Thedy Veliz, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Providing a relational developmental neurogenomics approach for emotional well-being, personal growth, education, and leadership development
About Non-Formularity
Non-Formularity is a personality profile designed to describe and better understand the unique dynamics of people with a highly reactive stress response system. This personality profile came about from my clinical work first with children and then with adults. I conceptualize Non-Formulaic people as having qualities that can be labeled as sensitive, creative, and gifted. Non-Formularity is found in 20-35% of the population based on research from the sensitivity literature.
The reason why I have taken an interest in this population is because since they don’t fit what we as a society consider to be the average child, traditional parenting and education are not designed for them.
They usually have above-average intelligence, are precocious learners and creative, think independently, and are sometimes very emotionally expressive. They also have a tendency to be labeled with several diagnoses including anxiety, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, ADD and ADHD, and learning disabilities. While they exhibit the same personality profile, they are all very different. I have learned that they have an ability to hide their symptoms which results in some parents not quite realizing the extent of their challenges.
Another reason why I have become an advocate for the needs of this population is because as they become adolescents, they have a tendency to self-medicate their feelings of inadequacy with substances or risky behaviors that might result in self-harm, addiction or suicide.
As they enter into adulthood, the feeling of being different and not fitting in becomes augmented and their relationships, education, and career suffers. Thus, the sooner parents are able to understand that their child is not designed to fit into the traditional environment, the sooner the environment can be adjusted to support the child’s needs.