Gifted individuals have unique social and emotional needs that often manifest as challenging interpersonal behavior. Chief among these needs are the fact that gifted students tend to be quite emotionally intense and that they tend to be quite cognitively rigid. Emotional intensity is defined as having stronger, more frequent, more complex, and more lasting emotional responses than would be considered typical. Cognitive rigidity is defined as difficulty in changing mental sets. The intersection of these two traits in the gifted population makes interventions challenging, but the impact of these traits can affect a person’s personal, social, and emotional growth. There are therapeutic techniques that can allow counselors, teachers, parents, and psychologists to positively impact these limiting traits. This article examines relevant literature on the subjects above, provides a case example from the author’s mental health practice, and explores potential interventions.
Treating grief in adolescents is only further complicated by a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). When the loss is traumatic, treatment becomes even more difficult, because mourning can be interrupted by the stigmatizing events of the loss, which leads to feelings of helplessness in the survivor. The case of 15-year-old Manda demonstrates a client with ASD whose traumatic grief symptoms do not respond to traditional approaches to treatment. Despite using therapeutic interventions targeted to clients with ASD and grief, 5 months of work based on complicated grief treatment (CGT) with Manda and her father has not led to any improvements in her suicidality and grief. In this treatment, her slow processing speed and cognitive rigidity seemed to prevent CGT interventions' effectiveness. Additional months using the neuropsychological therapeutic intervention of social medicine, education, exercise, diet, and sleep (SEEDS) by Arden (2015) has resulted in limited progress by helping Manda to develop some global skills in the areas that neuropsychology indicates support general mental health. After months of intensive work, Manda still seems unable to articulate or connect her feelings of loss to her sadness. Based on a literature review of developmental grief processes, Manda would be expected to be showing more understanding of what her loss means to her life moving forward and an ability to articulate the feelings attached to that loss. Until she is able to verbalize her feelings of traumatic loss, therapy will continue to be unable to significantly address her grief and integrate those feelings.
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