Based on what Kitty experienced in Scotland, she wanted to do the following:

1.    Adjust the contact with her parents

Up to that time, Kitty too often did what she thought her parents wanted. Although she really liked her parents, this now bothered her. She wanted to make her own choices and decided to tell her parents that in a conversation. She trained for that talk with a girlfriend who gave her tips.

In addition, she decided to start looking for her own apartment as soon as possible and move out.

2.    Working on career choice

She resigned her graduate assistant job and her supervisor told her she thought that was a shame.

But Kitty did not consider going back or choosing another, similar job.

For a while she just wanted to make money somewhere as a waitress while thinking about her next steps.

She was still young, so she had plenty of time to look.

Besides, she could always switch jobs!

Kitty really enjoyed her singing experience in Scotland.

She signed up for singing lessons and a theater orientation course. That course trained students to become drama therapists. That was one of the options that appealed to her. But she also thought about studying music.

She loved folk music and also considered learning to play the guitar, so she could accompany herself. Or maybe she could work on something to do with the environment.

3.    Private

The boyfriend in Scotland was long gone. She was sad about that, but she realized that it was not realistic to keep in touch. She started going out a little more frequently in hopes to meet nice guys. It had become much easier for her to make contacts.

Kitty's case: How to make real choices?

Over the following few months, Kitty became aware of feeling a number of signals for the first time in her life, but she did not yet know exactly their significance. She experienced:

• Tensions in her body: cold sweats, trembling, headaches.
• Feelings of fear, uncertainty and also sometimes gloom. 
• Feelings of pleasure, enjoying the outdoors, doing what she liked in Scotland, and especially, not thinking about her parents. 
• Anxiety, feelings that she had to make choices.
  

In Scotland she noticed that by doing things without choosing, she automatically felt whether it was good or not. That was quite a relief.

That made her more aware:

• that she certainly had taken another step to becoming independent and being allowed to choose for herself, but not yet knowing how to do that.
  
  
• of her patterns: first doing what others expected of her, not daring to do and feel what she wanted and felt herself, wanting to be liked.

She did not dare cry, become angry, or saying what she wanted. Her cousin Caroline went to the other extreme, but still she learned a lot from her. There were also the times that she had to find her own way in the woods in Scotland, that made her more aware of what she liked.

Through her adventures, Kitty learned to accept her own feelings. Together with her insights in her actions and choices, she realized that this was the basis for making her own choices instead of doing what other people wanted.

Selection process

Making choices can be seen as a multi-step process where the emphasis is on rational comparisons. This can be expressed through an eight-step process:

Step 1: Exploring your situation

Step 2: Exploring your goals and desires

Step 3: Exploring your capacities

Step 4: Exploring your interests

Step 5: Exploring study/work opportunities ... and alternatives

Step 6: Exploring alternatives

Step 7: Making choices

Step 8: Executing

We often see that gifted people make their choices as part of a search process, where they experience that they might run into barriers while just making logical choices. That is different from what they are used to. Exploring their own interests, motivations and feelings contribute more to making their choices.

Kitty wanted help with this, she was confused.

Kitty's case: Learning to choose

Kitty started seeing a psychologist who also counsels the gifted and coaches them in their selection process. This coach, proposed a series of ten appointments. Kitty thought that would be too much. In the past she would not have dared say anything.

But using the lessons she had learned about herself, she quietly proposed another plan. "How about we start with five conversations, and then after those five meetings we can see how far I have come and then determine how much I still need."

To Kitty's amazement, her coach thought this was a good idea!

Together with her coach she went back over the times she had made important choices in her life, what she did, thought and felt. What this showed was that Kitty especially enjoyed making music.

But in Scotland she also noticed that she sometimes could help a person who was down, because she was so good at listening.

Together with her coach, Kitty made a chart showing her strong points (her qualities) and her weaknesses.

Because gifted people have a strongly developed moral sense (own experiences of the authors and Jacobsen, 1999) the coach and Kitty wrote Kitty's value profile together.