Episode Details

"Improv games cultivate openness and playfulness, relaxation and self-care."Julie Skolnick, M.A., J.D. is Founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, with programs including the Let’s Talk 2e! Conference and The Haystack, a community for 2e Adults.2E or twice exceptional people are gifted as well as experiencing learning differences or neurodivergent qualities such as dyslexia, ADHD, or autism.

Gordon Smith is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Coach, and Improv Instructor. His practice focuses on neurodivergent adolescents, adults, and families.His site Gifted and Growing notes Improv can be defined “as the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers.”Learn about Online Improv for Gifted Adults (also online improv classes for 2E+ Teens, and for Families). "The class offers a six-week experience in which we come together (on zoom) with 2e+ peers to explore, experiment, and play. "Through Improv games and exercises we cultivate openness & playfulness, relaxation & self-care, emotional intelligence & empathy, and creative storytelling & expression."

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Transcript

Julie Skolnick 0:00

I'm so glad that you're here listening. Because this is a rare opportunity, I have to sit down with my good friend and colleague, Gordon Smith, who is from gifted and growing, which is a service where he really the center of his practice is to do counseling and therapy for gifted adolescents, adults and families.

And you know, you can't just go to anybody, for your stuff, gifted and 2E people. So how great it is to know about Gordon that he specializes in our people. But the other cool thing and actually what I want to talk to Gordon about today is his really cool improv groups that he runs for adults gifted adults and teams. So again, how niche can you get?

Julie Skolnick 0:55

By Oh, my goodness. So we've known each other a while and I've even had Gordon attend groups of mine and do stuff with parents and adults. I want to know, Gordon, why, why improv? Why is improv particularly? Why does it lend itself to the gifted folks? Why should gifted folks do improv? Talk to me.

Gordon Smith 1:21

So like you said, I've been doing counseling and therapy with folks for years, and people come to me with really big challenges that they're facing from day to day, and we do all that therapeutic work. And the best part of this whole improv complements a therapy.

And what it does is it provides an entirely different experience for people to kind of arrive at some of the same places, that when people come to improv in a group of other gifted and 2E adults, first of all, they're feeling mirrored, and met and can get that like felt sense of being in a group together. And that sense of safety that comes with that, though, that we just don't have a lot of practice with that in the world.

Gordon Smith 2:04

And then the whole practice of improv is a reverend, really practicing spontaneity, and practicing trusting yourself and trusting other people to have your back. And to be able to do this in a in a in an environment, you know, is supportive.

And that is really just about playing laughter. It kind of takes the other it doesn't have that same sort of therapy vibe that we're going to be talking about some big heavy things, what we're going to do is practice living in the non heavy places, and to be in those spaces where we get to practice trusting ourselves an