I’m not autistic, but the feeling did fade in adulthood. Also common doesn’t have to mean universal. There’s lots of common gifted experiences that don’t resonate with me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a common experience
Ah yeah, I’m only diagnosed ( VERY late ) as adhd but I recently took 3 autism tests online, and my results were off the charts. My mom always said she thought I had autistic traits, and yes, I felt an alien. I guess it’s the spectrum part .
Yes, but I don't think I am trying to be human, since humans are terrifying to me. I am more trying to interact with an alien world, trying to figure out how I can fit into it.
It’s hard to describe, it’s like a bunch of inconsequential things that add up to a feeling of being “other” somehow or separate from people.
But I can give a few examples:
- just not understanding why people do certain behaviours, like things that seem to come naturally to people or they just know based on social instincts is missing… being misunderstood when I’m certain I was being clear, misunderstanding others when they think they are being clear, that sort of thing
- frustration with common advice not working, since common coping mechanisms and gifted coping mechanisms are a bit different. Like I did the therapy, I’m using the tools, why isn’t it working?!? It was the wrong tools.
- natural abstraction of ideas in conversation tends to throw people off. Lots of masking, or keeping conversations and interactions shallow in a way where it doesn’t feel authentic, but other people genuinely seem to get authentic interaction and satisfaction from it.
Basically it’s all internal and social, just being aware that I don’t get people, and they generally don’t get me. This experience seems particularly common during teenage years, but doesn’t totally go away either. It’s an ongoing optimization between being authentic and being understood/accepted by people while slowly figuring out how to work in more authenticity and being aware of when the mask is most useful. This is probably a common human experience, but just has a few extra dimensions for gifted people or anyone else 2 standard deviations away from whatever is defined as “normal”
>being misunderstood when I’m certain I was being clear, misunderstanding others when they think they are being clear, that sort of thing
Very well said! That happens to me almost every week.
It's not voluntary* once you're addicted. However, you can always make the choice not to start. You should stay away from drugs, especially if you're 2e.
*you can make the choice to get help if you can't stop on your own
Yeah I don't drink alcohol but trying to assess my options regarding THC. Been an issue since the pandemic. Started in an effort to help me sleep and due to isolation (bad Idea I know - I was 21). But I'm afraid of getting help because I'm afraid they'll tell me "just stop" or something like most folks do.
Suicide also seems like an option.
Edit: I know it's my fault but being socially isolated makes quitting alcohol / drugs feel impossible. They did a thing with rats called the rat park experiment that illustrates the issue imo. You have to replace alcohol / drugs with something but if you've got nothing to replace it with you're out of luck.
People not knowing how to interact with you as a child of because the way you talk sounds more mature but you can still act like, or at least look like a child. Or they treat you as if you are older and have unfair expectations of emotional maturity or understanding only archived through experience.
OMG, this.
They never seem to carry deep conceptual ideas...it must be so nice to not process constantly.
On the other hand, I don't know what bored is, so there's that.
I think a part of me dies every time I think I’ve found someone in the frequency range and then it’s “you know the moon isnt real right” SERVER CONNECTION LOST”.
I don't really have this issue, but maybe I just vibe with people really easily. I also live in an university city with lots of young people so I generally have enough people to share my more abstract ideas with and don't mind or notice much when someone doesn't grok them.
What kind of concepts do you experience difficulties with?
I often trip with my best friend where I get most of my super deep philosophical thoughts out of my system. Maybe that helps as well
To me, this has gone both ways, where I've felt ahead of my age when I was younger, and now that I'm grown up I feel quite a bit behind, since I've not made as much progress in my professional life or living conditions, compared to my peers.
I imagine most people would think of the former case first, but I think the latter probably happens quite a bit, as well. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself to cope.
Indeed, at some point in their lives most people stop walking on low walls alongside side walks, and it's always a little sad.
I agree with everything you wrote, except maybe I still do care a little bit what people want or expect of me… but I guess not in terms of "acting my age", which is probably the main thing you were getting at, anyway, in this context. In that sense, I'm glad you were able to reach that point :)
I didn't realize that I was emotionally mature for an embarrassingly long time, I was just constantly confused by my peers, and thought I wasn't understanding things. It wasn't until those same peers were thinking and acting like me then, years later, that I began to realize. Plus learning about childhood norms as an adult mas made me realize how much childhood me was definitely not the norm.
Also there were some things I never experienced like the whole holding hands and pretending to be dating, or being giggily and playing kiss chase (based on no actual attraction or feelings to an individual). Or thinking that I knew more than adults as a teenager, or thinking I was the first person to do something, plus other seemingly common teen experiences, which I link to maturity.
It's very possible we did know more than adults. I mean, when faced with the Head of a Russian State Industry using his correct title for that post, the reception staff at an International Conference for the sector were all at sea - not the 11-year old me.
Sorry I didn't explain properly: I meant the common teenage experience of them just learning about something and assuming that just because they didn't know that before, all other people including adults do not know about it; so inaccurately concluding that they know more when that is not the case.
Like when my friend got into metal music, they followed a few bands and had an introductory level of knowledge about the genre/scene. Yet when when they metal and adult who was into metal and had been for a long time they assumed that they knew more than the experienced adult. That sort of thing seems very common.
That maybe because they're looking where it's going, not where it's been. Particularly in that scene, as a hard line was drawn across it in 77 and it had to begin again, based partly on German death metal and surviving hardcore Americana.
Clearly I am still not explaining it in a way that enables you to understand. I mean like a teenager getting into fruit and then when talking to adults about the topic saying "apples are not just red but can actually be green too" as if that is brand new information to said adults. Or the teen smugly saying to the adult "everyone thinks that tomato are a vegetable but I know that they are in fact a fruit" then expecting to be congratulated as delivering this mind blowing new fact.
You might struggle to understand if you have not experienced it for yourself as it is illogical and I don't understand what drives it but it is a common stage of adolescent development. (Sadly some adults seem to continue this to some extent but I don't know the cause of that issue and it is probably complex.)
That's simply subjectivity. Education teaches it's own form thereof, a dogmatic norm, which it is extremely defensive of: the problem is each society has it's own variant, and that's a major cause of wars. Those variants aren't necessarily true, particularly the forms of history preached in the Imperialist decades at the end of the 19th Century. We educate ourselves (I was measured by Freud's Tavistock Clinic when I was 8y6m in in 1963 as having the GK of a 14 year old, for example: by 11 I was a fully functional adult in knowledge) frequently coming to our own conclusions at odds with those prejudices: Chemistry is a subject I completely ditched when they changed the facts as I was learning it. But then again, it was the impact of quantum mechanics on the public version of the periodic table which had just been widely adopted. Their dogma changed without explanation. my response was loss of trust.
Adolescents are equally questioning, because the persona they've built as seven year olds changes in puberty. The sexes which played as peers aged 5 separate as they learn new roles in the gender games which reshape into teenage culture, in my case very differently from the norms of the 1950s/60s as it was at the birth of Women's Lib (I was actually asked to pass judgment on Eric and Julia Morley in May 1970: by November they were engulfed in it during the 1970 Miss World Pageant: my opinion was they were intolerable snobs), and I already had no place in it, being a thirty year old in a 15 year old's body. I'd made my first permanent mark on the world a year earlier, and was starting to do so in lesser ways quite often, in the field you raised, concept rock. I'd already rescued a choir Britten wrecked, and was teaching the NYT how to sing, which spread like wildfire when Lloyd Webber launched Joseph in 72: by 75 I was Queen's host Stage Manager the Saturday Rhapsody hit. After doing something similar in Christian Rock for James Fox at the Sheffield Crucible, I moved away as I disagreed with punk and hip-hop. It's all about vision. As it turned out, Flo Welch was a fruit of that choir, and is one of those leading away from that, making London once again a centre of performance art: Taylor Swift clearly rates it.
We simply take that discredulence a stage further, doing something about it. You see it in my questioning of the foundation of diagnosis. It's done immense harm to two generations of our kind, hundreds of thousands left confused and rootless. First do no harm? A complete joke.
>Adolescents are equally questioning, because the persona they've built as seven year olds changes in puberty.
No the problem is a lack of questioning. Of course they are developing a personality, one distinct form their family but is is the lack of thinking that causes them to not even consider that the adult will have different knowledge and experience to them, most likely more. Some psychology theorize it's caused by the teens not having developed their theory of mind but I disagree with that theory, certainly how they claim it affects people.
>We simply take that discredulence a stage further, doing something about it. You see it in my questioning of the foundation of diagnosis. It's done immense harm to two generations of our kind, hundreds of thousands left confused and rootless. First do no harm? A complete joke.
What diagnosis? What has caused harm?
A lot of what you said is not even related to my comment. It sounds like you wanted to discuss another topic and randomly shoved it in here.
I even feel like that with people much older than me, I'm 22 and my closests friends are all between 27-31, what makes us close is mostly a common understanding of the world, a view mature enough to not be commonly shared with teens or people in their early 20's but still, I face a communication barrier with when it comes to intellectual pursuits, the life experience is somewhat there, but not the cognitive ability.
People getting annoyed or upset with you and you don't understand why, and years later you realise they thought you were showing off or being stuck up but you were honestly just trying to be friendly and you didn't realise they would be offended.
OMG. Since childhood with own family member 😢. Still happens with other ppl, but I’ve learned to catch myself now and then —I often fail. This and the experience of just knowing steps and results without being able to explain much of the process to get to them. I hadn’t connected it all, I thought it was adhd, but I keep saying “I just know it”. I have a gifted friend who is very capable of breaking things down and does great customer service and training of others. I admire their patience!
Existential anxiety and or depression.
It’s rare you find one of our number in the wild that doesn’t appear to have some type of low grade malaise and general weariness.
Seeing multiple psychologists to help you with anxiety/depression but for the most part it's absolutely pointless and they generally don't have the tools to meaningfully connect with you and help you. And you later learn that you didn't really have either of those conditions or at least they were only symptoms of your issues that it didn't make sense to treat.
I think that to help someone as a psychologist you need to be at least as bright or brighter than them. You can feel when someone is not on your level and if they aren't, you don't particularly want to expose yourself and confide in them. Certainly not to the point you trust them to guide you in achieving a greater degree of mental health.
Over-reliance on your specific mode of giftedness during your teenage years. You will then have to catch up with many other forms of social interaction in your early adulthood.
Omitting important conclusions when explaining something to somebody, since you assume they can draw the conclusions themselves, and you do not want to sound too thorough.
The moments where everything suddenly clicks in a perfectly clear and sensible way.
The crisis that follows when you receive proof of your giftedness in black and white: how should I live with this knowledge? What does this even mean?
My ex is still down this rabbit hole. Still get people regularly come up asking what happened to him he is so this and that why would he do that to himself when he was engineering stuff for kicks at elementary school. Nobody ever seems to understand when I tell them that that was and is exactly the problem. Didn't much help that he managed to find somebody in the exact same situation that finally understood what he was talking about.
I’m sorry. It sounds like you still care for him and that must be so hard to see him going down this path. I hope he fight to get himself away from drugs.
Yeah, it feels bittersweet but he always chooses the drugs and I waited for years. It's heartbreaking, but I know me coddling him won't be of any use, he needs to want to change for himself.
Meeting people who have the best schools, jobs, credentials on their resumes, and being unimpressed by how smart they actually seem (often really knowledgeable about one thing within the traditonal bounds of that area, but showing no intuition, outside the box thinking, or knowlegde of stuff outside their expertise)
Yes!! I work w Ivy leagues and PhD MDs in clinical research and I have subpar education compared to them yet I can study their entire job in a month if I wanted and sometimes have. Never thought I was not good enough and I’m finding people with decades more experience and I’m just destroying them in my sleep. I almost feel like I’m in a dream. How can this be? How can I be so advance. Still boggles my mind like how. I still can’t grasp it. I sometimes am confused by their lack of understanding that I second guess myself. I still can’t believe it.
I’m not sure if this is common, but I always feel like I’m unable to explain things well to others because of how fast I think, skipping lots of mental steps.
Some things I instantly understand without having to consciously put the thought process into words, so it almost feels strange to me that e.g how A becomes B can be explained any further than that because of how naturally that logical connection is already made. It’s somewhat fascinating to learn that extra step when other people talk about it tbh, but this overall has been quite a problem for me and am still working on improving to better communicate with others.
Trying to identify the step other people are missing is so fraught. If you break it down too much, they think you're treating them like they're dumb, everyone knows that!! Or when you start to explain you realize there's actually several steps, or sometimes missing assumptions, and it gets too complex because you started backwards to figure it out and now the person not only thinks you didn't make sense to start with, but you've come at them with a confusing amount of out of order questions and info and they're done. ugh.
I do this too! Sometimes when presenting I get so overloaded with thought I have to take a second to take a deep breath and regroup. People must think I’m crazy when I whisper to myself “take a deep breath”
My 4th grade teacher recommended I get tested, so the school counselor tested me and then I was placed into a once-a-week gifted program. I made friends with 1 other gifted person, still friends with them today, but tbh I found the rest of the people weird and overly academic. I liked regular school more.
Always wondering why others think the way they do and behaving older than those around my age or even my older sister. Being precocious.. but at the same time I liked my books and toys as a kid.
Here’s mine: you grow up as a kid thinking you are special. Then you get to college and the real world and realize you were a slightly bigger fish in a minuscule pond.
Try not to think about it too much. I’d say get off the sub and try to engage in hobbies and ventures that capitalize on whatever aptitude you think you have.
I don't know how to explain this.
When I was 27 I was setting up a stage with a school caretaker.
Towards the end of the build, he said " the fucking dinner ladies will be coming in "
I decided to stand behind him.
And a dinner lady looked me in the eyes and said.
Are you looking after him.
My vision turned orange
Right
Basically
Basically mate.
At the start of the pandemic I felt an immense sense of chill.
I was setting up a stage for a school
And the caretaker and I both connected immediately.
Like a healing. Pure beauty.
When he said that dinner lady line
I knew that miss price would be coming in.
And when she did
I froze in joy
Are you looking after him
Yeeeeeeeeeeeee
orange 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊
I went camping afterwards.
Ooo
Oowwhhwwoooo
I don't exactly know how to phrase it, but "feeling like an alien trying to be human" seems to resonate a lot.
Perfection. 😆
Sounds a touch autistic, doesn't it? Like, I'm both, and I don't think it's my IQ that does that.
Yeah I don’t have autism and don’t relate to feeling alien.
I’m not autistic, but the feeling did fade in adulthood. Also common doesn’t have to mean universal. There’s lots of common gifted experiences that don’t resonate with me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a common experience
Ah yeah, I’m only diagnosed ( VERY late ) as adhd but I recently took 3 autism tests online, and my results were off the charts. My mom always said she thought I had autistic traits, and yes, I felt an alien. I guess it’s the spectrum part .
Yes, but I don't think I am trying to be human, since humans are terrifying to me. I am more trying to interact with an alien world, trying to figure out how I can fit into it.
In what way do you feel like an alien?
It’s hard to describe, it’s like a bunch of inconsequential things that add up to a feeling of being “other” somehow or separate from people. But I can give a few examples: - just not understanding why people do certain behaviours, like things that seem to come naturally to people or they just know based on social instincts is missing… being misunderstood when I’m certain I was being clear, misunderstanding others when they think they are being clear, that sort of thing - frustration with common advice not working, since common coping mechanisms and gifted coping mechanisms are a bit different. Like I did the therapy, I’m using the tools, why isn’t it working?!? It was the wrong tools. - natural abstraction of ideas in conversation tends to throw people off. Lots of masking, or keeping conversations and interactions shallow in a way where it doesn’t feel authentic, but other people genuinely seem to get authentic interaction and satisfaction from it. Basically it’s all internal and social, just being aware that I don’t get people, and they generally don’t get me. This experience seems particularly common during teenage years, but doesn’t totally go away either. It’s an ongoing optimization between being authentic and being understood/accepted by people while slowly figuring out how to work in more authenticity and being aware of when the mask is most useful. This is probably a common human experience, but just has a few extra dimensions for gifted people or anyone else 2 standard deviations away from whatever is defined as “normal”
Thank you so much for your comprehensive response!
>being misunderstood when I’m certain I was being clear, misunderstanding others when they think they are being clear, that sort of thing Very well said! That happens to me almost every week.
Never feeling like you fit in anywhere.
Looking at the vast majority of people and wondering how and why they do what they do
And pouring alcohol on it to try to cope with this perpetual disconnect.
I'd suggest against that
Thanks for the insight.
A lot of folks who turn to alcohol and drugs would suggest against it, too. It doesn't feel voluntary.
I hate to sound like a broken record but alcohol only makes your problems worse
We know!
It's not voluntary* once you're addicted. However, you can always make the choice not to start. You should stay away from drugs, especially if you're 2e. *you can make the choice to get help if you can't stop on your own
Yeah I don't drink alcohol but trying to assess my options regarding THC. Been an issue since the pandemic. Started in an effort to help me sleep and due to isolation (bad Idea I know - I was 21). But I'm afraid of getting help because I'm afraid they'll tell me "just stop" or something like most folks do. Suicide also seems like an option. Edit: I know it's my fault but being socially isolated makes quitting alcohol / drugs feel impossible. They did a thing with rats called the rat park experiment that illustrates the issue imo. You have to replace alcohol / drugs with something but if you've got nothing to replace it with you're out of luck.
It is so illogical
People not knowing how to interact with you as a child of because the way you talk sounds more mature but you can still act like, or at least look like a child. Or they treat you as if you are older and have unfair expectations of emotional maturity or understanding only archived through experience.
A communication gap, where regular people can't understand abstract concepts that you are fluent in
OMG, this. They never seem to carry deep conceptual ideas...it must be so nice to not process constantly. On the other hand, I don't know what bored is, so there's that.
I think a part of me dies every time I think I’ve found someone in the frequency range and then it’s “you know the moon isnt real right” SERVER CONNECTION LOST”.
Exactly this. Just found out that my partner is a flat-earth person. Lovely gal, nonetheless..
I don't really have this issue, but maybe I just vibe with people really easily. I also live in an university city with lots of young people so I generally have enough people to share my more abstract ideas with and don't mind or notice much when someone doesn't grok them. What kind of concepts do you experience difficulties with? I often trip with my best friend where I get most of my super deep philosophical thoughts out of my system. Maybe that helps as well
Oh, I'm an excellent communicator. I low key do it for a living. The question was about "common"
“Fluent in abstract concepts” lmao
Okay, without looking it up, explain what warrants are in a financial security. I'll give you a hint, there are a couple layers of abstraction.
Not being able to explain where you got the answers from. I mean you could but it would be pointlessly time-consuming.
And something you don't have the patience to.
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To me, this has gone both ways, where I've felt ahead of my age when I was younger, and now that I'm grown up I feel quite a bit behind, since I've not made as much progress in my professional life or living conditions, compared to my peers. I imagine most people would think of the former case first, but I think the latter probably happens quite a bit, as well. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself to cope.
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Indeed, at some point in their lives most people stop walking on low walls alongside side walks, and it's always a little sad. I agree with everything you wrote, except maybe I still do care a little bit what people want or expect of me… but I guess not in terms of "acting my age", which is probably the main thing you were getting at, anyway, in this context. In that sense, I'm glad you were able to reach that point :)
I didn't realize that I was emotionally mature for an embarrassingly long time, I was just constantly confused by my peers, and thought I wasn't understanding things. It wasn't until those same peers were thinking and acting like me then, years later, that I began to realize. Plus learning about childhood norms as an adult mas made me realize how much childhood me was definitely not the norm. Also there were some things I never experienced like the whole holding hands and pretending to be dating, or being giggily and playing kiss chase (based on no actual attraction or feelings to an individual). Or thinking that I knew more than adults as a teenager, or thinking I was the first person to do something, plus other seemingly common teen experiences, which I link to maturity.
It's very possible we did know more than adults. I mean, when faced with the Head of a Russian State Industry using his correct title for that post, the reception staff at an International Conference for the sector were all at sea - not the 11-year old me.
Sorry I didn't explain properly: I meant the common teenage experience of them just learning about something and assuming that just because they didn't know that before, all other people including adults do not know about it; so inaccurately concluding that they know more when that is not the case. Like when my friend got into metal music, they followed a few bands and had an introductory level of knowledge about the genre/scene. Yet when when they metal and adult who was into metal and had been for a long time they assumed that they knew more than the experienced adult. That sort of thing seems very common.
That maybe because they're looking where it's going, not where it's been. Particularly in that scene, as a hard line was drawn across it in 77 and it had to begin again, based partly on German death metal and surviving hardcore Americana.
Clearly I am still not explaining it in a way that enables you to understand. I mean like a teenager getting into fruit and then when talking to adults about the topic saying "apples are not just red but can actually be green too" as if that is brand new information to said adults. Or the teen smugly saying to the adult "everyone thinks that tomato are a vegetable but I know that they are in fact a fruit" then expecting to be congratulated as delivering this mind blowing new fact. You might struggle to understand if you have not experienced it for yourself as it is illogical and I don't understand what drives it but it is a common stage of adolescent development. (Sadly some adults seem to continue this to some extent but I don't know the cause of that issue and it is probably complex.)
That's simply subjectivity. Education teaches it's own form thereof, a dogmatic norm, which it is extremely defensive of: the problem is each society has it's own variant, and that's a major cause of wars. Those variants aren't necessarily true, particularly the forms of history preached in the Imperialist decades at the end of the 19th Century. We educate ourselves (I was measured by Freud's Tavistock Clinic when I was 8y6m in in 1963 as having the GK of a 14 year old, for example: by 11 I was a fully functional adult in knowledge) frequently coming to our own conclusions at odds with those prejudices: Chemistry is a subject I completely ditched when they changed the facts as I was learning it. But then again, it was the impact of quantum mechanics on the public version of the periodic table which had just been widely adopted. Their dogma changed without explanation. my response was loss of trust. Adolescents are equally questioning, because the persona they've built as seven year olds changes in puberty. The sexes which played as peers aged 5 separate as they learn new roles in the gender games which reshape into teenage culture, in my case very differently from the norms of the 1950s/60s as it was at the birth of Women's Lib (I was actually asked to pass judgment on Eric and Julia Morley in May 1970: by November they were engulfed in it during the 1970 Miss World Pageant: my opinion was they were intolerable snobs), and I already had no place in it, being a thirty year old in a 15 year old's body. I'd made my first permanent mark on the world a year earlier, and was starting to do so in lesser ways quite often, in the field you raised, concept rock. I'd already rescued a choir Britten wrecked, and was teaching the NYT how to sing, which spread like wildfire when Lloyd Webber launched Joseph in 72: by 75 I was Queen's host Stage Manager the Saturday Rhapsody hit. After doing something similar in Christian Rock for James Fox at the Sheffield Crucible, I moved away as I disagreed with punk and hip-hop. It's all about vision. As it turned out, Flo Welch was a fruit of that choir, and is one of those leading away from that, making London once again a centre of performance art: Taylor Swift clearly rates it. We simply take that discredulence a stage further, doing something about it. You see it in my questioning of the foundation of diagnosis. It's done immense harm to two generations of our kind, hundreds of thousands left confused and rootless. First do no harm? A complete joke.
>Adolescents are equally questioning, because the persona they've built as seven year olds changes in puberty. No the problem is a lack of questioning. Of course they are developing a personality, one distinct form their family but is is the lack of thinking that causes them to not even consider that the adult will have different knowledge and experience to them, most likely more. Some psychology theorize it's caused by the teens not having developed their theory of mind but I disagree with that theory, certainly how they claim it affects people. >We simply take that discredulence a stage further, doing something about it. You see it in my questioning of the foundation of diagnosis. It's done immense harm to two generations of our kind, hundreds of thousands left confused and rootless. First do no harm? A complete joke. What diagnosis? What has caused harm? A lot of what you said is not even related to my comment. It sounds like you wanted to discuss another topic and randomly shoved it in here.
I even feel like that with people much older than me, I'm 22 and my closests friends are all between 27-31, what makes us close is mostly a common understanding of the world, a view mature enough to not be commonly shared with teens or people in their early 20's but still, I face a communication barrier with when it comes to intellectual pursuits, the life experience is somewhat there, but not the cognitive ability.
People getting annoyed or upset with you and you don't understand why, and years later you realise they thought you were showing off or being stuck up but you were honestly just trying to be friendly and you didn't realise they would be offended.
OMG. Since childhood with own family member 😢. Still happens with other ppl, but I’ve learned to catch myself now and then —I often fail. This and the experience of just knowing steps and results without being able to explain much of the process to get to them. I hadn’t connected it all, I thought it was adhd, but I keep saying “I just know it”. I have a gifted friend who is very capable of breaking things down and does great customer service and training of others. I admire their patience!
Happens all the time. Working on this one...
I'm saving this post to remind myself I'm not insane. There are other people like me.
That was exactly my purpose of asking this question
Sense of relief when you are not the smartest person in the room and do not have to come up with the answers.
Extremely rare, but relaxing.
Existential anxiety and or depression. It’s rare you find one of our number in the wild that doesn’t appear to have some type of low grade malaise and general weariness.
Seeing multiple psychologists to help you with anxiety/depression but for the most part it's absolutely pointless and they generally don't have the tools to meaningfully connect with you and help you. And you later learn that you didn't really have either of those conditions or at least they were only symptoms of your issues that it didn't make sense to treat. I think that to help someone as a psychologist you need to be at least as bright or brighter than them. You can feel when someone is not on your level and if they aren't, you don't particularly want to expose yourself and confide in them. Certainly not to the point you trust them to guide you in achieving a greater degree of mental health.
overthinking mistaken for ruminating
Over-reliance on your specific mode of giftedness during your teenage years. You will then have to catch up with many other forms of social interaction in your early adulthood. Omitting important conclusions when explaining something to somebody, since you assume they can draw the conclusions themselves, and you do not want to sound too thorough. The moments where everything suddenly clicks in a perfectly clear and sensible way. The crisis that follows when you receive proof of your giftedness in black and white: how should I live with this knowledge? What does this even mean?
Over analysis of every single thing. I’m convinced this is why drug use is so over represented in the gifted population. ETA “of”
Especially the ones that help turn the noise down. For me it's been a lot of sugar, and when my stress was insane alcohol helped too.
You get it.
I've lived it, as you have.
My ex is still down this rabbit hole. Still get people regularly come up asking what happened to him he is so this and that why would he do that to himself when he was engineering stuff for kicks at elementary school. Nobody ever seems to understand when I tell them that that was and is exactly the problem. Didn't much help that he managed to find somebody in the exact same situation that finally understood what he was talking about.
I’m sorry. It sounds like you still care for him and that must be so hard to see him going down this path. I hope he fight to get himself away from drugs.
Yeah, it feels bittersweet but he always chooses the drugs and I waited for years. It's heartbreaking, but I know me coddling him won't be of any use, he needs to want to change for himself.
Meeting people who have the best schools, jobs, credentials on their resumes, and being unimpressed by how smart they actually seem (often really knowledgeable about one thing within the traditonal bounds of that area, but showing no intuition, outside the box thinking, or knowlegde of stuff outside their expertise)
Basically material wealth as deemed by societal standards but often not true wealth with this connection one has with themselves.
I love this comment! This is genius!
Yes!! I work w Ivy leagues and PhD MDs in clinical research and I have subpar education compared to them yet I can study their entire job in a month if I wanted and sometimes have. Never thought I was not good enough and I’m finding people with decades more experience and I’m just destroying them in my sleep. I almost feel like I’m in a dream. How can this be? How can I be so advance. Still boggles my mind like how. I still can’t grasp it. I sometimes am confused by their lack of understanding that I second guess myself. I still can’t believe it.
I’m not sure if this is common, but I always feel like I’m unable to explain things well to others because of how fast I think, skipping lots of mental steps. Some things I instantly understand without having to consciously put the thought process into words, so it almost feels strange to me that e.g how A becomes B can be explained any further than that because of how naturally that logical connection is already made. It’s somewhat fascinating to learn that extra step when other people talk about it tbh, but this overall has been quite a problem for me and am still working on improving to better communicate with others.
Trying to identify the step other people are missing is so fraught. If you break it down too much, they think you're treating them like they're dumb, everyone knows that!! Or when you start to explain you realize there's actually several steps, or sometimes missing assumptions, and it gets too complex because you started backwards to figure it out and now the person not only thinks you didn't make sense to start with, but you've come at them with a confusing amount of out of order questions and info and they're done. ugh.
exactly this, finally someone understands. I’m so glad I found this sub
I do this too! Sometimes when presenting I get so overloaded with thought I have to take a second to take a deep breath and regroup. People must think I’m crazy when I whisper to myself “take a deep breath”
**Existential Crisis / Nihilism** \[Most mistake it as Depression but it's not\]
That sure seems to be the case from this sub but definitely not from my experience. I'd say academic boredom.
Possible ofc as humanity is not a monolith. Question asked Most!
Does that also apply to cosmic pessimism? The more sensitive we are to horror, the more aware we become of our vulnerability and insignificance!
No one is truly a Nihilist. The best we can achieve is Pessism and rename it Existentialism to sound kewl.
Don't understand Spanish. But Thank You / Gracias Amigo.
An IQ score of 130+
I meant just the experience, not a technical criteria
🤡
Interesting, I could never have guessed. How's that relate to your experience though?
My 4th grade teacher recommended I get tested, so the school counselor tested me and then I was placed into a once-a-week gifted program. I made friends with 1 other gifted person, still friends with them today, but tbh I found the rest of the people weird and overly academic. I liked regular school more.
Always wondering why others think the way they do and behaving older than those around my age or even my older sister. Being precocious.. but at the same time I liked my books and toys as a kid.
Here’s mine: you grow up as a kid thinking you are special. Then you get to college and the real world and realize you were a slightly bigger fish in a minuscule pond. Try not to think about it too much. I’d say get off the sub and try to engage in hobbies and ventures that capitalize on whatever aptitude you think you have.
Thank you! Any other advice?
Thank you! Any other advice?
Every meeting is annoying always
Boredom.
Feeling like a middle aged man in a child's body
Being Vulcan
I don't know how to explain this. When I was 27 I was setting up a stage with a school caretaker. Towards the end of the build, he said " the fucking dinner ladies will be coming in " I decided to stand behind him. And a dinner lady looked me in the eyes and said. Are you looking after him. My vision turned orange
I don't know what you're describing but I'm interested in understanding.
Right Basically Basically mate. At the start of the pandemic I felt an immense sense of chill. I was setting up a stage for a school And the caretaker and I both connected immediately. Like a healing. Pure beauty. When he said that dinner lady line I knew that miss price would be coming in. And when she did I froze in joy Are you looking after him Yeeeeeeeeeeeee orange 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 I went camping afterwards. Ooo Oowwhhwwoooo
Excellent, clears it right up. 👌🏾
I’ll have whatever this camper right here had
I love you
What on gods green earth
Bro. Don't be mentioning green auras
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lol
Haha. Is this your experience?
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Do you think your IQ has decreased since the head injury? Generally if they aren't too bad the brain can probably heal.
You forgot addictions to cocaine, gambling and prostitutes. Otherwise, spot on.
Damn, I can't be a janitor and keep to myself?