Perceptivity and the gifted person

Lately … in case it hasn’t been obvious  … I’ve been operating on a pretty high frequency. Up and down with the ebb and flow of simply dealing with people. Either … I’ve suddenly lost all instinct I had in regard to people and their intentions with interpersonal relationships and interactions, or I’m becoming even more finely tuned in this regard and it is causing me to doubt what I thought I knew about me, about people, about what they want from me …

So I think of ‘perceptivity’ which was one of the five qualities listed in the initial ‘gifted series’ blog, ie the ability to see and understand people on different levels. What is hitting me at the moment is “The more discrepancy between the inner self and outer face, the more uncomfortable the gifted adult may feel.”

I’m thinking as I write here … I know – confusing for anyone reading and I apologise … I’m having big problems at the moment with exactly that – seeing the outer face of people, yet also beginning to see what is really behind that outer face. Behind their motivations for interacting with me. And I with them I suppose. I try and be as open and transparent as I can with people so they know where I stand, and where they stand with me. But it’s tough learning that ain’t necessarily so on the opposite side. So many people have hidden agendas for simply being friends, and not always agendas they are even aware of themselves in a lot of cases. I’m getting to a point where I’m asking “what do they want from me?” when I am confronted with communication with others.

Entelechy – remember that difficult word? I had never heard of that one before.  “Adults gifted in entelechy are highly attractive to others who feel drawn to openness, warmth, and closeness. ” … Hmmm.  I’m finding this happening. The only thing I can put it down to is the raw honesty with which I write … I’m pretty brazen about laying myself wide open for the world to ‘read’. I would have thought that would turn more people off than on but it seems not to be the case. I have virtual strangers messaging me saying they feel as if they can tell me anything … that they feel a connection with me. These sort of messages surprise me a great deal, but they are also extremely humbling. What is hard is responding in a way which is both grateful and understanding, yet not encouraging the feeling of close connection with people I either have never or barely communicated with at all.

“Gifted adults may find sources of rare intimacy; however, they may also find an overwhelming number of people who want contact but have little to offer in return. They may feel vulnerable to and intruded on by the demands of others who may feel cheated that the promise implied in the initial sharing cannot continue. … The risk is anxiety about requests from others and avoidance of closeness in interpersonal relationships.”

I no doubt have a few pissed off people, hopefully not hurt people, who don’t understand why I am not the best friend they think I am. The people I barely know who come out of the blue with these feelings of knowing me intimately (my fault entirely, I know, for journalling on here). But I just can’t … it’s too much … I can’t pretend to be someone’s best friend when I have never or barely talked to them before. And it is draining and quite frankly translates into a little bit of, not quite anxiety, but that high frequency feeling. Please don’t get me wrong … I am extremely humbled by this happening … extremely isn’t even a strong enough word. I feel like prostrating myself in humility. It just gets heavy.

The beautiful beautiful thing is that I have found some ‘sources of rare intimacy’ with a few friends on here. Which I put mainly down to the that first post in the ‘series’. Where we’re discovering people of like mind … ‘kindred spirits’ … rare instances of understanding the person each of us is – and for some of us it is the first time in our lives that we are understood in this way. It can be intoxicating.

But … (and back to what I was originally talking about which was the inner self/outer face of others … in my usual circuituous route) …

My openess on here has an upside (beautiful friends) and a downside (people with agendas, subconscious or otherwise). That intoxicating feeling I mentioned … and/or my openness about myself seems to encourage warm feelings from others (one extraordinary man with a beautiful soul said it was like reading the e-diaries of Anais Nin) …  some have translated their feelings about that as a crush .. while maintaining they are simply friends they have … oh, how do I say this delicately … not-so-platonic feelings? deeper feelings? than they profess to have for me (embarrassed blushing and cringing). This tends to make me uncomfortable and wary, in most cases. I tend to want to back off. It makes me nervous. It’s more about the discrepancy about what a person says to me, what they show me … their actions in fact and the reasons behind them … lets get real – the actions aren’t always for the reasons they say they are … than the crush itself. I’m as prone as the next person, after all 🙂

Another thing that makes me equally as nervous, if not moreso, is a sort of converse situation. If someone else has encouraged closeness and there seems to be some sort of amazing bond … is this real, or is this a serial thing for this person? A game, if you will. A way to stoke their ego maybe. Why this closeness? Is it real? Am I going to be hurt and disappointed again because I’ve invested trust that this person is being ‘real’? Am *I* being too flighty and distrustful? Or am I being gullible and naive yet again? I don’t know what to trust anymore and that bothers me greatly.

And then there are the weird cases where there are strange psychological games going on with people. Where people have fucked with my mind for their own weird gain whatever that may be. For their obsessions. For their envy. Whatever. Understandably I get wary.

Apart from family members and friends that are here on my flist – friends I’ve had for a long time that were long before my myspace days, (and a few females who are here simply to read my blog because they find it interesting), there are 2 .. maybe 3 … people  that I think I can trust I know exactly where we stand with each other. That’s all I want from people. To know exactly where I stand.

Questions questions questions. Too much too many. Too far into my own head. Up and down with every communication the perceptivity gets too much. Too too too. I’m finding myself getting wary, jumpy, unsure, and ready to flee because I can’t trust that what I see on the outside of a person is what I’m going to see on the inside. Most times it isn’t.