Gordon Smith, LPC

12/08/2025

Centering creative consciousness means entering associative flow and allowing that well to spring forth, bring forth. Laura Hope-Gill and I have re-opened registration for Turning the Jewel: Story and Self - a six-week expedition into reimagining the stories we have about ourselves.

This course is called Turning the Jewel because through this process we will regard our consciousness from many perspectives, seeing the many facets of who we are, tracking the way the light changes when we look at ourselves (the jewel) in many different ways. Our gifted meta-consciousness gives us the opportunity to dive into perspective-taking with an enormous complexity and depth. This course is made for gifted people, so there is space for all of who you are, all of the perspectives and complexities.

Turning the Jewel: Story and Self - This six-week series elevates and centers creative consciousness in your gifted personal development.

11/08/2025

with Dr. Nick Walker and Katy Higgins Lee Join us for a conversation as Katy Higgins Lee interviews Dr. Nick Walker, a leading thinker on the neurodiversity ...

11/08/2025

Thank you, Jade Farrington, for compiling these resources. You’ll wanna bookmark this one.

📢 NEW article and ebook: Our Path Through The Neurodiversity Paradigm - Resources to support understanding of neurodivergence

A long read that I hope will be valuable if you'd like to explore more around neurodiversity and what it's all about!

10/08/2025

I’ve already seen some folks show up for therapy consultations who were in full blown AI psychosis. This move by Illinois is prudent and demonstrates some leadership in our brave new world.

New law blocks apps from diagnosing or giving therapy advice in Illinois.

07/08/2025

Next month I'll be taking a week to engage in Warm Data with Nora Bateson. Ya heard?

Warm Data Theory and Practice September 16th - September 23rd, 2025 Asheville, North Carolina, USA Now more than ever our communities are divided and polarized. The possibilities for people to respond to events of this era (polyscrisis, metacrisis, omnicrisis, etc.) depend upon their ability to imp...

04/08/2025

When you're making the journey out of medical model thinking and its foundations of hierarchy and pathology, then taking in more content centered in neurodiversity is a refreshing and enlivening way to go. Viv Dawes has many helpful resources and videos at her website. I just finished watching the Monotropism video (only 3m28s!). https://www.autisticadvocate.co.uk/understanding

If you are autistic or AuDHD or 2e+, then do yourself the favor of shifting perspective from a medical model that would tell you you're sick and broken into a neurodiversity (ND) paradigm. In ND Paradigm you're a part of the tapestry of what's possible, and you get to mold your life around who you are and what you need.

31/07/2025

InterGifted has its latest publication out - How I Healed My Gifted Trauma. I have a lengthy poem included in the collection. Titled Brood XIV and inspired by the emergence of the 17-year cicadas this spring, here are a few excerpts:

Brood XIV

Sirens in the trees sing out life’s alarm,
Vibrating tymbals and hollow abdomens cry
To remain alive long enough to be met and create
The only thing worth having. Cicadas
Emergent, seventeen years in darkness,
Sucked at tree roots, quiet, cool, patient,
Hidden since Usain Bolt became the fastest man.
Change comes slowly, then up and tumble
Through damp, warm ground, old husks dry,
Crack, and release the red-eyed, wet-winged
Resurrected to pause in the sun that’s gone
Unseen since Obama won Guam, vulnerable
Soft bodies, long adolescent, constitute
Themselves to join treetop swarms and scream.
[...]
The World turns away when you’ve looked too long,
Laughs when you ask an honest question,
Rewards compliance and rejects complexity.
The World knows how you ought be,
The World offers love only when it isn’t
Discomfitted by too present a presence.
The World discourages passion in real time.
You find your dimmer switch, lowest gear, and
Volume k**b to lessen - lest you be lonelier -
Excel at The World’s priorities - lest expression be
Rejected. A collection of faces composed to
Remain safe - lest your place in the ecosystem
Shrink too small. Camouflage enough to convince,
Fool even you. Veils are skin once you forget.
[...]
At the feet of elders, translucent wings wet and unfolding,
Compound eyes open and will never close. Systems
Awareness clocks the neuroscience, lived experience, social
Networks, professional avenues, multiple exceptionalities,
Intersectionalities, and personalities populating this ecosphere.
Neurons swarm to reorient, one day building Rome, and the
Next thousand learning to govern. Magicicada has only one
Unfurling, yet you discover galaxies in deep field reflection.
These needs can be met. These contortions can be unknotted.
Ready to Redwood, Bonsai escapes its pot and sprints until
Collapse. The ache of grief, those unlived lives, the exertions,
Time pursuing sameness. Each traumatic interaction resides in
Burrows, highly myelinated cobwebs. You grasp the way, map
Navigable paths to rewire old systems into gardens of stars.

The whole publication is here: https://intergifted.com/bookshop/

30/07/2025

ICYMI - Check out this fun and deep dive.

29/07/2025

One of the ways the InterGifted community helps gifted adults is through shepherding people's individual experience out into the world through a careful, nurturing process of publishing. In the latest publication - How I Healed My Gifted Trauma - I have a long poem. It's titled Brood XIV and was inspired by the 17 year cicada eruption that happened here in western North Carolina this year. I'll likely share some excerpts of that in the days to come, AND I'll encourage everyone who's scrolling through social media in search of something relevant to their lives to pause, click through, and order this collection right now. It's a digital purchase, so it will be in your hands right away.

"How I Healed My Gifted Trauma is a collective exploration of that journey, written and illustrated by gifted adults around the world who have faced, integrated and restored wholeness following gifted trauma. Together, we show how uniqueness, adversity, and purpose can be woven into a deeper sense of existential belonging.

Compiled and edited by Jennifer Harvey Sallin and Lil Jedynak, in 2025. This book includes 18 stories and many more illustrations from 14 contributors."

Books and resources from our InterGifted community. Learn to live well with giftedness wherever you're at on your giftedness journey!

25/07/2025

I am actively recovering from getting my right knee replaced yesterday. So I'm sending this bouquet of memes to you, the future, in the hope they add levity and buoyancy to your experience.

24/07/2025

"This paper introduces Neurodiversity 2.0, an expanded framework that integrates insights from disability studies, social justice, and policy to address these gaps. By analyzing key tensions, drawing from theoretical perspectives such as relational autonomy, Crip Theory, and Disability Justice, and proposing systemic policy shifts, the paper argues for an approach that balances opportunities (leveraging strengths), with solutions (to address challenges). The current discourse often presents false binaries—social vs. medical models, autonomy vs. dependence, strengths vs. deficits—when, in reality, inclusion requires an integrated approach. This paper advocates for proactive, flexible, and participatory systems across research, education, employment, and healthcare that center both access and agency. By moving beyond reactive accommodations to proactive systems design, Neurodiversity 2.0 seeks to create structures that recognize and support the full spectrum of neurodivergent experiences."