Interview with a Creative - A Young Multipotential Polyglot

We rarely get a glimpse into what it looks like to be a healthy creative. But here is such an opportunity. Allow me to introduce Abby, a young polyglot.

Abby is a Korean interpreter who decided she wanted to learn Korean. She achieved this without taking any formal classes or using a language app. In just six months, Abby became a proficient interpreter.

She's accomplishing this in an era when most people are relying on AI for translation. However, Abby possesses something that AI lacks—emotions and the ability to perceive nuances in a way that AI cannot. Abby has also embarked on learning Japanese and hopes to become an interpreter for that language as well. In addition to her linguistic talents, Abby plays multiple musical instruments, sings, composes music, and is a working artist. She's currently attending college and has a strong affinity for the humanities. Abby is truly amazing.

Abby openly acknowledges that she doesn't quite fit into the conventional mold. She grapples with her sensitivity and can sometimes become overwhelmed. Fortunately, her brothers share a similar disposition, and her mother, recognizing their challenges, chose to homeschool them. Abby was nurtured in an environment that allowed her to grow into the person she was meant to be – beautiful, talented, sensitive, and kind in every way.

Interested in finding out about Abby's Interpreting  contact her at nabikoreanstudy@gmail.com

Check out her music on Instagram @abbybethmusic

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the exploration and cultivation of the outside genius found in neurodivergence.

Speaker 3: 0:15

Everyone, I'm going to introduce you to Abby Abby Frazier. Abby was my intern for a while and she's coming back to talk to you today just about her experience and her gifts, because Abby's definitely a gifted neurodivergent. She has savant abilities and she's profoundly gifted in a multitude of different ways and she has that inability to want to work for others and do the drone. Monotonous wears her out. It makes her stressed. Abby's going to talk about her journey and how she just moves to the world. Abby, tell us about yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:48

The first thing that comes to my mind when I'm asked that is just that I have a lot of things that interest me, a lot of things, and obviously there's goods and bads to that. The goods would be it's good to have an interest in a lot of things, because maybe you don't get bored very easily and you can kind of keep your mind stimulated. And if you have like physical activities that you enjoy which is not really my case, but you know that's obviously good too. But the downsides would be that it's hard to kind of focus in on one thing. Like sometimes I kind of feel like I'm stuck a little bit because, like I had a conversation with my brother about this recently, he's a musician and like 90 to 95% of his focus is on music and everything he does is music and he's gotten really, really good at anything music related because he puts all of his time into it.

Speaker 2: 1:41

And in my case, you know, I'm putting time into Korean studying, I'm putting time into Japanese studying, I'm putting time into music myself and editing, like video editing, photography, photography, editing, mental health counseling, like reading about that. So I feel like it's sometimes hard because I can't put, I'm not putting all my time into one thing. So I'm like, wow, I could be totally fluent in Korean right now if, like, I stuff to that 100%. Or wow, I could be having like a really nice job in photography right now if I put all my time and money into buying photography stuff. So that's it. I feel like that's a kind of a complicated way to describe something so simple. You ask to tell me about yourself. That comes to my mind is like there's just a whole lot of things to me that sometimes, when somebody asks me that I don't even know where to start, like I can't tell them oh, I'm a photographer. Or oh, I study languages. I'm just a person that does all of these things. I don't really know which one is me.

Speaker 3: 2:37

So what you're describing is just a big picture talent, because what you are doing is you're building a new talent. You're building something that people haven't done before, and the reason I know this is because I'm doing it. This is what I've done and I honestly didn't come to it until probably 30s, late 30s, maybe early 40s, and it was a really slow moving process. But you have a massive head start on me because you didn't go through the system that tells you need to work for others. You went through homeschool and so you're just in this space where you're supposed to be, and if you look back 100 years in our history, we have younger people. If their parents were of middle class and above, they were allowed to dabble and travel and try to figure it out, and they went to school and they got educations and then they sort of settled into a career and they got married and had children.

Speaker 3: 3:22

This is this is the people that had a little bit of money. If you didn't have money, then you kind of went to where everybody now goes, to America, which is working for others, and you're in a grind and you just like you, you're faceless, you're nameless and it's so hard to break free. That was my growing up. I was quite poor, so I had to work through that to get it and that added, you know, 10 years at least. If you have the opportunity to get ahead of that, I say, go for it. And you're doing that and that's all I can say. But do not beat yourself up at all on the fact that you haven't settled on one thing, because you are not supposed to. Your evolution is your evolution and you're supposed to go the way you're going. Somehow all of those will come together to be something amazing and fantastic, have no doubt.

Speaker 2: 4:02

That's well. I feel great that you say that. And it's also kind of funny because I remember, probably when I was maybe 12, maybe a little bit younger I can't remember the exact timeframe, but I know I was. It was definitely before like teenager years I remember kind of jokingly telling my mom, like what, what I wanted to do when I was old. And I said it as a joke because in my mind at the time I was like yeah, this is impossible. Like nobody does this, you can't do that. Yeah, in my mind I was like I told her I want to make a movie. Like I want to write the movie, I want to direct the movie, I want to star in the movie, I want to edit it, I want to add the only music to it, I want to write the articles about it.

Speaker 1: 4:40

I want to market it, I want to promote it like I want to do everything myself.

Speaker 2: 4:43

And so, like I always said, that's what I wanted to do, because, since I had so many interests, I'm like, well, since I want to do all of them, I just need to, you know, do it all myself. And you know, even recently now, I'm like, okay, and now I want to do a Korean translation of my own movie. I just want to add everything in that I can possibly do and make my own like huge thing. And you know, back then, like I said, I would say it as a joke because you don't, you don't watch a movie and then see one person in the credits. Like that just doesn't happen. Yeah, and I know, realistically, I would probably need some help. I like I think it would be a little too overwhelming to do all of that myself. But now I'm starting to see you can do more than what people might expect of you.

Speaker 3: 5:26

It isn't unrealistic. There are people who do it. I can't think of any off the top of my head of the Vignoco Ono, when she's a poor example, but she is a woman who's who dabbles in everything. There are plenty of artists out there who who are one man bands, because their aesthetic is so clean, so sure, it's such an emotional exercise for them that they really don't bring in other people. They make everything themselves and in doing so they notice details others will never notice. When you break it up and you have specialty, you end up missing the big picture. And the big picture not everybody sees it. So you're going to be talking to a niche group. But if you see it, you change the world because you can change the perspective of the people who come and see your art, who see your creations, who get to know you, because big picture is really where it all comes together and you make change.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Yeah, I definitely feel like I have that viewpoint. When I go into any project right now I'm working on editing a video for a particular event I always get around to it, but sometimes it's hard to see like the small details, because I'm thinking of like how it should look in the end and so I'm having to fill in each part. One of the things that I do when video editing is I like to edit maybe like a movie trailer style, music video style things, but I don't have the people to film. I'm not a professional music video film or something. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll go on YouTube and find an artist or a band and download a bunch of their videos and make a music video for them. I'm just going to give a random artist John Mayer like okay, he's one of my favorite artists. Like I can go on YouTube and find a bunch of videos of him and then clip them together and edit them in a way and make it look like a music video that his team would have edited. So that's one of my hobbies is doing that. But what's really cool about that is if you're actually recording music video, you can tell the artist like do this, do that I want this shot, I want this lighting.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Since I'm not doing that and I'm having to work from things that are already existing, I have to shape them with editing to fit the image I have in my mind. So I'll edit the color and the lighting and I'll put different video clips together and it's just. It's a really fun, cool thing, because I can go back and find videos like 10 years ago and clip them together with one that was two months ago and edit them to make them look like they're filmed in the same scene. That's kind of how my mind works. Instead of looking the first scene needs to be like this, the second scene needs to be like this. I see like I don't even see it. It's like I feel it.

Speaker 2: 7:50

I feel what the ultimate video is going to be, and then I have to go on YouTube and I have to edit and I have to put it together to make it become what I'm seeing and feeling in my mind. So that's kind of how I edit and you know, you're asking me about the Korean thing too. I think that's kind of how I do anything. It's not just editing, it's like I feel something, I see something as a whole, and then I fill everything in to get to that point.

Speaker 3: 8:12

And this is perfect, because this is the creative process, what you just described. We don't recognize their creative intellectuals. We sort of stick them all in this music, art. But truly, creativity is an accomplishment of all, and the smartest people I know are creative intellectuals. They're just creative period. The creative brains are so brilliant that they don't focus on executive functioning, they don't focus on these things that are day to day fitting into the system.

Speaker 3: 8:36

No, you're supposed to be out and you're supposed to make your own way, and if we didn't have creatives, we wouldn't, for raking, be where we are today as a species, because we've created most of those things. Yes, yes, we're taught to beat ourselves up because we're not right, but the whole science or psychology of the system is to maintain the society as it functions. And you are supposed to be right where you are because you're going to be one that brings in a whole new perspective to that society and changes it for the good. How do you deal with the fact that you're an outlier, that you have your own personal aesthetic and that you move through the world knowing that your way is your way and you're not going to alter it? What kind of things come up with? Conflicts? What resolution, what is that like and how do you handle it?

Speaker 2: 9:25

I feel like it's kind of a little bit of a comfort feeling sometimes, because I've always felt like and this kind of sounds weird, but I know that you'll understand it and likely anybody else will understand it You'll know yourself the best in most cases and so I feel like it's kind of a comfort thing because I feel like I don't have to have someone telling me what to do or somebody telling me how things are supposed to be or how I'm supposed to feel or whatever, because I am myself, like I live with myself. I am myself and so I kind of know. In a way it's like kind of, I guess, like a sensing sort of thing. So, yeah, I would say like it's kind of feels like an inner compass or something. I feel like that's a weird way to describe it. That's kind of how it is and you know you mentioned like conflicts and I would say there is conflicts. You know there's goods and bads and everything. So I would say, anytime that working the way I do or feeling the way I do has come up as a problem would probably be in situations where I'm working with other people or like a lot of other people. I've seen it in group projects and college. It's not, in general, like I don't have a problem working with people. I can, I get along with people great, there's not really anyone I don't get along with. I can work with anyone, I can follow rules. You know, like all of that's fine.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Actually, I don't even know if I can tell you a specific thing, but I just know what's coming back to me right now is a group project that I worked on in school last year and we had to come up with communications and we had to write a play of a couple in conflict and we had to like write out, script by script, their actual complex story and then we had to come up with a resolution, me and four other people. I think I was having a really hard time with it because all four of them were agreeing on this one part. Being in there and the whole time I'm like that throws the plot off so much gets distracting. It's going to take a lot of time, it's it's not going to be a smooth flow. It just didn't feel right to me, but I just kind of went along with it, because I'm sure everyone is used to this feeling, didn't want to be the odd one out, didn't want to be the one that is causing trouble or doesn't agree with the rest. So I kind of just went with it.

Speaker 2: 11:32

And then we had got up to be two days before the due day and we were nowhere on this project and kept feeling the whole time I'm like this thing is keeping us stuck, this thing does not belong in this script. And so I kind of last minute came in and I was like, do you think we could maybe blend these two plots or maybe just take this plot out? And I kind of explained to them that like I thought maybe it would flow a little bit better if we, you know, get it this way. And they were like, yeah, sure, why not? Like that sounds like a good idea.

Speaker 2: 12:00

And we did it. And we got it done in like a day. Like it just it went so smooth, it went so great. And then we submitted it and it got a 100 on the project. So not that it wouldn't have gotten 100 before, because it still could have, still probably would have been fine, but I just feel like that was one of the conflicts for me. Maybe nobody else would notice it, but in my own self I was like, oh, that, you know, doesn't really feel right with me because I'm just thinking this is not working. It was that kind of feeling General. I noticed positive from it for the most part.

Speaker 3: 12:28

Yeah, I think that we're trained to be a part of a collective in the school system and so if you've had any other experience like working on your own, you start to learn to trust yourself. But when you're in a collective, it's always about the group and moving the group forward, and so you learn to give up yourself. And so what you just described was kind of beautiful, because you knew when to kind of wait and explain it and then when at the end, when everybody couldn't see the path and you could, you're like, okay, back to what I said a while ago, without being rude about it, let's just try that. Let's let's just go with my gut here and let's just try it, because You've learned to trust your gut, you've learned to use your intuition, because intuition is unrealized cognition, it's trying to get it there, it's guide for you and your self learning.

Speaker 3: 13:12

And we are not taught that. We're fed things in the system and we work from the bottom up. But if you're creative, you don't work that way. I'm not sure that really anybody does, because really our school system is about behavioralism and training, not really truly about cultivation and you figuring out who you are. Yeah, you talked about going through that with your peers? How do you trust your own aesthetic, how do you know when to trust it and how do you know when to let it go?

Speaker 2: 13:37

I was actually just thinking I was. I was almost going to say that in the other story but I was like, uh, it's like it's irrelevant to what I was saying. So it's nice to ask that, because I was just thinking about it. I feel like that again kind of comes back to the I me, so I know myself, kind of thing. I feel like most of the times I can kind of guide myself in the right way. Just in that example I gave, how I decided to explain to the group giving them another suggestion, explaining why I thought maybe something different would work better. It's because I kind of just had that knowingness. And again and I know you know what I mean it's not like you're having thoughts in your mind that are telling you these things. It's like it's just a sense, it's a feeling, it's kind of just like an existence in you. It's kind of how it feels. I was like I just know this is going to work. I know it's going to make things better for all of us. It's going to be smoother, we'll probably get a better grade, the teacher will be able to read it easier. It was just all these good things coming together. I was like it makes the most sense for us to do this.

Speaker 2: 14:30

But usually when I have those feelings, I go for it because it just seems like. I usually don't even question it. I'm being led there by my own sensing, I guess. And so when it's the reverse, it's the same situation Like if it's something that I know is not a good idea or it's not going to work, I don't even participate in it, I don't say anything about it, I don't do anything about it, I just let it go because as much as I know that the other idea is going to be good and it's going to lead us down a good path, I know that the other feelings are also as accurate.

Speaker 2: 15:01

It's pretty nice because I usually don't have to question things too much. I just kind of feel them and I go based off of how I feel, and most of the times things turn out okay. And when they don't, I can't really say what that's down to. I don't know if that was like a false sensing kind of thing or if something. Maybe I wasn't sensing it and it was just like an overthinking kind of thought that I had. But in general I feel like most of the time things go kind of the way that I expect them to, based on how I feel they're going to be.

Speaker 3: 15:29

So let me put that into context, because that knowing thing is actually the future thinking, it's the futurism foresight ability, and what it is is we mental model in our brain. So wherever your giftedness is is where you tend to have that knowing feeling and your brain is mentally modeling it, but it's it comes up as an emotion of like, kind of like, let's test this and let's go here, and it's like just kind of a little like I wonder. I wonder if we did this and I think I think it's going to go this way. But you can't manifest it until you experiment it and then you can say ah, yes, I know that it will go here now, because what it is is you. It's part of our learning style and and I'm writing up educational system based on this the creatives do not learn bottom up.

Speaker 3: 16:10

They do not learn linearly, like our picture's so big or our picture's so detailed that that's just not applicable for us. What it is is we actually take this picture and what we already know, we sort of stop seeing and then we focus on the parts we don't know and then we weave what we know with what we don't know and we sew or something like that part in and we deduct like negative space. We, every time we know something, we will chunk it, so then we're constantly pulling parts out to reveal the real solution or theory or whatever. I've said it before and I'll say it again my daughter is a math savant and she's in college math and she could do graduate school math at ten and she doesn't know any formulas, she doesn't know math theory, she creates her own and you're describing that same thing and if I didn't have a math savant in my house I would be like the feelings, the blah, blah, blah. But it's not.

Speaker 2: 17:01

It's actually really scientific, like what you're doing is an actual deductive reasoning to the right answer well, it's crazy that you said that, because I was describing kind of the way I've been learning Korean, which I know is another one of the topics you wanted me to go into today. And so that's how I've been learning Korean, because over the two years that I've been studying it, I haven't spent a dollar on like a course, a textbook or anything. I've just not taken the traditional route that when somebody's like okay, I'm gonna go learn a language, I haven't done that. Instead, I have learned very similarly to the math situation you just described. I know some things that there's a, there's a website that I look at and they have things divided into lower, intermediate, upper intermediate, advanced stuff like that. And I have just briefly gone through all the different folders just because I want to see, like what their definition of advanced is, and I found out that I actually knew some grammar and some concepts that are in the advanced course and I don't even know some of them that are like in the beginner course. And I'm like, wow, that's really weird, because you know, typically when you're studying, you go from like kind of building blocks. It's like you're gonna learn the basics and then you're gonna learn a little bit more basic and then you're gonna gradually build and instead I haven't done that. It's like I learned the basics, which you know is the alphabet, because you kind of have to do that. So I learned that and then from there I just started learning anything else and now I'm kind of at the point where I can sometimes figure things out without even actually like formally learning about them, but kinda, like you said, based on something else I know I can figure out. Oh well, this must mean that and this must mean that.

Speaker 2: 18:36

And also, since I have like the empathy with people that is really I always want to say, it's like my main guide when it comes to learning Korean and translating is because, if I know the people that I'm translating in which most cases I do, because I typically translate the same people over and over again, since I know them and I know their personalities and I can feel people's personalities when I'm reading the text of a Korean thing, there might be, say it's a paragraph, there might be four or five words that I've never heard of, it's vocabulary, words that I've never heard of, don't even know what they mean. There might be one or two grammar structure, grammar points that I've never read about before. But there might be one little section that I do know and I know enough about the person's personality that I can put that together and I can feel the message, without even knowing what it means quite yet. I can feel it and then I start going from there and obviously you know, when you're posting online and you don't want to misinterpret anyone, I I go through several steps to make sure that what I'm saying is 100% accurate, because I'm not going to post anything online or tell somebody this person said this. I'm going 100% based off of that feeling because you know the wording can make a big difference.

Speaker 2: 19:47

So when I say that I don't want to be misinterpreted is like, oh, I'm not even checking to see if I'm accurate before I tell somebody. I definitely do that, but I mean initially when I'm trying to understand it myself. That's how I do. It is I think of the person and then again, like I said earlier, it's not even thoughts, it's a feeling, like I just look at it and I feel it. And I especially have that in Korean learning because, you know, there's some words that they don't even have a direct English translation like you will. It just doesn't exist in the language.

Speaker 2: 20:15

Yet somehow I feel it and it's so weird because I've tried to just casually teach people some Korean sometimes, like if they want to know a word or if I want to tell them something, I might try and tell them, but I come across the situation where I can't explain it to them, like I was trying to tell my mom recently about this one Korean word that's used over and over and over again and it can have a different meaning in so many different contexts and but in English it only translates to one context, like it translates to one word, but in Korean and depending on the context, it can mean so many different things.

Speaker 2: 20:48

And I was trying to tell my mom what this word meant, because I read this comment that almost made me want to cry because it was just so deep and emotional and I just felt it. And when I tried to translate it, I'm like this is not deep in English at all, like it is not capturing that meaning. So I'm like going off on a rant here, but no it's perfect, I'm like it's it's it's not capturing the meaning, and so it was bothering me because it didn't match.

Speaker 2: 21:10

And so I'm like you know, if somebody were to go google translate this, they're gonna think, wow, your translation is like totally off. You just added like 10 words that aren't even in the original translation, but that's because I have to put 10 English words in to capture the emotion of the one Korean word. And so it's like I was telling my mom. I'm like why is it that I can't teach you what this word means? I'm like I'm an English speaker, I'm not a native Korean speaker by any means, so like how was it that I was able to learn it but I'm not able to explain it? You know it's so. It's like the sensing that we've talked about so many times.

Speaker 3: 21:45

It's just like it's so hard to try, it's hard to describe, but it's also very simple, because it's an internal thing yeah, yes, I'm supposed to go. It's a self-trust, and in order for you to be able to develop that self-trust, you need space to be just with you, and I don't know that a lot of people have that. So that's really actually the part that makes it hard to describe, because for you, it's incredibly clear and everyone who has had experiences like you would understand exactly what you're saying. But for those of us who have not, it's foreign. I mean, it's why does that have anything to do with anything?

Speaker 2: 22:19

and it's like oh, it has everything to do with everything you know, like yeah, it's so crazy to me though, because there's there's so many words to me that are that way, where I learned them somehow as a non-native Korean speaker, yet I can't explain it to another non-native Korean speaker, like I'm trying to tell them. I'm trying to think in my head, I'm like, well, how did I learn it? Like, how can I explain it to them? Because I can go based on how I learned it and I'm like I don't even know how I learned it. It just like it was on the page and then it just like seeped into me or something like it never even went through my brain. So I can't even explain like, well, this is how I learned it, this is what I thought it, I saw it and it existed.

Speaker 3: 22:54

It was just weird it's the pattern understanding, because your brain weaves together all those things, and so your brain is weaving together your ability to see where that would fit and how it fits, and you create your own unique pattern. The, the world creates very black and white patterning and you're creating something multi-dimensional. So you're like noticing that this meaning has many dimensions and you're building this little model for just that word meaning. It's all subconscious. Your emotions come up and they're like hey, abby, you know this go in that direction.

Speaker 2: 23:25

That's exactly like I feel. Like if those little feelings and me could talk, they would have just said, yeah, like they're just talking to each other and I'm up here and I can't hear any of it and they do actually start talking.

Speaker 3: 23:35

They, at some point they start talking. When I got older, by the by the time I had children my second child I was like, wow, this crap is pretty loud. Now it was having children. I think that made it really turn on your baby needs this, you need to do this. And it really started talking to me and telling me things then, because it was about another person and it was like their life depended on it and it would come up and it'd be like wow, I just know what to do. And they say, like instinct, it's instinct, but it is. It. Is you modeling the world? Because some people seem to lack instinct on how to raise their own children or how to raise even a plant, or how to raise a dog. I mean, some people don't have that, but yet they have this other capability of how to pull car engine apart and put it back together.

Speaker 2: 24:16

Yeah, I don't have that yeah, I'm sitting here like that. That makes me think of my brother. You know, sam, who he can just do. It's like I don't even question how he does things, but he can care apart anything. He can put it back together, he can fix anything. He can figure out the problem of like anything. If I have anything broken I just handed him. I don't even think about how he's gonna fix it. If he's even possible, he's gonna find a way he'll fix it. That would be him's. I mean, he doesn't have any kids for me to know if he has the other same thing or not, but he definitely has the other time yeah, sam and my husband was mentoring.

Speaker 3: 24:49

Sam and Sam are similar brain and we can do that too. He can pull anything apart and put it back together. So Sam is brilliant in his own way and when he gets children he'll pull them apart, be like okay, but he won't pull them apart like quite to the same degree. But children break down to things and then break back up and Sam will use that and Sam will be fine as long as he can relax, that's very important stuff, yeah definitely yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:13

So tell me how you relax, because that's another thing is when you're interpreting. I have a lot of anxiety and panic when I'm listening to people speak in foreign language. The older I get, the more things I'm using in my subconscious when I'm talking with people. Until I get to the certain level I'm in so much anxiety I'm exhausted yeah, I definitely understand that I don't typically call myself a relaxed person ever.

Speaker 2: 25:39

I don't know if that I don't know if that word will ever go in the same sentences my name but because of that I have found a lot of techniques and a lot of things to help me. So, although I'm not a relaxed person in general it's not who I am I can help myself, get that way because I've experienced stress and anxiety so much that, like you know, what are you gonna do? Like, of course, you're gonna find things that work and don't work because you're stuck living that way and, like you know, you just naturally have to Do things and you're gonna end up seeing, naturally, these things are good for me and these things aren't. Are you asking this question Specifically into the language translating or just in general?

Speaker 3: 26:17

I'm asking both. I know that you struggle a little bit with anxiety, which we all do. That's kind of a part of being sensitive. But like a reward and benefit of that high sensitivity, the anxiety comes with it because it's trying to help you focus and it's saying like there's a lot. And then also, you know, on the flip side of what's kind of guiding you, I run into it all the time and I'm quite a bit older than you. I could be your mother. I always wonder how especially young people are still working their way through the journey of managing anxiety, because we have two options it's manage it outside of us or manage it inside of us, and that's your only two options.

Speaker 2: 26:49

Yeah, and mine is definitely inside. That's always been my the way that I handle it. This actually ties into what I said a little bit earlier about going off of your own guide, knowing how you are. So I myself know what stresses me out more than anyone else could. And If you were to ask me, okay, well, what is that then like, what is it that stresses you out?

Speaker 2: 27:10

That's another one of those things is I can't really put into words, I mean other than basic stuff, like obviously at taking tests, going interviews, those things are kind of natural for everyone.

Speaker 2: 27:19

But I mean the more specific things. If you were to ask me what they are, I Wouldn't really be able to tell you because it's more so. Just again, I feel like I feel things more than I think things, and so it's like that I can feel, when something is going to stress me out, like I can feel the Sensation of things and kind of tell like that's gonna be stressful for me or this is gonna be good for me, and so, as somebody who's had many, many, many panic attacks in their life and will probably have many, many more, I that's what my like just I guess sensing shifts into. So like when I get into that panic mode, obviously I start having all of the symptoms that come along with it, but immediately, like, those inner feelings start kicking in too. It's like they're working. I feel so weird describing this because it just it doesn't make any sense in general, it does know you're gonna understand.

Speaker 3: 28:12

Yeah, it does make it.

Speaker 2: 28:14

It feels like those you know little people, those little places we're talking about, are inside of me, like at a lower level, working to like calm everything down, is like get rid of this, get rid of this, let's focus on this, bring this in. Like it just seems like a whole army of people inside of me trying to bring it down. So it's like where the nervousness is happening, more like in my head and more like symptom wise. The actual things that that, I guess pertain to the anxiety itself. They're like inside me working and it's just. It's really kind of cool in a way, because that's not something that other people can do.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Like I've found over time because I mean used to when I've had panic attacks before I knew anything about any of the stuff I would go to someone like immediately, so like whether with my mom or another family member or Friend or something. I would just start going to them and I'd be like, oh, you've got to help me, like please talk to me, like please distract me. And it never worked. And I was so confused by that because, like probably anyone else, I would go online and search like how to stop anxiety tax, for like tips for anxiety and One of the number one tips. Every article was like talk to someone.

Speaker 2: 29:21

If you start feeling that way, you know, go talk to somebody. Or and they're not saying like a doctor, they're saying like just generally, talk to family, talk to friend, whatever, whether it's for distraction or advice, just talk to them. And I'm like, okay, I do that every time. It never helps. And like I could go through the whole list of tips, like go for a walk, drink water, lay down. I'm like these things don't help me. And so for the longest time I thought that I just had like I just have to live with it forever, like I'm just always gonna struggle, like this I'm not gonna like, because these things is what everyone says works for them and it doesn't work for me. And Over time I started finding out that the best thing for me to do when I feel like that is to literally just be by myself.

Speaker 2: 30:02

And you never see that on articles. They never tell you that they're like the first thing. They tell you to be in a community, be around people, and so that's what I did for the longest time. But now if I'm having a panic attack, it's like I immediately go to somewhere where I can be totally by myself, because the inside of me like knows what I need and knows what I don't need, and I don't need the distractions of other people looking at me, talking to me, I don't need the sounds or anything, it's like it just I feel my most comfortable in that state when I'm by myself.

Speaker 2: 30:34

And so that's why when I had, when I had my part-time job last year, it was not good for me, because If I was around people and if I'd get kind of anxious or panicky when I was around people, I couldn't just be like, okay, well, I'm leaving and I'm, you know, no explanation. I couldn't do that. And then, if you remember me telling you the story before they, eventually let me start closing the shop by myself. And so you might think, oh, that's great, because you're gonna be by yourself and you're not gonna have the pressure of other people around you, but actually no, because they were still relying on me as the only person there meaning that I still couldn't just be by myself.

Speaker 2: 31:11

I needed to be. That's why that was traumatic for me. Going back to your question about, like, how I deal with it, that's honestly what I would say is, like, if I'm feeling that way, I just kind of go inward and I don't think about what's going on around me and I can kind of even like Disassociate myself sometimes, like take myself out of my head and just like exist until it all sorts itself out. I just talked to my mom about this the other day, because we were talking about the high sensing and everything, and I was told you that you have this concert coming up next week. I don't know why I have to feel so nervous and so anxious leading up to it and why I have to feel so depressed when it's over. Like why do I have to feel these things these deeply?

Speaker 2: 31:50

And most people, they have average excitement, nervousness leading up to a concert and they're a little bit sad when it ends. For maybe a couple days they go back to school, they go back to work, they're totally fine. Me, on the other hand, I feel like something's been torn out of me because this concert that I was so excited for was over, and then me and my mom were realizing this at the same time. We're like yeah, but that also probably means that we enjoy the concert experience more than those people can. We're feeling it deeper, we're into it more, like we're not just going to have stronger sadness and stronger nervousness, we're also going to be able to have stronger happiness, stronger feelings like everything, stronger. When I started thinking about it like that okay, that's actually pretty cool Like I might be literally the only person that I've been you having the best time of everyone, because I'm feeling it so much.

Speaker 3: 32:34

You're having like a religious experience essentially, and you're going to have those intense experiences your whole life, because this is the part of a giftedness, this is a part of your high sensing giftedness and this is a part of our over excitabilities. I have come to realize that my over excitabilities have that high and low in every freaking situation of my life High, low, high, low where I'm going like extreme happiness, extreme sadness, extreme excitement, extreme fear, extreme extreme. But what it is is that you're laying down layers of understanding between all of those. So the higher and the lower is all your memories, mapping each of the sensing details of the whole experience, so that you can almost go into that in your head and experience it all over again, almost in heightened than you were in that moment, because you were overwhelmed. And so your body three days later is still processing it, and that's why that's so true.

Speaker 2: 33:24

Yeah, that's so true. I was on my first little day trip to the mountains a couple of weekends ago and we I have kind of a fear of heights, I'm I just don't like anything that I feel like I can look down on and we drove to the top of this mountain highest height I've ever been and I was so scared and I was like taking pictures on my phone I'm like I was making sure to look through my phone and not around me and I literally said this to those that were around me, which is my mom, my dad, my brother. I told them kind of like in a joking way I like right now I'm just here and then when we get home in a couple days I'll look back at my pictures and be like, wow, I did that, Like I went to the top of the mountain.

Speaker 2: 34:01

Look how nice it looked, it was so pretty up there. That's how I work. But in the moment I'm so scared, I'm so overwhelmed I didn't want to think about it. But once things are calmed down again, then I can go back in my memories and be like, wow, that was so much fun, that was so cool. So yeah, that's exactly what you just described.

Speaker 3: 34:16

Yeah, I know I'm not a big camera person, because I feel I'm overwhelmed by the situation and the idea of having to also think of the camera and focus on others is almost too much. But I also realized that my husband is, and the reason he is is that it allows him to go back and experience it later, because he's just a little bit less sensitive than I am, and so this is his way of reliving it multiple times over, whereas I, in that moment, I'm such a sensor I'd say I'll have this in my head forever. Thanks, in that case, I have both. Yeah, the thing that's valuable for him is he's giving me a prompt to bring it back up. It beautiful, because I can tell him did you notice this? And that's like no, and I'll add context to that memory for him, because he was running around with the camera, not using all his senses. He was focused on that, and it is amazing how we can focus and blot out things and then also unfocus and accept things.

Speaker 3: 35:04

I think that the way our brains work and the way our sensing works, we pretended like one size fits all in that area, but it's very, very much not so when we go into understanding how our sensing intelligence works how we move through the world, gathering data and gathering that deeper context, and then we can compare and contrast it to others and other experiences.

Speaker 3: 35:24

It keeps adding depth to these experience of our lives so that when you're a hundred years old and you look back, you'll be like now, I see it in a whole new way and that's the millionth way you've seen it. So now you understand why your highs and lows are exceptional to others, because they're laying down layers that you're just going to keep laying down. And the more you lay down that first time, the more you can lay down further, because you have more connections to attitude. It's an advantage. I mean, it's in this scary advantage. There's times in my life where I will go back in my head and notice something. I can sort of bring up a situation with my emotion and go back and ask myself a question about this situation and it will zero in on the answer and I'll know it and I'll be like, oh God, I know that now.

Speaker 2: 36:05

Yeah, exactly, it's almost like you have a constant video recording in your head and you can go back and play it as long as you remember it, go back and play it at any point and notice things that you didn't even notice while you were there. It's a really cool thing, and I think that being able to think like that is actually what helps me in so many of the creative things I do, whether it's video editing or writing or anything because, I feel like I have all my well, maybe not 20 years, because I probably don't remember my first three years, but 17 years.

Speaker 2: 36:34

I have 17 years of memories. I can go back and like any point in time, I can just notice different things and, yeah, just like you said, focus in certain elements and everything and like I think, kind of going back to the anxiety question too, for my whole life I've always heard people refer to me as having an imagination. I've just heard that word associated with me for so long, my whole life. Everyone would always have my name and imagination, like in the same sense, over and over and over again, and I didn't really have an opinion about it one way or the other, like they usually would be saying it in a good way, and if they were saying it in a bad way, it wasn't a bad way toward me, it was more so I was scared about something. And they're like oh, you were in that big imagination.

Speaker 2: 37:12

Like of course, you're scared of it, the anxiety thing that definitely plays in, because we're talking about how we can kind of relive memories and go back to them. I also and I know you can too, and anyone that has these things they can do that. I can create situations in my mind that have never existed and never will exist, and they're just as real in my mind as if I'd actually been there, and so I have dreams like that. All of my dreams are like 3D super detailed, super realistic, like everything's accurate, like everything feels very realistic, and that's why, when I have a good dream, I'm like wow, that was great. I feel like I can add that to my memories of things that I did, but I actually never did it, and so that's how my whole mind works. And so, with the anxiety stuff, people can wonder sometimes like how do I get so anxious about something? Or like how do you get so, so worried? How can you have a panic attack about that? And that's because in my mind.

Speaker 2: 38:07

I am picturing this whole story as if it was real, as ever. Like if that thing had actually happened, that's what it would have been like. That's how my mind plays it, and so I can get really, really scared about those things. And then, obviously, it works in the reverse too, where I can create a situation that I would love to happen but never will. I can kind of create like a very realistic imaging memory in my mind. In that way it's good and bad, obviously for the reason I just described, but it's weird and cool being able to not only like, imagine and live out experiences that you have had, but also ones that are totally fake, never happened, never even real.

Speaker 3: 38:44

So you just described, basically, foresight abilities and I kind of said that already. But I really want to go into your. Anxiety is bringing up your memories, it's bringing up information, it's bringing up understanding, it's bringing up things and as you get older you will go like okay, this is why you go by yourself. There is a sensory deprivation thing you need to do in order for you to fully process all that information coming up. So we're like in a battle all the time of trying to process what we already know and add it new and what we're currently doing in our environment. And when you're in the morning time, like when we first wake up, all these things are coming at us, all our brains flooding, it's coming online. We are like a super computer as far as brains go and so our brains have a lot to connect and bring up and they clean up each night and we have all this high sensitivity and so we feel crappy, we feel this or that, but really all of it is is your brilliance, sort of like, coming online and then it's delivering something, and the older you get, the more you go into it and the more you're like okay, what's the message? What's the message? It will sort of reveal it to you, either in pictures or sound or smell, like I mean there's all these ways that it can reveal itself, but you'll start to notice the patterns of I smell this every time I supposed to see this person. I mean, we have these weird way our sensing comes in to bring us on a schedule.

Speaker 3: 40:01

They talk about neurodivergence and the creatives not being good with schedules, not being good with remembering things, but it's because we don't go by that we have such a complex brain. It's bringing up all these cues and then it's taking cues from the environment and we're trying to put them in order and create this world. And you're talking about your imagination, and what that imagination is is that modeling. It's that brilliant modeling you have in your head and you're able to see all these scenarios if you were born into this life or you were this than that. And that's why they put imagination as part of your intelligence for children, because imagination is what shows that ability to model.

Speaker 3: 40:36

So I do have on my sub-stack page a foresight group, because there's so many big picture savants or autistics or ADHDers or all these, or dyslexics, like all of these groups, are known for having this ability to do what you're talking about the imagination and the modeling and yet we've just pathologized in it, when it's actually a beautiful gift. I mean, my life would be not nearly as clean or healthy right now if I hadn't had that gift, because I would be emulating the situation I came from, which was not none of those. So you will always be pushed to better because you are modeling all the possible scenarios, and why the heck would you go down the wrong ones if you could tell that they were gonna be wrong?

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, exactly, and I mean I know, like for me, growing up kind of we talked about earlier like I'm homeschooled and everything you get the responses. You get the reactions like, oh, how did you ever make any friends? Or how did you learn anything? How will you ever get a job, how will you go to college? You know you get this question.

Speaker 2: 41:35

That has kind of contributed to me being the way I am, and in a good way, because, like you were saying earlier, you don't have the influence of people. You're not being told to be one way or the other. I definitely feel like I was never told to do one specific thing or to follow one specific path. It was how I spent all my time. I would do my school stuff with my mom and then I'd finish up and I'd go work on videos. I do stop motions.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I would go on Microsoft Word and write scripts for movies that were never gonna exist but in my mind they're very real and I'm writing a script for it. I'd go on Microsoft Paint and I would draw things. Like that's how I spent all my time. I would, if I also had the addition of those people and teachers and people kind of saying, no, you're supposed to do this, I would probably be much different right now, but, as you know, since this is who I was born, as I would still have everything that I have right now, I would just not be nearly as in a good place. I can definitely see how you know, when you describe these things to me, how things have kind of come about in the way that they have, like it's very clear to me.

Speaker 3: 42:34

Yeah, definitely. Your life has been organic and so you have evolved as you ought to have. You should have evolved. Other people are supported by that, who are like you because they went through a system that pushed them in a direction they are not naturally so they didn't figure out how they evolved. They go through a lot of emotions. Their emotions are constantly giving a message this isn't you, this isn't right for you. You hate this. This is your Starbucks job. This is the job where you were like I hate this. Why am I doing it? Because you don't have control over your space. You don't have a control over your ability to go and create using what you learned.

Speaker 3: 43:06

I mean, we do really need a lot of space in our lives because we are creators, and creators need to stop and process, and that's supposed to be that way. And if we really allowed everybody to create, we'd be in a much healthier space than we are right now as a country, because creating makes new ways of seeing, being and doing and we would have more efficient ways. We would have probably those cars that George Jetson drove, because we would be just further along, because we wouldn't all be trying to be the same, because that's what Rob's innovation is, when we cut that out or we keep you down and we only give it to the wealthy or a few people whose parents changed the whole world around. I do want to mention, though, you're the youngest of five, so you did have a lot of people in the house I was there for a long time.

Speaker 2: 43:49

so I'm still here. There's always somebody ready, but the thing is, they're all like me too, so it's like I was being surrounded by people. I mean even my mom, and I mean my dad. I am definitely like a 50-50 split of both my mom and my dad. Maybe had I been an only child or something, it could have been harder on me? I don't know. I could probably imagine it because you know, I can create stories that aren't real.

Speaker 3: 44:10

but yeah, I could see you being a huge director in Hollywood because you had nobody else, and so you were really making those movies all the way through when you were a kid.

Speaker 2: 44:17

Thankfully my brother's like we team up together all the time because he also was there was a time period where he was making videos all the time too and I never really felt like I was weird around them because we were all the same. When I started to feel weird and even then I don't mean it in bad ways, things like that don't really bother me that much but is really when I did get out around people for the first time was when I got my first part-time job. I was 18 years old. I was like, wow, these are, this is how like people act, like outside of my house, this is how people act. I was seeing, you know, kind of weird customers or people would ask me things. I'm just like who asks that Like, who thinks to ask like that understood them. But at the same time I'm like, wow, this is weird, that this is what real life is like.

Speaker 2: 44:56

I've always been the odd one out, like I mean, there's a picture of me. It's so funny if you look at. There's a picture of me in church when I was eight, I think, and there was a group, my whole class, and there's, I think, like 18 people and they're all huddled in a circle around some task we were doing. Here's the circle, there's me. I'm over here all by myself. You know, I went to a vacation by-school a couple of years later. There was a group of 31 people and, ironically, the table sat 30 people. I was the one that did not have a seat and I sat at a table with 30 seats by myself and the pastor comes up to me and he's like do you wanna sit over here? And I'm like no, I'm fine. So I just sat there at a huge table all by myself. I was the only one.

Speaker 3: 45:37

I can answer the question for you. First off, I run into this a lot. The parents are worried that the child's not gonna have friends or whatever because they are sitting at a different table. This is why I sat at a different table and I would force myself into the group, but it was overwhelming. You and I, we take in so many inputs, we know so much about people. We need the space for downtime. We need the space to have our big picture view and not be in it, because being in it is overwhelming. It's details and our brain takes in the details and lays them down, but actually doesn't process them in that moment. By sitting back, we are able to take in the details nonetheless, but we're not overwhelmed by them, and then we can be like yeah, hey guys, how are ya? I'm working on my stuff, because it allows you to focus on your thing.

Speaker 3: 46:19

You have a probably really high proprioception, which is your ability to feel, sense others outside of your space, and I think it's like 10 feet and I always tell people we should have 20. Because ours is double. Do not sit so close to me unless you are my child or my significant other. Please do not crowd my space, because my body has already mapped those people and so when they're next to me I'm not taking in that many inputs. But if you're kind of new to me and you're like trying to crowd me, I'm like I just feel you. I feel you so much and while I might learn a lot from that, I need to do it slowly because I'm laying down so many layers. I see it as a sign of intelligence, I see it as a sign of sensing intelligence. And then you don't have the blocks that most people do, because you haven't been told to be a different way. You've allowed to be organically lived, the way you are supposed to be. So yours bubbles up and it's clear to you and you know and understand it, and that is a beautiful thing. You have been blessed with a beautiful thing. You have been fascinating for most people because you have lived an organic life and that is so rare today and you're not going through the emotional turmoil that most people who are like you go through if they've been through the system and they've been told by other people you're supposed to fit in.

Speaker 3: 47:33

You're supposed to like groups that doesn't really actually exist. There is no supposed to. They're just making that up so that you fit in with the cattling of people. You are not even an introvert, you're an ambivert. I know you swing both ways. I know that from just being around you. But you have so much that you're taking in that you're like, yeah, now I got to go process that. So I think most people who are high processing on the people pattern side, they tend to be ambiverts because they are so high processing and they love people. But they're also like, yeah, and I'm going to need some space, so you keep rocking on being you Abby, because I think you're awesome. Thank you so much. I will.

Speaker 2: 48:14

That's the only way I know how to be.

Speaker 3: 48:16

Yeah, that's the truth, isn't it? It's the only way to be. It's the only healthy way.

Speaker 1: 48:22

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