Were you a gifted child? How are you seen as adult?

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Y'all are making me glad I gave up on therapy.

Although, at a certain point, really a fellow ought to take over the reins for himself and administer self-therapy. That's my own opinion probably applicable mainly to me, myself and I.

Some people see great value in talking things out with another. I do too, actually, just have never encountered a therapist that actually made me feel any better about things. How can they, in a 45 min. session with a complete stranger, unless they are Nostradamus or Merlin? Maybe our expectations are high, but then again they sure do charge a lot for their services.

Probably our sample is skewed - we're introverts judging by the fact we're spending our time typing into a computer forum rather than out and about with friends. Maybe extroverts get way more mileage out of therapy? Any extroverts care to chime in?

:crickets:



Well, I was just like you, doing those 16 ounce curls sitting by the computer typing on forums, playing video games, watching TV shows. I started drinking at 13 and continued to 48, then gave it up for good after performing a banishing ritual. That's the thing that impressed me most about white magic, that I can go in a grocery store now and the booze aisle repulses me, I feel ill looking at wine, beer bottles. But drawing pentagrams in the air is not for everyone.

When I was 11, my verbal IQ was 99, performance IQ was 139.

I have no idea what that equated to as my overall IQ. A few years ago it was 110 (overall) when I was a participant in research. Different scale though, so not really a comparison to the number above.

Like the OP, I was excellent at copying pictures, way advanced for my age. I never kept up with it, or I would've been brilliant at it by now. I remember when I was 9 this doctor asked me to draw this picture of Winnie The Pooh that was on his wall, so I did, and he was shocked and kept saying to my mother, "It looks exactly the same!! !!"

As for how I'm seen as an adult, well, anything I do artistically doesn't especially impress anyone. Artists are everywhere, still as an adult I dress really well sometimes and impress other women and they give me curious looks and attention, and compliments. I *love* that. It's so fun.

See http://antjuanfinch.com/pdit . My math ability is less than good but I think that(139 and 98) equals 114 . That's if you believe a legit FSIQ can be given with such a large gap between PIQ and VIQ. Many psychologists don't.

my nice brother fits this description
but i wonder what the best way is to fix this.. because i think a lot of the adult inadequacies may result from (or be increased by) no early intervention as a child (no identification or minimization of 'defects' because the child just seemed so 'perfect' )... so the adult things that could have been eased into are instead like an insurmountable challenge.

i guess early identification and intervention is the key to success in these cases.
but very jealous of the 'gifted but autistic' kids who get those things ages 3-5

i was NOT gifted but they thought i was nearing gifted-
from how much i read -

(so they put me in the 'not quite gifted but not quite normal' class, this had children in
grades 5 and 6 combined in one class)

my actual grades soon proved them wrong... even though i was only expected to do work of my age level, i was getting bad grades in everything except english.

i have never been close to gifted-- only hyperlexic..
and actually quite stupid overall...i guess it is a blessing because then less was expected of me...
whereas with him.. he had so much pressure to manage on his own -
and it gave him a serious nervous breakdown a few times..

i guess in that sense, paradoxically, being gifted is a hindrance

B to C grade student . Probable undiagnosed learning difficulty. Now with the help there is would be regarded as 2e.

Although my IQ was ok (118, I think), I was a mess as a youth. Totally disorganized, shambling about in a kind of mental fog. Unable to read the face of a clock or even tie my shoelaces. Worst of all, my attention span was gnat-sized. when I finally got the proper medications (age 50), it was apparent that the best part of my life had been wasted, barely surviving like an animal as opposed to really living.

i was the same (still am without Welbutrin) .

the shoelaces and attention and clock part match me exactly.
now i can proudly say i not only tie my own shoelaces but also my kids' ..and even figured out how to 'double knot' which my mom had been trying to teach me before and i never got it right

It's great to hear that! One of the better things about being on the Spectrum is that many of us are still

young at heart, still evolving as adults. I am 50, but I feel (and act, alas) like a twenty year old.

Our futures (especially if we get the right drugs) promise improvement and growing acceptance of self if we can just hang on through the long, dark slog upwards

This is why I always say that “being a parent” forces one to mature. You’re fully responsible for another person whom you bought to life.

I probably would have benefited from being a dad. I would probably have “grown up faster” after making major mistakes in the beginning. Hoping the “major mistake” didn’t harm the kid majorly.

Once, when I was in my 30s, I failed to hold a very young baby correctly because I wasn’t taught. I didn’t support my nephew’s neck properly. Luckily, this was caught in time.

Extrovert here! I'll chime in. Doing well in therapy isn't about extroversion or introversion, since you're talking to just one person. Even a strong introvert is usually able to pull that off pretty well.

However, therapy is about having very robust social skills, an ability most aspies lack. In order to succeed in therapy, you MUST be able to figure out what your therapist wants to hear, when your therapist want to hear it, and how to phrase it. If you fail to do that, your therapist will be angry with you, and will retaliate somehow, usually by mocking you or pushing your emotional buttons. Like, if your therapist asks you how something made you feel, you're supposed to KNOW what to say and how to say it in a way your therapist likes. If you fail to do that, your therapist will trigger you in order to make you cry. This is known as "negative reinforcement", and is meant to teach you to talk about your feelings the way your therapist wants to hear, all without teaching you the technical skills to do that.

Another example: if you're a teenager seeing a family therapist, she (let that person be a woman) DOES NOT want to hear you complain about your parents, and it's YOUR job to know this from the get-go. She is, after all, their ally helping them "fix" you. If you complain about them, she will mock you and/or rub the misery back in your face, although she will NEVER say to your face you're saying something wrong. You're supposed to learn on the fly not to complain about your parents again, unless their actions meet the therapy industry's mandated reporting standards, like physical abuse.

TL;DR: The only way for aspies to win at therapy is not to play the game at all. It's rigged against us by design.

You have a lot of insight into bad therapy! While I am sure that good ones exist, my experience was similar to yours. I had to figure out what topics pissed him off, and avoid them. What I wanted to talk about hardly mattered, and I was ultimately responsible for my own misery because of my bad choices (genetics be damned!).

He should have paid me by the hour!

I fought back against my therapist a little differently. I just fabricated nonexistent issues, like feeling anxious about a math test, and talked about them like it's an overwhelming tragedy, whenever I knew she was about to start grilling me about my feelings. She'd immediately jump in to try to "help me deal with the test anxiety", and I'd keep talking about it until the session ended. Then at the following session, I'd gush praise at her: "Wow! I felt so much better after we talked, and I did well on that test." She'd fall for it every time, and even react by laying off my feelings that day. I don't know who was more naive and gullible: her or me.

Yes, I was a gifted child I suppose. Talented at sciences/maths. I came from a low income background in a small Midwestern town, so my potential was limited by that and severe bullying which messed up my brain for a long time. I began to reach my full potential in 2016 when I went back to college after getting academically dismissed (caused by depression). I'm now on the verge of finishing my master of science degree and could have extended my project to the PHD level if my parents were wealthy.

Personally, I wish I was an artist

I wish I was an artist...

. First school, in Bangkok , sussed there was something going on. Tests at Great Ormond street for what we now call cerebral palsy. That was in 1962/1963 Result was negative. No alternatives were considered. My parent's didn't pursue the matter further.

Later school reports from 8 to 18:Badly coordinated; poor at drawing and writing,bad at geometry, disorganised and messy . Lots of pointers to there being something up . However 1961-1975, when I was at school, was a period when there was very little attempt to join those pointers together .

The ability to draw, copying pictures, sounds pretty cool to me. I always envied a kid in school that drew really good comic books, that's what he did, he made comics. I would advise finding an angle like that, maybe cartoon/comics, and that can be of any genre you know, drama, spiritual, erotic, comedy, whatever. I assume dressing well is related to artistry, how? I know artists that dress pretty dumpy.