it. Well, technically it's a lighter tint of it. If you add black to it, you get a shade of it. You get a darker shade of whatever the primary color is. Or you add another color to it, and then you get a tone. So there's all these different tones. So there's tones of red, and where we have this argument is because often you'll call the burgundy thing red, which to me makes no sense because I'm looking, I'm scanning our environment for something red, which is like the color of like the red in a rainbow, right? So a pure red tone. That's why I would use a descriptive word like burgundy or brick or whatever, depending on what you're adding to it, if you're adding a purple or a brown. Or if you're adding purple and you're getting red-violet, then call it red-violet. Otherwise, I don't know what to look for because my brain wants to be very specific on color, which, you know, it's just preference. We're just seeing these from different perspectives. But I would never call burgundy red. So if you say, go get your red coat, I'm like, I don't have a red coat. What do you mean? You know, that kind of a thing. But to apply this to what you're asking. Red wine would be a burgundy or a cabernet. You wouldn't say that's a white wine. Some are very deep red, though, which is a shade of red. So you can get a really rich red, which is what I see in most wines, unless you have more of a purple, you know, to it. But most red wines are just, like, really deep shades of red, which is kind of like adding a black to it in color theory. But I digress. I don't know how this applies to what you asked me, though, which is what tools could I give you to help you match my intensity while de-escalating the situation because I think you actually get just as upset when you're talking about these things. Right. Because you are like, red is red is red. No, no. I definitely see variation. But I guess I don't understand why you can't lump all of the shades and tints into one category. So if there's three primary colors, then everything can either be red, blue, or yellow. But obviously there's, like, green. When you mix blue with yellow, it no longer is pure blue. And so if you – it depends on what it is. Is it fine for you to call something red that is, like, burgundy? Yeah, it's no big deal unless you're describing something to me that you need me to see, like, oh, look at that red car. Well, immediately I'm scanning for an actual red car, not a burgundy car. Now, if burgundy is the only one and there's, like, five cars around and they're all, like, blue and black except there's one burgundy, I will understand which one you're talking about. But if there's an actual red car in the parking lot and burgundy and you say the red one, I'm looking at the red one or I'm looking for a red one. So that's where it gets confusing and it's helpful if you can be more specific because if I'm trying to look for something in a large number of samplings and you say red, I'm looking for red. You know, that's – anyway, that's our own – clearly this is a topic of conversation we have often, so that's why I'm going to do it over the phone. But I'm not sure that that – in that situation can be applied to what you're asking me, which is what tools could you use to emotionally meet someone where they're at when you don't feel that emotion. Because in that specific situation, we both feel frustration. So you're already there with me. Right, right. So are you thinking of a situation where you felt frustration but I didn't? It doesn't have to be me or something that kids are feeling and you don't identify and so you're trying to not come off as condescending but come off as understanding. There was an incident the other day when, say, I asked someone to help put away the groceries and it caused kind of a meltdown and I didn't really understand that. I didn't say anything further, but just asking them, could you help bring in the groceries was too much. So how could you – How could I have anticipated that, that that would be too much to ask? Sure. We were, you know, all heading into the house. The groceries were in the car. It seemed like that would just be done without asking. However, every time I don't ask, it doesn't get done. Right. I was like, I better say something. I better verbalize it so that they do help out in some meaningful way. Yeah. So I think some of the things that we sort of have already talked through with that situation are things like noticing the patterns of when a person breaks down or gets upset with that specific child that we're talking about. When they get off work after a long day of work, it's like they've hit their bandwidth. They can't really take on more and they're just waiting to get home to relax. That's pretty consistent with something you've seen in the past that you could apply to that situation. I don't think that that gives someone a free pass to never help out, but I do think that we can choose to pick our battles at certain times. Historically, when asked to do something after work, it upsets that individual. It's probably not the best time to try to ask them to contribute. They'd be more likely to help in the morning. That same child is really good at helping her younger sibling get ready. We can notice certain things about them, and this is a strength that she has. Siblings come to her and talk to her about things. She's very perceptive and caring, so she's kind of a sounding board for her siblings. She's also very gracious in helping them do their hair or get their makeup on, help them get dressed and stuff. When we're running kids to a bunch of different schools, it's really valuable to have that, that she's at home helping them. I think on one level, maybe just lowering expectation that she show up in certain ways while appreciating the ways she is showing up could be helpful, but also noticing what are her breakdown times. I know for myself, my breakdown times are like transitions, so those limbo times of we've just finished something, but we haven't transitioned or moved to the next activity, and there's this period of waiting that feels really uncomfortable. You like to fill that period of waiting with tasks, and that's hard for me because I'm switching from one gear to the next, and so those feel like limbo activities that are really confusing and hard. I don't really know how to describe that well, but it's like this morning. If you tell me these are the things on the agenda that I think are really important to get done today, then I can say, okay, I want to help you get those done. I don't think I'll have the bandwidth for them this morning, but I think I can help you with them at 3, and we can full close like before bed. That's my way of saying I want to be helpful, but also here's where I feel like I will have the most energy to be able to do those tasks with you. I think the same for this child could be applied in that we know that when they get off work, they don't have a lot of energy to do other tasks, but maybe we want specifically her to help out with bringing in groceries. We could say something like, hey, it's going to be really important that we get a grocery order this week and that we all kind of work together to get it put away. Is there a day that you have left on your schedule that we can – I mean, that's kind of a – because it doesn't really require everyone to do it. It's kind of a silly example, but if it was something that was important, like we are going to have to wash the car today. When can we accomplish that? You can say this is an important priority to me, but I understand that you have control over your schedule. When can you show up for me in this way? That's helpful because it's not pushing your agenda onto them, but it also is getting done what you're needing. I guess for me, there's just a certain task. When I see them, I do them. It's not something that I can assign to anyone else. I just notice that the wash needs to be moved over to the dry or I need to start a new load or I need to do the dishes. I just see them. I don't have to plan my day around it. Right. You don't have sensitivity to those things. That's where knowing different people in a household. If you're juggling, you know, we don't usually have all seven with us at the same time, but if we did and there's like nine people in a household, knowing where each person's triggers and weaknesses and strengths are, that's why assessments like these are really helpful to be able to look at and say, okay, this kid is particularly gifted at doing these things. She's really great at helping her siblings regulate their emotions and, like, talking to them and getting them calmed down or helping them get ready. Let's utilize her in that space, in that arena, and let's maybe not utilize her in bringing the groceries where somebody who's not as sensitive to that type of thing where it's like an energy-at-the-end-of-the-day draining thing. Like James, we can ask him to bring in groceries pretty much any time of day. He's game. He at least is compliant. And so knowing all the moving pieces of who's in your house and where do they kind of peter out and where do they have the ability, like, I can go on our mental tasks all day long. Like if you want me to figure something out or put together a program or set something up, hand that to me. Like, I'll take that off your plate because I can do that and not really run out of energy. But if you're going to ask for something very physical at the end of the day, then I'm probably not going to have any physical spoons left at the end of the day for something like that. Can you explain the spoon theory? Yeah. Do you have a certain number of spoons to do tasks throughout the day? I think the first time I heard about spoon theory was actually being used to help those who are termed spoonies. The spoonie is a term for people who have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Actually, I'm not positive it's very just only specific to that, but there's these kind of overlapping, I don't even know what to call it, but there's some overlap between POTS Syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Perhaps they're interactive. I know people who have this, but because I don't, I'm not pretending to be an expert here, which is why I'm not sure exactly if they're the same thing or if they're just seen together often. But there's definitely correlation. It's not the same thing. But they're also called spoonies. Okay. So what happens with this, one of the aspects of people who have these diagnoses is that they have a lot of chronic fatigue, so they have energy they have to manage. They can run out of energy pretty quickly, so this term spoons is like how many spoons do you start your day with? This is like certain tasks drain you more than others. So this cannot just be applied to individuals who are called spoonies. This is indeed anybody who gets drained by different things. So mental tasks drain you more than they drain me. So you may start your day with 10 spoons, but if I'm going to have you engage in like a philosophical conversation with me for three hours, that might take like four of your spoons, and you're going to get really tired and want to nap. Whereas for me, that almost energizes me, and if it drains me at all, it's going to take like a half spoon or one spoon. For you, physical tasks may take one or two spoons away from your 10 spoons. But for me, it would be like all my spoons for the day, depending on what the task is. Some may not as much as others. Going to a very social outing, for me, it's going to be like half my spoons. So having kind of an awareness of what drains or energizes your kids or your partner or the people around you can be really helpful to know if you're requiring something of them that's like past what they can give you. I don't think that it means that they don't ever have to do it. So, again, it would be like I can't just say to you, like doing all these physical tasks that you do, that drains me. I'm never going to help you. That would be really crappy of me. And as a partner, just not helpful. But I might be able to say to you, like we've kind of had conversations in the past, like, yes, I want to help you fold out laundry. Can we do that when we put on a movie tonight and can just like fold while we watch? And then that doesn't drain me in the same way that it would in the morning if I'm trying to get ready and get out the door. So being able to have those conversations and say, what's important to you is important to me too. Here's how I can get there with you. I guess, yeah, I feel motivated by getting things done and accomplishing things that gives me some inertia, some momentum. And, yeah, for you, it seems to like slow you down or in some way giving you less energy. When it's a physical task. When it's a mental task, I feel that experience, that same thing. Like if I get going on a certain project or topic that I'm researching, I can go all day. That like energizes me to keep like researching the next thing and get into a different book and then pull from this to, you know, map out this theory or whatever. That's energizing to me in the same way that you build momentum with tasks. And at the end of the day, you feel super accomplished. I feel that way if I'm like, yeah, I read three books and I mapped this all out and I understand the correlations between this theory and this theory. That's energizing and it like gives me strength. But if I were to just do physical tasks all day, I would get to the end of the day and even if I had accomplished a lot of things around the house, I'd be like, I'm exhausted. I'm not doing that again for another two months. And I don't feel, I feel like I wasted my time. I could have been doing, you know, all of these like higher mental tasks, which to me feel like a greater priority. That is not the case for everyone. To you, that wouldn't feel right. Like if you did mental tasks all day, you'd be like, I could have gotten so much done at home. So it's just perspective. But that's where it's helpful to know that spoons don't mean the same thing for each person. Right. Yeah. And we're not all given the same number of spoons each day. Definitely. And, you know, how they're spent is very different. So I can't say, well, that's only a one-spoon job. You should easily do both of them. Right. Or it doesn't matter when you do it, if it's one spoon, you know, you can fold laundry in the morning or the evening. But for you, it does. Yeah. Right. It takes away from how much energy you have for the rest of the day. Yes. And so that's why if I'm going to do, like, a social thing early afternoon or early – I mean, not early afternoon, late afternoon or early evening, for me, seems like a happy medium time because restaurants are less crowded right around, like, 4, 30, 5 o'clock than they are at, like, 7. It's not first thing in my day. First thing in my day would shut me down. Like if I did a social thing right at the start, then, like, the rest of the day I want to recover. And if I do it last, I, like, have no energy to go into it because I've already expended most of my energy throughout the day. But that's, like, a happy medium time for me to say, like, yeah, let's meet this other couple that we want to have dinner with at 5. And then we're out of the restaurant by the time it starts picking up and getting really crowded, we can actually have a conversation with them because we can hear each other. And then we go home and still have some time to, like, interact with the kids and each other before bed that feels really good. So it's instead of me just saying, no, I'm never doing anything social, which could be a tendency for me if I didn't value, like, I want to have relationships. Then I can say, here's how I can show up in this way because it does take more spoons for me. Do you have the capacity to increase the number of spoons? Or is that a fixed count? Yeah, no, I don't know that you can, like, increase so much in a day. Maybe. But what I would say is that, like, if you use a lot of spoons one day, the next day you may start with less. Like, that's how I've noticed, at least in myself, if I had one day of, like, a lot. Like, last night we drove the kids out to Springfield. We had this whole issue with location and navigation and all of that. We listened to a lot of, like, audio book stuff on our drive. So then we had a lot of mental and conversational stuff happening. And we're also just in a car for however many hours, you know, is a lot on the drive. And we got back home and we, like, crashed. So, like, today, had it been a really packed day, it would have been very hard after, like, a day yesterday that was so exhausting. Right. So I do think you can maybe, like, impact how many days or how many spoons you start the day with by what you do the day before or what has been cumulatively building over the week. If you have a really intense week, you may need those, like, recovery days built in, where you just aren't expected to use many spoons at all. Right. Yeah, I know one aspect of your kind of recovery is being by water, like being outside in nature. You went out to take some time yesterday to stop by the lake. And you visited Grand Lake and walked by the water. You collected some seashells by the shore and got some feathers and different things. So you find that rejuvenating and a way to kind of clear your mind, right? Right. Yeah, I wouldn't say that it necessarily gives me more spoons. Like, it doesn't invigorate energy in me, but it just feels like a giant out-breath. You know, like after a lot of in-breath, it just feels like, okay, reset, get back in the car, do more driving. I still came home pretty exhausted, but it was a really nice break in the middle of that drive to kind of break some of that up. So I loved that you thought about doing that. Yeah, it was a great opportunity to do some drone flying, too, and get some great video of the wildlife, the birds on the water, and get to see this big, beautiful lake here just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well, I love that we can do that together, both engaged in kind of different forms of recovery or activity, because for you that provides an opportunity to use that time for something useful, which is capturing those drone shots. But because you typically are doing drone shots in beautiful locations, I love that it gives me time to just, like, soak in nature and have no set schedule. You know, I can just go explore and collect and take pictures. So we would spend that time very differently, but we're able to both find some satisfaction in that. And that's another great thing about knowing what the people around us need, because now we can find ways to let that overlap where we all feel like we're getting what we need out of our time together. And one thing, you had mentioned that we listen to audiobooks. So whenever we are on a drive, we're often listening to either podcasts or audiobooks. And one that I think we'd probably like to do a podcast on eventually, but it was called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. And we just finished it on this last drive, and it really changed the way that I think about parenting and probably all the many mistakes that I've made in just, you know, the last couple of years that I've been with Jennifer and having seven kids. Well, you have that thrown at you. Yeah. You have, like, taken on a superhero-sized load of responsibility in a very short period of time and done it remarkably well. So I think you should give yourself quite a bit of grace having to, like, figure out parenting fast. You don't get the, like, slow scale that most parents get through, like, the different stages. You know, they're a baby, and you learn that stage. And then you learn the next stage. You're, like, thrown into teenagers and adolescents. That's a hard ask for anyone. Yeah, it's a lot all at once. But I just realized that this is a whole different paradigm for thinking about people and children and each other and how so much of our interactions are kind of conditional in a way. And so this book helps you to reframe your love for them as unconditional rather than having everything in, like, being earned, like your love is earned by good behavior in some way, and you're withholding their attention or maybe even inflicting pain on them if they're not behaving like you would want them to. Well, and the more we understand about, like, you know, recent pop psychology talks a lot about attachment theory and attachment styles. And the more that we're beginning to understand where those attachment styles come from, if in childhood you learn that love is given but also can be taken away, the ability to feel secure in any kind of relationship becomes threatened because you know you can both gain it and lose it. And it's conditional depending on what you do. So anything that signals you might have a disconnection from love with that person feels like you did something wrong to get that because that was what was modeled for you as a child. It's like you can earn their love or you can lose it. And I don't think many parents feel like he talks about it. Most parents say, of course I love my kid no matter what. But the way that you show up for your child may speak differently to them than what you know you have running in the background, which is just you always love your kid no matter what. They are feeling a very different subjective reality of my mom feels cold to me right now or my mom feels warm to me. She is separating herself from me or she is with me and we are connected. They can't read your mind to know that you're consistently holding them in a feeling of love space somewhere. They're just experiencing the symptoms of your dissatisfaction or satisfaction with them. And if love is so easily felt as lost or gained, then they go on to become the adult that doesn't feel secure or safe in their relationships because they know at any point they could lose it. Yeah, which is so common with just about everyone. It kind of feels that way that every relationship is tenuous and dependent upon your behavior and no attachment is really secure because one misstep and that love is lost. Yeah, that's especially important with kids to let them know that they are always loved and that even though you are upset with their behavior right now, it doesn't mean that they are in any danger. But they can certainly feel that way. I really enjoyed that book. It definitely shifted my paradigm in parenting and I just realized how a lot of what I thought was good parenting, what I had experienced in, I guess, my childhood, could also be construed as being conditional or dependent upon good behavior. Well, and that's never the intent. Both you and I are incredibly blessed with good parents. We had parents who really love us and still to this day express their love for us. But that doesn't always mean that as a child we were aware of that constant love and affection. We definitely experienced feeling like, when I do this, it means there's some separation that happens between us and our parent or we disappointed them, which is like a horrible feeling for a kid to disappoint the person that is the most important person to them in their world. And I think as adults and as parents, we often don't realize how much of our children's world really does rotate around how we are with them and if we are okay with them. And so all of that speaks to how important it really is as a family to kind of map out these areas of strengths, weaknesses, triggers, fear points, areas where they shine of each individual in the house so that we can make sure that ourselves and our children are really well-resourced, have the tools that they need, and their environment supports their development. And what resources are you speaking of when you talk about being well-resourced? So there have been some studies rather recently that have been done, and one really interesting account to follow that I've been kind of watching for about a year now, I think it's called the Creative Method or Method Creative. I'll put a link to it in our show notes. But Lindsey, who's the main spokesperson for this organization, she has a Substack account, and she goes into how there's this overlap between neurodivergence and gifted individuals and the determining factor in whether somebody is seen as gifted or disordered is whether they have resources, tools, and their environment supports them. So it's just like if you have a plant that's planted in the exact perfect environment for them to thrive in. It will bloom and flower and flourish and reproduce and take off. But if you put it in soil in an environment that is out of the perfect zone for them to grow, different kind of soil than they need, they don't get enough light exposure that they specifically need, they're going to look like a faulty plant that fails to thrive. And it's the same with humans. We can bloom and take off and do really well, and these strengths are seen as strengths when we're in environments that support it. But that same individual in an environment that is not supportive of the way that they are, think, and work is going to look disordered. And so one example of that would be someone who's in the military, and they're trained to be hypervigilant. So they notice everything, and they notice all threats and danger, and it's incredibly important in that field, in that career and outlet. But when they come back and they have to reintegrate into society as a civilian, that hypervigilance can become absolutely debilitating to where they find it very hard to cope in everyday life. And so that's an example of this skill being praised as a gift and a high ability or seen as a disorder. And it's the same with any of us. If we're in an environment, a household, a family, a school, a job, that our gifts plug into really well and we're valued for them, we're going to be seen as gifted individuals who contribute positively to society. But if we're in an environment, household, school, job, that isn't set up to value what we bring to the table, we're going to be probably labeled as having a disorder. And that's not to downplay very serious mental health diagnoses, but oftentimes things like, and you can look at these studies if you go to those links that I'm going to link in our show notes, oftentimes individuals that are diagnosed with ADD and autism, and they're now seeing that one of the things she talks about is the high overlap with those two and the increasing rate of it being seen as ADHD where they have both. That may become, we may merge over that in the future. I would not be surprised to see those two diagnoses merge into one because there's so much overlap. But these diagnoses are being given in later adult life when the gifted child who is seen as gifted hits a stage of burnout and they're under-resourced and their gifts are no longer gifts and they're kind of working against them. Now they get this diagnosis late in life of ADHD or autism, when in reality there's usually a circumstance that's a stressing circumstance, a hormonal change like menopause or something like that, or a burnout phase in career or life that precipitates this diagnosis. What would be a sign to someone listening that this particular course would really be beneficial for them to take? Would it be if they're facing burnout or they've received a diagnosis of autism or if they were, say, labeled as gifted as a child? What would be a marker for this? Well, it's interesting because I've seen a lot of viral reels and memes probably in the last five years of people who, I guess the character type or the stereotype is like, I was the gifted child with so much potential and now my life is a train wreck, kind of in varying different ways that it's saying that. I don't think that that is always the case, but I do think it's more common. It's obviously viral for a reason because I think those children who were put in the gifted program had an outlet maybe to channel that extra energy, mental energy, physical energy, verbal energy in all those five areas that we talked about in the course. They had an outlet to channel it into more expansive learning than they were getting maybe in the traditional classroom. And so for a while, that gave them a channel or an outlet. And then they grow up to be adults and there's no outlet necessarily. And if we don't know how to create that outlet for ourselves or if other people don't know how to create it for gifted individuals in their workplace or in their homes, this energy can express in ways like burnout. It can express in meltdowns. It can express in all of these really uncomfortable ways that happen when energy builds in the body and has nowhere to go. So I would say if you've ever experienced anything like that, this is going to be a helpful course for you. But I think it's for so many more people than just that because it really can help in your interactions with loved ones if anyone in your sphere presents in this way. If you have children, partners, friends, people who are very close to you, a parent who has a lot of over what we might call hypersensitivity, there's some overlap with highly sensitive persons. If you've ever read the book The Highly Sensitive Person, I'll also put a link for that in our show notes. This level of intensity and sensitivity, that in and of itself, if you experience that, I would say this is going to be a really important training tool. And my hope is to add some tools and resources, like we talked about being well-resourced, to add some tools and resources for gifted individuals that maybe gifted class didn't cover. Because my experience with gifted class as a child was that we got removed from our traditional classroom. And amongst a few other things, the main things we were taught to do was chess and Shakespearean plays, which was cool and it was a fun outlet in the middle of my day. But it didn't teach these important tools of emotional regulation, psychomotor regulation, intellectual looping regulation, how to control sensory overwhelm. All of these tools are tools that don't change the individual. They just help them be who they are without experiencing these meltdowns or burnout. And so I think that it's an important component to gifted education. And for continuing education, too. Like most of your clients are adults, but you'd like to also work more with children, particularly children on the spectrum that may have some, what are diagnosed as learning disorders, but you really see them as gifts. Absolutely. Yeah, this high sensitivity can really lead to many gifts and talents that maybe aren't as recognized and they could be better utilized just with the proper resources. So you'd like to provide them with those resources and diagnostic tools to help them find those gifts and abilities. I love working with adults because it's never too late to learn these things. But I also would love to catch it in the early development, how much different could we experience this as adults if we had learned it as children. And one of the things that I noticed when working with my own children, but also with others when I was teaching or doing private tutoring, I was working with some dyslexic students. And the way that their brain works is so fascinating to me. I mean, this is stuff that, like, lights me up. Like, they're brilliant the way their brain thinks. Like, these are the engineers of tomorrow. They can spin a thing in their head and see it from all sides, like tactile, you know, like engineering-type images in their head. They have full sensory experience. They have synesthesia. And it's fascinating to me to see that be called a learning disorder. Because when they are, like we talked about, well-resourced, they're brilliant. You know, I've got two children who display these traits of dyslexia. We're given learning disability labels. And my oldest, who I experienced that with, she reads, you know, 400, 500-page books. They would say a dyslexic kid could never do that. But she was just so brilliantly able to overcompensate for her, you know, disability. I love working with kids like that because I don't see it as a disability. I see it as an ability. They just haven't figured out what that ability is yet. Right, right. So, with the proper resources, you can, you know, turn a disorder into a gift. Which can eliminate the frustration and the anger that comes with the roadblocks that they find themselves hitting up against. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you've touched on this briefly, but you believe that maybe some of the nonverbal kids that aren't able to communicate may be communicating telepathically or maybe they're capable of maybe a higher bandwidth of communication than verbal would allow. So, in theory, this makes sense because when you have a restriction or a limitation in one area, it allows for the way that things are typically done to be done a different way. So, when verbal communication is our main form of communication, we don't try to communicate in other ways as commonly because it's just easier to use our words. And you'll even hear parents tell kids, use your words, use your words. You know, we're very much encouraged to communicate with words, which is wonderful. But then we don't often go beyond that or explore beyond that in all the other ways that we can communicate. And I think there's some attention given to, you know, body communication. And we learn to recognize what different body posturing or mannerisms could mean. But beyond that, there's very little study or research or knowledge going into, like, what are all these other ways to communicate, one of those being telepathic communication. And I think that that is where, you know, as a theory, I could see these children expanding into because they're not using verbal communication. But then as some beginnings of proof that we're seeing, there have been studies done where they are showing this, that they actually are communicating on that level. And I want to see it. I want to work with them. I want to explore that whole landscape of possibility. Yeah, that sounds like just the cutting edge of human potential and of our scientific method, just breaking through the traditional barriers. And the Internet has allowed us to do that, to communicate with people in many different languages and to communicate with video and images and audio. Right now, we're talking to many people that are in our physical presence. So in a way, that is telepathy. Our thoughts are going into your head in a way. Thank you all for listening to this. And we want to be able to reach you through this format. And also, we'd love if you would take this course. So where can you find out more about the multiversity? Well, registration for multiversity is going to be live on Thanksgiving. There is actually already set up, because as I've been building this program, it automatically, in the plans and pricing, creates the link for it. So if they go to our plans and pricing page right now, there is a link to sign up for the multiversity. So you can do that now, which is basically like pre-registration. Official registration will launch where there will be an actual landing page for that on Thanksgiving Day. And then the course begins on January 6th. And don't worry if there's schedule conflicts, because it's all recorded. There are going to be live groups, but if you can't make them, those recordings of the live group calls will be available for you to watch later. All right, excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing this course develop, and I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving this year. Yes, happy Thanksgiving.
