The Gifted Profile (High Intellectual Potential, or HPI) is characterised by a different cognitive functioning that leads a person, among other things, to process information more quickly. Faced with such multiple intelligence, the signs are not necessarily easy to identify, even though certain characteristics do emerge. Popularised by the French series “HPI” starring Audrey Fleurot, some people, now adults, have finally been able to put a name to their condition…

The characteristic signs of a gifted profile

Excelling in areas that are not always recognised by today’s education system, identifying a gifted person is no easy task. And, contrary to popular belief, their journey is not always smooth — often because of overwhelming intellectual activity, an atypical way of thinking and heightened sensitivity.

Other characteristic signs of giftedness include a thirst for and ease with learning, self-teaching, marked perfectionism, a wide range of interests, a strong creative imagination, a sense of humour, open-mindedness, and more.

The day everything becomes clear…

“I don’t know if I especially like Audrey Fleurot; but I can say she’s become a bit like family to me. Let’s say she changed my life…” says Olivia Bokhobza[1]. At 30, the young woman considers herself gifted entirely by chance. While watching the series with Audrey Fleurot, she recognises aspects of her own personality and sees the actress as a potential “friend”…

Through the lens of this new perspective, she better understands certain past events, such as her professional life, marked by this unchanging cycle: “attraction, disillusionment, overthinking and boredom.”

A view shared by Virginie Cotel, now a coach and therapist for highly sensitive, gifted and multipotential people: she experiences this perspective “like opening a door onto a whole new world”[2]. Hungry for information, she looks for every matching clue that might place her among the 2.5% of the French population with an IQ above 130…

A liberating gifted diagnosis, even in adulthood

Once the tests were taken, Virginie Cotel found herself reading the results in a fog, struggling to take in the reality: she is gifted! But this trait struggled to make sense in her everyday life.

It would take her 2 years to turn the diagnosis into a real revelation: “It gave me the keys, a framework for understanding my identity, my relationship with others, the meaning I want to give my life, and how I can bring that need for meaning into my everyday life,” she says today.

For Olivia Bokhobza, the realisation was much the same: thanks to the diagnosis, she learned to calibrate all her character traits so as to use them wisely. While she doesn’t say “Hi, I’m gifted” to everyone she meets, she doesn’t hesitate to explain it if one of her behaviours is misunderstood.

 

If, like Olivia and Virginie, you suspect you may be gifted, do not hesitate to reach out to a psychologist to help make sense of your behaviour and emotions: as these accounts show, a diagnosis is, in every case, extremely liberating!

[1] Source: https://www.psychologies.com/moi/se-connaitre/temoignage-diagnostiquee-HPI-Audrey-Fleurot

[2] Source: https://terresatypiques.com/blog/comment-jai-decouvert-que-jetais-surdouee/