Description: Giftedness and Emotional Health and Well-Being

This presentation is geared for parents, teachers, counselors, and high school/college students.
Patricia Gatto Walden, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized licensed psychologist who has worked holistically with thousands of gifted and profoundly gifted children, adolescents, and adults for three decades. She has helped parents, educators, and administrators understand and accept the multifaceted inner world, needs, and concerns of gifted individuals. Additionally, her career has included university instruction of doctoral level counseling trainees, counselor supervision, and educational administration. She has been a featured speaker at international and national gifted conferences and educational workshops. She is chair-elect of the Global Awareness Division of the National Association for Gifted Children. She is a Senior Fellow for the Institute of Educational Advancement.

No charge (donations encouraged)

Dr Patricia Gatto-Walden will present how to embrace and navigate through emotional intensities in everyday life. Incorporating her decades of experience counseling gifted individuals of all ages, Dr. Pat will describe inner experiences of gifted individuals' extensive emotional range from joy, expansive and hopeful feelings to anxious, withdrawn, irritable and hopeless emotions. From a holistic and developmental perspective, attention will also be given to the causes and complexities of stress, anxiety, burn-out and depression. She will address how to pursue emotional health and well-being, and define when it is time to contact a counselor for support. For those who wish to stay an additional 15 minutes, she will lead an "emotional cleansing" exercise to help participants learn how to release emotional debris.