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Abstract

The journey toward becoming one's best is a heroic quest which demands strength, courage, independence, and perseverance. This paper assists counselors and psychotherapists to understand and illuminate the issues, obstacles, and challenges confronting gifted women, and to empower their clients to claim and express their high potential. These issues are drawn from the author's interviews with clients and colleagues, a survey of participants at a 1986 conference for and about gifted women, and a comprehensive literature review. Gifted women are urged to recognize and externalize cultural and familial devaluation, refuse to be invisible or to “disappear,” resist the pull of the status quo, and envision new possibilities for personal fulfillment. Guidelines, strategies, and resources for enabling these goals are discussed.

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Counseling Gifted Women: Becoming the Heroes of Our Own Stories

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