The Rainforest Mind (RFM): Mysterious, Misunderstood, and

Misdiagnosed?
October 23, 2022

Are you highly sensitive, smart, complex, creative, intense, curious and misunderstood?
According to Paula Prober (Your Rainforest Mind, 2016), these are the typical signs of a
rainforest mind. Prober is a former teacher of gifted children and has coined the term
rainforest mind. I have to admit, after having read dozens of books on gifted and twice
exceptional children, I found the book rather underwhelming. It is poorly structured, quite
repetitive, leaves a lot unclear (e.g. if there is a difference between HSPs and RFMs - both
concepts are based on overexcitabilities), and overuses anecdotal evidence. The author
frequently tells her readers frequently just to read some of her main sources, such as Elaine
Aaron, Susan Cain and watch a couple of TED-talks. Even the metaphor of the rainforest
seems to work poorly: “Like the rain forest, are you intense, multilayered, colorful, creative,
overwhelming, highly sensitive, complex, idealistic, and influential?” WTF?
Nevertheless, the book is well worth reading as it offers some great insights into the
struggles of gifted and 2e children and teens.
Contrary to the mythology that “smart” people will be just fine without help, what often
comes with smart is excessive doubt, anxiety, depression, shame, and loneliness. [...] Billy,
16, had been experiencing severe anxiety, missing several days of school. His mother
described him as “hard on himself,” a “perfectionist,” and “very sensitive.” He felt judged,
misunderstood, and bullied by peers. Never identified in school as gifted, Billy assumed there
was something seriously wrong with him. He knew he was different, but he did not know
why.

Anyone familiar with the concept of neurodiversity will immediately find themselves at home
here: social struggles, bullying, anxiety, depression, loneliness. The word ADHD comes up
almost a dozen times in the book and yet Prober insists that RFMs are misdiagnosed with
ADHD. As someone who can identify both as ADHD (undiagnosed) and RFM, I find this
stance quite annoying and I was reminded of Elaine Aaron’s insistence that HSPs have
NOTHING to do with ASD. While a lot of HSPs/RFMs might be reluctant to be labelled
ASD/ADHD it equally makes no sense to me to exclude neurodiverse people. In fact, I would
even argue that most gifted people are neurodiverse. A woman on the spectrum recently
blogged: “Why is HSP still code for ASD?”. One might equally argue that RFM is code for
ADHD.
Prober could improve her rainforest metaphor a lot by reading Thom Hartmann, who argued
that people with ADHD have a hunter mind. Indeed, the only people really living in rainforests
today are slash-and-burn horticulturalists like the Yanomami and hunter-gatherers like the
Aka. I agree with Hartmann that such nomadic hunter-gatherers require different cognitive
skills and more flexible minds than sedentary farmers, who are far more specialised, which
has its manifestation as trait conscientiousness on the level of personality psychology.
Multipotentiality is the term Prober refers to in this context and its signs are:

 Feeling like a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none

 Feeling like a dilettante

 Changing majors in college many times

 Taking longer to get through college

 Not going to college because you cannot decide on a major

 Having a terrible time choosing one career

 Frequently changing jobs and/or careers

 Being told you can do anything you want (Aren’t you lucky?)

 Not feeling lucky

In 1972, R.H. Frederickson et al. defined a multipotentialite person as someone who, “when
provided with appropriate environments, can select and develop a number of competencies
to a high level.” From the point of evolutionary psychology this is exactly what we would
expect in the changing, fluid environments of hunter-gatherers as compared to the more
stable, routine-like environment of farmers. Despite book titles such as Why Generalists
Win by David Epstein, specialists tend to have the safer life path, from schooling to getting
employed. Of course, generalists like Einstein, who completely fits the description of a RFM,
do occasionally win, but I am quite sure that a lot of RFMs feel unlucky and think like they
just didn’t win in the lottery of life.
The difference between farmer and forager minds can often be seen in children and teens
when they get asked what they want to be later in life. Farmer type children tend to be very
specific, like a truck driver or a policeman. Forager type children are often less sure or at a
loss. John Lennon famously answered “Happy”. When his teacher said that he hadn’t
understood the question, he unanswered that the teachers didn’t understand life.
The concept of RFM is therefore very close to that of an “orchid child”. As Thom Hartmann
argued, a hunter mind will do worse at farmer tasks (e.g. route learning and routine work),
and we mostly live in a farmer world. Of course, most people alive today have a mixed
forager-farmer genetic heritage, so we see many different shades of the phenomenon, such
as neurodiversity, gifted, RFM and HSP. And they generally tend to come as spectra.
For more on the hunter-gatherer neurotribe check out my book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0836LW5QV