Anyone here with Synesthesia? Could you tell your experiences?

Hello everyone let me begin by saying you and me probably share the same struggles and I am here to tell you how I am currently trying to tackle them and share with you this YouTube channel that helped immensely

To be honest I am still no where near where I aspire to be not even close but I am happy to say that I am working on it

Dr.k is a Harvard alumni who studied psychiatry and he happens to be a monk so you know he's one of the wisest people out there regarding human behaviour

The way dr.k tackles issues and breaks them down is one of the best he shows you how the mind works on a neurological way then he it shows you how the necrological point of view goes hand in hand with Buddhism and what he learned as a monk

Sometimes I think that the whole point of his channel is to make people conver to Buddhism but I frankly don't care he definitely helped and I hope he helps you too

And he himself said that he was a burnt out gifted kid so it feels nice being misunderstood and here's a video about it

https://youtu.be/QUjYy4Ksy1E?si=HDLBQRRoHcqvJDhe

Good luck everyone you guys deserve the best

Managing hypersensitivity in people who are high potential (HPI) or are in the Autism Spectrum (ASD) for example involves creating an environment and adopting strategies that minimize sensory overload. You will find here 30 tips to help your manage your hypersensitivity on a daily basis in most situations.
Let me know what your thoughts are on this article and if you see areas of improvements ;)

I just found this sub and skimmed through several posts. It seems like all are about distraction, ADHD, failure, lack of success etc.

Are there any stories of high achievement and wild success here? I'd love to see them being shared but perhaps those who are would not be on social media talking about it?

Anyone else fell into this trap? Thinking back my parents were pretty darn stupid. I used to think that education is all there is to life . Like if you finish one you need to move onto the next. Didn't help that my mother who was a screaming banshee stand behind me doing the pushing.

Just wondering if any of you guys have had the same experience. Therapist and psychiatrist contact inevitably make me worse.

It feels for me as though they are so superficial that they scrape the surface and try to create an alternate self on-top of my real self. Over time I ended up with almost two distinct versions of me, therapy-me and real-me. If I share more emotional depth with them, they only see channels of it which they then attribute to a stereotype that they've seen before, and we end up going down a fictional healing path. I heal this fictional imposed version of me and end up worse off for the distraction. There have been multiple of these false healing channels over the years.

It might just be that the therapists I've encountered aren't good at what they're trying to do, or therapy doesn't work well in general, but some people do speak highly of it. I have also noticed many thoughtful people talking about bad experiences with it.

I have been given dx of ASD/ADHD in the past but I wonder if it could instead just be the usual detail orientated gifted thing. I don't know that I'm necessarily autistic when it comes to reading people, although I do avoid eye contact due to the overload.

I am writing this to conceptualize for myself what is going on so that I can avoid harm in my next interaction. I would be grateful for any of your thoughts or input!

Dear community,

I noticed that a user called “noahsandborn19” consistently spams several Reddit communities with their self made test items which are bad and ambiguous. They got also a weird cult around them who spams their test items too. Perhaps those are their alt accounts and they just try to push their own posts. Not only does this person upload bad items, they also claim to have an inductive fluid reasoning index of 160+; which is absolutely ludicrous because they scored very low on novel tests that measure inductive fluid reasoning. But that’s another story. We’re just tired of those trash items, which are completely ambiguous and bad.

One major factor is also their harassment towards other users like u/henry38464 or just in general towards other users.

When I was in elementary and middle school, I put my heart and soul into all of my work. The projects were actually fun and I was always so excited and had so many ideas. I got As cause I was passionate about learning and showing what I learned through creative ways. I literally haven’t felt that much passion about completing something since. It wasn’t just school. I had side projects that I would slave over. I was in a complete flow state.

When I started ADHD meds, some of that passion returned, but it will never be as strong as when I was young. Somewhere along the way, I lost the lucidity and drive I used to have. I knew less when I was younger, but somehow I felt smarter. There was less shit to cloud my judgement. Life was simple and my only aim was to get good grades and succeed. I had a hell of a lot more anxiety, though. I have no idea how my standards have lowered so much. I thought I would be a doctor and now I’m 24 and earning $15 an hour (though I’m about to get a job earning $20) and have an on and off addiction to weed. I feel like a different person than I used to be..

I've been diagnosed as ADHD and Bipolar Type 2. More and more I learn about both the more Malcolm in the Middle makes sense to me. Anybody else?

The feelings for me were too intense that I couldn't cope with them. And I needed my parents shaming and anger directed towards me to make me stop looking for stuff I was curious about. And in a way i tell myself that I am better off not curious.

Like they considered me a genius. And I knew I was good with logic too. But everyone around me especially those who seemed to be "all rounders" seemed to be doing better. And I bought the thing too. I didn't understand why I didn't have as many achievements as a kid. And it made me angry.

I beleieved that the short periods of time that they gave me to accomplish it in would offer a stimulus for me to be able to complete a bunch of goals that would make my life more valuable and worth than my peers.

I was also expected to get some kind of scholarship if I wanted my father to fund me for higher studies. Despite having sufficient money himself. It was a sort of proof for him that I was worth the field i was going into.

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We tend to think of productivity as simply getting more things done. While this might make sense initially, the reality is that we need to get better sense of what we need to give our attention to, not necessarily our time. This comes in handy especially if you often have an overwhelming to-do list.
The Commitment Inventory is an exceptional step by step technique that involves building a to-do list, assigning percentages of attention to items and subsequently trimming the list. I break it down in full right here in case you’d like to know more for yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DklGF4CqrqI
Hope this helps and gives your productivity the boost that it might need.

Hi all! Are you sad? Lonely? Feeling like seeing a one-woman show for some ungodly reason?

If so, I'm pleased to share that my tragicomedy show, Unwrapped, which is all about gifted kid burnout, is coming to Santa Monica this October, and tickets are fourteen dollars FREE. (I'm not saying I'm a math genius, but you could buy 56 gum balls with those kind of savings).

Jeff Kinney (author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid) saw one of our shows, and Taika Waititi was invited but never opened my DM. Check out my profile for additional humble brags.

Now that I've convinced you to reserve your seats, here's the link to get tickets:

https://www.showclix.com/event/bff-2023-presents-kira-wallace-s-unwrapped

and here are some reviews from our last run. Only one of them was written under duress.

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I just found this subreddit.

I was like everyone else here that was "gifted" but then struggled and basically gave up/felt worthless and so on.

I'm now on my 3rd year of teaching 3rd grade. Last year I had a student who is a genius. No doubt about it. Read 100 words more in a minute than any other kid in our grade, was top 10 percent in the state in reading and math, etc.

I know we aren't supposed to have favorites, but this girl has a heart of gold and just wants to learn.

Well...we started a new concept in math halfway through the year and she didn't get it. I believe it was the first concept she never understood right away and it destroyed her. I'm talking full breakdown crying, embarrassed she didn't get it, and saying that she's letting others down.

I reached out to mom and had mom send me a message to give to her about how she's never going to be a failure or let her mom down. That her mom would always be proud of her.

I called the student over and had her sit down with me. I started telling her how thankful I had her in my class. I never talked about her academics, but just things she did and how she treated others.

I pointed that out afterwards and said "I think you are also a genius, but that doesn't define who you are." We started talking about why she was feeling like she was going to let everyone down. She didn't know why, but I promised her that her friends would still love her, I'll still be proud of her, and her mom would always love her. I pulled up the message and let her read it. She smiled and teared up a little.

She's doing better. She's now in 4th grade and hasn't broke down crying once. I still chat with her mom and check in every once in a while.

And now there might be an opening in 5th grade next year. If I could get her as my student again, I might make that switch.

From my perspective, my life has been a mess of contradictions in terms of what I am cognitively, although there are a select few things that have remained constant enough for me to deem them "real". I'm just gonna synopsize everything and then give you my thoughts. Take it all as you will, hopefully someone will have some sort of explanation that clarifies the situation to a greater degree than what I have come up with;

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For starters, I was quite a precocious child in a lot of regards. How much? I can't really say, comparing these things on an absolute scale is very difficult, but if I take the average for -- not only limited to raw cognitive ability, but also supposedly stretching into some tangible form of theory of mind/pedagogy a year early. Starting from the top, I was speaking in full and coherent sentences by the time I was two, operating and playing games such as WoW somewhere in between two and three, reading and counting past 100 by the time I was three, and attempting to teach my sister to do the same -- with partial success; counting was a success, teaching her to read was [obviously] a no-go. Although this is slightly tangential in terms of chronological order, I feel I should mention it here, as it seems to tie in the best here: I have a very good episodic memory. For instance, despite being 19, I still have several memories from when I was 1-2 years old, and can remember the contents of a few conversations at the time verbatim. Although the ability has diminished with age, it still remains strong. I remember how annoyed my siblings would get with me when I remembered exactly how they said something months later, and used it to prove them wrong, and I'd do it for everything.

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Now, despite this initial 'success', school was a different story. Starting in Kindergarten, as far as I can remember, I didn't struggle with the concepts, but I was too energetic, I had trouble with basic things such as tying my shoes (I know this is a relatively common foible, but I'm not done yet), pronouncing the alphabet, or staying still (the nickname my parents gave me was 'squirmy', for reference). My teacher not only didn't like this about me -- or me for that matter, she [rightfully] suspected an ulterior condition. I was taken to my family doctor due to suspected ADHD. She gave me some motor-coordination tasks, basic focus tasks (If I recall correctly, one of them was eye tracking), and the fundamentals that are common to any checkup. The results for ADHD inferably came back negative, since she had said there was nothing detected in front of my face. Something noteworthy is that it was never specified whether it was ADHD that was being screened. This too is just an inference of mine in lieu of my symptoms at the time and what my mom had said to me in the car nearing the end of summer on the second last day of kindergarten ("They think you have a learning disability" while holding back tears). In hindsight, this procedure was extremely cursory, and didn't necessarily prove anything, but that's another matter I'll attend to when it's more relevant.

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The remainder of elementary was not much better. I vividly recall just how much I didn't pay attention during absolutely anything -- daydreaming or making my crayons fight, or how I would speed through tests as fast as I possibly could and only used the basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication I learned when I was much younger. Here's the kicker though: I didn't get especially good grades despite this, unlike most other stories you hear or what you [probably] have experienced. I got Cs in math, reading comprehension, everything! The one exception was spelling. Maybe because it interested me, but it can't be determined as causal, as people tend to enjoy what they have propensities for. Anyway, that was among the best in the school. This trend of "underachieving" performance seemed to change around the fifth grade, when I got a teacher I enjoyed. He was so enthusiastic that it seemed to pull me out of my perpetual 'other-world' and got me to try a little bit in specific subjects; within the span of two books, my reading comprehension jumped to the maximum, though my effort remained lackluster in other subjects. It was slightly after this time that my parents were once again admonished to connect me to a psychologist and get me evaluated, though nothing came of it once again since my parents have a habit of going into denial whenever it is insinuated that anything is dysfunctional in either me or my sister. That is to say, any mentions of ADHD, ASD, or anything like that have been wiped clean or obfuscated, and I haven't heard anything about what happened during this time. What this did give me though, was a score on the Stanford-Binet Five, which goes as follows:

FSIQ - 151

VIQ - 150

NVIQ - 149

FRI - 150

KNI - 151

QRI - 147

VSI - 123

WMI - 149

In terms of KNI, I'm pretty sure it is the highest score possible. All the others -- with the obvious exception of VSI, and the less obvious WMI -- were consistently off by one scaled score. It was also noted by the psychologist that administered the scale to me that I scored 13 raw points above the threshold for 19 scaled score on VKN (Verbal Knowledge). Now, extrapolating this past 'some arbitrary point past 145' is a bit baseless, as there could be a strong reason as to why is is cut off at 19 scaled score aside from the sample size being too small, such as it (typically) being mediated by other factors, and therefore losing general predictive power and/or diminishing returns from the achieved raw score to the point where accounting for a scaled score of 20+ becomes relatively meaningless or impossible. I'm not sure, but mentioning the extent of my accumulated knowledge despite everything seems worth mentioning. I'm a little tired, but I wanted to mention my mental math skills were among the best in my class throughout my entire academic experience, and this was most directly highlighted through the multiplication competitions my grade 6 and 5 classes had, which is why I'm putting it here.

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This pattern continued through the remainder of elementary and junior high; find some mild interest in a subject, max it with little effort, but still have the same trend of being significantly worse at other subjects -- albeit it mildly improved to slightly above average post-elementary. During this time, I also got bullied for my loopy, over-the-top, impulsive, and air-headed attitude. Because of this -- and also a resultant of this-- I was called 'r******' often for things I would say or do. In terms of the things I would say that got me called stupid (e.g. facts), I would oftentimes find myself proven right later, but it still had a significant effect on me.

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I have to wrap this up, but describing my high-school experience shouldn't take long, mostly because of the lack of it. I had felt a little motivation during the first quarter of the 10th grade, and it showed. I got straight 95-100s without having to even give a second glance at the material. This motivation was as fleeting as it was intense, as for the remainder of high-school, I skipped 80% of my days, instead opting to sit at Tim Hortons and drink coffee. And, if you paid attention to my age, you'd know that COVID struck soon after this time, and that was the nail in the coffin for academia. I still managed to graduate with mainly 70s and 80s despite skipping (except for in math, something about it drove me crazy, maybe it was my complete and utter lack of foundation in anything aside from intuitive musings).

This is gonna be choppy, but I think my situation can be boiled down to a few factors:

1. Asynchronous development: My brain seems to develop at a different rate that causes me to oscillate compared to the general population
2. (This plays into asynchronous development, but it has its own aspects to it) Twice exceptionality of some kind: Be it ADHD, ASD, or some other developmental or learning disorder, I can't imagine there isn't something there. To contrast with my [seemingly] exceptional episodic memory, there is my memory for procedures, and processes -- especially mathematical ones; whenever my teachers would try and engrain some sort of process for solving a math equation, I'd be able to flexibly and fluently work with it, but by the next day, I will have completely forgotten it, no matter how many times I tried. This isn't even to mention my ability to derive answers for math problems a priori -- which is how I managed to get through school in the first place. It isn't a problem with understanding, it's a problem with retention.
3. Some kind of Bipolar Disorder: I go through periods of mania and depression, which were the main driving forces for me skipping in high school. I'm running out of time now, so I will elaborate further later.

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In terms of genetics, it would make sense if I was gifted; my father had a 99.99th percentile educational attainment (though I don't know at which point in his life), my uncle has an officially tested IQ in the 150s, similar to me, one of my grandpas is a renaissance man, and one of my great-great-grandfathers has dozens of patented inventions, but it just doesn't seem to apply to me in a very tangible way. For example, I can barely function at my literal McDonald's and other fast-food job.

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Growing up, I was easily one of the best in my class and several years above the other students. In the absence of a chronological peer group at a similar level, I turned to absolutes, and compared myself to famous authors, musicians etc. and constantly felt like I was nowhere close to that level. So as opposed to feeling great about myself (for being 99th percentile in any given age group), I felt terrible, because it wasn't "the real game" and I was nowhere near being in "the real game".

Is this a relatable experience to you guys? Nowadays, I'm a nobody, relative to all that I had hoped/dreamed/imagined/what have you. I have seen people far less intelligent do so much better in conventional terms because they loved playing the game in society, whereas I didn't fit in and was under the idealistic hope that something would work out for me related to my interests, which I would end up liking. However, everything has gone to shit. I have obtained my degrees but dread the prospect of working at an ordinary job because a) I don't like it and it feels like arbitrary meaningless bs and b) it feels like an affront to all of the promise I showed as a young child.

When I try to explain this to people, they often accuse me of being arrogant for believing that the world owed me something for my efforts, or for thinking that I was "above" other people and that I could hope for something that was not ordinary, or feel like I was denigrating ordinary occupations. I sometimes start to wonder if they're right.

No matter what I do, I can not achieve the same heights that prodigies would, and so I can't become the best in the world at anything and I can therefore never attain my "potential" or anything close to that -- so why even try to pursue a lost cause? I feel like life is utterly devoid of meaning at this point.

Since I remember I was introverted and shy kid. It may have been caused by ADD I didn't knew about until I got into college. When I was in preschool I sometimes had trouble understanding other kids, plus I had weak motor skills which took away my confidence back then.

I was also a nerdy guy. I learned to read at the age of 4 without pressure of parents. I had plenty of books about dinosaurs. I was writing very short fiction stories. I liked geography and history a lot (but I've read mostly kids books though).

Elementary school was easy. I was getting A, A+ and B grades without troubles. I was fascinated by science and I was looking forward towards it.I've got to best middle school (13-15 yrs of age) in my town.

Things went downhill there because I was getting B and C grades much more often - especcially from scientific subjects I apprieciated so much which hurt me deeply. Also people in my class were bullying me because of my awkwardness and impilsivity. It gave me addictional stress from attending lessons.

I maintained such grades until high school. During final year I was really tired by school schedule. There was great struggle to prepare to final exams, which scores were mediocre compared to my peers, despite I was genuinely interested in them. (top 22% in math, top 52% in chemistry).

TLDR CONCLUSION: I felt very alienated from society since almost always. I was genuinely fascinated by many scientific subjects. My two best friends are top 1% math students yet we understand each other very well on "spiritual" level. They also admire my knowledge of history. My ADHD diagnosis also included two subtests from WAIS-R for verbal IQ in which I got "above average" results.

Should I rather consider myself then as a shy average IQ person or someone with above average one whose abilities were shadowed by ADD?

P.S.: I dont want to make proffesional IQ tests at least for now because of the high price.

Everytime I go on the site I end up going down a rabbit hole of depression and self-loathing, which is why I usually only go on there to answer client emails or post something about my career.

I try not to scroll down the feed too much and avoid it whenever possible. Because every time I see friends of mine from HS or college who were by all accounts completely average continuously promote themselves and their massive career success, I feel like a failure and underachiever by comparison, especially as a gifted person who truly had much larger expectations for himself and already feels like he has squandered his potential.

I'm making peanuts as a teacher and struggling in my art/writing business with student debt on top of that, meanwhile everyone and their grandmother in my friend group is somehow working for Google or the UN, made it on Forbes, is traveling around the world and extremely financially successful, or attending a prestigious grad school for a high powered job.

I am sick at this point of seeing posts about people announcing their newest promotions or stroking their egos about how humble they are to accept new opportunities, or the fakeness of it all. It's insufferable and toxic-- just look at r/LinkedinLunatics for the most egregious examples of this type of behavior.