FINDINGSThe purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of successful, intense gifted adults to understand how they experienced intensities, and intelligence in their lives.Specific questions that were investigated included the following: How did having OEs influence life experiences (social, educational, and personal)? What supports helped (or would have helped) navigate the process of growing upgifted and intense? Through in-depth interviews and background surveys, three common themes emerged from the diverse group of participants: hyperawareness of the internal and external environment, isolation resulting from intensities, and finding peers who are “weirdos” like them.HyperawarenessWhen asked to describe their intensities to those who did not experience OEs, each of the participants expressed qualitatively different life experiences than those who were not intense. The awareness influenced life experiences in many different ways for the participants. Elizabeth who notices the colors and beauty all around her responded, “It’s like the Wizard of Oz where it starts off in black and whiteand then when she lands in Oz it’s all the bright colors.” When asked to compare intense people to non-intense people Dominic replied, “It’s not like we’re on a different spectrum than average people. It’s that our knob is turned up higher than theirs could go.” Vincent felt that intensity was more than just being different from others: