Slightly Aspie and Definitely Gifted

Post Reply New Topic

This is orngjce223 here. If you've seen me before on Gifted forums (or, more likely, you haven't), you probably know I'm both gifted and Aspergers.

Twice exceptional, they call it.

Any questions?

Welcome to WP!

Welcome to WP!

I have a brother who is both HFA and gifted, and the rest of my family around the same area - parents PDD/gifted, sister just gifted (and an airhead, but that's beside the point).

I actually hail from Cogito, a gifted forums, which you might want to check out if you're interested in... smarter things.

howdy...

hi, and welcome to WP!

I am not hep with all that jive, could you explain 'gifted' to me?

Merle

It doesn't have *one* definition, by-the-way.

But if you really wanted, my IQ seems to be in the 140something range, so that would probably settle it for you.

There's also the "increased emotions" bit of it... when I'm happy I'm absolutely ecstatic, and when I'm angry I'd be furious, and things of that nature. Something about connections between things that I think, but I'd rather not... uh... *alienate* you at this point.

And adding to that, I have no eye contact to speak of. So there's the "aspie" bit.

Well, I hope you have a good time here and can contribute some interesting posts.

You know, I've never considered 140's to be gifted... so it is, then?
Congratulations, and I suppose I'd better stop picking on my little brother for that...

Seriously, though, don't you get bored of that gifted environment after a while? I sure as hell did, but to each his own.

A high IQ, by itself, isn't something that really affects me. Giftedness is more of a way of thinking than anything.

I'd say that giftedness is like being in a hall of mirrors. Anything that I learn bounces off them again and again, so that I learn them better (imagine recognizing a picture of Paris Hilton and then, immediately after, thinking of the deposed French queen Marie Antoinette, same personality, different time period, without someone asking you to do so) - but the emotions that I feel are also bounced off those mirrors again and again, and made more intense, which they call "emotional giftedness". (I call it "me blowing things way out of proportion again".)

I'll be in that. As a child, afflicted by illness and surgery, I learned to read - my elder sister taught me while I was in a hospital bed - before I learned to talk.

Through childhood, school, being literate blended with being science oriented, being the child of an engineer, and changing schools every few years. I spilled out into an australian university in the sixties, unable to talk with other people and unaware that I had a problem. My IQ was / is 160+, but I've rarely known personal relationships. Unaware. That there was any difference, fundamentally, between me and any other human being.

I spent this afternoon with my son - he's mid twenties now, and beginning to contemplate an aspergers diagnosis. It's a lonely life we're condemned to, and there's not a lot around to make it any easier - either for us or for those who care about us.

Perhaps early diagnosis helps in that at least we can be with people we have something in common with, perhaps it harms in encouraging us to think of ourselves with disempowering models.

I can't tell. I've spoken with one or two early diagnosis cases and while I'm certain that a chance of avoiding some of the bite of that loneliness is worth taking, we haven't had enough success yet. But hell, I've been sure of the diagnosis for three years now, and I've only spoken with three other people who admit to aspergers?

It's a pity that cogito discriminates against older and self taught people. Unless an aspie is born of academic parents in recent decades, they've little chance there.

"Hello," fellow-traveler orngjce223, and welcome to Wrong Planet, a great place with great forums and with many gifted people such as yourself. Enjoy the sites, take great care of yourself, and all the WP best to you.

The forums I've found are "gifted teenagers" forums, so there's a reason that they discriminate against those people who are born before, say, 1975.

Note to self: One of these days, I had better start a twice-exceptional forums.